Terahertz (THz) radiation, or far-infrared light, can penetrate clothing and other materials to provide images of concealed weapons, drugs, or other objects. However, THz scanners must usually be very close to the objects they are imaging because water vapor in air absorbs THz radiation so strongly that most of it never reaches the object to be imaged.

Tiny pores within plant cells may hold promise for green fuels.

Researchers have discovered that particles from cornstalks undergo previously unknown structural changes when processed to produce ethanol, an insight they said will help establish a viable method for large-scale production of ethanol from plant matter.

Armed with more than a decade’s worth of statistics, researchers are sounding a new alarm about growing rates of syphilis among gay and bisexual men.

The overall number of syphilis cases in the United States fell from 50,578 in 1990 to just 7,177 in 2003 perhaps because of a nationwide prevention campaign aimed at heterosexuals. Nevertheless, gay men have seen their rates rise significantly in this decade.

A generation of children born with HIV are now coming of age and reaching sexual maturity. Girls in this group who are sexually active are experiencing a higher number than expected of cervical abnormalities, a new study finds.

Researchers monitored the rate of first-time pregnancies, genital health and Pap test results of 638 girls, ages13 and over, who became infected with HIV around the time of birth. Nearly 50 percent of the girls had abnormal cervical cells.

Ten genetic variants associated with type 2 diabetes, a disease which impacts more than 170 million people worldwide, have been identified or confirmed by a U.S.-Finnish team led by scientists at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

The discoveries could lead to the development of new drugs for diabetes, permit more effective targeting of drug and behavioral therapies, and help scientists and physicians better predict who will develop diabetes, said Michael Boehnke, the Richard G. Cornell Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics at the U-M School of Public Health.

Engineers at Washington University in St.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have been awarded over £366,000 to help unravel the mystery of a stomach bug which causes gastric ulcers and cancer. Their research could lead to the development of a vaccine for those most at risk.

Studies of the enzyme CTP synthetase in the parasite Trypanosoma brucei have brought researchers at Umeå University in Sweden closer to a cure for African sleeping sickness. Their findings are now being published in the April issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Since the parasite constantly changes its surface, it can avoid the immune defense of humans and invade the central nervous system, which leads to personality disturbances, sleep disruptions, and ultimately death. For patients affected by a severe T brucei infection in the central nervous system, there are no medicines that can treat both subspecies without incurring extremely serious side effects.

Nanotechnology is the ability to measure, see, manipulate and manufacture things usually between 1 and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; a human hair is roughly 100,000 nanometers wide. More than $30 billion in products incorporating nanotechnology were sold globally in 2005. By 2014, Lux Research estimates this figure will grow to $2.6 trillion.

As products made with nanometer-scale materials and devices spread to more industries and markets, there is a growing opportunity and responsibility to leverage nanotechnology to reduce pollution, conserve resources and, ultimately, build a "clean" economy, advises a new report from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies.

An electrical circuit that should carry enough power to produce the long-sought goal of controlled high-yield nuclear fusion and, equally important, do it every 10 seconds, has undergone extensive preliminary experiments and computer simulations at Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine facility.

Z, when it fires, is already the largest producer of X-rays on Earth and has been used to produce fusion neutrons. But rapid bursts are necessary for future generating plants to produce electrical power from sea water.