MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Kansas State University researchers have developed a new testing method to help millers assure wheat flour purity that will meet baking industry standards and consumers' expectations.

The test introduces sophisticated molecular methods that focus on high, endosperm purity in flour extracted from wheat kernels.

"We are helping the miller by measuring the endosperm purity for flour streams coming from each stage of the milling process," said Mark Boatwright, a Kansas State University doctoral candidate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from Runnels, Iowa. "This will allow the miller to optimize settings on equipment and make decisions to meet the baker's specifications for quality flour."

Autism spectrum disorder is a group of social and neurodevelopmental disorders that include difficulty with interpersonal interaction, communication and excessive repetitive behaviors. Currently, though there are medications to treat some symptoms but no drug therapies exist to treat the underlying disorders.

Treating mice with a compound called SR1078 showed reduced autistic behavior in the mouse analog of autism, according to Thomas Burris, Ph.D., chair of pharmacology and physiology at Saint Louis University, by increasing the expression of genes known to be low in the brains of autistic patients. 

Though more urbanization has been linked by activists to better environment and various other social engineering desires, science has instead demonstrated the benefits of contact with nature for human well-being.

Rather than criticizing rural life while lobbying for more spending on city green spaces, it makes more sense to talk about just getting people out of the city mentality. For a paper in 
BioScience, scholars used nationally representative data from the United Kingdom and model testing to examine the relationships between objective measures and self-reported assessments of contact with nature, community cohesion, and local crime incidence.

Representatives from more than 190 countries will travel to Paris next week in emissions-belching vehicles to dine on five-course meals and talk about creating a process to reduce greenhouse gases over time.  Then 170 of them will ignore it while the ones with few CO2 emissions will claim they are doing their part. 

An economics paper in Science estimates that the Paris pledges can reduce the probability of the highest levels of warming, and increase the probability of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, if they are implemented and numerical models are accurate. 

In new research appearing in the prestigious journal Nature Biotechnology, an international research team led by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem describes a new technique for growing human hepatocytes in the laboratory. This groundbreaking development could help advance a variety of liver-related research and applications, from studying drug toxicity to creating bio-artificial liver support for patients awaiting transplantations.

Research led by Dr. Keiji Tanimoto from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, has brought us closer to understanding the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon of genomic imprinting. In this intriguing event, one copy of a gene is 'turned off', or silenced, depending on whether it was derived from the mother or the father. The research team has identified a segment of DNA that is essential in the imprinting process for the closely linked Igf2/H19 genes, two of the first imprinted genes to be discovered. If these genes are incorrectly imprinted, it can lead to the overgrowth (Beckwith-Wiedemann) or dwarfism (Silver Russell) syndromes, and also has a role in some kidney and liver cancers.

Fast Radio Bursts - bursts of energy from space that appear as a short flashes of radio waves to telescopes on Earth - have baffled astronomers since first detected a decade ago.

Though only 16 have been recorded, there could be thousands of of these mysterious events each day.

(PHILADELPHIA) -- Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have discovered why conventional efforts to block a tiny strand of ribonucleic acid, called microRNA, in triple negative breast cancer cells failed. In a study published December 2nd in the journal PLOS ONE, the new insight enables effective design of RNA blockers against previously intractable microRNAs.

(PHILADELPHIA) - Although a number of treatments exist to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, to date, none reliably slow the progression of the disease. In 2013, a molecule called GM1 ganglioside showed promise in patients for not only relieving symptoms but also slowing disease progression. However, GM1 ganglioside has been difficult to make and to deliver to patients for regular use. Now, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University have demonstrated a way to help the brain of mice produce more of its own GM1 ganglioside in a study published December 2nd in the open access journal PLOS ONE.