Good breeding increases shelf life

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SALINAS, CA - The lettuce cut and packaged for food service and salad mixes is an increasingly important component of the produce industry. Lettuce is highly perishable, and the cutting required in processing further shortens its shelf life.

'Nanosculpture' could enable new types of heat pumps and energy converters

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Troy, N.Y. – A new technique for growing single-crystal nanorods and controlling their shape using biomolecules could enable the development of smaller, more powerful heat pumps and devices that harvest electricity from heat.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered how to direct the growth of nanorods made up of two single crystals using a biomolecular surfactant. The researchers were also able to create "branched" structures by carefully controlling the temperature, time, and amount of surfactant used during synthesis.

Research publications online: Too much of a good thing?

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The Internet gives scientists and researchers instant access to an astonishing number of academic journals. So what is the impact of having such a wealth of information at their fingertips? The answer, according to new research released today in the journal Science, is surprising--scholars are actually citing fewer papers in their own work, and the papers they do cite tend to be more recent publications. This trend may be limiting the creation of new ideas and theories.

Study shows cost-effectiveness of 64-slice CT scanner in emergency department chest pain patients

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Elderly falls cut by 11 percent with education and intervention

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Commonly viewed as an inevitable consequence of aging and often ignored in clinical practice, falls among the elderly were cut by 11 percent when researchers at Yale School of Medicine used a combination of fall prevention educational campaigns and interventions aimed at encouraging clinicians to incorporate fall-risk assessment and management into their practices.

Too much, too little sleep increases ischemic risk in postmenopausal women

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Postmenopausal women who regularly sleep more than nine hours a night may have an increased risk of ischemic stroke, researchers reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Compared to women sleeping seven hours, the risk of ischemic stroke was 60-70 percent higher for those sleeping nine hours or more, said lead author Jiu-Chiuan Chen, M.D., Sc.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health in Chapel Hill.

Yale researchers discover remnant of an ancient 'RNA world'

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Some bacterial cells can swim, morph into new forms and even become dangerously virulent - all without initial involvement of DNA. Yale University researchers describe Friday in the journal Science how bacteria accomplish this amazing feat - and in doing so provide a glimpse of what the earliest forms of life on Earth may have looked like.

Global warming experts recommend drastic measures to save species

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AUSTIN, Texas—An international team of conservation scientists from Australia, the United Kingdom and United States, including University of Texas at Austin Professor Camille Parmesan, call for new conservation tactics, such as assisted migration, in the face of the growing threat of climate change.

They report their policy ideas in a paper published July 18 in the journal Science.

Discovery of a new signaling mechanism may lead to novel anti-inflammatory therapy

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A team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has uncovered a new signaling mechanism used to activate protein kinases that are critical for the body's inflammatory response. Their work will be published in the July 18 online edition of Science (Science Express.).

Measures to help species cope with climate change?

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Many species must move to new areas to survive climate change. Often, this seems impossible. Species stranded on mountain tops in southern Europe that are becoming too hot for them, for instance, are unlikely to be able to reach northern Europe unaided. So should WE step in to help?