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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcy reorganizations represented a sea change in corporate restructuring, one that could portend the end of our current system of bankruptcy reorganization, according to a published article by two University of Illinois experts in bankruptcy law.

Experiments with an artificial stomach suggest that a popular lemon-lime soft drink could play an unexpected role in improving the effectiveness of an oral anticancer drug. The experiments produced evidence that patients will absorb more of the unnamed drug, tested in Phase I in clinical trials, when taken with "flat" or degassed Sprite. The study appears in ACS' Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal.

November 10, 2010 -- To keep soldiers in the battlefield healthy, the U.S. Army is exploring new ways to detect harmful bacteria in water.

Current techniques for analyzing water in the field can take as long as 24 hours to complete, according to Bart Lipkens of Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts and his colleagues at Physical Sciences in Andover, Ma.

They are working on an alternative technology that uses sound waves to accelerate the process.

New hemlock hybrids that are tolerant to the invasive insect known as hemlock woolly adelgid have been created by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.

By the end of this year, colonoscopy screening will have prevented bowel cancer in approximately 99 000 people since it was introduced in Germany. This is the result obtained by Hermann Brenner of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and his co-authors in their interim assessment conducted eight years after the procedure was added to the German cancer screening program. The authors present their projection and initial results of colonoscopy screening in Germany in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010: 107(43): 753 9).

Many aspects of the German Genetic Diagnostics Act (Gendiagnostikgesetz) are out of touch with the latest technology, almost impossible to implement in clinical practice, or even detrimental to the success of recognised screening tests, such as newborn screening. The Act, which came into force in February 2010, is in desperate need of amendment.

Monash University researchers have discovered that male Australian desert goby fish are surprisingly strategic when it comes to courtship, adapting their tactics depending on the frequency of their contact with females.

Attracting females involves significant time, energy and exposure to predation and previous research has indicated that male gobies are more likely to court larger females due to the number of eggs they carry compared with their smaller counterparts.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Beginning around 542 million years ago, a profusion of animals with shells and skeletons began to appear in the fossil record. So many life forms appeared during this time that it is often referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion."

How well a person performs in a coalition is partly hereditary, according to a recent study.

Researchers found that how successfully an individual operates in a group is as much down to having the right genetic make-up as it is to having common cultural ties with fellow group members.

After assessing nearly 1000 pairs of adult twins, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that strong genetic influences have a major influence on how loyal a person feels to their social group.

It also has a significant impact on how flexibly they can adapt group membership.

Evidence suggesting that the risk of childhood asthma associated with prenatal paracetamol exposure may depend on antioxidant genes in the mother has been found by a team of UK scientists. The results of their study - which strengthens the argument for a causal link between paracetamol exposure in early life and later childhood asthma - are published online (10 November) in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

A new Reference Report published today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) lists 79 reference methods for GMO analysis which have been validated according to international standards. This Compendium, developed jointly by the European Union Reference Laboratory for Genetically Modified Food and Feed (EU-RL GMFF) and the European Network of GMO Laboratories (ENGL), presents the technical state of the art in GMO detection methods. Each method is described in a user-friendly way, facilitating the implementation of GMO legislation by official control bodies.

New research from North Carolina State University shows that most online news stories about cancer contain language that likely contributes to public uncertainty about the disease – a significant finding, given that at least one-third of Americans seek health information online.

ANTWERP – An international team of scientists calls for protecting complementary food for infants in developing countries – especially those where corn is a staple food – against fumonisin, a toxin produced by fungi. Until now, physicians thought the growth retardation of children in those regions was to be blamed on the poor nutritional value of the complementary maize porridge they receive when breast milk is no longer sufficient. But toxins indeed are involved, the scientists report in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research.