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BUFFALO, N.Y. – Most Americans want the U.S. to place more emphasis on developing solar power, recent polls suggest.

A major impediment, however, is the cost to manufacture, install and maintain solar panels. Simply put, most people and businesses cannot afford to place them on their rooftops.

Fortunately, that is changing because researchers such as Qiaoqiang Gan, University at Buffalo assistant professor of electrical engineering, are helping develop a new generation of photovoltaic cells that produce more power and cost less to manufacture than what's available today.

New Rochelle, NY, May 13, 2013—New approaches to applying noninvasive imaging tests such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance (MR), and positron emission tomography (PET) may play a bigger role in evaluating and managing patients with diabetes. Advances in noninvasive imaging technology can assess important changes in fat composition and distribution in the body that may affect the metabolic complications and diseases associated with diabetes, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.

On 31 March 2013, the Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission announced human cases of novel H7N9 influenza virus infections. A group of scientists, led by Professor Chen Hualan of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, has investigated the origins of this novel H7N9 influenza virus and published their results in Springer's open access journal Chinese Science Bulletin (SpringerOpen).

Cancún, Mexico -- It's very hard to convict a murderer if the victim's body can't be found. And the best way to hide a body is to bury it. Developing new tools to find those clandestine graves is the goal of a small community of researchers spread across several countries, some of whom are presenting their work on Tuesday, May 14, at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancún, Mexico, a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.

Researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle (USA) and the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at the University of Luxembourg have jointly developed a revolutionary method to analyse the genomes of yeast families. The team of Dr. Aimée Dudley from the ISB and Dr. Patrick May from LCSB published their paper in the renowned scientific journal Nature Methods on May 12th. It describes a new method called BEST: Barcode Enabled Sequencing of Tetrads (DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.2479).

How active a living cell is can be seen by its oxygen consumption. The method for determining this consumption has now been significantly improved by chemists in Bochum. The problem up to now was that the measuring electrode altered the oxygen consumption in the cell's environment much more than the cell itself. "We already found that out twelve years ago," says Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schuhmann from the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the Ruhr-Universität.

A world-first completed clinical study by an Australian team has found Kava, a medicinal South Pacific plant, significantly reduced the symptoms of people suffering anxiety.

The study, led by the University of Melbourne and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, revealed Kava could be an alternative treatment to pharmaceutical products for the hundreds of thousands of Australians who suffer from Generalised Anxiety Disorders (GAD).

Enantioselectivity has been recognized in the fields of life science, pharmacology, modern medicine, and chemistry. The increasing release of chiral persistent organic pollutants (POPs) into the environment in recent decades has led to an increase in scientific research into their environmental behavior and safety.

PHILADELPHIA – Cytokines are molecules produced by immune cells that induce the migration of other cells to sites of infection or injury, promote the production of anti-microbial agents, and signal the production of inflammatory mediators. These events are important for fighting infections. However, sometimes this process goes unchecked, resulting in unwanted inflammation that can damage tissues and organs.

A team of 70 scientists from the U.S., China, Australia and Japan today reports having sequenced and annotated the genome of the "sacred lotus," which is believed to have a powerful genetic system that repairs genetic defects, and may hold secrets about aging successfully. The scientists sequenced more than 86 percent of the nearly 27,000 genes of the plant, Nelumbo nucifera, which is revered in China and elsewhere as a symbol of spiritual purity and longevity.

As leadership of the Arctic Council passes from Sweden to Canada May 15, experts say it is crucial that northern nations strengthen response capabilities to shipping-related accidents foreseen in newly-opened northern waters, as well as to more-common local emergencies such as floods, forest fires and rescue situations.

A new analysis has found a link between exposure to Agent Orange and lethal forms of prostate cancer among US Veterans. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest that Agent Orange exposure history should be incorporated into prostate screening decisions for Veterans.

Recent public health efforts have focused extensively on reducing the amount of formula babies are given in the hospital after birth. But in the first randomized trial of its kind, researchers at UC San Francisco have found that giving small amounts of formula in the first few days of life to infants experiencing high levels of early weight loss actually can increase the length of time their mothers end up breastfeeding.

The gardener's best friend, the earthworm, is great at protecting leaves from being chomped by slugs, suggests research in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology. Although they lurk in the soil, they seem to protect the plants above ground. Increasing plant diversity also decreases the amount of damage slugs do to individual plants.

Copenhagen, Denmark – Climate change could dramatically reduce the geographic ranges of thousands of common plant and animal species during this century, according to research using data made freely available online through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).