Body

Turning the "hydrogen economy" concept into a reality, even on a small scale, has been a bumpy road, but scientists are developing a novel way to store hydrogen to smooth out the long-awaited transition away from fossil fuels. Their report on a new solid, stable material that can pack in a large amount of hydrogen that can be used as a fuel appears in the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials.

To the relief of patients diagnosed with hepatitis C, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two new treatments late last year, and a few more are on the way. Now scientists are solving another side of the disease's problem: identifying the millions more who have the virus but don't know it — and unwittingly pass it on. A report in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry describes a novel, scrapbook-inspired test that does just that.

A team led by a University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) researcher, working as a grantee from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has identified a number of existing drugs that could be "repurposed" to fight outbreaks of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

TORONTO, May 21, 2014 – Homeless clients using services at Toronto's Good Shepherd Ministries are nearly nine times more likely to have a history of problem or pathological gambling than the general population, a new study from St. Michael's Hospital has found.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Researchers at MIT have discovered a new way of harnessing temperature gradients in fluids to propel objects. In the natural world, the mechanism may influence the motion of icebergs floating on the sea and rocks moving through subterranean magma chambers.

New Rochelle, NY, May 21, 2014—A targeted gene silencing strategy blocks production of the dysfunctional huntingtin (Htt) protein, the cause of Huntington's disease, a fatal, inherited neurodegenerative disorder. The effectiveness of this RNA interference (RNAi) approach in reducing levels of mutant Htt protein and disease symptoms in a mouse model of the disease is described in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

Boosting a key immune process called autophagy with interferon gamma (IFN-γ) could help clear a lethal bacterial infection in cystic fibrosis, a new study suggests. The work, led by a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and published in PLoS One in May, offers new information about immune function in patients with the disease.

Field and laboratory work by Omar Torres-Carvajal from Museo de Zoología QCAZ, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, and his former undergraduate student Simón Lobos has resulted in the discovery of a gem-looking new species of shade lizard from the cloudforests in northwestern Ecuador.

Patients receiving chemical treatment for cancer often suffer fatigue and body weight loss, two of the most worrying effects of this therapy linked to the alteration of their circadian rhythms.

The circadian system, better known as our biological clock, is responsible for coordinating all the processes that take place in our organism.

If it does not function correctly, what is known as a circadian disruption or chronodisruption, has for years been linked to an increased incidence of cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression, cognitive problems or cardiovascular diseases.

Research from North Carolina State University finds that dam removal improves spawning grounds for American shad and seems likely to improve survival rates for adult fish, juveniles and eggs – but for different reasons.

It's no longer a certainty that American mothers will get custody over their children during a divorce. In fact, if Wisconsin Court Records of the past 20 years are anything to go by, joint custody is becoming the norm. So says Maria Cancian and colleagues from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the US, whose findings are published in Springer's journal Demography.

In this Review, Dr Catherine Smallwood and Dr Maurizio Barbeschi of WHO, Geneva, Switzerland and colleagues outline the ways in which organisers of future sporting mass gatherings can, and should, learn from the management of the safety and wellbeing of more than eight million people at the Euro 2012 Football Championships in Poland and Ukraine.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 20, 2014 – Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) today presented new data from a clinical validation study of Prolaris at the 2014 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. The study is the largest validation study to date of any gene-based prognostic test in patients with prostate cancer who were diagnosed by needle biopsy.

St Jude Medical's Nanostim device and Medtronic's Micra, both single-chamber leadless pacing systems, and the most advanced commercially available valve, the Edwards Sapien 3 Transcatheter Heart Valve (Edwards Life Sciences) featured in the discussions.

With regard to leadless pacing, participants heard that there was a need for a novel system that provides reliable pacing and sensing, and addresses the challenges of current pacing systems by minimising the risks of infection, pneumothorax, dislodgement and long-term infection.

A few years ago researchers described a Turkish family whose family members moved around on all fours. It turned out that they lacked the sense of equilibrium. This was caused by the rare neurological disease CAMRQ, which is the result of a mutation in the lipid pump in the cells. On the other hand, it was not known why the genetic error had such serious consequences.