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Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with private industry and other government agencies, have produced a new reference material for beryllium. Beryllium, an exotic metal used as a hardener in high-performance alloys and ceramics, can cause berylliosis—a chronic, incurable and sometimes fatal illness. The new reference material is expected to dramatically improve methods used to monitor workers' exposure and aid in contamination control as well as toxicological research.

Inventing a useful new tool for creating chemical reactions between single molecules, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have employed microfluidics—the manipulation of fluids at the microscopic scale—to make microdroplets that contain single molecules of interest.

A research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) studying sugar-coated nanoparticles for use as a possible cancer therapy has uncovered a delicate balancing act that makes the particles more effective than conventional thinking says they should be. Just like individuals in a crowd respecting other people's personal space, the particles work because they get close together, but not too close.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a new ruler, and even for an organization that routinely deals in superlatives, it sets some records. Designed to be the most accurate commercially available "meter stick" for the nano world, the new measuring tool—a calibration standard for X-ray diffraction—boasts uncertainties below a femtometer. That's 0.000 000 000 000 001 meter, or roughly the size of a neutron.

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Internal medicine residents who reported higher levels of fatigue and distress were more likely to report a medical error, according to a study in the September 23/30 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers report that distress and fatigue among medical residents are independent contributors to self-perceived medical errors. The findings appear today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

VIDEO ALERT: Additional audio and video resources including excerpts from an interview with Dr. Colin West describing the research are available on the Mayo Clinic News Blog. password MC845.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Childbearing is associated directly with future development of the metabolic syndrome — abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, insulin resistance and other cardiovascular disease risk factors — and for women who have had gestational diabetes, the risk is more than twice greater, according to a study co-authored by University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Private cord blood banking is not cost-effective because it costs an additional $1,374,246 per life-year gained, according to a new analysis by UCSF researchers. The research team also concluded that private cord blood banking is cost-effective only for families with a child with a very high likelihood of needing a stem cell transplant.

Worried that dust from a nearby construction zone will harm your family's health? A new Tel Aviv University tool could either confirm your suspicions or better yet, set your mind at rest.

A new mathematical model of chronic wound healing could augment intuition and experience with clear guidance on how to test treatment strategies in tackling a major public-health problem - an estimated 6.5 million people in the United States who are affected by chronic wounds, many who are at risk of losing limbs or even dying as a result of the most severe of these wounds.

MADISON, WI, AUGUST 22, 2009 – Bacteria commonly used to indicate health risks in recreational waters might not be so reliable after all. Pathogenic E. coli were pervasive in stream-water samples with low concentrations of fecal indicator bacteria.

Scientists working to develop a vaccine for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) report they have created the first antigen that induces protective antibodies capable of blocking infection of human cells by genetically-diverse strains of HIV. The new antigen differs from previously-tested vaccines by virtue of its chemically-activated property that enables close sharing of electrons and produces strong covalent bonding. Researchers used a mouse model to generate the antibodies.

Sept. 22, 2009 -- Sometimes to see something properly, you have to stand farther back. This is true of Chuck Close portraits where a patchwork of many small faces changes into one giant face as you back away.

It may also be true of the frogs of Central America, where the pattern of extinctions emerges clearly only at a certain spatial scale.

Everyone knows that frogs are in trouble and that some species have disappeared, but a recent analysis of Central American frog surveys shows the situation is worse than had been thought.

PHILADELPHIA – Obesity is an important factor contributing to chemotherapy resistance and increasing relapse rates among children with leukemia, according to recent findings published online first in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Obesity is associated with increased incidence and mortality of many types of cancer. Leukemia is the most common cancer in children, affecting more than 2,000 children each year in the United States alone, according to background materials in the study.