Tech

PHILADELPHIA –- An international collaboration led by chemists and engineers from the University of Pennsylvania has prepared a library of synthetic biomaterials that mimic cellular membranes and that show promise in targeted delivery of cancer drugs, gene therapy, proteins, imaging and diagnostic agents and cosmetics safely to the body in the emerging field called nanomedicine.

A group of Japanese researchers, who publish their findings today Thursday, 20 May in IOP Publishing's Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, have succeeded in building a fully functional replica model – an ornithopter – of a swallowtail butterfly, and they have filmed their model butterfly flying.

To lower the fuel consumption of airplanes and ships, it is necessary to reduce their flow resistance, or drag. An innovative paint system makes this possible. This not only lowers costs, it also reduces CO2 emissions.

The U.S. Air Force Suicide Prevention Program (AFSPP) has reduced suicide rates significantly since it was launched in 1996, according to a new study that examined almost three decades of data.

"The enduring public health message from 12 years of this program is that suicide rates can be reduced, and that program success requires interventions to be consistently supported, maintained, and monitored for compliance," the researchers conclude in the study published by the American Journal of Public Health.

With oil from the big Gulf of Mexico spill threatening fragile coastal wetlands, clean-up crews are about to discover whether a combination of old and new clean-up methods will help limit the environmental damage. That's the topic of an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

Eight-five per cent of patients who took part in a survey shortly after day surgery said that they had been anxious about receiving a general anaesthetic, according to research in the May issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Seventeen per cent of respondents said they were very or extremely anxious, 22 per cent said they were quite anxious, 46 per cent said they were a little anxious and 15 per cent experienced no anxiety at all.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Thanks to a new semiconductor manufacturing method pioneered at the University of Illinois, the future of solar energy just got brighter.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- It may seem intuitive that greater amounts of exercise lead to less obesity, but an Indiana University study has found that this conventional wisdom applies primarily to white women. The findings draw attention not only to racial, ethnic and gender differences regarding exercise but also to the role work can play.

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- In a large natural disaster, such as the Haitian earthquake earlier this year, or in an unsolved homicide case, knowing the birth date of an individual can guide forensic investigators to the correct identity among a large number of possible victims.

Livermore researcher Bruce Buchholz and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute are looking at victim's teeth to determine how old they are at the time of death.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – May 19, 2010 – Researchers at the Syracuse Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New York examined postpolypectomy bleeding in patients undergoing colonoscopy on uninterrupted clopidogrel and found that the postpolypectomy bleeding rate is significantly higher in patients undergoing polypectomy while taking clopidogrel and concomitant aspirin/nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, but that the risk is small and the outcome is favorable.

A new method of analysing squalene and squalane, oils often used in the production of cosmetics and vaccines, can show whether they came originally from the liver oil of deepwater sharks or from olive oil.

Scientists monitoring the US oil spill with ESA's Envisat radar satellite say that it has entered the Loop Current, a powerful conveyor belt that flows clockwise around the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.

"With these images from space, we have visible proof that at least oil from the surface of the water has reached the current," said Dr Bertrand Chapron of Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea.