In a paper published this week in the journal Nature Chemistry, researchers from the Center for Electrochemical Sciences – CES at the Ruhr-University Bochum and from the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr report a novel concept to work with efficient and possibly cheaper catalysts. A kind of buffer protects the catalysts against the hostile conditions encountered in fuel cells, which have been to date dismissed utilization. The scientists report in the current issue of Nature Chemistry.
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This was determined using Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) at BESSY II. A thorough examination with an electron microscope (TEM) confirmed their result. "The research on this phenomenon is now proceeding because we are convinced that such nanoclusters lend themselves as catalysts, whether in fuel cells, in photocatalytic water splitting, or for other important reactions in chemical engineering", explains Dr. Armin Hoell of HZB. The results have just appeared in two peer reviewed international academic journals.
A recent study in Manchester has found that a procedure to take tissue samples from lung cancer patients can be used safely in the elderly – allowing doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis and to choose appropriate treatment.
Half of all lung cancer patients are over 70 years old when first diagnosed, but studies have shown that these older patients are less likely to receive an accurate diagnosis.
A correct assessment of the stage of a patient's disease – how much their tumour has grown and spread – is key to ensuring they receive the right treatment.
Twist, Snail, Slug. They may sound like words in a children's nursery rhyme, but they are actually the exotic names given to proteins that can generate cells with stem cell-like properties that have the ability to form diverse types of tissue.
One protein with the even more out-there name of ZEB1 (zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1), is now thought to keep breast cancer cells from being successfully treated with radiation therapy, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
When researchers from the University of Oxford reduced the expression of a protein called ClpGM6 in T. brucei trypomastigotes, the cells switched to an epimastigote-like morphology. The kinetoplast was close to the nucleus or anterior to it, and a long section of the flagellum extended beyond the cell. The parasites weren't identical to epimastigotes—they lacked a distinctive surface protein found at this life stage—but they were able to survive and reproduce for more than 40 generations.
LA JOLLA—For hundreds of years, healers in São Tomé e Príncipe—an island off the western coast of Africa—have prescribed cata-manginga leaves and bark to their patients. These pickings from the Voacanga africana tree are said to decrease inflammation and ease the symptoms of mental disorders.
Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño, who in the 1980s endured harsh global media attention when she was subjected to unscientific gender tests, is co-author of a study that takes stock of current sexual verification policies in athletics.
PULLMAN, Wash.—It's a given that, in numbers terms, the 20th Century was the most violent in history, with civil war, purges and two World Wars killing as many as 200 million people.
But on a per-capita basis, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler has documented a particularly bloody period more than eight centuries ago on what is now American soil. Between 1140 and 1180, in the central Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado, four relatively peaceful centuries of pueblo living devolved into several decades of violence.
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 4, 2014 – Australia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. A University of Utah researcher found such man-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists.
"We have uncovered a framework that allows us to predict when human subsistence practices might be detrimental to the environment and when they might be beneficial," says Brian Codding, an assistant professor of anthropology.
Cancer Research UK scientists have found a new use for an old drug by showing that it shrinks a particular type of pancreatic cancer tumour and stops it spreading, according to research published in Gut*.
"It's a crucial step forward in developing new treatments for this devastating disease..." - Dr Jennifer Morton, study author
The scientists, at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and the University of Glasgow, treated mice with pancreatic cancers caused by known genetic faults with the drug rapamycin**.
Although mutations in a gene dubbed "the guardian of the genome" are widely recognized as being associated with more aggressive forms of cancer, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found evidence suggesting that the deleterious health effects of the mutated gene may in large part be due to other genetic abnormalities, at least in squamous cell head and neck cancers.
Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Every once in a while, we are forced to sort that stack of papers on the kitchen counter. Interspersed between the expired coupons and dozens of takeout menus are important documents like your car insurance or electric bill. So it isn't an option to simply drop it all in the trash at once – you need to read through the messages to be sure that you don't lose vital information.
An Australian–US team of climate researchers has solved a puzzle that has challenged scientists for over a decade. Climate models predict that the equatorial Pacific trades should weaken with increasing greenhouse gases. Yet, since the early 1990s, satellites and climate stations reveal a rapid and unprecedented strengthening of the Pacific trade winds, accelerating sea level rise in the western Pacific and impacting both Pacific and global climate.
Researchers have developed a simple and versatile method for making artificial anti-cancer molecules that mimic the properties of one of the body's natural defence systems.
The chemists, led by Professor Peter Scott at the University of Warwick, UK, have been able to produce molecules that have a similar structure to peptides which are naturally produced in the body to fight cancer and infection.
BOSTON –– A large DNA analysis of people with and without pancreatic cancer has identified several new genetic markers that signal increased risk of developing the highly lethal disease, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The markers are variations in the inherited DNA code at particular locations along chromosomes. Several of these variations in the DNA code were identified that influence an individual's risk for pancreatic cancer.