Body

A new study in today's issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery found minimal risk for severe infection with osseointegrated implants--a newer prosthetic system, press-fitted directly into the femur bone--that enables bone growth over a metal, robotic prosthetic limb in patients with above knee amputations.

A weedy plant found on the roadside in northern Australia has stems ripe for biofuel production.

Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls at the University of Adelaide have discovered that a variety of sorghum growing wild in Australia, Arun, has the potential to yield over 10,000 litres of bioethanol per hectare per year.

Japan -- The Greek goddess Psyche borrowed help from ants to sort a room full of different grains. Cells, on the other hand, do something similar without Olympian assistance, as they organize molecules into robust, functional fibers. Now scientists are able to see self-sorting phenomena happen in real time with artificial molecules.

The achievement, reported in Nature Chemistry, elucidates how two different types of nanofibers sort themselves into organized structures under artificial conditions.

Aerosol particles generated by human activity counteract the warming of the earth's atmosphere by greenhouse gases. However, this effect might be smaller than first thought, as many particles were already generated from tree emissions in pre-industrial times. This was the finding of a simulation carried out as part of the international CLOUD experiment, in which researchers from the Goethe University played a major role. The results are published in the form of three papers in the renowned journals "Science" and "Nature".

What if scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and funders could restart scholarly communication all over? This was the slogan of the first FORCE11 Scholarly Commons Working Group (SCWG) workshop, which took place in February.

The Australian small carpenter bee populations appear to have dramatically flourished in the period of global warming following the last Ice Age some 18,000 years ago.

Researchers from Bochum have engineered a hydrogen-producing enzyme in the test tube that works as efficiently as the original. The protein - a so-called hydrogenase from green algae - is made up of a protein scaffold and a cofactor. The latter is the reaction centre where the substances that react with each other dock. When the researchers added various chemically synthesised substances to the protein scaffold, the cofactor spontaneously assembled.

New research led by the University of Stirling has found a global pattern of sustained species extinctions on islands within hydroelectric reservoirs.

Scientists have discovered that reservoir islands created by large dams across the world do not maintain the same levels of animal and plant life found prior to flooding.

Despite being hailed as conservation sanctuaries that protect species from hunting and deforestation, islands undergo sustained loss of species year on year after dam construction, a pattern otherwise known as 'extinction debt'.

A tiny marine crustacean with a great big claw has shown that not only does size matter, but left or right-handedness (or in this case, left or right-clawedness) is important too.

The 5-6mm marine amphipod Dulichiella appendiculata, related to the land-based beach-hopper or sand flea we see hopping around on beaches, has one large claw on one side (either right or left), and a small claw on the opposite side.

DALLAS, May 31, 2016 - Both short- and long-term exposure to some air pollutants commonly associated with coal burning, vehicle exhaust, airborne dust and dirt are associated with the development of high blood pressure, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension.

Financial relationships between biomedical companies and organizations that produce clinical practice guidelines are common, but often unreported.

Sixty-three per cent of organizations that published clinical practice guidelines on the National Guideline Clearinghouse website in 2012 reported receiving funds from biomedical companies, but these relationships were seldom disclosed in the guidelines, according to a new study published by Henry Stelfox and colleagues from the University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada, in PLOS Medicine.

Many children with concussion initially sought care through primary care and not the emergency department, although younger children and those insured by Medicaid were more likely to go to the ED, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

Concussion diagnosis is symptom-based and does not require advanced diagnostic tools such as imaging. A better understanding of the points of health care entry for children with concussion is necessary to guide health care networks and clinicians on where training and resources should be directed.

New research from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) highlights a substantial gap in how the United States currently estimates the nation's burden of pediatric concussions.

A key cellular signal provides a vital balance between the body's ability to destroy invading microbes and its need to prevent autoimmune disease, in which immune cells attack the body's own tissues. That is the finding of a study led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and published May 31 in the journal Immunity.

Many animals depend on their microbiome to digest their food. Symbiotic microorganisms produce enzymes their hosts cannot, and these work alone or together with the animals' own enzymes to break down their food. Many plant-feeding insects need microbial enzymes, such as pectinases, that degrade plant cell walls; yet some insects have overcome this dependency in a surprising way. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, found that stick insects make microbial enzymes themselves.