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48 articles from ScienceDaily

Simple new testing method aims to improve time-release drugs

Engineers filled a glass tube bent like a tuning fork, kept vibrating by a circuit at its resonance frequency, with simulated stomach and intestine contents and passed an over-the-counter time-release drug granule through the tube. They observed a brief change in the frequency. When plotted, they could compare the peaks of resonance frequency against the time to learn the buoyant mass of the drug...

Can we harness a plant's ability to synthesize medicinal compounds?

Anthraquinones are a class of naturally occurring compounds prized for their medicinal properties, as well as for other applications, including ecologically friendly dyes. Despite wide interest, the mechanism by which plants produce them has remained shrouded in mystery until now. New work reveals a gene responsible for anthraquinone synthesis in plants. Their findings could help scientists...

Commonly used antibiotic shows promise for combating Zika infections

Researchers used a variety of advanced drug screening techniques to test out more than 10,000 compounds in search of a cure. To their surprise, they found that the widely used antibiotic methacycline was effective at preventing brain infections and reducing neurological problems associated with the virus in mice.

Clean Air Act saved 1.5 billion birds

US pollution regulations meant to protect humans from dirty air are also saving birds. So concludes a new continent-wide study. Study authors found that improved air quality under a federal program to reduce ozone pollution may have averted the loss of 1.5 billion birds during the past 40 years.

Memories of past events retain remarkable fidelity even as we age

Even though people tend to remember fewer details about past events as time goes by, the details they do remember are retained with remarkable fidelity, according to a new study. This finding holds true regardless of the age of the person or the amount of time that elapsed since the event took place.

CRISPRi screens reveal sources of metabolic robustness in E. coli

Metabolic robustness, the ability of a metabolic system to buffer changes in its environment, is not always a welcome feature for microbiologists: it interferes with metabolic engineering or prevents that antibiotics kill bacteria. Therefore it is important to understand the mechanisms that enable metabolic robustness. A massively parallel CRISPRi screen demonstrated that E. colimetabolism is very...

Researchers go underwater to study how sponge species vanished

Researchers embarked on an underwater journey to solve a mystery: Why did sponges of the Agelas oroides species, which used to be common in the shallow waters along the Mediterranean coast of Israel, disappear? The researchers believe that the main reason for the disappearance of the sponges was the rise in seawater temperatures during the summer months, which in the past 60 years have risen by...

Strengthening the climate change scenario framework

Over the past decade, the climate change research community developed a scenario framework that combines alternative futures of climate and society to facilitate integrated research and consistent assessment to inform policy. An international team of researchers assessed how well this framework is working and what challenges it faces.

Secrets of the 'lost crops' revealed where bison roam

Blame it on the bison. If not for the wooly, boulder-sized beasts that once roamed North America in vast herds, ancient people might have looked past the little barley that grew under those thundering hooves. But the people soon came to rely on little barley and other small-seeded native plants as staple food.

Stable catalysts for new energy

Looking for the perfect catalyst is not only about finding the right material, but also about its orientation. Depending on the direction in which a crystal is cut and which of its atoms it thus presents to the outside world on its surface, its behavior can change dramatically.

Blast from the past

Astronomers have discovered that CK Vulpeculae, first seen as a bright new star in 1670, is approximately five times farther away than previously thought. This makes the 1670 explosion of CK Vulpeculae much more energetic than previously estimated and puts it into a mysterious class of objects that are too bright to be members of the well-understood type of explosions known as novae, but too faint...

Quantum magic squares

The magic of mathematics is particularly reflected in magic squares. Recently, quantum physicists and mathematicians introduced the notion of the quantum magic square, and for the first time studied in detail the properties of this quantum version of magic squares.

Understanding the utility of plasmas for medical applications

Plasma medicine is an emerging field, as plasmas show promise for use in a wide range of therapies from wound healing to cancer treatment, and plasma jets are the main plasma sources typically used in plasma-surface applications. To better understand how plasma jets modify the surfaces of biological tissue, researchers conducted computer simulations of the interaction between an atmospheric...