The ‘green’ side of pumpkins — purging pollution from soils

While parents and youngsters are busy carving jack-o-lanterns in preparation for Halloween, Canadian scientists are hard at work on another way to use the popular yellow-orange plant. New research shows that pumpkins can clean up soil contaminated with DDT and other pollutants. In a greenhouse study, members of the Cucurbita pepo species — including pumpkin and zucchini — demonstrated the ability to remove DDT from soil, suggesting a potential ”green” technique for cleaning up sites contaminated with DDT, PCBs and other harmful compounds.

Early life stress can inhibit development of brain-cell communication zones

High stress levels during infancy and early childhood can lead to the poor development of communication zones in brain cells — a condition found in mental disorders such as autism, depression and mental retardation. These are the findings of researchers in California and at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry. For the first time, the researchers have identified how increased amounts of a key messenger for stress, the neuropeptide CRH, can inhibit the normal growth of dendrites, which are branch-like protrusions of neurons that send and receive messages from other brain cells.

Possible link between diabetes and liver cancer

Diabetics could face a higher risk of both pancreatic and liver cancer, according to a Universite de Montreal researcher who will be presenting her team’s findings at the Frontiers in Cancer Research Prevention Meeting. While the association between diabetes and both pancreatic and liver cancer has been previously documented, the researchers accounted for many factors unavailable in previous studies, making this the most accurate association ever found between diabetes and the incidence of liver cancer.

Alkaloid aids in exterminating sun-damaged skin cells

A common antibacterial and antifungal ingredient used in mouthwashes and tooth paste may have another positive medicinal use: protection against skin cancer. According to new studies, sanguinarine was shown to enhance production of proteins that induce cell death, or apoptosis, in cells damaged by ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation. The alkaloid also restricts skin cell production of other pro-proliferation proteins. ”This natural compound may protect skin from cells that acquire the genetic damage caused by UV radiation from advancing toward cancer.”

Whites more likely to mistake tools for guns when held by blacks

People are more likely to misidentify tools as guns when they are first linked to African Americans, at least under extreme time pressure, new research suggests. While researchers say the experiment was much less complex than real-life encounters, they hope it begins to shed light on how subtle racial biases may help lead to situations in which police accidentally shoot unarmed minorities.

Minimally invasive surgery OK for heart rhythm abnormality

A minimally invasive approach to curing the most common heart rhythm abnormality, atrial fibrillation, takes half the time of the traditional surgical procedure but is equally effective, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. ”Our findings show that this technique is much easier to perform but works just as well as the more invasive approach.”

Researchers uncover process for carb-induced fat formation

Researchers are one step closer to understanding how high carbohydrate diets lead to obesity and diabetes. They have shown that a single protein called carbohydrate response element binding protein activates several genes that cause cells in the liver to turn sugar into fat. ”With the discovery of this factor, the biochemical mechanism of how carbohydrates are converted to fat has become clearer.”

Biodiversity losses threaten world’s 900 million rural poor

An unprecedented loss of biodiversity has reduced the amount of food available to the world’s 900 million rural poor and should receive widespread attention, UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fr?chette said today. ”Given the growing interdependence among countries and expanding trade in agricultural goods and services, maintaining biodiversity for food security is as much a global priority as a local one,” she said at a commemoration in New York of World Food Day.

Propulsion concept could make 90-day Mars round trip possible

A new means of propelling spacecraft being developed could dramatically cut the time needed for astronauts to travel to and from Mars and could make humans a permanent fixture in space. In fact, with magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, or mag-beam, quick trips to distant parts of the solar system could become routine. Currently, using conventional technology and adjusting for the orbits of both the Earth and Mars around the sun, it would take astronauts about 2.5 years to travel to Mars, conduct their scientific mission and return. ”We’re trying to get to Mars and back in 90 days.”

FDA Approves Temporary Artificial Heart

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a partial artificial heart intended to keep people alive in the hospital while they are awaiting a heart transplant. The product is a pulsating bi-ventricular device that is implanted into the chest to replace the patient’s left and right ventricles (the bottom half of the heart). The implanted device is sewn to the patient’s remaining atria (the top half of the heart). Hospitalized patients are connected by tubes from the heart through their chest wall to a large power-generating console, which operates and monitors the device.

Astronomers Discover Planet Building is Big Mess

Planets are built over a long period of massive collisions between rocky bodies as big as mountain ranges, astronomers announced today. New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope reveal surprisingly large dust clouds around several stars. These clouds most likely flared up when rocky, embryonic planets smashed together. The Earth’s own Moon may have formed from such a catastrophe. Prior to these new results, astronomers thought planets were formed under less chaotic circumstances.

Why thin, flat things rise and glide on the way down

Exactly what governs the motions of falling paper? While college students suspect the answer is known to lazy professors — the ones who allegedly grade essays by throwing them down stairwells to see which sails the farthest — the so-called falling paper problem has long intrigued scientists. Now a professor and her graduate student at Cornell University have solved the falling paper problem — in part by calculating the motions of a scientific journal page in flight.

Insulin pumps effective for children with diabetes

Pre-school youngsters with type I diabetes can be treated as successfully with insulin pumps as with daily injections, researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine report. A clinical trial at the Riley Hospital for Children studied 20 patients 5 years old or younger receiving treatment with continuous insulin infusion by pump and 17 who were receiving injection therapy. Physicians compared control of blood sugar levels, parents’ satisfaction and safety in both groups. ”Pump therapy was safe and well tolerated,” says endocrinologist Linda A. DiMeglio, M.D., who led the study.

Researchers guide light through liquids and gases on a chip

Researchers have reported the first demonstration of integrated optical waveguides with liquid cores, a technology that enables light propagation through small volumes of liquids on a chip. The new technology has a wide range of potential applications, including chemical and biological sensors with single-molecule sensitivity. ”It is an enabling technology that opens up a wide range of fields to the use of optics on integrated semiconductors to do experiments or build devices,” said Holger Schmidt, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UC Santa Cruz.