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  • Iowa State Testing Bio-Oil Gasifier for Biofuels

    Engineers at Iowa State University in Ames are testing a new machine that converts biomass to oil and then gas, for conversion to transportation and boiler fuels. The new bio-oil gasifier is part of a next-generation biofuels feasibility research project, funded by state and federal grants of nearly $1.5 million. The bio-oil gasifier uses a…

  • More Americans Get Blood Pressure Under Control by 2010

    A larger percentage of Americans with hypertension had their blood pressure under control by the end of 2010 than in 2001, a gain attributed to higher use of multiple drugs to treat the condition. The findings from the study conducted by National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and…

  • 3-D, Low-Radiation Breast Cancer Imaging Technique Developed

    Physicists and radiologists in the U.S. and Europe developed a new method for producing three-dimensional images of breast tissue with a lower dose of radiation than a mammogram. The team from University of California in Los Angeles, Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and Garching, Germany, and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France describe their…

  • FDA Approves Drug to Treat Seizures in Epilepsy Patients

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug perampanel, given in tablet form to treat partial onset seizures in patients with epilepsy ages 12 years and older. Perampanel is marketed under the brand name Fycompa by Eisai Inc. of Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, and headquartered in Tokyo. Epilepsy is a brain disorder characterized seizures…

  • Current Rice Cultivation Techniques Adding Greenhouse Gases

    Researchers at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, Northern Arizona University, and University of California in Davis found that increases in temperature and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are making rice agriculture a larger source of the greenhouse gas methane. The team’s findings appear online this week in the journal Nature Climate Change. Rice is the…

  • Lubricated Textured Surfaces Boost Condenser Water Movement

    Engineering researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology devised a technique for accelerating the movement of water off industrial surfaces like those in power plant and desalination condensers. The team from MIT’s Lab for Nanoengineered Surfaces, Interfaces, and Coatings published its findings earlier this month in the journal ACS Nano (paid subscription required). In power plant…

  • More Hospital Pediatricians Replacing Pagers with Texting

    A survey of pediatric hospital physicians shows increasing use of mobile phone text messaging rather than pagers among this segment of the medical profession. Pediatrician Stephanie Kuhlmann and colleagues from the Kansas University medical school in Wichita presented their findings yesterday at a meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in New Orleans. The Kansas…

  • Arcadia Biosciences to Develop Heat Tolerant Wheat

    Agricultural technology company Arcadia Biosciences in Davis, California will develop heat-tolerant varieties of wheat under a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The deal also involves  the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), which will share in the rights to the discoveries. Arcadia Biosciences says some 50 million acres of…

  • Q3 Venture Funding Drops, Science Sectors Hit Hard

    Venture capital (VC) funding for U.S. companies dropped sharply in the third quarter of 2012, with the amount of money invested declining by about a third and number of deals down by almost 10 percent compared to 2011. For the year to date, says Dow Jones VentureSource, a financial industry research service, VC funding totaled…

  • Trial to Test Branded vs. Generic Anti-Rejection Drugs

    Researchers at University of Cincinnati will lead a clinical trial testing a brand-name drug to reduce rejection of transplants against generic versions. The $2.7 million study, funded by the Food and Drug Administration, includes colleagues from University of Colorado and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. The trial will test the drug tacrolimus, an immunosuppressant compound…