As people age, their brains pay the price — inflammation goes up, levels of certain neurotransmitters go down, and the result is a plethora of ailments ranging from memory impairment and depression to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But in a long-term study with implications to treat these and other conditions, researchers have found that an experimental drug, taken chronically, has the ability to stem the effects of aging in the rat brain.

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The use of combination chemotherapy following surgery did not improve survival in patients with gastric cancer, according to a randomized clinical trial.

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Independent tests conducted by engineers at the US Department of Energy on a BMW Hydrogen 7 Mono-Fuel demonstration vehicle have found that the car’s hydrogen-powered engine surpasses the super-ultra low-emission vehicle level, the most stringent emissions performance standard to date.

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Salmonella bacteria can be turned into tiny terminator robots that venture deep into cancerous tumors where conventional chemotherapy can’t reach. Once in place, the bacteria manufacture drugs that destroy cancer cells. This could translate chemotherapy that is more specific, more effective and easier on patients.

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Researchers are developing a spectral imaging system that could result in shorter operating times for infants undergoing surgery for Hirschsprung’s disease, according to a results from a new mouse study. Spectral imaging identifies diseased tissue without need for biopsy.

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After several days spent in a parking orbit 2000 km ahead of the ISS, Jules Verne ATV is now ready to join up with the International Space Station. This first docking attempt can be followed live on April 3, 2008 from 15:30 CEST onwards from one of the European participating centers.

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With a proposed fiscal year 2009 budget of $20 million, the effort by the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and partners to develop grid-appropriate reactors is gaining steam.

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Looking for evidence of life on Mars or other planets? Finding cellulose microfibers would be the next best thing to a close encounter, according to new research. The new research also pushes back the earliest direct evidence of biological material on Earth by about 200 million years.

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Determining the structure of unknown natural compounds is a slow and expensive part of drug screening and development — but this may now change thanks to a new combination of experimental and computational protocols just developed.

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Biologists have just confirmed what poets have known for centuries: eyes really are windows of the soul — or at least of the brain. Harvard researchers describe the development of gene probe eye drops that — for the first time–make it possible to monitor and detect tissue repair in the brain of living organisms using MRI.

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