Osteoporosis, which means porous bones, is a disease that thins and weakens bones, making them fragile and more likely to break. The vast majority of individuals affected by osteoporosis are women. Although the disease can strike at any age, the greatest risk for fractures from osteoporosis occurs after menopause. This is because women’s bodies produce less oestrogen after menopause, and oestrogen plays an important role in helping to prevent bone loss. As the EU population continues to age, the occ

MIT team is part of project

A 150-ton magnet developed in part by MIT engineers is pulling the world closer to nuclear fusion as a potential source of energy.

Over the last three years “we’ve shown that we can design a magnet of this size and complexity and make it work,” said Joseph V. Minervini, a senior research engineer at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and Department of Nuclear Engineering. Minervini leads the MIT team involved in the project.

Two researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are creating a faster, more efficient data-mining technique to determine basic rules of how proteins form. The researchers are Mohammed Zaki, assistant professor of computer science, and Chris Bystroff, assistant professor of biology.

Researchers can identify a protein’s biological function, and therefore its specific role in disease, if they know the 3-D structure of a protein given its amino-acid sequence.

Twenty simple amin

Reducing bad cholesterol to below “optimal” levels reversed the accumulation of artery-clogging plaque, according to a study in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. When atherosclerotic plaque builds up in the arteries it can cause a heart attack or stroke.

People with known heart disease or a major risk factor, such as diabetes, are counseled to reduce their low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (“bad” cholesterol) below 100 milligr

Penn State engineers have optimized an energy harvesting circuit so that it transfers four times more electrical power out of vibration – the ordinary shakes and rattles generated by human motion or machine operation.

Using their laboratory prototype, which was developed from off-the-shelf parts, the Penn State researchers can generate 50 milliwatts. Although they haven’t tried it, they believe the motion of a runner could be harnessed to generate enough power to run a portable electron

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and their colleagues have uncovered new information that will help brain researchers better understand a person’s tolerance to drugs of abuse and open new avenues of investigation into the relationship of addictive-drug usage and the biological causes of mood disorders.

Dr. Michel Barrot, assistant professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and lead author of the paper, said researchers used genetically altered mice to show that p