NIEHS awards Recovery Act funds to focus more research on health and safety of nanomaterials

(NIH/National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, is increasing its investment in understanding the potential health, safety and environmental issues related to tiny particles that are used in many everyday products such as sunscreens, cosmetics and electronics. The NIEHS will award about $13 million over a two-year period, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to bolster the NIEHS’s ongoing research portfolio in the area of engineered nanomaterials.

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If you're lucky, the following quote may be relevant in some way to the post above, but then again...

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
 - Albert Einstein

9 Influenza Puzzles

A research paper published last year aimed to address 9 puzzling things about influenza:

Why is influenza seasonal and ubiquitous, where does the virus hide between epidemics?

Why are the epidemics so fast to spread?

Why do they end so quickly?

Why do countries on similar latitudes have coincidental epidemics?

Why is the serial interval obscure?

Why is the secondary attack [...]

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Post by David Bradley Science Writer. You can get in touch with David via email or check out his CV on the Sciencebase.com site.

If you're lucky, the following quote may be relevant in some way to the post above, but then again...

Believe not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, believe not because you have been made to believe from your childhood, but reason truth out, and after you have analyzed it, then if you find it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it and help others live up to it.
 - Siddhartha Gautama

Drugs in the Water Supply

According to an AP investigation, US pharma companies have released at least 1000 tonnes of pharmaceuticals into American waterways. This putative contamination of the drinking water supply has been consistently overlooked by the Federal government, their report says.
Interestingly, this drugs in the water supply is a topic I discussed at least a decade ago in [...]

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This post originally appeared in full in David Bradley's ChemSpider.com hosted Spinneret blog (geddit?). Hopefully, any molecular structures and links are hooking up to the Chemspider database correctly, please let us know if you have problems with mol files, InChI code etc

If you're lucky, the following quote may be relevant in some way to the post above, but then again...

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
 - Soren Kierkegaard