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ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: May 05, 2010

ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: May 5, 2010

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News Items in This Edition

Scientists are reporting dramatic new real-world evidence supporting the idea that hand washing can prevent the spread of water-borne disease. It appears in a new study showing a connection between fecal bacteria contamination on hands, fecal contamination of stored drinking water, and health in households in a developing country in Africa. The study is in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal...

A prescription drug already approved to treat genital warts and skin cancer may have a new use in boosting the effectiveness of future vaccines for bacterial and viral diseases, such as hepatitis C and HIV (the AIDS virus). These findings appear in ACS’ Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal. John Pesce and colleagues at the Naval Medical Research Center and UC-Berkeley note that vaccines...

Scientists are reporting development of a potential new way of enabling patients with bacterial keratitis to stick with the extraordinarily intensive treatment needed for this potentially blinding eye infection. The disease affects more than 500,000 people each year worldwide, including 30,000 people in the United States. The study is in ACS’ Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal. Howida Kamal Ibrahim...

A team of scientists in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are reporting disturbing evidence that soil microbes have become progressively more resistant to antibiotics over the last 60 years. Surprisingly, this trend continues despite apparent more stringent rules on use of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture, and improved sewage treatment technology that broadly improves water quality in surrounding environments…

The portable packages of food called the Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE) that sustain military personnel in combat or field conditions without regular food facilities are getting tastier and more sophisticated thanks to innovations in food technology. That’s the focus of an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS’ weekly newsmagazine. C&EN Senior Editor Bethany Halford notes that the forerunners to today’s MREs, known as C Rations, consisted of simple ingredients like beans and franks…

Journalists’ Resources

  • Save the Date: ACS Fall 2010 National Meeting
    Thousands of scientists will gather in Boston August 22-26, 2010 for the 240th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Watch for further information in the months ahead.
  • Press releases, briefings, and more from ACS’ 239th National Meeting
    www.eurekalert.org/acsmeet.php

    http://www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive
  • Must-reads from C&EN: Taking aim at hepatitis C
    This week’s cover story looks in depth at the predicted dawning of an exciting new era in the treatment of hepatitis C in 2010. That’s when the U. S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to approve the first two in a series of safer, more potent, and more convenient medications for the disease, which may infect more than six million people in the United States. Click here to read the full story.
  • ACS Pressroom Blog The ACS Office of Public Affairs’ (OPA) pressroom blog highlights research from ACS’ 38 peer-reviewed journals and National Meetings.
  • Bytesize Science blog Educators and kids, put on your thinking caps: The American Chemical Society has a blog for Bytesize Science, a science podcast for kids of all ages.
  • ACS satellite pressroom: Daily news blasts on Twitter
    The satellite press room has become one of the most popular science news sites on Twitter. To get our news blasts and updates, create a free account at https://twitter.com/signup. Then visit http://twitter.com/ACSpressroom and click the ‘join’ button beneath the press room logo.
  • C&EN on Twitter
    Follow @cenmag <http://twitter.com/cenmag> for the latest news in chemistry and dispatches from our blog, C&ENtral Science <http://centralscience.org>.
  • ACS Press Releases
    Press releases
    on a variety of chemistry-related topics.
  • General Chemistry Glossary
  • Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Web site on everyday chemicals
    Whether you want to learn more about caffeine, benzoyl peroxide (acne treatment), sodium chloride (table salt), or some other familiar chemical, CAS Common Chemistry can help. The new Web site provides non-chemists and others with useful information about everyday chemicals by searching either a chemical name or a corresponding CAS Registry Number. The site includes about 7,800 chemicals of general interest as well as all 118 elements from the Periodic Table, providing alternative names, molecular structures, a Wikipedia link, and other information.
  • Science Connections from CAS
    CAS - Science Connections
    is a series of articles that showcases the value of CAS databases in light of important general-interest science and technology news. Topics range from fruit flies to Nobel Prize winners, with the CAS - Science Connections series pointing to CAS databases for a more complete understanding of the latest news.

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