Iranian researchers found a new way to coat aluminum alloys with nanomaterials that lack the toxicity of chromate.
According to the Iranian Nanotechnology Initiative, researchers at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran introduced nanocerium oxide as the alternative for aluminum alloys coating. This nanostructure increases the resistance of most metals and alloys against corrosion, Fars News Agency reported.
“In recent years, the produced nanocerium oxide coatings by sol-gel method are found to have so many applications in different industries like optics, medicine and corrosion,“ said Hossein Hassannejad, one of the researchers.
Hassannejad noted that these applications are linked to the coating’s characteristics and have excellent features of very high chemical purity, coating homogeneity degree control, phase change and microstructure controllability. This nanostructure could also be used in gas sensor manufacture, he added.
“The process of cerium oxide coating by sol-gel method is simple and doesn’t require expensive equipment, high temperatures, vacuum condition or high levels of technical specialization which greatly help this coating’s commercialization,“ he said.
Elaborating on the process of coating, Hassannejad said, “First, the solution is prepared by solving sodium chloride heptahydral in absolute ethanol. Then, the samples are placed in the solution at a constant rate. After 5 minutes, the samples are drawn from the solution and dried by air. Finally, the samples undergo heat treatment.“

A single dose of a drug used to treat arthritis and asthma could cure severe throat pain if used on top of antibiotics.
Patients treated with corticosteroid drugs, a type of anti-inflammatory, were three times more likely have their pain disappear with 24 hours than those given antibiotics alone, Telegraph wrote.
The steroids also reduced the time it took for patients to feel relief from their pain, to an average of about six hours.
The team reviewed the results of eight studies, involving a total of 743 patients, 369 children and 374 adults, who all had symptoms of a severe sore throat. Use of common painkillers made no difference.
However, the effects of the corticosteroids were apparent only in adults and not in children, the results show. The researchers believe that the treatment could work by reducing the inflammation that comes with a sore throat.
The team has called for more research on whether the drugs could also eradicate the pain if used without antibiotics.
Dr Carl Heneghan, from the University of Oxford, said that the medication was already ’approved’ but awareness of the drugs ability to treat sore throats was low.
Typically, a severe sore throat can remain for between five and seven days, he said.
“People coming into to emergency departments in the next few weeks might find they are given this,“ he added. Heneghan added that side-effects associated with corticosteroid, which can include a thinning of the skin, were “very rare“ and would result only from long-term use.

In elderly men and women, certain medications can increase the risk of falling.
Findings from a four-year study conducted in France suggest the risk of falling is 1.4 times greater among elderly men and women taking a long-acting benzodiazepine, compared with age-matched men and women not using this type of anti-anxiety medication, Reuters reported.
Dr. Annick Alperovitch from Paris also found a moderately increased risk of falling among elderly men and women who regularly used mood- and behavior-altering ’psychotropic’ medications.
Their findings identified similar risk among elderly individuals reporting regular use of tranquilizers, muscle relaxants and anti-spasmodics, and some antihistamines that block nerve responses.
The researchers assessed the association between the use of potentially inappropriate medications and the risk of falls in 6343 community-living men and women.
They defined “inappropriate medication“ as drugs likely to have a greater effect on elderly individuals than on their younger counterparts, as well as medications with side effects potentially associated with increased risk for falling.
Overall, about 30 percent of study patients reported use of drugs with these qualities and during the course of the study, 22 percent of them had fallen 2 or more times.
“Use of inappropriate medications increased the risk of falls,“ they report, and use of long-acting benzodiazepines was responsible for the main part of this increase.

Scientists in the United States have decoded the overall structure of the HIV virus genome that causes AIDS in humans, according to a study.
The breakthrough should help develop strategies for combating the virus with new anti-viral drugs, the researchers said, AFP reported.
“We are beginning to understand tricks the genome uses to help the virus escape detection by the human host,“ said Professor Kevin Weeks, from the University of North Carolina.
Like the viruses that cause influenza and hepatitis C, HIV carries its genetic information in single-strand RNA rather than the double strand DNA found in all living organisms and certain viruses.
This make is more difficult to decode because, unlike DNA, RNA is able to fold itself into intricate, three-dimensional patterns.
Earlier studies have succeeded in modeling small regions of the HIV genome, which consists of two strands each containing nearly 10,000 nucleotides, the basic molecular building blocks of both DNA and RNA.
Using a new technique, Weeks and colleagues produced images which, while lower in resolution, spanned a much larger area.
The study should help scientists discover ways in which the RNA genome determines the lifecycle of the HIV virus.
“One approach is to change the RNA sequence and see if the virus notices,“ said Ronald Swanstrom, a co-author of the study.
“If it doesn’t grow as well when you disrupt the virus with mutations, then you know you’ve mutated or affected something that was important to the virus,“ he said in a statement.
Hashim Al-Hashimi of the University of Michigan, also writing in Nature, said in a commentary that the study was a “considerable achievement“ in so far as it provided an “aerial view“ of the genome’s overall structure.
“Structural biologists can now use this genomic map to judiciously zoom in on pieces of the HIV-1 genome and determine architectural and functional principles at the atomic level,“ he said.
AIDS first came to public notice in 1981, when alert US doctors noted an unusual cluster of deaths among young homosexuals in California and New York.
It has since killed at least 25 million people, and 33 million others are living with the disease or the HIV virus, which destroys immune cells and exposes the body to opportunistic disease.

A generous glass of beetroot juice boosts endurance by reducing the amount of oxygen needed during physical exercise, according to a study.
Subjects who drank the juice easily outperformed a control group in tests and were able to exercise at the same intensity for up to 16 percent longer, AFP reported.
The findings will be of keen interest to endurance athletes but may also prove helpful to people with cardiovascular, respiratory or metabolic diseases as well as the elderly, the researchers said. There are essentially two ways to enhance physical performance in relation to oxygen intake.
One is to raise the “VO2-max“ level, which is an individual’s highest possible rate of oxygen consumption during all-out exercise.
The VO2-max ceiling varies from person to person. It is partly genetic but it can be increased through training or the use of EPO, the oxygen-boosting drug that has plagued the Tour de France cycling competition as well as other professional sports.
“But there is an alternative,“ explained Andy Jones, a professor at the University of Exeter in Britain.
“If you can reduce the energy cost“--the amount of oxygen used--“that can be beneficial too,“ he told AFP by phone.
That’s where beetroots come in.
In experiments, Jones and colleagues asked two groups of people to exercise at a fixed, high-intensity work rate for as long as they possibly could.
The group that drank a red-colored placebo held out on average for nine or ten minutes. Those who drank beetroot, however, went 11 or 12 minutes.
“They were exercising at exactly the same work rate. The improvement in performance was not because the VO2-max had changed but simply because the efficiency had been enhanced,“ Jones said.
“We were amazed by the effects on oxygen uptake because these effects cannot be achieved by any other known means.“
Whether the juice will also work over several hours of less intense exercise -- equivalent to long-distance running or cycling--remains to be shown but seems likely, Jones added.
The researchers are not sure exactly how the ruby-red elixir works but they do have an educated guess.
Like lettuce and spinach, beetroot is rich in nitrate, which the body converts into nitrite. This, in turn, is a chemical trigger for another compound, nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide can dilate blood vessels and thus provide more oxygen to muscles. “But we think the key is that it seems to do a lot of weird and wonderful things within the muscle cells’ mitochondria, where oxidized energy is produced,“ Jones said.
Earlier laboratory studies confirm the link between nitric oxide and increased energy output but further experiments are needed to see whether this truly is the magic ingredient.