Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, July 2012
2012-07-19
(Press-News.org) BIOLOGY -- Waterlogged protein . . .
Proteins' biological functions, such as the ability to metabolize drugs in our bodies, are known to rely heavily on the presence of water, but mechanisms behind the relationship have remained unclear. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory have provided new evidence that suggests water is even more involved in protein dynamics than previously thought. Through a novel combination of supercomputer simulations and neutron scattering experiments, the research team found that the effects of water reach into the very core of a protein instead of remaining on the surface, as earlier research had suggested. "The implications are that surface hydration may lubricate dynamics in interior protein active sites, thus enabling biological function," said lead author Jeremy Smith. [Contact: Morgan McCorkle, (865) 574-7308; mccorkleml@ornl.gov]
ELECTRONICS -- Quantum leap in security . . .
Intrusion detection is moving up a couple of notches with a technology that overcomes one of the main vulnerabilities of conventional security systems. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Quantum Optical Seal, ideal for securing nuclear, military and chemical facilities, monitors an optical network for tampering using entangled pulses of light that are exclusively described by their quantum mechanical properties. "This offers the quantum optical seal a unique ability to identify sophisticated attempts at deception, including those attacks that would go unnoticed by more conventional techniques," said Travis Humble, who led the team of inventors. The patented technology is inherently immune to replication, a standard technique used to defeat less sophisticated intrusion detection systems. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]
MATERIALS -- Steel shield . . .
A protective coating developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory can extend the life of costly cutting and boring tools by more than 20 percent, potentially saving millions of dollars over the life of a project. The nanostructure coating, NanoSHIELD, is made from the laser fusing of glassy iron powders. The product was designed for high-wear applications such as tunnel boring, construction, drilling, industrial rock crushing and excavation operations, said Bill Peter, one of the inventors. While the coatings can be applied to any type of steel, its first application was for tunnel boring tools used to cut granite for the Combined Sewer Overflow Tunnel in Atlanta. Also, in 25 years of testing disc cutter coatings at Colorado School of Mines, NanoSHIELD-coated cutters were the first to not spall after one pass at actual rocks. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov]
NUCLEAR ENERGY -- Supercomputer speeds path forward . . .
By using graphic processing units in a test bed for the Titan supercomputer, researchers have more than tripled the speed of a code designed to improve efficiency, longevity and safety of nuclear reactors. The algorithm, dubbed Denovo, sweeps through a virtual reactor to track the location of radioactive particles. When run on graphics processing units, Denovo ran 3.5 times faster than what was possible with ORNL's Jaguar, which uses only central processing units. With this increase, 3D simulations are now within reach, said Tom Evans, who led the Denovo development team. Titan is a GPU/CPU hybrid to be installed over the next several months. This research supports the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (http://www.casl.gov/). [Contact: Dawn Levy, (865) 576-6448; levyd@ornl.gov]
MATERIALS -- Atomic hybrids . . .
Atom-by-atom studies of a two-dimensional hybrid material at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are paving the way toward novel low-power electronics. ORNL researchers used electron microscopy to examine newly synthesized samples of a combination of graphene and molybdenum disulfide, which could one day form the backbone of new electronic devices such as flexible cell phones. "In the future, it could be possible to imprint flexible electronic circuits using graphene and two-dimensional semiconductors such as molybdenum disulfide," said ORNL's Juan-Carlos Idrobo, a co-author on the team's study in Nano Letters. "But first, we need to understand how the atomic layers in these 2-D hybrid materials grow with respect to each other before we can start to make devices out of them." Microscopic analysis showed that atoms in the two materials are locked in a nonrandom orientation that is favorable for potential electronic applications. [Contact: Morgan McCorkle, (865) 574-7308; mccorkleml@ornl.gov]
INFORMATION:Media contacts: Ron Walli, (865 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov; (865) 574-4160; news@ornl.gov
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-07-19
PITTSBURGH— As an old proverb goes, "before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need most."
New research from Carnegie Mellon University's George Loewenstein and the University of Vienna's Linda Dezsö provides evidence of the pitfalls of making or receiving personal loans. Published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, the study is the first to systematically investigate the contours and consequences of loans between peers, such as friends, siblings, and coworkers and shows how self-serving bias behavior affects future relationships.
"This research ...
2012-07-19
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Severe sepsis, a body's dangerous defensive response against an infection, not only diminishes the quality of life for patients – it puts their spouses at a greater risk of depression, a joint University of Michigan Health System and University of Washington School of Medicine study shows.
Wives whose husbands were hospitalized for severe sepsis were nearly four times more likely to experience substantial depressive symptoms, according to the study released July 18 ahead of the August publish date in Critical Care Medicine.
Sepsis happens when an ...
2012-07-19
Forget bad guys and gunfire: Being a police officer can be hazardous to your health in other ways.
Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that police officers who sleep fewer than six hours per night are more susceptible to chronic fatigue and health problems, such as being overweight or obese, and contracting diabetes or heart disease. The study found that officers working the evening or night shifts were 14 times more likely to get less restful sleep than day-shift officers, and also were subjected to more back-to-back shifts, exacerbating their sleep deficit.
The ...
2012-07-19
(Washington) – "We know that the current Medicare payment system is not serving the needs of patients, physicians or taxpayers," David L. Bronson, MD, FACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), today told the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Health. "Congress needs to do its part by repealing the SGR, once and for all. But the medical profession needs to do its part by leading the adoption of innovative models to align payment policies with the value of care provided to patients."
Dr. Bronson pointed to several promising payment and delivery ...
2012-07-19
New Rochelle, NY, July 18, 2012— Approximately 1 in 3 Americans suffers from chronic sleep deprivation and another 10-15% of the population has chronic insomnia. Sleep disorders can profoundly affect a person's whole life and have been linked to a range of diseases, including obesity, depression, anxiety, and inflammatory disorders. Over-the-counter herbal remedies are often used to treat insomnia, but surprisingly, very little research has been done to study their efficacy, according to an article in Alternative and Complementary Therapies, published by Mary Ann Liebert, ...
2012-07-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Nearly a quarter of college women try smoking tobacco with a hookah, or water pipe, for the first time during their freshman year, according to new research from The Miriam Hospital's Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine.
The study, published online by Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, suggests a possible link to alcohol and marijuana use. Researchers found the more alcohol women consumed, the more likely they were to experiment with hookah smoking, while women who used marijuana engaged in hookah smoking more frequently than their peers.
They ...
2012-07-19
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues have demonstrated that the inhibition of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in mouse models of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), an aggressive and incurable subtype of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma that becomes resistant to treatment, can harness the immune system to eradicate residual malignant cells responsible for disease relapse.
Their study appears in a recent issue of Cancer Research, published by the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Despite good initial response to first-line treatment ...
2012-07-19
Scientists at The University of Nottingham believe they've found a way of fighting obesity — with a pioneering technique which uses thermal imaging. This heat-seeking technology is being used to trace our reserves of brown fat — the body's 'good fat' — which plays a key role in how quickly our body can burn calories as energy.
This special tissue known as Brown Adipose Tissue, or brown fat, produces 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body. Potentially the more brown fat we have the less likely we are to lay down excess energy or food as white fat.
Michael ...
2012-07-19
The University of Central Florida has detected what could be its first planet, only two-thirds the size of Earth and located right around the corner, cosmically speaking, at a mere 33light- years away.
The exoplanet candidate called UCF 1.01, is close to its star, so close it goes around the star in 1.4 days. The planet's surface likely reaches temperatures of more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The discoverers believe that it has no atmosphere, is only two-thirds the gravity of Earth and that its surface may be volcanic or molten.
"We have found strong evidence for ...
2012-07-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A team of archaeologists led by Brown University's Stephen Houston has uncovered a pyramid, part of the Maya archaeological site at El Zotz, Guatemala. The ornately decorated structure is topped by a temple covered in a series of masks depicting different phases of the sun, as well as deeply modeled and vibrantly painted stucco throughout.
The team began uncovering the temple, called the Temple of the Night Sun, in 2009. Dating to about 350 to 400 A.D., the temple sits just behind the previously discovered royal tomb, atop the Diablo ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, July 2012
