LA JOLLA--When you're taking a walk around the block, your body is mostly on autopilot--you don't have to consciously think about alternating which leg you step with or which muscles it takes to lift a foot and put it back down. That's thanks to a set of cells in your spinal cord that help translate messages between your brain and your motor neurons, which control muscles. Now, for the first time, researchers have created a method to watch--in real time--the activity of those motor neurons. The new technology, developed by Salk scientists and published in Neuron, is ...

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new artificially intelligent system that crowdsources plots for interactive stories, which are popular in video games and let players choose different branching story options. With potentially limitless crowdsourced plot points, the system could allow for more creative stories and an easier method for interactive narrative generation. Current AI models for games have a limited number of scenarios, no matter what a player chooses. They depend on a dataset already programmed into a model by experts. Using ...

Tropical Storm Fred is losing its punch. Satellite imagery shows that there are no strong thunderstorms developing in the tropical storm indicating that the storm is weakening. The RapidScat instrument that flies aboard the International Space Station measured Tropical Storm Fred's winds on September 1 at 4 a.m. EDT. RapidScat saw that the strongest winds tightly circled the center and were on the northern side of the storm, as strong as 24 and 27 meters per second (53.6 mph/ 86.4 kph and 60.4/97.2 kph). On September 1 at 13:00 UTC (9 a.m. EDT) the MODIS instrument ...

GeoSpace High water tables can be a boon to crop yields A high water table - usually a bane to crop yields - can provide much-needed water during drought and to crops planted in coarse-grained soils, found a new study published online in Water Resources Research. 3-D maps illustrate formation of the Hangai Dome in central Mongolia Scientists used 1.7 million seismic wave measurements from 227 earthquakes across East Asia to create animated 3-D images of subsurface rock formations under the Hangai Dome in central Mongolia as part of their recent study accepted in Geophysical ...

A new study by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) has found that coral reef diversity 'hotspots' in the southwestern Indian Ocean rely more on the biomass of fish than where they are located, a conclusion that has major implications for management decisions to protect coral reef ecosystems. Using data gathered over a 12-year period from nearly 270 coral reefs across the southwestern Indian Ocean, the WCS study found that the highest conservation priorities in the region should be reef systems where fish biomass exceeds 600 kilograms per hectare. This finding conflicts ...

Can water ever be too clean? If the intent is to store it underground, the answer, surprisingly, is yes. In a new study, Stanford scientists have shown that recycled water percolating into underground storage aquifers in Southern California picked up trace amounts of arsenic because the water was too pure. The research, published online in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, sheds light on a poorly understood aspect of groundwater recharge with purified recycled water, namely the potential mobilization of arsenic. Arsenic is a naturally occurring element that ...

ATLANTA - Sept. 2, 2015 - The number of men with breast cancer who undergo surgery to remove the unaffected breast has risen sharply, according to a new report by American Cancer Society and Dana Farber Cancer Institute researchers. The report, appearing in JAMA Surgery, is the first to identify the trend, which mirrors a trend seen in U.S. women over the past two decades. Breast cancer in men is rare, accounting for only about 1 percent of all cases in the United States. In women (particularly younger women), the use of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) surgery ...

Genes are not only important for regular memory performance, but also for the development of Alzheimer's disease. Researchers at the University of Basel now identified a specific group of genes that plays a central role in both processes. This group of molecules controls the concentration of calcium ions inside the cell. Their results appear in the current issue of the journal JAMA Psychiatry. Intact memory capacity is crucial for everyday life. This fact becomes apparent once a memory disorder has developed. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of age-associated ...

WASHINGTON, DC, September 2, 2015 -- Social scientists have long argued documentary films are powerful tools for social change. But a University of Iowa (UI) sociologist and his co-researchers are the first to use the Internet and social media to systematically show how a documentary film reshaped public perception and ultimately led to municipal bans on hydraulic fracking. By measuring an uptick in online searches as well as social media chatter and mass media coverage, Ion Bogdan Vasi, an associate professor of sociology at the UI and corresponding author of a new ...

A new study of more than 300 women suggests that exposure to certain phthalates -- substances commonly used in food packaging, personal-care and other everyday products -- could be associated with miscarriage, mostly between 5 and 13 weeks of pregnancy. The research, appearing in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, is the first epidemiological study on non-work-related exposure to phthalates to provide evidence for the possible link among a general population. Out of concern over the potential health effects of phthalates, the U.S. has banned six of these ...

Scientific experiments examining what happens to the faulty channel protein that causes cystic fibrosis during inflammation have yielded unexpected and exciting results. The study, conducted by Sara Bitam and her colleagues at INSERM in France, has just passed peer review on open science publishing platform F1000Research. Cystic fibrosis is a life-limiting auto¬somal recessive monogenic disorder that affects 1 in every 2000 - 3500 newborns in the EU and US per year. It is caused by mutations in the gene that encodes the CFTR protein, an epithelial ion channel involved ...

Gum disease is a common condition among adults that occurs when bacteria form biofilms or plaques on teeth, and consequently the gums become inflamed. Some severe cases, called periodontitis, call for antibiotics. But now scientists have discovered that wild blueberry extract could help prevent dental plaque formation. Their report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry could lead to a new therapy for periodontitis and a reduced need for antibiotics. Many people have had some degree of gum inflammation, or gingivitis, caused by dental plaque. The gums get ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - In the popular mind, mass extinctions are associated with catastrophic events, like giant meteorite impacts and volcanic super-eruptions. But the world's first known mass extinction, which took place about 540 million years ago, now appears to have had a more subtle cause: evolution itself. "People have been slow to recognize that biological organisms can also drive mass extinction," said Simon Darroch, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University. "But our comparative study of several communities of Ediacarans, ...

New research from Royal Holloway, University of London has found that changes in lifestyle over the past 30 years have led to a sharp reduction in the strenuousness of daily life, which researchers say may explain why there has been a dramatic rise in obesity. The study, carried out by Dr Melanie Luhrmann from the Department of Economics along with Professor Rachel Griffith and Dr Rodrigo Lluberas, revealed that while obesity rates have almost trebled, surprisingly, our actual calorie intake has fallen by around 20 per cent compared to 30 years ago. The researchers found ...

Advances in 3-D printing have led to new ways to make bone and some other relatively simple body parts that can be implanted in patients. But finding an ideal bio-ink has stalled progress toward printing more complex tissues with versatile functions -- tissues that can be loaded with pharmaceuticals, for example. Now scientists, reporting in the journal ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, have developed a silk-based ink that could open up new possibilities toward that goal. Most inks currently being developed for 3-D printing are made of thermoplastics, silicones, ...

China's economic downturn plus other factors, including overcapacity and tightening regulations, mean the next two to three years could be challenging for the foreign chemical and pharmaceutical companies located there. To survive in China as it adjusts to a slower pace of growth, businesses will likewise need to adapt, reports Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Jean-François Tremblay, a senior correspondent at C&EN, notes that owing to reforms initiated in 1978, China has been a profitable place for chemical ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas -- A Kansas State University wheat geneticist is part of a breakthrough study that identifies one of the wheat genes that controls response to low temperature exposure, a process called vernalization. Natural variation in vernalization genes defines when the plant begins to flower and is critical for adaptation to different environments. Researchers anticipate this will help wheat breeders design wheat varieties that can adapt and thrive in changing environments around the world. Eduard Akhunov, associate professor in the plant pathology department, ...

In China, smoking now causes nearly a quarter of all cancers in adult males. The finding comes from a large study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, as part of a Special Issue on Lung Cancer in China. High uptake rates of cigarette smoking in teenaged males and continued use in adulthood foreshadow even greater tobacco-related cancer risks for the nation. Tobacco-related deaths have been declining steadily in most developed countries; however, China now produces and consumes about 40 percent of the world's cigarettes, ...

School age children who are born prematurely are more likely to have low mathematical achievement, thought to be associated with reduced working memory and number skills, according to a new study published today in the neurology journal Brain. Researchers assessed up to 224 preterm children at age five and age seven to examine the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after birth to identify infants at risk of later academic impairment. The study participants are from Melbourne, Australia and are part of a Murdoch Children's Research Institute study. The authors suggest ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A new Duke University-led study has revealed the presence of radioactive contaminants in coal ash from all three major U.S. coal-producing basins. The study found that levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil, and up to 10 times higher than in the parent coal itself because of the way combustion concentrates radioactivity. The finding raises concerns about the environmental and human health risks posed by coal ash, which is currently unregulated and is stored in coal-fired power plants' holding ponds and landfills ...

New York, NY--September 2, 2015--Researchers from Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have developed a new method that can target delivery of very small volumes of drugs into the lung. Their approach, in which micro-liters of liquid containing a drug are instilled into the lung, distributed as a thin film in the predetermined region of the lung airway, and absorbed locally, may provide much more effective treatment of lung disease. The work was published in the August 31 online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...

Refined by nature over a billion years, photosynthesis has given life to the planet, providing an environment suitable for the smallest, most primitive organism all the way to our own species. While scientists have been studying and mimicking the natural phenomenon in the laboratory for years, understanding how to replicate the chemical process behind it has largely remained a mystery -- until now. Recent experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have afforded researchers a greater understanding of how to manipulate photosynthesis, ...

(Boston)--A new discovery by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers may change how kidney disease is treated in the future. The previously unknown protein transmembrane and immunoglobulin containing 1 (TMIGD1) involved in protecting kidney epithelial cells (cells critical to normal kidney function) from injury, could be a novel target for restoring kidney function from various forms of kidney disease. The findings are published online in the American Journal of Pathology. Kidneys have several roles, of which filtering blood of waste products to generate ...

The world might seem a little grayer than usual when we're down in the dumps and we often talk about "feeling blue" -- new research suggests that the associations we make between emotion and color go beyond mere metaphor. The results of two studies indicate that feeling sadness may actually change how we perceive color. Specifically, researchers found that participants who were induced to feel sad were less accurate in identifying colors on the blue-yellow axis than those who were led to feel amused or emotionally neutral. The research is published in Psychological Science, ...

A research group, led by Professor Masao Nagasaki and Senior Assistant Professor Yosuke Kawai at Tohoku University Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization, has successfully designed the first ever SNP*1 array that has been optimized for the Japanese population. SNP, which stands for Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, is a DNA sequence variation that occurs commonly within a population. This new array, called the "Japonica Array," covers the whole-genome region from which the SNPs possessed by Japanese people can be obtained with a high degree of accuracy. The design of ...