New research shows that a preservation technique known as sequential subnormothermic ex vivo liver perfusion (SNEVLP) prevents ischemic type biliary stricture following liver transplantation using grafts from donations after cardiac death (DCD). Findings published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, indicate that the preservation of DCD grafts using SNEVLP versus cold storage reduces bile duct and endothelial cell injury post transplantation. The shortage ...

VIDEO: Scientists at the US Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory modeled the 'passing probability' of molecules within the narrow pores of mesoporous nanoparticles. This understanding will help determine the optimal diameter... Click here for more information. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have developed deeper understanding of the ideal design for mesoporous nanoparticles used in catalytic reactions, such as hydrocarbon conversion to biofuels. ...

ATLANTA—Animal-assisted therapy can reduce symptoms of anxiety and loneliness among college students, according to researchers at Georgia State University, Idaho State University and Savannah College of Art and Design. Their findings are published in the latest issue of the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health. The researchers provided animal-assisted therapy to 55 students in a group setting at a small arts college in the Southeast. They found a 60 percent decrease in self-reported anxiety and loneliness symptoms following animal-assisted therapy, in which a ...

MADISON, Wis. — Developing invisible implantable medical sensor arrays, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers has overcome a major technological hurdle in researchers' efforts to understand the brain. The team described its technology, which has applications in fields ranging from neuroscience to cardiac care and even contact lenses, in the Oct. 20 issue of the online journal Nature Communications. Neural researchers study, monitor or stimulate the brain using imaging techniques in conjunction with implantable sensors that allow them to continuously ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Oct. 21, 2014 -- The most obvious effects of too much sun exposure are cosmetic, like wrinkled and rough skin. Some damage, however, goes deeper—ultraviolet light can damage DNA and cause proteins in the body to break down into smaller, sometimes harmful pieces that may also damage DNA, increasing the risk of skin cancer and cataracts. Understanding the specific pathways by which this degradation occurs is an important step in developing protective mechanisms against it. Researchers from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne ...

By analysing DNA extracted from the petrous bones of skulls of ancient Europeans, scientists have identified that these peoples remained intolerant to lactose (natural sugar in the milk of mammals) for 5,000 years after they adopted agricultural practices and 4,000 years after the onset of cheese-making among Central European Neolithic farmers. The findings published online in the scientific journal Nature Communications (21 Oct) also suggest that major technological transitions in Central Europe between the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age were also associated with ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 21, 2014 -- X-ray phase tomography is an imaging technique that uses penetrating X-rays to create volumetric views through "slices" or sections of soft biological tissues, such as tumors, and it offers strongly enhanced contrast compared to conventional CT scans. Yet scientists still do not know which X-ray phase tomography methods are best suited to yield optimized results for a wide variety of conditions. To answer this question, a large group of researchers in Europe set out to compare three different X-ray phase tomography methods at the ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 21, 2014 -- Hikers are generally advised that the weight of the packs they carry should correspond to their own size, with smaller individuals carrying lighter loads. Although petite backpackers might appreciate the excuse to hand off heavier gear to the larger members of the group, it turns out that they may not need the help. While leading students on extended backpacking trips for Outward Bound, Kansas State University physics professor Michael O'Shea noticed that some of the smaller students could comfortably carry a greater pack weight than ...

VIDEO: Chapman University has initiated the first comprehensive nationwide study on what strikes fear in Americans in the first of what is a planned annual study. The Chapman Survey on American... Click here for more information. ORANGE, Calif. – Chapman University has initiated the first comprehensive nationwide study on what strikes fear in Americans in the first of what is a planned annual study. According to the Chapman poll, the number one fear in America today ...

A team of researchers led by NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries have discovered two significant vessels from World War II's Battle of the Atlantic. The German U-boat 576 and the freighter Bluefields were found approximately 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina. Lost for more than 70 years, the discovery of the two vessels, in an area known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, is a rare window into a historic military battle and the underwater battlefield landscape of WWII. "This is not just the discovery of a single shipwreck," said Joe Hoyt, a NOAA sanctuary ...

NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites captured before and after images of Bermuda and surrounding waters before and after Hurricane Gonzalo struck the island on Oct. 17. The images revealed how Gonzalo stirred up the sediment from the ocean bottom. The MODIS instrument or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer that flies aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites provided imagery of Bermuda and the stirred sediment. In a comparison of imagery before and after Hurricane Gonzalo passed, the after image showed sediment streaming east and south of Bermuda. The MODIS instrument ...

Slow-moving Tropical Storm Ana was still affecting parts of Hawaii on Oct. 20 when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead from its orbit in space. Imagery from Aqua showed that wind shear was affecting the storm. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible picture of Tropical Storm Ana over Hawaii on Oct. 20 at 23:55 UTC (7:55 p.m. EDT). The image showed that most of the clouds and showers were north and east of the center of circulation, pushed away from the center by strong southwesterly wind ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Publicly traded corporations are increasingly publishing social responsibility reports for investors, who now consider such information alongside traditional financial data before investing in a company. But according to new research from a University of Illinois expert in financial reporting and financial statement analysis, less-numerate investors are more susceptible to style and presentation effects of the reports, potentially leading them to make unintended judgments about the company. W. Brooke Elliott, a professor of accountancy at Illinois, ...

CHICAGO –A new study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), evaluated consumers' choice in fresh tomato selection and revealed which characteristics make the red fruit most appealing. The researchers found that the most important fresh tomato attributes were color, amount of juice when sliced and size. Consumers were most drawn to fresh tomatoes shown to be red, firm, medium/small sized, crisp, meaty, and that contain few seeds. The study also found that a lack of characteristic taste and flavor – including ...

What makes human conflict intractable – and how can psychological research resolve historic disagreements? A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team of researchers from The New School for Social Research, Northwestern University and Boston College demonstrates how seemingly unsolvable political and ethnic conflicts are fueled by asymmetrical perceptions of opponents' motivations – and that these tensions can be relieved by providing financial incentives to better understand what drives an adversary group. "This ...

Boulder, CO, USA — Stegosaurs might be portrayed as lumbering plant eaters, but they were lethal fighters when necessary, according to paleontologists who have uncovered new evidence of a casualty of stegosaurian combat. The evidence is a fatal stab wound in the pubis bone of a predatory allosaur. The wound – in the conical shape of a stegosaur tail spike – would have required great dexterity to inflict and shows clear signs of having cut short the allosaur's life. "A massive infection ate away a baseball-sized sector of the bone," reports Houston Museum ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 21, 2014—Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered exceptional properties in a garnet material that could enable development of higher-energy battery designs. The ORNL-led team used scanning transmission electron microscopy to take an atomic-level look at a cubic garnet material called LLZO. The researchers found the material to be highly stable in a range of aqueous environments, making the compound a promising component in new battery configurations. Researchers frequently seek to improve ...

Boulder, CO, USA — Washington's coast is so close to the seismically active Cascadia Subduction Zone that if a megathrust earthquake were to occur, a tsunami would hit the Washington shoreline in just 25 minutes. One coastal community is preparing for such a disaster by starting construction on the nation's first tsunami evacuation refuge, large enough to shelter more than 1,000 people who are within 20-minute walking distance. The vertical evacuation-refuge will be the roof of the gym of the new school in Grays Harbor County, Washington. The Ocosta Elementary ...

They may be tiny and stingless but there's nothing sweet and innocent about a species of native Sugarbag bee when it goes to war over a coveted honey-filled hive. A study by behavioural ecologist Dr Paul Cunningham, from QUT, and molecular biologist Dr James Hereward, from the University of Queensland, published in American Naturalist, found the bees' used their jaws as lethal weapons when they zoomed in on a neighbouring Brisbane hive to boot out the inhabitants and install their own queen to rule. Dr Cunningham said the attacking bees arrived in a swarm and clashed ...

This news release is available in German. Stroma cells are derived from connective tissue and may critically influence tumour growth. This knowledge is not new. However, bioanalyst Christopher Gerner and an interdisciplinary team from the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna have developed a novel methodology for investigation. Using modern mass spectrometry, tumour-promoting activities from breast fibroblasts were directly determined from needle biopsy samples. Recently this experimental break-through is published in the renowned Journal of Proteome ...

Folsom, Calif., (October 21, 2014) – A new animal study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease indicates that a diet including walnuts may have a beneficial effect in reducing the risk, delaying the onset, slowing the progression of, or preventing Alzheimer's disease. Research led by Abha Chauhan, PhD, head of the Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities (IBR), found significant improvement in learning skills, memory, reducing anxiety, and motor development in mice fed a walnut-enriched ...

When it comes to the brain, "more is better" seems like an obvious assumption. But in the case of synapses, which are the connections between brain cells, too many or too few can both disrupt brain function. Researchers from Princeton University and the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) recently found that an immune-system protein called MHCI, or major histocompatibility complex class I, moonlights in the nervous system to help regulate the number of synapses, which transmit chemical and electrical signals between neurons. The researchers report in the Journal ...

Massive black holes spewing out radio-frequency-emitting particles at near-light speed can block formation of new stars in aging galaxies, a study has found. The research provides crucial new evidence that it is these jets of "radio-frequency feedback" streaming from mature galaxies' central black holes that prevent hot free gas from cooling and collapsing into baby stars. "When you look into the past history of the universe, you see these galaxies building stars," said Tobias Marriage, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins and co-lead author ...

A new medical imaging method being developed at Rutgers University could help physicians detect cancer and other diseases earlier than before, speeding treatment and reducing the need for invasive, time-consuming biopsies. The potentially lifesaving technique uses nanotechnology to reveal small cancerous tumors and cardiovascular lesions deep inside the body. It is showing promise in early tests by Rutgers researchers in the schools of engineering and pharmacy. The Rutgers scientists, who published initial results of their work in the July issue of the journal Nature ...

Undescended testis is commonly found in newborn boys and usually normalizes spontaneously by the age of six months. In one in a hundred boys, however, at least one testis remains undescended—a condition associated with impaired fertility and a higher risk of testicular cancer in later life. About 3500 boys are affected with this condition in Germany each year. In the currently valid medical guideline for the treatment of undescended testis, early surgery is recommended, i.e., orchidopexy before the child's first birthday, in order to prevent late sequelae. Nonetheless, ...