EUGENE, Ore. -- Scientists, including University of Oregon chemist Geraldine Richmond, have tapped oil and water to create scaffolds of self-assembling, synthetic proteins called peptoid nanosheets that mimic complex biological mechanisms and processes. The accomplishment -- detailed this week in a paper placed online ahead of print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- is expected to fuel an alternative design of the two-dimensional peptoid nanosheets that can be used in a broad range of applications. Among them could be improved chemical sensors ...

The Annual Thematic issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine that appears in September 2014 is devoted to "The biology and medicine of microphysiological systems" and describes the work of scientists participating in the Microphysiological Systems Program directed by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and funded in part by the NIH Common Fund. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are collaborating with the NIH in the program. Fourteen of ...

A recently published paper provides a history of scientific research on mountain ecosystems, looks at the issues threatening wildlife in these systems, and sets an agenda for biodiversity conservation throughout the world's mountain regions. The paper, "Mountain gloom and mountain glory revisited: A survey of conservation, connectivity, and climate change in mountain regions," appears online in the Journal of Mountain Ecology. Authors are Charles C. Chester of Tufts University, Jodi A. Hilty of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and Lawrence S. Hamilton of World Commission ...

New Haven, Conn. — Yale Cancer Center researchers may have discovered a new way of harnessing lupus antibodies to sabotage cancer cells made vulnerable by deficient DNA repair. The findings were published recently in Nature's journal Scientific Reports. The study, led by James E. Hansen, M.D., assistant professor of therapeutic radiology at Yale School of Medicine, found that cancer cells with deficient DNA repair mechanisms (or the inability to repair their own genetic damage) were significantly more vulnerable to attack by lupus antibodies. "Patients with lupus ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Obesity is associated with many health risks, including heart disease and diabetes, but University of Illinois researchers have found a possible way to mitigate one often-overlooked risk: not buckling up in the car. A new study led by Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and of mathematics, found that increasing the obesity rates are associated with a decrease in seatbelt usage. However, these effects can be mitigated when seatbelt laws are in effect. "Primary seatbelt laws lead to increased use of seatbelts," Jacobson said. "On the ...

Melatonin supplements do not appear to lessen delirium in elderly people undergoing surgery for hip fractures, indicates a new trial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) Many older patients in hospital experience delirium, with disturbances in their sleep–wake cycle. Antipsychotic medications used to reduce symptoms have serious adverse effects, leading the US Food and Drug Administration to warn against their use. Benzodiazepines are also used, although they are known to cause or aggravate delirium. A lack of melatonin may be one factor underlying ...

In an article in the September issue of BioScience, Samantha Joye and colleagues describe Gulf of Mexico microbial communities in the aftermath of the 2010 Macondo blowout. The authors describe revealing population-level responses of hydrocarbon-degrading microbes to the unprecedented deepwater oil plume. The spill provided a unique opportunity to study the responses of indigenous microbial communities to a substantial injection of hydrocarbons. Surveys of genetic identifiers within cells known as ribosomal RNA and analyses relying on modern techniques including metagenomics, ...

Each year thousands of students enroll in medical schools across the country. But just how many feel they've been disrespected, publicly humiliated, ridiculed or even harassed by their superiors at some point during their medical education? Recently, researchers at Michigan State University were the first to analyze 12 years worth of national survey data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, or AAMC, questioning graduating students about their medical school experience during the clinical portion of their education. They found that up to 20 percent of ...

A brain region largely known for coordinating motor control has a largely overlooked role in childhood development that could reveal information crucial to understanding the onset of autism, according to Princeton University researchers. The cerebellum — an area located in the lower rear of the brain — is known to process external and internal information such as sensory cues that influence the development of other brain regions, the researchers report in the journal Neuron. Based on a review of existing research, the researchers offer a new theory that an injury to the ...

What happens when you are hospitalized, but your outpatient doctor does not know? Or when you arrive at the office for follow-up care, but your doctor does not have the right information about your hospital stay? Missing or incomplete communication from hospitals to outpatient primary care physicians (PCPs) can contribute to poor experiences and lead to hospital readmissions. However, a new study shows that implementing guidelines can improve hospitals' communication during patient care transitions. Researchers from Healthcentric Advisors collaborated with Rhode Island ...

A new study published in the September issue of The FASEB Journal, http://www.fasebj.org, identifies a novel strategy to diagnose the leading cause of blindness in adults, diabetic retinopathy, before irreversible structural damage has occurred. This advance involves quantifying the early molecular changes caused by diabetes on the endothelium of retinal vessels. Using new probes developed by scientists, they were able to distinguish the early molecular development of diabetic retinopathy. "My goal is to establish a versatile clinical tool that alerts of a disease process ...

Winston-Salem, N.C. – Sept. 2, 2014 – What if repairing large segments of damaged muscle tissue was as simple as mobilizing the body's stem cells to the site of the injury? New research in mice and rats, conducted at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine, suggests that "in body" regeneration of muscle tissue might be possible by harnessing the body's natural healing powers. Reporting online ahead of print in the journal Acta Biomaterialia, the research team demonstrated the ability to recruit stem cells that can form muscle tissue to ...

More than one third of all planned orthopaedic surgery procedures are re-booked, postponed or cancelled completely. The most common reasons are cancellation at the patient's own request or emergency cases having to be prioritised. These are the findings of a study carried out by the Sahlgrenska Academy in association with Sahlgrenska University Hospital. Postponed or cancelled operations are a problem both for the individual patient, who may have to wait longer for treatment, and for the hospital providing treatment in the form of poorer use of resources. The Department ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A team of University of Maryland physicists has published new nanoscience advances that they and other scientists say make possible new nanostructures and nanotechnologies with huge potential applications ranging from clean energy and quantum computing advances to new sensor development. Published in the September 2, issue of Nature Communications the Maryland scientists' primary discovery is a fundamentally new synthesis strategy for hybrid nanostructures that uses a connector, or "intermedium," nanoparticle to join multiple different nanoparticles ...

Most forecasts about the future of higher education have focused on how the institutions themselves will be affected – including the possibility of less demand for classes on campus and fewer tenured faculty members as people take courses online. Some changes already have begun. When researchers at the University of Houston tackled the issue, they focused instead on what students will need in the future, including improved mentoring, personalized learning and feedback in real time. The UH researchers identified three key themes: A shift in the balance of power away ...

New research1 presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona shows that having a family history of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is not enough to motivate people to follow healthy lifestyles. Researchers used data from 188,139 users of HeartAge.me, a free online tool that engages people presenting their personal CVD risk factors as their estimated 'heart age', to test the hypothesis that those who have a family history of CVD are more likely to attend medical examinations and blood pressure checks and be motivated to adopt healthy diet and lifestyle ...

It's not always true that digital distribution of media will have lower carbon emissions than distribution by physical means, at least when file sizes are large. That's the conclusion of a study published in Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology that looked at the carbon footprint of games for consoles such as PlayStation®3. Researchers found that Blu-ray Discs delivered via retail stores caused lower greenhouse gas emissions than game files downloaded over broadband Internet. For their analysis, the investigators estimated total carbon equivalent emissions for an 8.8-gigabyte ...

A new Journal of Evolutionary Biology study provides evidence that physical barriers formed by oceans can influence language diversification. Investigators argue that the same factor responsible for much of the biodiversity in the Galápagos Islands is also responsible for the linguistic diversity in the Japanese Islands: the natural oceanic barriers that impede interaction between speech communities. Therefore, spatially isolated languages gradually diverge from one another due to a reduction of linguistic contact. "Charles Darwin would have been amused by a study like ...

In light of the upcoming referendum on whether Scotland should be an independent country, researchers present a set of predictions of the possible effects on internal and international migration. If Scotland declares independence, international immigration will remain the most uncertain flow. However, if large inflows occur, they are likely to be balanced by emigration from Scotland. Migration between Scotland and the rest of the UK is expected to remain at similar levels to the present, irrespective of the outcome of the 2014 independence referendum. "International ...

Move over antibiotic ointment, there might be a new salve to dominate medicine cabinets of the future, and it comes from an unlikely place—the lowly salamander. Salamanders may not be the cuddliest of animals, but they can regenerate lost limbs and achieve amazing recovery of seriously damaged body parts. Now, a new report published in the September 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal, identifies a small protein (called a "peptide") from the skin of salamanders that may be the key to unlocking the secret of this amazing wound healing trick in humans. "This research takes ...

The prevalence of opioid-involved overdoses has become an increasing concern to health officials both in NYC and nationally. According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the number of unintentional opioid-involved overdose deaths in 2011 was nearly triple the number of such deaths in 2000. Much of the increase has been attributed to a dramatic rise in nonmedical prescription opioid (PO) use among teens and young adults, and, more recently, in heroin use among youth who transitioned from POs to heroin. Now researchers affiliated with New York ...

A new study published by The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Iron Dome system, which Israeli authorities have credited with saving lives during the recent conflict with Hamas. Modeling Short Range Ballistic Missile Defense and Israel's Iron Dome System is by Michael J. Armstrong of the Goodman School of Business, Brock University, in Ontario, Canada. It appears in the Articles in Advance section of the INFORMS journal Operations Research. The study examines the previous Israel-Gaza ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS — Two Kansas State University biochemists have discovered a family of proteins that could lead to better treatments for Staphylococcus aureus, a pathogenic bacterium that can cause more than 60,000 potentially life-threatening infections each year. Brian Geisbrecht, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and Kasra Ramyar, his research associate, are studying S. aureus, which is the cause of increasing common staph infections. Their work appears in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, in the article ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2, 2014—In a new guideline, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine has recommended against the routine use of bed rest in pregnancy. "There is no evidence that bed rest improves outcomes", says Anthony Sciscione, DO, director of Delaware Center for Maternal and Fetal Medicine and one of the co-authors of the guideline. "However, there is evidence that bed rest can be harmful for moms, babies, and families." About one in five women are placed on bed rest during their pregnancy. Surveys have shown that both ob/gyns and maternal-fetal medicine specialists ...

Many research studies have made it clear that a mother's eating habits prior to pregnancy, during pregnancy and during lactation have a profound impact on her offspring and their propensity for developing weight problems, including obesity. However, until now, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon were unclear. According to new research published in the September 2014 issue of The FASEB JournalF, scientists using an animal model found an epigenetic link between a mother's diet and an offspring's risk of future obesity. This link hinges on the blocked expression of a gene ...