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Technology14 Sep 2015

An even more versatile optical chip

Telecommunication networks will soon reach the physical limits of current technology and in order to overcome the current bottleneck, they will have to exploit the quantum properties of light. Roberto Morandotti and his INRS team are paving the way to this technological revolution by removing the technical barriers of quantum photonics through the use of their optical chips. Recently they directly generated cross-polarized (orthogonal) photon pairs on a chip, a first in quantum optics. Polarization will now be among the controllable parameters for harnessing light in a ...

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Medicine14 Sep 2015

Swinging on 'monkey bars': Motor proteins caught in the act

The first images of motor proteins in action are published in the journal Nature Communications today. These proteins are vital to complex life, forming the transport infrastructure that allows different parts of cells to specialise in particular functions. Until now, the way they move has never been directly observed. Researchers at the University of Leeds and in Japan used electron microscopes to capture images of the largest type of motor protein, called dynein, during the act of stepping along its molecular track. Dr Stan Burgess, at the University of Leeds' ...

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Science14 Sep 2015

Elephants born when mothers are stressed age faster and produce fewer offspring

Elephants born into stressful situations have fewer offspring and age faster, researchers at the University of Sheffield have found. Scientists discovered that Asian elephants born during times when their mothers experience highest stress levels produce significantly fewer offspring in their lifetime despite having higher rates of reproduction at an early age. The research team, from the University's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, also found that those animals born under stress declined much more rapidly in older age, decades later. Lead author Dr Hannah ...

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Medicine14 Sep 2015

Mediterranean diet plus olive oil associated with reduced breast cancer risk

Eating a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra virgin olive oil was associated with a relatively lower risk of breast cancer in a study of women in Spain, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Breast cancer is a frequently diagnosed cancer and a leading cause of death in women. Diet has been extensively studied as a modifiable risk factor in the development of breast cancer but epidemiologic evidence on the effect of specific dietary factors is inconsistent. The Mediterranean diet is known for its abundance of plant foods, fish and ...

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Medicine14 Sep 2015

Social factors may impact young leukemia patients' survival

A new study reveals that insurance status, marital status, and county-level income may affect the chances of survival in young patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that efforts are needed to address the social factors that impact critical aspects of health in these patients. AML will affect approximately 20,830 and kill 10,460 Americans in 2015. Tremendous progress has been made in identifying disease characteristics that cause a patient to have ...

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Medicine14 Sep 2015

Treatment protocol improves outcomes for infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome

A new protocol to treat babies born in withdrawal from drugs can be used widely to improve outcomes for these babies. The protocol reduces length of stay and the duration of treatment with opioids that are used therapeutically to wean babies off of drugs. "The incidence of neonatal abstinence syndrome after an infant's in utero exposure to opioids has risen dramatically in recent years," says Eric Hall, PhD, a researcher in the Perinatal Institute at Cincinnati Children's and lead author of the study. "After adoption of the protocol, opioid treatment went from 34 to ...

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Science14 Sep 2015

Pedaling like a Tour de France winner is a losing strategy for most of us

Pedalling like Chris Froome or Alberto Contador might seem appealing, but Oxford University researchers have found that for most of us it's likely to reduce rather than improve our performance. A team from Oxford's Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences looked at a common measure of aerobic fitness called VO2 max. While it can be measured accurately in a laboratory, it is often more practical to use techniques that estimate VO2 max for individuals by getting them to exercise to their maximal level. These include the 'bleep test' of shuttle runs used by police forces ...

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Technology14 Sep 2015

Astronomers peer into the 'amniotic sac' of a planet-hosting star

Astronomers have successfully peered through the 'amniotic sac' of a star that is still forming to observe the innermost region of a burgeoning solar system for the first time. In a research paper published today in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of astronomers describe surprising findings in their observations of the parent star, which is called HD 100546. Lead author Dr Ignacio Mendigutía, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leeds, said: "Nobody has ever been able to probe this close ...

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Medicine14 Sep 2015

Study links marijuana use to poor blood sugar control in middle age

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that current and former users of marijuana are more likely to have prediabetes--the state of poor blood sugar control that can progress to type 2 diabetes--than never users of marijuana. However the researchers, led by Mike Bancks (University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Minneapolis, MN, USA) failed to establish a direct link between marijuana use and type 2 diabetes. Marijuana is the most frequently used illicit drug in America (and is estimated to ...

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Environment13 Sep 2015

Climate research: Where is the world's permafrost thawing?

Bremerhaven (Germany), 14th September 2015. This Saturday at a conference in Quebec, Canada an international research team will present the first online data portal on global permafrost. In the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost researchers first collect all the existing permafrost temperature and active thickness layer data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions and then make it freely available for download. This new portal can serve as an early warning system for researchers and decision-makers around the globe. A detailed description of the data ...

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Medicine12 Sep 2015

Study: No sex differences in research funding at Johns Hopkins Department of Medicine

Though national data suggest that women researchers are less likely to obtain independent research funding than men, a study published in the Journal of Women's Health found that male and female researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are funded at nearly the same rate. Rita Rastogi Kalyani, M.D., M.H.S.; Hsin-Chieh Yeh, Ph.D.; Jeanne Clarke, M.D., M.P.H.; Myron Weisfeldt, M.D.; Terry Choi; and Susan McDonald, M.D., all of Johns Hopkins, authored the study. Kalyani points out that, in recent years, Johns Hopkins has demonstrated a commitment to ...

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Medicine11 Sep 2015

Resveratrol impacts Alzheimer's disease biomarker

WASHINGTON (Sept. 11, 2015) -- The largest nationwide clinical trial to study high-dose resveratrol long-term in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease found that a biomarker that declines when the disease progresses was stabilized in people who took the purified form of resveratrol. Resveratrol is a naturally occurring compound found in foods such as red grapes, raspberries, dark chocolate and some red wines. The results, published online today in Neurology, "are very interesting," says the study's principal investigator, R. Scott Turner, MD, PhD, director ...

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Medicine11 Sep 2015

Achieving effective health care with a new approach to caring for chronic illnesses

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (September 11, 2015) -- Researchers from the University of Miami and Harvard University address the challenges of effective universal health coverage in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on solving one of the most pressing issues: the care of chronic illnesses. Their suggestions, aimed at strengthening health care systems, include recommendations based on a "diagonal approach" for managing health care. Their report is published in the September issue of the journal Health Affairs. The authors shared their findings on Wednesday, September 9, ...

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Environment11 Sep 2015

Burning remaining fossil fuel could cause 60-meter sea level rise

Washington, DC--New work from an international team including Carnegie's Ken Caldeira demonstrates that the planet's remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica if burned, leading to a 50- or 60-meter (160 to 200 foot) rise in sea level. Because so many major cities are at or near sea level, this would put many highly populated areas where more than a billion people live under water, including New York City and Washington, DC. It is published in Science Advances. "Our findings show that if we do not want to melt Antarctica, we ...

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Environment11 Sep 2015

Burning all fossil energy would eliminate all ice of Antarctica

Burning all of the world's available fossil-fuel resources would result in the complete melting of the Antarctic ice sheet, a new study to be published in Science Advances shows. The Antarctic ice masses store water equivalent to more than 50 meters of sea-level rise. The new calculations show that Antarctica's long-term contribution to sea-level rise could likely be restricted to a few meters that could still be manageable, if global warming did not exceed 2 degrees. Crossing this threshold, however, would in the long run destabilize both West and East Antarctica - causing ...

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Science11 Sep 2015

Study shows Africanized bees continue to spread in California

A study conducted by biologists at UC San Diego has found that the Africanized honey bee--an aggressive hybrid of the European honey bee--is continuing to expand its range northward since its introduction into Southern California in 1994. The study, published in this week's edition of the journal PLOS ONE, found that more than 60 percent of the foraging honey bees in San Diego County are Africanized and that Africanized bees can now be found as far north as California's delta region. "Our study shows that the large majority of bees one encounters in San Diego County are ...

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Medicine11 Sep 2015

Neural circuit in the cricket brain detects the rhythm of the right mating call

Scientists have identified an ingeniously elegant brain circuit consisting of just five nerve cells that allows female crickets to automatically identify the chirps of males from the same species through the rhythmic pulses hidden within the mating call. The circuit uses a time delay mechanism to match the gaps between pulses in a species-specific chirp - gaps of just few milliseconds. The circuit delays a pulse by the exact between-pulse gap, so that, if it coincides with the next pulse coming in, the same species signal is confirmed. It's one of the first times ...

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Science11 Sep 2015

Large eyes come at a high cost

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have shown that well-developed eyes come at a surprising cost to other organ systems. The study involving Mexican cavefish shows that the visual system can require between 5% and 15% of an animal's total energy budget. Researchers have long associated the presence of a well-developed brain with major energy consumption. This means that animals that develop advanced nervous systems require environments where this is possible. There has to be good access to nutrients, and every investment in an organ comes at a cost to some other ...

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Medicine11 Sep 2015

Study supports aggressive treatment of high blood pressure, says ACC president

WASHINGTON (Sept. 11, 2015) - A statement from American College of Cardiology President Kim Allan Williams Sr., M.D., FACC, regarding the National Institutes of Health stopping the SPRINT trial early after demonstrating the positive benefits of lower blood pressure control targets: "About 70 million American adults have high blood pressure and only half of them have their condition under control. The preliminary data demonstrates why the cardiovascular community must continue to aggressively fight a condition that leads to stroke, kidney disease and heart problems for ...

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Medicine11 Sep 2015

Periodontitis and heart disease: Researchers connect the molecular dots

Washington, DC - September 11, 2015 - Periodontitis is a risk factor for heart disease. Now a team of researchers has shown that a periodontal pathogen causes changes in gene expression that boost inflammation and atherosclerosis in aortic smooth muscle cells. The research is published ahead of print in Infection and Immunity, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The circumstantial evidence that led to this study was ample. The periodontal pathogen, Porphyromonas gingivalis, has also been found in coronary artery plaques of heart attack patients. And in ...

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Science11 Sep 2015

Too many candidates spoil the stew

This election year has produced 17 Republican presidential candidates, which on its surface may appear to give the party a competitive advantage. Evolution, however, disagrees. A new study by Michigan State University researcher Arend Hintze and appearing in the current issue of Scientific Reports, says the delicate balance of some, but not too much, competition optimally drives the evolution of decision-making strategies. "Competition has a unique relationship with our decision-making strategies as humans," said Hintze, an assistant professor at MSU. "Modest competition ...

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Social Science11 Sep 2015

Nano in food and agriculture: Regulations require collaboration to ensure safety

An overview of regulatory solutions worldwide on the use of nanotechnology in food and feed production shows a differing approach: only the EU and Switzerland have nano-specific provisions incorporated in existing legislation, whereas other countries count on non-legally binding guidance and standards for industry. Collaboration among countries across the globe is required to share information and ensure protection for people and the environment, according to a JRC co-authored paper. The paper Regulatory aspects of nanotechnology in the agri/feed/food sector in EU and ...

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Science11 Sep 2015

Insights into obscure transition uncovered by X-rays

The list of potential mechanisms that underlie an unusual metal-insulator transition has been narrowed by a team of scientists using a combination of X-ray techniques. This transition has ramifications for material design for electronics and sensors. The transition between being electrically conductive (metallic) at high temperatures and electrically insulating at lower temperatures is known as a metal-insulator transition (MIT). Pinpointing the activation mechanism that allows crystals used in devices such as transistors in electronics and temperature-based sensor control ...

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Science11 Sep 2015

Disney Research demonstrates LEDs that use visible light to talk to each other and internet

The light that typically floods homes, offices and public buildings could provide something more than illumination. Scientists at Disney Research and ETH Zurich have demonstrated that light could be a medium for light bulbs to communicate - with each other, with objects and with the Internet. Transmitting signals via light is nothing new; Alexander Graham Bell showed that speech could be conveyed with light in the 1880s, years before speech was first transmitted via radio. The Disney researchers, however, have created networking technology that makes it possible for LED ...

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Medicine11 Sep 2015

Innovative imaging technique reveals new cellular secrets

KANSAS CITY, MO -- Cellular mitosis depends in part on small organelles that extend spindles to pull apart chromosome pairs. Before they can perform this and other essential tasks, these tiny cylindrical structures -- known as centrioles in animals and spindle pole bodies (SPBs) in yeast -- must themselves duplicate. However, much about this nanoscale process has remained veiled by the limits of current microscopy. Optical approaches cannot resolve objects below certain wavelength limits, while non-optical approaches like electron microscopy (EM) can only study nonliving ...

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