Physicists have identified the "quantum glue" that underlies a promising type of superconductivity -- a crucial step towards the creation of energy superhighways that conduct electricity without current loss. The research, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a collaboration between theoretical physicists led by Dirk Morr, professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and experimentalists led by Seamus J.C. Davis of Cornell University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The earliest superconducting materials required ...

A team of researchers from Warwick Business School and Boston University have developed a method to automatically identify topics that people search for on Google before subsequent stock market falls. Applied to data between 2004 and 2012, the method shows that increases in searches for business and politics preceded falls in the stock market. The study, 'Quantifying the semantics of search behavior before stock market moves,' was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers suggest that this method could be applied to help identify ...

VIDEO: Salk scientists have discovered the link between astrocytes and memory. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA—When you're expecting something—like the meal you've ordered at a restaurant—or when something captures your interest, unique electrical rhythms sweep through your brain. These waves are called gamma oscillations and they reflect a symphony of cells—both excitatory and inhibitory—playing together in an orchestrated way. Though their role has been debated, ...

Millions of people in the United States have a circulatory problem of the legs called peripheral vascular disease. It can be painful and may even require surgery in serious cases. This disease can lead to severe skeletal muscle wasting and, in turn, limb amputation. At The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School, scientists tested a non-surgical preventative treatment in a mouse model of the disease and it was associated with increased blood circulation. Their proof-of-concept study appears in the journal Cell Reports. Unlike ...

TEMPE, Ariz. - Reactions among minerals and organic compounds in hydrothermal environments are critical components of the Earth's deep carbon cycle, they provide energy for the deep biosphere, and may have implications for the origins of life. However, very little is known about how minerals influence organic reactions. A team of researchers from Arizona State University have demonstrated how a common mineral acts as a catalysts for specific hydrothermal organic reactions – negating the need for toxic solvents or expensive reagents. At the heart of organic chemistry, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Fifteen years ago, MIT professor John Essigmann and colleagues from the University of Washington had a novel idea for an HIV drug. They thought if they could induce the virus to mutate uncontrollably, they could force it to weaken and eventually die out — a strategy that our immune system uses against many viruses. The researchers developed such a drug, which caused HIV to mutate at an enhanced rate, as expected. But it did not eliminate the virus from patients in a small clinical trial reported in 2011. In a new study, however, Essigmann and colleagues ...

NEW YORK (July 28, 2:45 pm [ET]): Ten hospitals in the Tennessee Surgical Quality Collaborative (TSQC) have reduced surgical complications by 19.7 percent since 2009, resulting in at least 533 lives saved and $75.2 million in reduced costs, according to new results presented today at the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) National Conference in New York City. The hospital collaborative was formed in 2008 as a partnership of the Tennessee Chapter of the American College of Surgeons and the Tennessee Hospital Association's ...

Stimulating one of two dopamine-producing regions in the brain was able to arouse animals receiving general anesthesia with either isoflurane or propofol. In the August issue of Anesthesiology, investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report that rats anesthetized with continuous doses of either agent would move, raise their heads and even stand up in response to electrical stimulation delivered to the ventral tegmental area (VTA). Stimulation of the other major dopamine-releasing area, the substantia nigra, did not induce the animals to wake up. "Dopamine ...

A study of juvenile rat brain cells suggests that the effects of a commonly used anesthetic drug on the connections between brain cells are temporary. The study, published in this week's issue of the journal PLOS ONE, was conducted by biologists at the University of California, San Diego and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York in response to concerns, arising from multiple studies on humans over the past decade, that exposing children to general anesthetics may increase their susceptibility to long-term cognitive and behavioral deficits, such as learning disabilities. An ...

DALLAS – July 28, 2014 – UT Southwestern Medical Center cancer researchers have found a molecule that selectively and irreversibly interferes with the activity of a mutated cancer gene common in 30 percent of tumors. The molecule, SML-8-73-1 (SML), interferes with the KRAS gene, or Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog. The gene produces proteins called K-Ras that influence when cells divide. Mutations in K-Ras can result in normal cells dividing uncontrollably and turning cancerous. These mutations are particularly found in cancers of the lung, pancreas, and colon. ...

The genome of Solanum pennellii, a wild relative of the domestic tomato, has been published by an international group of researchers including the labs headed by Professors Neelima Sinha and Julin Maloof at the UC Davis Department of Plant Biology. The new genome information may help breeders produce tastier, more stress-tolerant tomatoes. The work, published July 27 in the journal Nature Genetics, was lead by Björn Usadel and colleagues at Aachen University in Germany. The UC Davis labs carried out work on the transcriptome of S. pennellii — the RNA molecules that are ...

A team of international researchers has discovered a new type of cool burning flames that could lead to cleaner, more efficient engines for cars. The discovery was made during a series of experiments on the International Space Station by a team led by Forman Williams, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Researchers detailed their findings recently in the journal Microgravity Science and Technology. "We observed something that we didn't think could exist," Williams said. A better understanding of the cool flames' ...

HIV research findings made possible by a test developed at University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CU School of Pharmacy) AURORA, Colo (July 28, 2014) An influential new test, discovered and developed in the Colorado Antiviral Pharmacology Laboratory at the CU School of Pharmacy, helps monitor the effectiveness of the HIV prevention drug called Truvada (a combination of tenofovir/emtricitabine), which is taken once daily to prevent HIV infection. A study presented during the AIDS 2014 Conference and published in Lancet Infectious ...

Tropical Storm Hernan developed over this past weekend and reached hurricane strength before vertical wind shear kicked in and kicked the storm down. NASA's Terra satellite passed over Hernan when it was developing as a tropical depression near Baja California, Mexico. Tropical Storm Hernan was born on Saturday, July 26 at 5 a.m. EDT as Tropical Depression 8-E. By 5 p.m. EDT it strengthened into Tropical Storm Hernan. At 11 a.m. EDT on Sunday, July 27, Hernan's maximum sustained winds were already up to 70 mph, just four miles per hour shy of hurricane status. As Hernan ...

Eight of the top 10 U.S. cities that have seen an increase in so-called "nuisance flooding"--which causes such public inconveniences as frequent road closures, overwhelmed storm drains and compromised infrastructure--are on the East Coast, according to a new NOAA technical report. This nuisance flooding, caused by rising sea levels, has increased on all three U.S. coasts, between 300 and 925 percent since the 1960s. The report, Sea Level Rise and Nuisance Flood Frequency Changes around the United States, also finds Annapolis and Baltimore, Maryland, lead the list with ...

Washington, DC, July 28, 2014 – "Fist bumping" transmits significantly fewer bacteria than either handshaking or high-fiving, while still addressing the cultural expectation of hand-to-hand contact between patients and clinicians, according to a study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). In this study from the Institute of Biological, Environmental, and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom, researchers ...

SAN ANTONIO (July 28, 2014) -- Researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, the Texas Liver Institute and other institutions have identified a combination of pills that cures 9 of 10 hepatitis C patients. The combination of the drugs sofosbuvir and simeprevir, with or without ribavirin, cured 93 percent of patients in 12 weeks, and was well tolerated by patients, according to the study published today in The Lancet. National study conducted in the U.S. Eric Lawitz, M.D., clinical professor in the School of Medicine at the UT Health ...

Set goal, work to achieve goal, attain goal and react accordingly — that's the script we write when we set our sights on an achievement. But what happens when the script isn't followed, and you learn too soon that you will accomplish what you set out to do? New research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business finds that the positive reaction one would have when succeeding is lessened if it doesn't follow the expected course. In "Feeling Good at the Right Time: Why People Value Predictability in Goal Attainment," Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral ...

There is no cure for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, but the research community is one step closer to finding treatment. University of Washington bioengineers have a designed a peptide structure that can stop the harmful changes of the body's normal proteins into a state that's linked to widespread diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and Lou Gehrig's disease. The synthetic molecule blocks these proteins as they shift from their normal state into an abnormally folded form by targeting a toxic intermediate phase. The ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, July 28, 2014...Mothers who live near green spaces deliver babies with significantly higher birth weights, according to a new study, "Green Spaces and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes" published in the journal, Occupational and Environmental Medicine. A team of researchers from Israel and Spain, including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), evaluated nearly 40,000 single live births from a registry birth cohort in Tel Aviv, Israel to determine the impact of green surroundings during pregnancy and birth outcomes. "We found that that overall, an increase ...

PORTLAND, Ore. – The findings of a new study suggest two ways to effectively address the problem that birth control pills may not work as well in obese women, compared to women of a normal body mass index. Birth control pills are a one-size-fits-all method, researchers say, but as the population has increased in weight, concern has grown about how well the pill works for obese women. Studies have consistently found that obesity has a negative impact on drug levels in the body, which may in turn affect how well the pill prevents pregnancy. "Birth control pills have ...

A powerful new tool that can help advance the genetic engineering of "fuel" crops for clean, green and renewable bioenergy, has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The JBEI researchers have developed an assay that enables scientists to identify and characterize the function of nucleotide sugar transporters, critical components in the biosynthesis of plant cell walls. "Our unique assay enabled us to analyze ...

A new strategy which enables molecules to be disconnected essentially anywhere, even remote from functionality, is described by researchers from the University of Bristol in Nature Chemistry today. The method is now being developed to explore the possibility of creating a tuberculosis (TB) vaccine. The organic synthesis strategy, developed by Professor Varinder Aggarwal and Dr Ramesh Rasappan in the School of Chemistry, involves a new method for combining smaller fragments together in which there is no obvious history in the product of their genesis. The paper describes ...

CHICAGO – A new study, published in the July, 2014, issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute by Northwestern Medicine® researchers, sheds new light on the risks associated with the growing popularity of endoscopic resection in the treatment of localized, early-stage esophageal cancer. Researchers found that the more traditional surgical resection, while more invasive, provided significantly better outcomes with an 87.6 percent five-year survival rate for patients than endoscopic resection, which had a 76 percent five-year survival rate. The study, "Treatment ...

Tropical Storm Genevieve may be a remnant low pressure area but there's still a chance it could make a comeback. Meanwhile, GOES-West satellite imagery showed there are two developing low pressure areas "chasing" Genevieve to the east. NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center has suddenly become very busy tracking these three areas. NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland provided an infrared image of the Central and Eastern Pacific on July 28 that showed Genevieve southeast of Hawaii, and two other low pressure areas behind ...