Applying just the right amount of tension to a chain of carbon atoms can turn it from a metallic conductor to an insulator, according to Rice University scientists. Stretching the material known as carbyne -- a hard-to-make, one-dimensional chain of carbon atoms -- by just 3 percent can begin to change its properties in ways that engineers might find useful for mechanically activated nanoscale electronics and optics. The finding by Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues appears in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters. Until recently, ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- Why does the word "dog" have meaning? If you say "dog" to a friend, why does your friend understand you? Kansas State University philosopher Elliott Wagner aims to address these types of questions in his latest research, which focuses on long-standing philosophical questions about semantic meaning. Wagner, assistant professor of philosophy, and two other philosophers and a mathematician are collaborating to use game theory to analyze communication and how it acquires meaning. "If I order a cappuccino at a coffee shop, I usually don't think about ...

A Coventry University scientist has developed a pioneering new way – using samples of beating heart tissue – to test the effect of drugs on the heart without using human or animal trials. The breakthrough is the work of Dr Helen Maddock – an expert in cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology from the University's Centre for Applied Biological and Exercise Sciences – and could lead to the lives of hundreds of future patients being saved and the quality of their treatments improved. Adverse effects of drugs on the cardiovascular system are a major cause of many medical ...

It is widely accepted that age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of visual impairment and blindness in industrialized countries. However, it is questionable whether it can continue to be defined as a disease in people in their 50s and beyond. Investigations to determine the incidence of age-related macular degeneration undertaken as part of the Gutenberg Health Study of the University Medical Center of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have shown that even persons under the age of 50 years may be affected by an early form of the eye disease. ...

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the most widely cultivated cereal crop in the world and provides 20 percent of the food calories consumed by humans. A polyploid species, hexaploid bread wheat contains six duplicated copies of its genome and is more than five times larger than the human genome. This makes genome research in wheat particularly difficult. Dr. Klaus Mayer, Head of the Research Unit Plant Genome and Systems Biology at HMGU, in collaboration with his colleagues Matthias Pfeifer, Dr. Karl Kugler and Manuel Spannagl, succeeded in gaining insights into complex ...

Researchers at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the University of Barcelona have discovered the interaction between HERC2 proteins with another protein called p53 that is inactivated in more than half of human tumors. The study results were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Regulation of the activity of p53 by HERC2 The team of José Luis Rosa, at the growth factors and cell differentiation research group at IDIBELL studies the molecular mechanisms of HERC family proteins. These proteins are ubiquitin ligases that regulate the ...

The seriousness of disease often results from the strength of immune response, rather than with the virus, itself. Turning down that response, rather than attacking the virus, might be a better way to reduce that severity, says Juliet Morrison of the University of Washington, Seattle. She and her collaborators have now taken the first step in doing just that for the H7N9 influenza, and their work has already led to identification of six potential therapeutics for this highly virulent strain. The research is published ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. "We set ...

A special class of tiny gold particles can easily slip through cell membranes, making them good candidates to deliver drugs directly to target cells. A new study from MIT materials scientists reveals that these nanoparticles enter cells by taking advantage of a route normally used in vesicle-vesicle fusion, a crucial process that allows signal transmission between neurons. In the July 21 issue of Nature Communications, the researchers describe in detail the mechanism by which these nanoparticles are able to fuse with a membrane. The findings suggest possible strategies ...

The concentrations of many historically used, and now widely banned, pesticides and other toxic chemicals—called legacy contaminants—can become magnified in an animal that eats contaminated food; however, a new Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry study has found that Arctic mammals metabolize some currently used pesticides, preventing such 'biomagnification.' Researchers who studied the vegetation-caribou-wolf food chain in the Bathurst region of Canada say that currently use pesticides enter the food chain and become concentrated in vegetation, but the evidence shows ...

Storm-triggered landslides cause loss of life, property damage, and landscape alterations. For instance, the remnants of Hurricane Camille in 1969 caused 109 deaths in central Virginia, after 600 mm of rain fell in mountainous terrain in 6 hours. More recently, on 8 August 2010, a rainstorm-induced landslide devastated the Chinese county of Zhouqu, causing more than 1000 deaths. A new modeling study by Ren (Geophysical Research Letters) examines the multiple factors, both natural and human caused, that came together to produce this event. The triad of storm-triggered landslides ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Could stuffing yourself full of high-fat foods cause you to lose your sense of smell? A new study from Florida State University neuroscientists says so, and it has researchers taking a closer look at how our diets could impact a whole range of human functions that were not traditionally considered when examining the impact of obesity. "This opens up a lot of possibilities for obesity research," said Florida State University post-doctoral researcher Nicolas Thiebaud, who led the study examining how high-fat foods impacted smell. Thiebaud led the ...

By tracking hybrids between songbird species, investigators have found that migration routes are under genetic control and could be preventing interbreeding. The research, which is published in Ecology Letters, was conducted using geolocators that, like GPS, record the position of a bird and allow its long distance movement to be tracked. Compared with their parents, hybrids exhibited increased variability in their migratory routes: some used intermediate routes across less suitable areas, while others used the same routes as one parental group on fall migration and the ...

Adipose-derived stem cells-transdifferentiated motoneurons after transplantation can integrate in the host cord. However, cell survival has been restricted by a lack of ideal environment for nerve cell growth. Taki Tiraihi, Shefa Neuroscience Research Center at Khatam Al-Anbia Hospital, Iran developed rat models of spinal cord injury (SCI) and injected adipose-derived stem cells-transdifferentiated motoneurons into the epicenter, rostral and caudal regions of the impact site and simultaneously transplanted glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF)-gelfoam complex ...

There is evidence that astrocytes are closely related to the development and formation of retinal vessels. Dysfunction of astrocytes is an important cause of many retinal vascular disorders and blood-retinal barrier. Huanling Yao, Institute of Neurobiology, College of Life Science, Henan University, China, investigated development of the retinal vascular system and formation of the blood-retinal barrier in mice using immunofluorescence staining, gelatin-ink perfusion, and transmission electron microscopy. The development of the vasculature in the retina followed the rules ...

Dr. Ning Yuan, Beijing Jishuitan Hospital, China and his colleagues, developed a novel neural stem cell scaffold that has two layers: the inner loose layer and the outer compact layer. The loose layer was infiltrated with a large amount of neural stem cells before it was transplanted in vivo. Thus a plenty of neural stem cells can be provided at the target spinal cord site. The loose layer was adhered to the injured side and the compact layer was placed against the lateral side. The compact layer has very small holes, so it can prevent ingrowth of adjacent scar tissue. ...

Previous studies have demonstrated that deacetyl chitin conduit nerve bridging or electrical stimulation shows therapeutic effect on peripheral nerve injury (PNI). Dr. Peixun Zhang, Peking University People's Hospital, China and his team bridged the injured right rat sciatic nerve using a deacetyl chitin conduit combined with electrical stimulation (0.1 ms, 3 V, 20 Hz, for 1 hour). At 6 and 12 weeks after treatment, nerve conduction velocity, myelinated axon number, fiber diameter, axon diameter and the thickness of the myelin sheath in the stimulation group were better ...

The discovery that many small galaxies throughout the universe do not 'swarm' around larger ones like bees do but 'dance' in orderly disc-shaped orbits is a challenge to our understanding of how the universe formed and evolved. The finding, by an international team of astronomers, including Professor Geraint Lewis from the University of Sydney's School of Physics, has just been announced in Nature. "Early in 2013 we announced our startling discovery that half of the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy are orbiting it in an immense plane" said Professor ...

Unclogging the body's protein disposal system may improve memory in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to a study from scientists at Kyungpook National University in Korea published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. In AD, various biochemical functions of brain cells go awry, leading to progressive neuronal damage and eventual memory loss. One example is the cellular disposal system, called autophagy, which is disrupted in patients with AD, causing the accumulation of toxic protein plaques characteristic of the disease. Jae-sung Bae and colleagues ...

Too much dietary fat is bad for the heart, but the right kind of fat keeps the heart healthy, according to a paper published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Unsaturated dietary fatty acids, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), are known to protect against cardiovascular diseases. However, the mechanism and the specific fat metabolites responsible for this protection were unknown. A group of Japanese scientists now show that mice engineered to produce their own EPA are protected against heart disease and have improved cardiac function. One particular EPA metabolite, ...

Cold-blooded animals cannot regulate their body temperature, so their cells are stressed when facing temperature extremes. Worse still, even at slightly colder temperatures, some biological processes in the cell are slowed down more than others, which should throw the cells' delicate chemical balance out of whack. Yet, those cells manage to keep their biological processes coordinated. Now researchers from the University of Rochester and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory have found out how they do that. "The production of proteins is a key process in all cells, ...

Boston, MA – Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed a scalable, next-generation platelet bioreactor to generate fully functional human platelets in vitro. The work is a major biomedical advancement that will help address blood transfusion needs worldwide. The study is published July 21, 2014 in Blood. "The ability to generate an alternative source of functional human platelets with virtually no disease transmission represents a paradigm shift in how we collect platelets that may allow us meet the growing need for blood transfusions," said Jonathan ...

Models for the evolution of life are now being developed to try and clarify the long term dynamics of an evolving system of species. Specifically, a recent model proposed by Petri Kärenlampi from the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu accounts for species interactions with various degrees of symmetry, connectivity, and species abundance. This is an improvement on previous, simpler models, which apply random fitness levels to species. The findings published in EPJ E demonstrate that the resulting replicator ecosystems do not appear to be a self-organised critical model, ...

Boston – Cystoid macular edema (CME) is a common complication of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a family of retinal diseases in which patients typically lose night and side vision first and then develop impaired central vision. CME can also decrease central vision. Current treatments for CME in RP are not always effective and can lead to adverse results. Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, and Boston University School of Medicine tested whether the extent of retinal swelling due to CME was inversely related to dietary iodine intake in patients ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Lack of sleep, already considered a public health epidemic, can also lead to errors in memory, finds a new study by researchers at Michigan State University and the University of California, Irvine. The study, published in the journal Psychological Science, found participants deprived of a night's sleep were more likely to flub the details of a simulated burglary they were shown in a series of images. Distorted memory can have serious consequences in areas such as criminal justice, where eyewitness misidentifications are thought to be the leading ...

Because the severe autism-like condition Christianson Syndrome was only first reported in 1999 and some symptoms take more than a decade to appear, families and doctors urgently need fundamental information about it. A new study that doubles the number of cases now documented in the scientific literature provides the most definitive characterization of CS to date. The authors therefore propose the first diagnostic criteria for the condition. "We're hoping that clinicians will use these criteria and that there will be more awareness among clinicians and the community about ...