A new approach to measuring biodiversity has uncovered some biologically important but currently unprotected areas in Western Australia, while confirming the significance of the world heritage listed Wet Tropics rainforests in the country's north-east. In a paper published yesterday (Friday 18 July) in Nature Communications, scientists from CSIRO, University of California, University of Canberra, the Australian Tropical Herbarium at James Cook University and University of New South Wales applied the new method to Australia's iconic Acacia. The genus Acacia includes ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Twisting a screwdriver, removing a bottle cap, and peeling a banana are just a few simple tasks that are tricky to pull off single-handedly. Now a new wrist-mounted robot can provide a helping hand — or rather, fingers. Researchers at MIT have developed a robot that enhances the grasping motion of the human hand. The device, worn around one's wrist, works essentially like two extra fingers adjacent to the pinky and thumb. A novel control algorithm enables it to move in sync with the wearer's fingers to grasp objects of various shapes and sizes. Wearing ...

Further analysis of a Phase II study of therapeutic HIV vaccine candidate Vacc-4x revealed a potential biomarker associated with participants who experienced a more profound viral load reduction after receiving the vaccine. The results of this exploratory, ad hoc, subset analysis by St George's, University of London and Bionor Pharma were announced today at the AIDS 2014 Conference in Melbourne, Australia. If confirmed, the biomarker may be able to predict which patients will benefit most from the therapeutic HIV vaccine candidate Vacc-4x, which is being developed by ...

VIDEO: This is a video demonstrating scanning-stage-based exposure, whereby programmed motion of a microscope stage is used to write the University's "Block I " logo into the plasmonic film. Each bar in the... Click here for more information. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated that an array of novel gold, pillar-bowtie nanoantennas (pBNAs) can be used like traditional photographic film to record light for distances that ...

A fishing expedition of microscopic proportions led by University of Arizona ecologists revealed that the lines between virus types in nature are less blurred than previously thought. Using lab-cultured bacteria as "bait," a team of scientists led by Matthew Sullivan has sequenced complete and partial genomes of about 10 million viruses from an ocean water sample in a single experiment. The study, published online on July 14 by the journal Nature, revealed that the genomes of viruses in natural ecosystems fall into more distinct categories than previously thought. This ...

VIDEO: This video shows images from NASA's LRO spacecraft of various lunar pits. Click here for more information. While the moon's surface is battered by millions of craters, it also has over 200 holes – steep-walled pits that in some cases might lead to caves that future astronauts could explore and use for shelter, according to new observations from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The pits range in size from about 5 meters (~5 yards) across to more than ...

Older adults are at a greater danger of falling when walking for utilitarian purposes such as shopping and appointments than when walking for recreation, according to a study from UMass Medical School. "Older adults have two times the risk of falling while walking out of necessity than walking for recreation, and four times greater risk of injury from a fall on a sidewalk than in a recreational area," said Wenjun Li, PhD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Health at UMMS and lead author of the study "Utilitarian Walking, Neighborhood ...

Boulder, Colo. - The hazard posed by large earthquakes is difficult to estimate because they often occur hundreds to thousands of years apart. Because written records for the Puget Lowland of northwestern Washington cover less than 170 years, the size and frequency of the largest and oldest earthquakes on the Seattle and Tacoma faults are unknown. Past earthquakes can only be estimated through geologic studies of sediments and landforms that are created when faults break the ground surface. Along the Cascadia margin, the cities of Seattle and Tacoma occupy the Puget ...

Not unlike looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, a team of Michigan State University researchers have found a gene that could be key to the development of stem cells – cells that can potentially save millions of lives by morphing into practically any cell in the body. The gene, known as ASF1A, was not discovered by the team. However, it is at least one of the genes responsible for the mechanism of cellular reprogramming, a phenomenon that can turn one cell type into another, which is key to the making of stem cells. In a paper published in the journal Science, ...

Those who experience persistent sleep problems after a divorce stand to suffer from more than just dark circles. They might also be at risk for potentially harmful increases in blood pressure, a new study finds. A growing body of research links divorce to significant negative health effects and even early death, yet few studies have looked at why that connection may exist. Divorce-related sleep troubles may be partly to blame, suggest the authors of a new study to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Health Psychology. "In the initial few months after ...

Go ahead and call Rachel Dutton's research cheesy if you must. As far as she's concerned, it's anything but an insult. A Bauer Fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Center for Systems Biology, Dutton and her lab study cheese – or more precisely – the bacteria and fungi that live on cheese, in an effort to better understand how microbial communities form. After studying 137 varieties of cheese collected in 10 different countries, Dutton has been able to identify three general types of microbial communities that live on cheese, opening the door to using each as ...

Nearly all electronics require devices called oscillators that create precise frequencies—frequencies used to keep time in wristwatches or to transmit reliable signals to radios. For nearly 100 years, these oscillators have relied upon quartz crystals to provide a frequency reference, much like a tuning fork is used as a reference to tune a piano. However, future high-end navigation systems, radar systems, and even possibly tomorrow's consumer electronics will require references beyond the performance of quartz. Now, researchers in the laboratory of Kerry Vahala, the ...

Helicobacter pylori infection promotes stomach ulcers and cancer. How H. pylori initially interacts with and irritates gastric tissue is not well understood. An article published on July 17th in PLOS Pathogens now describes that H. pylori rapidly identifies and colonizes sites of minor injuries in the stomach, almost immediately interferes with healing at those injury sites, and so promotes sustained gastric damage. Smoking, alcohol, excessive salt intake, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs cause damage to the tissue lining the stomach, and are associated with ...

This news release is available in French, Japanese, and German. The genetic blueprint is an invaluable resource to plant science researchers and breeders. For the first time, they have at their disposal a set of tools enabling them to rapidly locate specific genes on individual wheat chromosomes throughout the genome. Jorge Dubcovsky, Professor at the University of California Davis, USA, says that these results "have been a fantastic resource for our laboratory. The development of genome specific primers, which used to take several weeks of work, can now be done ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (July 18, 2014) Feeding a growing human population without increasing stresses on Earth's strained land and water resources may seem like an impossible challenge. But according to a new report by researchers at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, focusing efforts to improve food systems on a few specific regions, crops and actions could make it possible to both meet the basic needs of 3 billion more people and decrease agriculture's environmental footprint. The report, published today in Science, focuses on 17 key crops ...

A cross-disciplinary team is calling for public discussion about a potential new way to solve longstanding global ecological problems by using an emerging technology called "gene drives." The advance could potentially lead to powerful new ways of combating malaria and other insect-borne diseases, controlling invasive species and promoting sustainable agriculture. Representing the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston University, ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Closely related organisms share most of their genes, but these similarities belie major differences in behavior, intelligence, and physical appearance. For example, we share nearly 99% of our genes with chimps, our closest relatives on the great "tree of life." Still, the differences between the two species are unmistakable. If not just genes, what else accounts for the disparities? Scientists are beginning to appreciate that the timing of the events that happen during development plays a decisive role in defining an organism, which may help to ...

Viral relics show cancer’s ‘footprint’ on our evolution Cancer has left its ‘footprint’ on our evolution, according to a study which examined how the relics of ancient viruses are preserved in the genomes of 38 mammal species. Viral relics are evidence of the ancient battles our genes have fought against infection. Occasionally the retroviruses that infect an animal get incorporated into that animal’s genome and sometimes these relics get passed down from generation to generation – termed ‘endogenous retroviruses’ (ERVs). Because ERVs may be copied to other parts of the ...

Using ultra-short X-ray flashes, an international team of researchers watched electrons jumping between the fragments of exploding molecules. The study reveals up to what distance a charge transfer between the two molecular fragments can occur, marking the limit of the molecular regime. The technique used can show the dynamics of charge transfer in a wide range of molecular systems, as the scientists around Dr. Benjamin Erk and Dr. Daniel Rolles of DESY and Professor Artem Rudenko of Kansas State University report in the scientific journal Science. Such mechanisms play ...

PITTSBURGH, July 17, 2014 – Cystic fibrosis (CF) could be considered two diseases, one that affects multiple organs including the lungs, and one that doesn't affect the lungs at all, according to a multicenter team led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The research, published online today in PLOS Genetics, showed that nine variants in the gene associated with cystic fibrosis can lead to pancreatitis, sinusitis and male infertility, but leave the lungs unharmed. People with CF inherit from each parent a severely mutated copy of a gene ...

LA JOLLA, CA AND JUPITER, FL—Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and their collaborators have found that ancient enzymes, known for their fundamental role in translating genetic information into proteins, evolved myriad other functions in humans. The surprising discovery highlights an intriguing oddity of protein evolution as well as a potentially valuable new class of therapeutic proteins and therapeutic targets. "These new protein variants represent a previously unrecognized layer of biology—the ...

Perovskite solar cells show tremendous promise in propelling solar power into the marketplace. The cells use a hole-transportation layer, which promotes the efficient movement of electrical current after exposure to sunlight. However, manufacturing the hole-transportation organic materials is very costly and lack long term stability. Publishing in Science, a team of scientists in China, led by Professor Hongwei Han in cooperation with Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL, have developed a perovskite solar cell that does not use a hole-transporting layer, with 12.8% conversion ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas — Several Kansas State University researchers were essential in helping scientists assemble a draft of a genetic blueprint of bread wheat, also known as common wheat. The food plant is grown on more than 531 million acres around the world and produces nearly 700 million tons of food each year. The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, which also includes faculty at Kansas State University, recently published a chromosome-based draft sequence of wheat's genetic code, which is called a genome. "A chromosome-based draft sequence of the hexaploid ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas — Ultrafast X-ray laser research led by Kansas State University has provided scientists with a snapshot of a fundamental molecular phenomenon. The finding sheds new light on microscopic electron motion in molecules. Artem Rudenko, assistant professor of physics and a member of the university's James R. Macdonald Laboratory; Daniel Rolles, currently a junior research group leader at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany, who will be joining the university's physics department in January 2015; and an international group of collaborators ...

In a recent study, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder found no evidence that a California ban on using hand-held cellphones while driving decreased the number of traffic accidents in the state in the first six months following the ban. The findings, published in the journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, are surprising given prior research that suggests driving while using a cellphone is risky. For example, past laboratory studies have shown that people who talk on a cellphone while using driving simulators are as impaired as people ...