This news release is available in German. X-ray phase-contrast imaging is a method that uses the refraction of X-rays through a specimen instead of attenuation resulting from absorption. The images produced with this method are often of much higher quality than those based on absorption. The scientists in the team of Prof. Franz Pfeiffer are particularly interested in developing new approaches for biomedical X-ray imaging and therapy – including X-ray phase-contrast imaging. One main goal is to make this method available for clinical applications such as diagnosis of ...

Southern Japan received a soaking from Tropical Storm Neoguri on July 9 and 10 and data from the TRMM satellite was used to create a map that shows how much rain fell in Kyushu. Kyushu is the southwestern most and third largest island of Japan. The island is mountainous and is home to Mount Aso. Heavy rainfall from Neoguri fell on land that was already soaked in the past week from a slow moving frontal system. Typhoon Neoguri made landfall on Kyushu early Thursday, July 10, local time after affecting the Okinawa island chain. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission ...

SEATTLE, WASH. — July 11, 2014 — Researchers have pioneered a revolutionary new way to digitally navigate three-dimensional images. The new technology, called Virtual Finger, allows scientists to move through digital images of small structures like neurons and synapses using the flat surface of their computer screens. Virtual Finger's unique technology makes 3D imaging studies orders of magnitude more efficient, saving time, money and resources at an unprecedented level across many areas of experimental biology. The software and its applications are profiled in this week's ...

July 11, 2014 – The increased risk of kidney injury related to the use of hydroxyethyl starch (HES) in resuscitation fluids reflects the mass of HES molecules, according to a report in Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS). The "total mass of HES molecules" explains the harmful effect of HES on cultured human renal proximal tubule cells (PTCs), concludes the laboratory study by Dr Christian Wunder and colleagues of University Hospital Würzburg, Austria. Other factors—such as differences in the origin or molecular ...

Using electronic health records to understand the best available treatment for patients, from a range of possible options, is more efficient and less costly for taxpayers than the existing clinical trial process, a new study shows. Research led by Professor van Staa, carried out while he was a member of the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) and who is now based at The University of Manchester's Health eResearch Centre, published in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) today (Friday 11 July) looked at the use of statins in 300 people with high risk of cardiovascular ...

Lighting is crucial to the art of photography. But lights are cumbersome and time-consuming to set up, and outside the studio, it can be prohibitively difficult to position them where, ideally, they ought to go. Researchers at MIT and Cornell University hope to change that by providing photographers with squadrons of small, light-equipped autonomous robots that automatically assume the positions necessary to produce lighting effects specified through a simple, intuitive, camera-mounted interface. At the International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, ...

WASHINGTON —Young adults who screened positive for a history of hazardous or binge drinking reduced their binge drinking by more than 50 percent after receiving mobile phone text messages following a visit to the emergency department, according to a study published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("A Text Message Alcohol Intervention for Young Adult Emergency Department Patients: A Randomized Clinical Trial"). "Each day in the U.S., more than 50,000 adults ages 18 to 24 visit ERs and up to half have hazardous alcohol use patterns," said Brian Suffoletto, ...

Guam and surrounding areas were under a Tropical Storm Warning and Watch on July 11 as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead. During the early morning hours on July 11, Tropical Depression 09W strengthened into a tropical storm. On July 11 at 03:45 UTC (1:45 p.m. EDT Guam local time/), the Moderate Resolution Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm 09W (09W) over Guam. The MODIS image showed a concentration of strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation, and in a large band circling ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Last year, MIT researchers discovered that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic surfaces during condensation, they can gain electric charge in the process. Now, the same team has demonstrated that this process can generate small amounts of electricity that might be used to power electronic devices. The new findings, by postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, associate professor of mechanical engineering Evelyn Wang, and two others, are published in the journal Applied Physics Letters. This approach could lead to devices to charge cellphones ...

Virtual reality interface devices permit the user to interact with the virtual world in real time through a variety of multisensory channels including hearing, sight, touch and smell. The virtual reality interface devices enable the reorganization of neural networks in the brain of patients with chronic stroke and cerebral palsy, thereby improving hand function and other skills, contributing to their quality of life. Virtual reality interface devices can also activate visual, vestibular and proprioceptive systems, which help control body posture and improve balance function. ...

There is evidence that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants can promote neuronal cell proliferation and enhance neuroplasticity both in vitro and in vivo. Dr. Javad Verdi and his team, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Iran proposed that citalopram, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, can increase the efficacy of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) differentiating into neuronal-like cells. Experimental results confirmed that citalopram can improve the neuronal-like cell differentiation of BMSCs by increasing cell proliferation and survival ...

Recent evidence has demonstrated that transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells can stimulate neurogenesis in the brain of adult rat or mouse models of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and improve tissue and function injury under the condition of cerebral ischemia. Few studies are reported on the therapeutic effect of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) transplantation in mice with AD and on the effect on oxidative injury and neurogenesis in the brain of AD mice. Dr. Yufang Yan and her team, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, China transplanted ADSCs into the hippocampus ...

In addition to the hippocampus, the marginal division of the striatum is also involved in learning and memory. What is the impact degree of substance P in the striatal marginal division on learning and memory function? Yan Yu and his team, College of Biophotonics, South China Normal University, China found, using immunofluorescence staining, that substance P receptor, neurokinin 1 was highly expressed in the hippocampus and striatal marginal division of normal rats. Unilateral or bilateral injection of an antisense oligonucleotide against neurokinin 1 receptor mRNA in the ...

There is evidence that under the normal circumstances, astrocytes participate in normal physiological activities and development, maintain neuronal environment, and exhibit therapeutic and repairing effects on brain injury and neurodegenerative disease. Previous studies have found that nerve cells differentiated from adipose-derived stromal cells after chemical induction have reduced viability, which produces influences on subsequent studies and application. Prof. Xiaodong Yuan, Kailuan General Hospital, Hebei United University, China demonstrated that after chemical induction, ...

Evidence exists that cannabinoid receptor type 1 can inhibit voltage-gated calcium channel, decrease intracellular Ca2+ influx, and reduce neurotransmitter release. However, some scholars demonstrated that cannabinoid receptor type 1 can increase extracellular Ca2+ influx and increase neurotransmitter release. Dr. Yi Zhang and his team, Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China used whole cell voltage-clamp and calcium imaging in cultured trigeminal ganglion neurons and found that anandamide directly caused ...

Women would benefit from being prescribed exercise as medicine, according to a QUT study that revealed moderate to high intensity activity is essential to reducing the risk of death in older women. Professor Debra Anderson, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said that in addition to conventional treatments for physical and mental health, health professionals should be prescribing tailored exercise programs for older women. Professor Anderson and QUT's Dr Charlotte Seib co-authored a paper published in the international journal of midlife health ...

New research from UC San Francisco shows that an "expressive therapy" group intervention conducted by The Medea Project helps women living with HIV disclose their health status and improves their social support, self-efficacy and the safety and quality of their relationships. "Medication alone is totally insufficient," said the study's first author, Edward L. Machtinger, MD, director of the Women's HIV Program at UCSF. "Over 90 percent of our patients are on effective antiretroviral therapy but far too many are dying from suicide, addiction, and violence. Depression, addiction, ...

New research conducted at Aarhus University has revealed that people who have grown up on a farm with livestock are only half as likely as their urban counterparts to develop the most common inflammatory bowel diseases: ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. The study findings have recently been published in the European Journal of Epidemiology. "It is extremely exciting that we can now see that not only allergic diseases, but also more classic inflammatory diseases appear to depend on the environment we are exposed to early in our lives," relates Vivi Schlünssen, Associate ...

Shenzhen, July 10, 2014---A team of researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, BGI and other institutes have identified a gene of wild soybean linked to salt tolerance, with implication for improving this important crop to grow in saline soil. This study published online in Nature Communications provides an effective strategy to unveil novel genomic information for crop improvement. Soybean is an important crop for the world. Due to domestication and human selection, cultivated soybeans have less genetic diversities than their wild counterparts. Among the lost ...

July 3, 2014, Shenzhen, China— Researchers from Salk Institute for Biological Studies, BGI, and other institutes for the first time evaluated the safety and reliability of the existing targeted gene correction technologies, and successfully developed a new method, TALEN-HDAdV, which could significantly increased gene-correction efficiency in human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC). This study published online in Cell Stell Cell provides an important theoretical foundation for stem cell-based gene therapy. The combination of stem cells and targeted genome editing technology ...

For many years scientists have been trying to unravel mechanisms that guide function and differentiation of blood stem cells, those cells that generate all blood cells including our immune system. The study of human blood stem cells is difficult because they can only be found in the bone marrow in specialized "niches" that cannot be recapitulated in a culture dish. Now a group of scientists from Dresden led by stem cell researcher Prof. Claudia Waskow (Technische Universität Dresden) was able to generate a mouse model that supports the transplantation of human blood stem ...

Social animals often develop relationships with other group members to reduce aggression and gain access to scarce resources. In wild chacma baboons the strategy for grooming activities shows a certain pattern across the day. The results are just published in the scientific journal Biology Letters. Grooming between individuals in a group of baboons is not practiced without ulterior motives. To be groomed has hygienic benefits and is stress relieving for the individual, while grooming another individual can provide access to infants, mating opportunities and high quality ...

An international team of researchers, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, has just a reported a major step in understanding photosynthesis, the process by which the Earth first gained and now maintains the oxygen in its atmosphere and which is therefore crucial for all higher forms of life on earth. The researchers report the first direct visualization of a crucial event in the photosynthetic reaction, namely the step in which a specific protein complex, photosystem II, splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using energy ...

Researchers from Umeå University, Sweden, have explored two different ways that allow unprecedented experimental insights into the reaction sequence leading to the formation of oxygen molecules in photosynthesis. The two studies have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. "The new knowledge will help improving present day synthetic catalysts for water oxidation, which are key components for building artificial leaf devices for the direct storage of solar energy in fuels like hydrogen, ethanol or methanol," says Johannes Messinger, Professor in ...

A team including researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research has developed a novel methodology that, for the first time, combines 3-D and advanced range estimator technologies to provide highly detailed data on the range and movements of terrestrial, aquatic, and avian wildlife species. One aspect of the study focused on learning more about the range and movements of the California condor using miniaturized GPS biotelemetry units attached to every condor released into the wild. "We have been calculating ...