Easily manufactured, low cost, lightweight, flexible dielectric polymers that can operate at high temperatures may be the solution to energy storage and power conversion in electric vehicles and other high temperature applications, according to a team of Penn State engineers. "Ceramics are usually the choice for energy storage dielectrics for high temperature applications, but they are heavy, weight is a consideration and they are often also brittle," said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. "Polymers have a low working temperature and ...

Researchers at USC have developed a yeast model to study a gene mutation that disrupts the duplication of DNA, causing massive damage to a cell's chromosomes, while somehow allowing the cell to continue dividing. The result is a mess: Zombie cells that by all rights shouldn't be able to survive, let alone divide, with their chromosomes shattered and strung out between tiny micronuclei. Sometimes they're connected to each other by ultrafine DNA bridges. (Imagine tearing apart a hot pizza - these DNA bridges are like strings of cheese still draping between the separated ...

WASHINGTON - The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) announces the publication of a Health Education & Behavior theme section devoted to the latest research on domestic violence prevention and the effectiveness of community coalitions in 19 states to prevent and reduce intimate partner violence. The theme section "DELTA PREP" (Domestic Violence Prevention Enhancement and Leadership Through Alliances and Preparing and Raising Expectations for Prevention) presents findings from a multi-site project supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ...

Abusive men put female partners at greater sexual risk, study finds Abusive and controlling men are more likely to put their female partners at sexual risk, and the level of that risk escalates along with the abusive behavior, a UW study found. Published in the Journal of Sex Research in July, the study looked at patterns of risky sexual behavior among heterosexual men aged 18 to 25, including some who self-reported using abusive and/or controlling behaviors in their relationships and others who didn't. The research found that men who were physically and sexually ...

A critical immune organ called the thymus shrinks rapidly with age, putting older individuals at greater risk for life-threatening infections. A study published August 6 in Cell Reports reveals that thymus atrophy may stem from a decline in its ability to protect against DNA damage from free radicals. The damage accelerates metabolic dysfunction in the organ, progressively reducing its production of pathogen-fighting T cells. The findings suggest that common dietary antioxidants may slow thymus atrophy and could represent a promising treatment strategy for protecting ...

CINCINNATI - Researchers have developed a new technology that precisely marks where groups of regulatory proteins called transcription factors bind DNA in the nuclei of live cells. Reporting their data Aug. 6 in the journal Molecular Cell, scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center say the new technology - called SpDamID - could allow scientists to answer basic questions about tissue development and disease that existing technology cannot address. "With further development this technology has the potential to give investigators glimpses into biological ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Men's and women's ideas of the perfect mate differ significantly due to evolutionary pressures, according to a cross-cultural study on multiple mate preferences by psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin. The study of 4,764 men and 5,389 women in 33 countries and 37 cultures showed that sex differences in mate preferences are much larger than previously appreciated and stable across cultures. "Many want to believe that women and men are identical in their underlying psychology, but the genders differ strikingly in their evolved mate preferences ...

Understanding how and why we evolved such large brains is one of the most puzzling issues in the study of human evolution. It is widely accepted that brain size increase is partly linked to changes in diet over the last 3 million years, and increases in meat consumption and the development of cooking have received particular attention from the scientific community. In a new study published in The Quarterly Review of Biology, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682587, Dr. Karen Hardy and her team bring together archaeological, anthropological, genetic, physiological and ...

Researchers at the Babraham Institute and University of Massachusetts Medical School in the United States have developed a new model to study motor neuron degeneration and have used this to identify three genes involved in the neurodegeneration process. These findings could have relevance for understanding the progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other forms of motor neuron disease (MND). ALS is the most common form of adult-onset motor neuron disease and kills over 1,200 people a year in the UK. The researchers developed a new model to study neurodegeneration ...

Greenhouse gasses (GHG) emission savings due to final renewable energy consumption in electricity, cooling/heating and transport sectors rose at a compound annual growth rate of 8.8% from 2009 to 2012, confirming the renewables' great potential in climate change mitigation, according to a new JRC report. Nearly two thirds of the total savings came thanks to renewable energy development in Germany, Sweden, France, Italy and Spain. The report assesses data on the use of renewable energy, submitted by EU Member States every two years, as required by EU legislation on renewable ...

TORONTO -- Despite the growing use of online support groups such as those on Facebook to help curb substance abuse, attending traditional face-to-face meetings may continue to be more effective for people trying to maintain sobriety, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association's 123rd Annual Convention. "One of the most hotly debated media issues today is whether our rapidly increasing use of social networking might be supplanting face-to-face-interactions and, if so, what the social consequences might prove for us as a culture," said Donald ...

JAMA Oncology will publish two studies, a commentary and an author audio interview examining outcomes in women with breast cancer who had breast-conserving surgery and were treated with hypofractionated radiation therapy (shorter courses of radiation treatment administered in larger daily fraction sizes) compared with longer courses of conventionally fractionated radiation therapy. In the first article, Benjamin D. Smith, M.D., of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston1, and coauthors conducted a randomized clinical trial of 287 women to assess the ...

In an analysis that included a representative sample of the South Korean population, a lower blood manganese level and higher blood mercury level were associated with greater odds of a glaucoma diagnosis, according to a study published online by JAMA Ophthalmology. Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide and a growing public health concern because of an aging global population. Abnormal body levels of essential elements and exposure to toxic trace metals have been postulated to contribute to the pathogenesis of diseases affecting many organ ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6, 2015 -- Optical illusions are deceptive and mind-boggling. What's going on inside our heads when we see things that appear to be moving but aren't, and when we view other, similar visual tricks? In this collaboration between the American Chemical Society and Inside Science TV, we explain how optical illusions work, so you can understand the science behind the trickery. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYIr40D7wNw. Inside Science TV is a production of the American Institute of Physics. See more videos in the series on the ISTV YouTube ...

Enhancement of the Petawatt laser "LFEX" [1] up to 2,000 trillion watts for one trillionth of one second. High power output implemented by a 4-beam amplifier technology and the world's highest performance dielectric multilayer diffraction grating of large diameter [2]. Big step forward for creating such new fundamental technologies as cancer therapy for medical applications and non-destructive inspection of bridges and buildings, to contribute to our future life of longevity, safety, and security, and for the realization of fast ignition as an energy resource. The ...

The results of their research have recently been published in the high-profile journal eLife*. The ability of most cardiac muscle cells to reproduce disappears in humans and all other mammals shortly after birth. What remains unclear, however, is how this happens and whether it is possible to restore this ability and therefore to regenerate the heart. FAU researchers Dr. David Zebrowski and Prof. Dr. Felix B. Engel from the Department of Nephropathology at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen's Institute of Pathology and their colleagues have now found a possible explanation ...

Carrying itself around with a dark brown mask on its face and a broad shapeless white mark on its chest and belly, a frog had been jumping across the Peruvian cloud forests of the Andes unrecognised by the scientific world. Now, this visibly distinguishable species has been picked up by Dr. Catenazzi of Southern Illinois University and his team from its likely only locality, a cloud forest near Cusco in Peru, at 2350 m elevation by Drs. Catenazzi, Uscapi and May. Their research is published in the open-access journal ZooKeys. The new fleshbelly frog species, called N. ...

Researchers from the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, have been looking into how tsunami-type waves can originate from massive storm systems, independent of earthquakes or landslides. According to Volker Roeber and Jeremy D. Bricker, massive storm systems can be the cause of devastating tsunami-type waves. It happened during Typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines in November 2013. Typhoon Haiyan was one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded, causing more than 6,000 casualties. A development ...

People who recognise they are overweight or obese are more likely to put on weight than those who are unaware that they may be heavier than doctors would advise, according to research by the University of Liverpool. In a study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, researchers looked at the lives of 14,000 adults in the US and the UK through data captured in three studies: the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the UK National Child Development Study and Midlife in the United States. They analysed data from time periods after ...

Lack of microinvaginations in the cell membrane, caveolae, can cause serious diseases such as lipodystrophy and muscular dystrophy. Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have now discovered a "main switch" that regulates the formation of these invaginations. Many cells in the body are equipped with small microinvaginations in the cell membrane called caveolae. They are important for the cell's ability to take up molecules and particles from the cell surface into the cell. If this doesn't work, the function of the cell is disturbed, resulting in diseases. Having too ...

New camera technology that reveals the world through the eyes of animals has been developed by University of Exeter researchers. The details are published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. The software, which converts digital photos to animal vision, can be used to analyse colours and patterns and is particularly useful for the study of animal and plant signalling, camouflage and animal predation, but could also prove useful for anyone wanting to measure colours accurately and objectively. The software has already been used by the Sensory Ecology ...

Dasabuvir (trade name Exviera) and the fixed-dose drug combination ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir (trade name Viekirax) have been available since January 2015 for the treatment of adults with chronic hepatitis C infection. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) had examined their added benefit in a dossier assessment completed in April 2015. In an addendum, the Institute now assessed study data subsequently submitted by the drug manufacturer in the commenting procedure. According to the findings, the results of an indirect comparison ...

Why some planets, like Saturn or Jupiter, have their rings, while others like, the Earth or Mars do not? It turned out that "the size does not matter" -- not only giants as Saturn possess the rings, but even tiny asteroids do: According to the recent discovery of the Spitzer Space Telescope, the remote asteroid Chariklo, which is only 260 km in diameter, also has rings. A natural answer may be the following: Occasionally, in a far past, some planets had much more material in their vicinity then the other ones. The material was in a form of dust. Dust particles merged ...

UC Davis study should help guide patients and their oncologists (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Combing data collected on thousands of California ovarian cancer patients, UC Davis researchers have determined that almost one-third survived at least 10 years after diagnosis. The unprecedented findings upend the notion that women diagnosed with cancer of the ovary always face a poor chance of survival. In fact, while the study confirmed earlier findings on characteristics associated with ovarian cancer survival -- younger age, earlier stage and lower grade tumors at diagnosis ...

The dull black plastic of the device on Joshua Pearce's desk belies its usefulness. Pearce picks up the box, which has a switch on the side and a small opening on top. A handful of vials sit in a bag nearby, and each would fit snugly in the opening. The set-up seems generic, even bland, except that it could radically change how we deal with water quality issues. Pearce, who has a joint appointment as an associate professor of materials science and engineering as well as electrical and computer engineering, runs an open sustainability technology lab at Michigan Technological ...