Laboratory for the Spectroscopy of Planetary Atmospheres of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology has come up with a high-resolution meter to gauge the concentration of gases in the atmosphere with unparalleled precision. The infrared spectrum radiometer is described in an article recently published in the journal Optics Express. The paper, authored by Alexander Rodin, Artem Klimchuk, Alexander Nadezhdinsky, Dmitry Churbanov and Maxim Spiridonov, says that the new spectrum radiometer is 100 times more precise than the best available near-infrared spectrometers, ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease. It can affect various organs, in particular, the skin, joints and kidneys although it displays great variability in extent and seriousness depending on the patient. Approximately nine out of every ten patients are female and it appears in one woman in every thousand. As Dr Guillermo Ruiz-Irastorza, head of the Autoimmune Disease Research Unit of the Hospital Universitario Cruces, explained, traditionally lupus has been treated mostly with glucocorticoids ...

BETHESDA, MD – June 17, 2014 – Sex is everywhere in nature. Whether it's a male bird singing to mark his territory or a tiny yeast cell secreting chemicals to attract the opposite mating type, sex has profoundly shaped the appearance, behavior and evolution of many organisms. The genetic and evolutionary forces underlying sex differences and sex determination are crucial for understanding much of the natural world, including human biology. In recognition of the importance of these topics, the Genetics Society of America journals GENETICS and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics ...

BETHESDA, MD – June 17, 2014 – Immunity is what stops you dying from a common cold or a tiny pinprick. Differences in resistance or tolerance to disease influence who catches the bug that's going around the office, or which species succumb to the deadly fungus devastating frogs around the world. But immunity involves more than just the immune cells that recognize and hunt down pathogens. It is influenced by the host's health, physiology, behavior, and environment. And underlying all these processes and their intricate interactions are the genes that govern their function. This ...

A UT Arlington research team says their study of genetic information from more than 4,000 beetle species has yielded a new theory about why some species lose their Y chromosome and others, such as humans, hang on to it. They call it the "fragile Y hypothesis." The biologists' idea is that the fate of the Y chromosome is heavily influenced by how meiosis, or the production of sperm, works in an organism. They believe the size of an area where X and Y genetic information mingle or recombine can serve as a strong clue that a species is at risk of losing the Y chromosome ...

Non-vocational adult education drawing on a person's own motivation comes with a variety of benefits that are also reflected on the person's close friends, family and work. Studying boosts self-confidence and well-being, and expands social networks. Furthermore, motivation to pursue other studies also increases. Thanks to participation in adult education, tolerance towards and confidence in other people grows, and adult learners pay increasing attention to their health. Parents are better able to support the studying of their school-aged children. All of the above are ...

Scientists at the University of Bonn and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) have developed a novel camera system which can see around the corner without using a mirror. Using diffusely reflected light, it reconstructs the shape of objects outside of the field of view. The researchers will be reporting their results at the international Conference for Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) from June 24-27 in Columbus (Ohio, USA). A laser shines on the wall; a camera watches the scene. Nothing more than white ingrain wallpaper with a bright spot ...

Mitochondria are cell organelles located within animal and human cells. They produce energy for the organism, possess their own genetic material - mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) - and are transmitted exclusively by the mother. Depending on their activity and tasks, different numbers of mitochondria are present in a cell - usually a few hundred to a thousand per body cell. Inherited mitochondrial disorders or so-called mitochondropathies occur in about one of 10,000 humans throughout the world. Diseases such as diabetes, stroke, cardiac defects, epilepsy, or muscle weakness ...

This news release is available in German. Substantial improvements in freshwater quality by 2015 have been a declared objective of the EU member states, manifesting itself by the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (WFD). A recent study conducted by the Institute for Environmental Sciences Landau together with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and fellow scientists from France (University of Lorraine and EDF) and Switzerland (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology - EAWAG) shows that this target is unlikely to be ...

Children's marks at school influence the likelihood of them abandoning their studies, but the effect varies according to their social background: among students with poor marks, those from a higher social class have more opportunities to raise their marks than children of low-skilled workers. This is according to a study carried out by researchers from the National University of Distance Learning (UNED) and the European University Institute. "The study deals with dissociating the effect of the marks (considered the 'primary source' of educational results) from other processes ...

Inspired by anomalies that arise in certain mathematical equations, researchers have demonstrated a laser system that paradoxically turns off when more power is added rather than becoming continuously brighter. The finding by a team of researchers at Vienna University of Technology and Princeton University, could lead to new ways to manipulate the interaction of electronics and light, an important tool in modern communications networks and high-speed information processing. The researchers published their results June 13 in the journal Nature Communications (Ref. 1). Their ...

NEW YORK (June 17, 2014) – A new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society says that in wild yak societies, it's the mothers that are the real climbers. The study found that mothers with young venture on steeper terrain and slightly higher elevation than either males or females without young. The authors of the study expect that this strategy is an adaptive way to avoid predators and to access more nutritious food. Wild yaks are an endangered species occurring only on the Tibetan Plateau and closely related to North American bison. The study, which appears in ...

This news release is available in German. The cells of the human immune system are created from special stem cells in the bone marrow. In diseases affecting the bone marrow, such as leukemia, the degenerate cells must be destroyed using radiation or chemotherapy. Subsequently, the hematopoietic system has to be replaced with stem cells from the blood of a healthy donor. Because of the resulting temporary weakening of the immune system, patients are more exposed to viruses that would normally be warded off. The cytomegalovirus (CMV), which can cause serious damage to ...

This news release is available in German. Sound waves fade, water waves ebb, light waves are dissipated by a wall. The absorption of waves is a very common phenomenon. But only recently have physicists realized that amazing new possibilities are opened up, when this energy loss, rather than being seen as an annoying nuisance, is actually considered a desired effect. At the Vienna University of Technology, a system of two coupled lasers has been created, in which wave dissipation leads to a behaviour completely contrary to intuition: additional energy can switch it ...

A study conducted by the University of Granada has scientifically proven that alcohol consumption markedly impairs night-vision because it increases the perception of halos—luminous circles—and other visual night-time disturbances. Moreover, this deterioration of vision is significantly greater in subjects with breath alcohol content in excess of 0.25mg/litre—the legal limit for driving in Spain and other countries and, also, that recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). Researchers from the Laboratory of Vision Sciences and Applications conclude that alcohol ...

Popular beliefs about the influence of the moon on humans widely exist. Many people report sleeplessness around the time of full moon. In contrast to earlier studies, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich did not observe any correlation between human sleep and the lunar phases. The researchers analyzed preexisting data of a large cohort of volunteers and their sleep nights. Further identification of mostly unpublished null findings suggests that the conflicting results of previous studies might be due to a publication bias. For centuries, people ...

Winter takes its toll on living things. To protect themselves from the elements, bears hibernate, and trees go dormant. Biologists have observed what happens when trees become dormant, but up to now, they haven't understood the underlying genetic mechanisms that enable them to start growing again. Led by molecular geneticists from Michigan Technological University a gene has been identified and characterized that tells a poplar tree when winter ends and a spring growing season begins. Victor Busov, a professor in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental ...

Examining factors such as how much children gesture at an early age may make it possible to identify and intervene with very young children at risk for delays in speech and cognitive development, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago. The research by leading early learning scientists looked at children from a wide variety of backgrounds, including those from advantaged and disadvantaged families, and those who had suffered brain injury. Their work was published in an article, "New Evidence About Language and Cognitive Development Based on ...

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a nanoshell to protect foreign enzymes used to starve cancer cells as part of chemotherapy. Their work is featured on the June 2014 cover of the journal Nano Letters. Enzymes are naturally smart machines that are responsible for many complex functions and chemical reactions in biology. However, despite their huge potential, their use in medicine has been limited by the immune system, which is designed to attack foreign intruders. For example, doctors have long relied on an enzyme called asparaginase ...

Melbourne researchers have shown a type of leukaemia can be successfully 'reversed' by coaxing the cancer cells back into normal development. The discovery was made using a model of B-progenitor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer affecting children. Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute showed that switching off a gene called Pax5 could cause cancer in a model of B-ALL, while restoring its function could 'cure' the disease. Institute researchers Dr Ross Dickins and Ms Grace Liu led the study with institute colleagues and ...

E-cigarettes, also known as vaping pens or e-hookas, are commonly advertised on Twitter and the tweets often link to commercial websites promoting e-cig use, according to University of Illinois at Chicago researchers. The study, published as a special supplement in the July 2014 issue of Tobacco Control released online June 16, has implications for future FDA regulations on the marketing of e-cigarettes and related products. "There's this whole wild west of social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – and the FDA has no way to track what's happening in ...

A tax on sweetened soft drinks could be an effective weapon in the war against obesity, generating weight losses of up to 3.64 kilograms as individuals reduce their consumption. Researchers from Monash University, Imperial College London and University of York and Lancaster University, England have estimated the extent to which drinking habits would change if beverages such as carbonated non-diet soft drinks; cordials and fruit drinks were taxed. Lead author Dr Anurag Sharma, of the Centre for Health Economics at Monash University, said such a tax could have important ...

Water is thought to be embedded in the moon's rocks or, if cold enough, "stuck" on their surfaces. It's predominantly found at the poles. But scientists probably won't find it intact on the sunlit side. New research at the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates that ultraviolet photons emitted by the sun likely cause H2O molecules to either quickly desorb or break apart. The fragments of water may remain on the lunar surface, but the presence of useful amounts of water on the sunward side is not likely. The Georgia Tech team built an ultra-high vacuum system that ...

There is new hope for people suffering from depression. Researchers have identified a compound, hydroxynorketamine (HNK), that may treat symptoms of depression just as effectively and rapidly as ketamine, without the unwanted side effects associated with the psychoactive drug, according to a study in the July issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®). Interestingly, use of HNK may also serve as a future therapeutic approach for treating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, ...

A study in the July issue of Anesthesiology revealed that patients who receive a simple, multicolor, standardized medication instruction sheet before surgery are more likely to comply with their physician's instructions and experience a significantly shorter post-op stay in recovery. These findings are important because surgical patients often fail to follow their doctor's medication instructions for preexisting conditions such as diabetes and hypertension on the day they are having surgery – a costly mistake that can lead to surgery cancellation, complications and longer ...