This news release is available in German. Jülich, 7 July - Using a single molecule as a sensor, scientists in Jülich have successfully imaged electric potential fields with unrivalled precision. The ultrahigh-resolution images provide information on the distribution of charges in the electron shells of single molecules and even atoms. The 3D technique is also contact-free. The first results achieved using "scanning quantum dot microscopy" have been published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters. The related publication was chosen as ...

A yearlong study of first-time smartphone users by researchers at Rice University and the U.S. Air Force found that users felt smartphones were actually detrimental to their ability to learn. The research paper "You Can Lead a Horse to Water But You Cannot Make Him Learn: Smartphone Use in Higher Education" appeared in a recent edition of the British Journal of Educational Technology. The research reveals the self-rated impact of smartphones among the users. "Smartphone technology is penetrating world markets and becoming abundant in most college settings," said Philip ...

Today in Nature Communications, scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) provide molecular details about Seckel Syndrome, a rare disease that causes microcephaly, or small brain, and growth delays. A joint study conducted by Travis Stracker and Jens Lüders indicates that the protein CEP63 plays a key role during brain development as it is involved in the correct division of stem cells in this organ. Furthermore, the researchers have discovered that CEP63 is associated with sperm production--an unknown function until now. Rescuing microcephaly ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Mikel Zubizarreta, a member of the UPV/EHU's IT 781-13 group, highlights the advantages of timber in building works: "Although it is not as tough as other materials used in structures, it is a better insulator, in other words, it is more energy-efficient and less dense so the structure weighs less. On the other hand, timber is a renewable material -trees are planted and grown and forests are a CO2 sink- and is abundant in the Basque Country (nearly 55% of its surface area consists of forests)." Yet timber is used much less ...

PHILADELPHIA - Many people believe that phase I trials with healthy volunteers are very risky and because they pose risks with no benefits, unethical. But how risky are such trials? Less than 1% of 11,000 healthy volunteers who participated in 394 phase I trials for new drugs experienced serious complications, according to a new meta-analysis of participants in non-cancer, phase I medication trials. In addition, none of the volunteers died or suffered persistent disabilities linked to the experimental drugs. In the largest study of its kind, researchers found only 34 (0.31%) ...

Washington, D.C. - July 6, 2015 - Those bacteria that require iron walk a tightrope. Iron is essential for their growth, but too much iron can damage DNA and enzymes through oxidation. Therefore, bacteria have machinery to maintain their intracellular iron within a range that is healthy for them. Now Theresa D. Ho, PhD, and Craig D. Ellermeier, PhD shed new light on how the pathogen, Clostridium difficile, which is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infectious diarrhea, regulates iron. The research is published online ahead of print July 6 in the Journal of Bacteriology, ...

While nitrous oxide gas has been used recreationally and medically for more than 200 years - originally for its euphoric and then for its pain relieving and anesthetic properties - the mechanism behind its effects on the brain has been poorly understood. A report from investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) finds that the EEG patterns of patients receiving high doses of nitrous oxide differ significantly from those of the same patients when they had received ether-based inhaled anesthetics earlier in the procedures, findings that - along with suggesting how ...

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2015 - In 1962, an underground fire started in the coal-mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Fifty-three years later, that fire still burns. In this week's episode of Reactions, we explain the history and science behind the Centralia mine fire. Does anyone still live there? How could the fire keep burning for so long, and why hasn't it been extinguished? From a chemical standpoint, what is fire, anyway? It's all answered in our latest video: https://youtu.be/fsgqy5FYP2c.INFORMATION: Subscribe to the series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions, and follow ...

HONOLULU - Aspirin may inhibit the growth of mesothelioma, an aggressive and deadly asbestos-related cancer, University of Hawai'i Cancer Center researchers have found. The finding could eventually give doctors and patients a potential new tool to fight against this devastating disease, which kills about 3,200 people a year nationwide, and advance knowledge of how to fight other cancers. The study published in Cell Death and Disease showed that aspirin slows down the growth of mesothelioma by blocking the carcinogenic effects of the inflammatory molecule, High-Mobility ...

Researchers have developed a new design for a cloaking device that overcomes some of the limitations of existing "invisibility cloaks." In a new study, electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have designed a cloaking device that is both thin and does not alter the brightness of light around a hidden object. The technology behind this cloak will have more applications than invisibility, such as concentrating solar energy and increasing signal speed in optical communications. "Invisibility may seem like magic at first, but its underlying concepts ...

University of Adelaide researchers are developing a laser system for fast, non-invasive, onsite breath analysis for disease, potentially enabling screening for a range of diseases including diabetes, infections and various cancers in the future. The researchers have developed an instrument they equate to an "optical dog's nose" which uses a special laser to measure the molecular content of a sample of gas. "Rather than sniffing out a variety of smells as a dog would, the laser system uses light to "sense" the range of molecules that are present in the sample," says ...

KUNMING, 7 July 2015 - Increasing amounts of environmentally valuable and protected land are being cleared for rubber plantations that are economically unsustainable, new research suggests. More widespread monitoring is vital to design policy that protects livelihoods and environments. The research was recently published in Global Environmental Change and constitutes a joint effort by scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) East and Central Asia office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the University of Singapore and the ...

A piece of deep frozen ice and electronic gadgets may seem to have little connection (except that they are both 'cool' to have on you), but ice could now play a role in opening a new era in the electronic industry where conducting polymers, simply put plastics with electrical properties, are in great demand for practical applications. Chemists at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea, have discovered an innovative method to form two-dimensional polyaniline (PANI) nanosheets using ice as a hard template. The product, called PANI-ICE, is reported ...

Today theoretical physicists are facing the difficulty that General Relativity is not (pertubatively) renormalizable, and find that it is very hard to construct the quantum theory of gravity with LI. A possible solution is to break the LI in the ultraviolet (UV) region, so that the theory is renormalizable and unitary. However, the invariance should be recovered in the infrared (IR), so that all of the gravitational experiments in the IR can be satisfied. According to this idea, Horava proposed a Horava-Lifshitz (HL) gravity without LI [P. Horava, Phys. Rev. D 79 (2009) ...

Recent experiments have successfully tested Einstein's general theory of relativity in a variety of ways and to remarkable precision. These experiments included spacecraft Doppler tracking, planetary radar ranging, lunar and satellite laser ranging, as well as a number of dedicated gravitational experiments in space and many ground based efforts. How can computational models keep up with the ever improving accuracy of these missions? Finding a solution to the Einstein's gravitational field equations in the case of an unperturbed one-body problem is quite a simple task. ...

This news release is available in Japanese. The Earth's magnetic field periodically reverses such that the north magnetic pole becomes the south magnetic pole. The latest reversal is called by geologists the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary (MBB), and occurred approximately 780,000 years ago. The MBB is extremely important for calibrating the ages of rocks and the timing of events that occurred in the geological past; however, the exact age of this event has been imprecise because of uncertainties in the dating methods that have been used. A team of researchers based in ...

July 6, 2015, Shenzhen, China-- Mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) database demonstrated its great value on detecting wild bees in UK farms via mitochondrial metagenomics pipeline, a new approach developed by scientists from the China National Genebank (CNGB), BGI-Shenzhen. The study published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution shows that, with mitogenome references, collecting wild bees, extracting their mixed DNA, and directly reading the DNA of the resultant 'bee soup' could finally make large-scale bee monitoring programmes feasible. This new research ...

Chicago (July 7, 2015)- Switzerland has a long history of trying to be as self-sufficient and energy independent as possible. Although its energy supply system has served it well in the past, the country is now looking to turn away from its reliance on nuclear power and seeks to compensate for the energy lost from hydropower as a result of climate change. In the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, Dominic Notter of Empa discusses how the country aims to address this transition, finding a new supply mix that combines energy conservation, ...

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have identified a key mechanism in neuropathic pain. The discovery could eventually benefit millions of patients with chronic pain from trauma, diabetes, shingles, multiple sclerosis or other conditions that cause nerve damage. A biological process called endoplasmic reticulum stress, or ER stress, is the significant driver of neuropathic pain, said lead researchers Bora Inceoglu of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Ahmed Bettaieb, Department of Nutrition. ...

LOS ANGELES (July 6, 2015) - Cedars-Sinai researchers have successfully tested two new methods for preserving cognition in laboratory mice that exhibit features of Alzheimer's disease by using white blood cells from bone marrow and a drug for multiple sclerosis to control immune response in the brain. Under the two approaches, immune cells from outside the brain were found to travel in greater numbers through the blood into the brain. The study showed measurable benefits in mice, an encouraging step toward further testing of these potentially powerful strategies in human ...

New research suggests guidelines on children's exposure to radio frequency waves from technology are confusing for parents. The review into the polices of 34 countries, carried out by Dr Mary Redmayne, from the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, found varying degrees of advice about children's exposure to radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF). RF-EMFs are emitted from technology including WiFi, tablets and mobile phones. Associated with an increased risk of some brain tumours in heavy and long-term phone users, RF-EMFs ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (July 7, 2015) - Parents of kids with severe allergies know how scary a severe allergic reaction (anaphylaxis) is. New research offers clues as to why some kids can have a second, related reaction hours later - and what to do about it. A study in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), examined records of 484 children seen in an emergency department (ED) for anaphylaxis. The researchers tracked whether there was a second, follow-up reaction. Delayed ...

When Greek mythology and cell biology meet, you get the protein Callipygian, recently discovered and named by researchers at The Johns Hopkins University for its role in determining which area of a cell becomes the back as it begins to move. The findings, made in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, shed light on how symmetrical, round cells become "polarized," or asymmetrical and directional. A summary of the findings was published online June 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Cells have to have a front and a back to migrate," says Peter ...

Scientists have discovered new ways in which the malaria parasite survives in the blood stream of its victims, a discovery that could pave the way to new treatments for the disease. The researchers at the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Toxicology Unit based at the University of Leicester and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine identified a key protein, called a protein kinase, that if targeted stops the disease. The study is published today (Tuesday) in Nature Communications. Malaria is caused by a parasite that lives inside an infected mosquito and ...

Testing thousands of approved drugs, EPFL scientists have identified an unlikely anti-tuberculosis drug: the over-the-counter antacid lansoprazole (Prevacid®). Tuberculosis continues to be a global pandemic, second only to AIDS as the greatest single-agent killer in the world. In 2013 alone, the TB bug Mycobacterium tuberculosis caused 1.5 million deaths and almost nine million new infections. Resistance to TB drugs is widespread, creating an urgent need for new medicines. EPFL scientists have now identified lansoprazole, a widely used, over-the-counter antacid, as ...