Thin fibers play a tremendous role in many areas of our daily life, from the use of glass fibers in ultra-fast data transmission to textile fibers in our clothing. In order to enable special properties of these fibers, they are often coated with a thin liquid layer that is supposed to be stable and homogeneous. However, for the production of drinkable water, the exact opposite features are desired: there, one aims at harvesting water, which is transported along the fiber as a liquid film or as liquid droplets, from fog. Now, scientists have been able to reveal, by means ...

This news release is available in German. Observing time at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Paranal Mountain is a very precious commodity - and yet the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile spent an entire night with a high-resolution infrared camera pointed at a single object in the night sky. The data collected by the Naco optics instrument enabled an international team headed by ETH Zurich's Sascha Quanz to confirm its earlier hypothesis: that a young gas planet - presumed not unlike Jupiter in our own solar system - is orbiting the star designated HD 100546. At ...

This news release is available in German. A new bio-inspired zeolite catalyst, developed by an international team with researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM), Eindhoven University of Technology and University of Amsterdam, might pave the way to small scale 'gas-to-liquid' technologies converting natural gas to fuels and starting materials for the chemical industry. Investigating the mechanism of the selective oxidation of methane to methanol they identified a trinuclear copper-oxo-cluster as the active center inside the zeolite micropores. In ...

Being busy with acts of kindness can help people who suffer from social anxiety to mingle more easily. This is the opinion of Canadian researchers Jennifer Trew of Simon Fraser University and Lynn Alden of the University of British Columbia, in a study published in Springer's journal Motivation and Emotion. Sufferers from social anxiety are more than just a little shy. Dealings with others might make them feel so threatened or anxious that they often actively avoid socializing. Although this protects them from angst and possible embarrassment, they lose out on the support ...

More than one in ten complaints of sexual harassment at work are reported by men, a QUT study has found. According to the research, conducted by Professor Paula McDonald from the QUT Business School and Professor Sara Charlesworth from RMIT, women were accused of sexually harassing men in 5 per cent of cases and men accused other men in 11 per cent of cases. Workplace sexual harassment at the margins, published in the Work, Employment and Society journal, analysed sexual harassment complaints lodged with Australian equal opportunity commissions in the six months from ...

BARCELONA-LUGANO, 1 July 2015 - The SENRI trial has opened the window to evaluate NK1 antagonists for emesis prevention in patients taking oxaliplatin chemotherapy, antiemetics expert and ESMO spokesperson Fausto Roila said, putting into perspective the results of a Japanese study presented today at the ESMO 17th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2015 in Barcelona. Roila's comments came as the SENRI Trial results were presented including a new gender analysis (1),(2). He said: "Until now we said that NK1 antagonists have no role in the prevention of emesis in ...

BARCELONA-LUGANO, 1 July 2015 - Patients with the lowest body mass index (BMI) had the shortest overall survival in an analysis of bevacizumab studies in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) presented for the first time today at the ESMO 17th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2015 in Barcelona.(1) "There is good evidence that obesity increases the risk of getting colorectal cancer and that it increases the risk of colorectal cancer recurrence after curative therapy," said lead study author Dr Yousuf Zafar, associate professor of medicine at Duke Cancer Institute ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Although being overweight with a high body-mass index (BMI) has long been associated with a higher risk for colorectal cancer, thinner patients might not fare as well after treatment for advanced cancer, according to a new study from Duke Medicine. The study, which was presented today at the European Society for Medical Oncology World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer, found that patients with a low to healthy body weight lived an average of two-and-a-half months less than overweight and obese patients. The results surprised researchers, who expected ...

Lexington, Mass., July 1, 2015 - Substituting deuterium for certain hydrogen atoms in molecules has been shown to enhance the metabolic properties of a number of drugs and provides a promising approach to the discovery and development of innovative drug products. The deuterium chemistry approach has the potential to reduce the high failure rates of conventional drug development by building on the known pharmacology of existing compounds and leveraging their desirable therapeutic properties. Selective deuterium substitution as a means of ameliorating unwanted clinically ...

Working in cell cultures and mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that an experimental drug called fostamatinib combined with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel may overcome ovarian cancer cells' resistance to paclitaxel. Scientists elsewhere are already testing fostamatinib in people with lymphoma and idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, an autoimmune disorder. Based on results of the current study described in a report online June 18 in the journal Cancer Cell, Johns Hopkins researchers say they are planning a phase I clinical trial to test the paclitaxel-fostamatinib ...

A team from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, along with collaborators from several Japanese institutions, have successfully produced pairs of spin-entangled electrons and demonstrated, for the first time, that these electrons remain entangled even when they are separated from one another on a chip. This research could contribute to the creation of futuristic quantum networks operating using quantum teleportation, which could allow information contained in quantum bits--qubits--to be shared between many elements on chip, a key requirement to scale up the power ...

St John's Wort can produce the same adverse reactions as antidepressants, and serious side effects can occur when the two are taken together, according to new University of Adelaide research. In a study published this month in the journal, Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology, researchers compared the pattern of spontaneous reported adverse drug reactions to St John's Wort, a herbal treatment for depression, and fluoxetine, a commonly prescribed antidepressant. They found the adverse reactions were the same for people who took St John's Wort as it was ...

A research in the North Caucasus, conducted by a group of Russian scientists over three years, has revealed an intermediate distribution of Caucasian populations of non-biting midges between Europe and Siberia. Their observations also proved some interesting morphological distinctions between the studied populations and the previously researched ones from Europe and Siberia. Their results have been published in the open-access journal Comparative Cytogenetics. The study on karyotypical and morphological peculiarities of Ch. bernensis is a part of the investigation of ...

Sandcastles are a prime example of how adding a small amount of liquid to a granular material changes its characteristics. But understanding the effect of a liquid wetting randomly oriented fibres in a fibrous medium remains a mystery. Relevant to the building industry, which uses glass wool, for instance, this phenomenon can be better understood by studying the behaviour of a liquid trapped between two parallel fibres. It can either remain in the shape of a drop or spread between the fibres into a long and thin column of liquid. Now, scientists have demonstrated that the ...

Failing to find a mating partner is a dent to the reproductive prospects of any animal, but in the flatworm species Macrostomum hystrix it might involve a real headache. Zoologists from the Universities of Basel and Bielefeld have discovered the extraordinary lengths to which this animal is willing to go in order to reproduce - including apparently injecting sperm directly into their own heads. The academic journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B has published their findings. The absence of a mate usually spells disaster for sexually reproducing animals. However, some ...

Atoms absorb and emit light of various wavelengths. Physicists have long known that there are some tiny changes, or shifts, in the light that gets absorbed or emitted, due to the properties of the atomic nucleus. Now, a team of scientists has elucidated the so-called hyperfine structure of cadmium atoms. Relying on a method called laser spectroscopy, they have measured variations in the energy transition within cadmium atom - Cd in the periodic table. They studied a chain of isotopes with an odd number of neutrons ranging from 59 in 107Cd to 75 in 123Cd. From these high-precision ...

A good night's sleep has long been recommended to those who have experienced a traumatic event. But an Oxford University-led study provides preliminary experimental work suggesting it could actually be the wrong thing to do. The research, conducted in Oxford's Wellcome Trust-funded Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi) and published in the journal Sleep, showed that sleep deprivation might prevent people from consolidating memories of experimental trauma (emotional film clips in the study), reducing their tendency to experience flashbacks. Dr Kate Porcheret, ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Soldiers injured during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have the highest survival rates in history, thanks to the availability of surgeons skilled in combat care. But combat-ready surgical skills are hard to sustain off the battlefield. "A lot of knowledge builds up in the military medical enterprise during times of war," said Joseph Galante, who chairs the UC Davis Division of Trauma, Emergency and Critical Care Surgery and is a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves. "When peacetime comes, that knowledge can slide. We need to identify ways ...

The global supply of seafood is set to change substantially and many people will not be able to enjoy the same quantity and dishes in the future due to climate change and ocean acidification, according to UBC scientists. These findings were released today in Japan by the Nereus program, an international research team led by UBC scientists and supported by the Nippon Foundation. The Nereus program was formed to study the future of the world's oceans and seafood resources. Today it released a summary of the first phase of its research in a report titled 'Predicting Future ...

ASCO Perspective: Gary Schwartz, MD, ASCO Expert "This study adds to the growing discussion around food and cancer risk. While the findings are intriguing, it's far too soon to recommend any broad changes to grapefruit or orange consumption. Until conclusive data are available, we should continue to be cautious about protecting our skin from sun exposure." A new analysis of dietary patterns among more than 100,000 Americans suggests that frequent consumption of citrus -- namely whole grapefruit and orange juice -- may be associated with an increased risk of melanoma. ...

July 1 -- Researchers in the United Kingdom and Denmark have studied the "see-through" larvae of zebrafish to reveal how wound healing leads to skin cancer. Live imaging shows neutrophils, the protective inflammatory cells of the body's immune system, diverted from an induced wound to any nearby precancerous skin cells. The newly arrived neutrophils cause rapid division of these skin cells, which may cause them to progress to melanoma. The results are published in The EMBO Journal. "Our results provide direct visual evidence of a physical link between wound-associated ...

Scientists from the University of Leeds and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, have discovered a new protein which triggers the growth of blood vessels in breast cancer tumours which have spread to the brain, a common location which breast cancer can spread to. Dr Georgia Mavria's team in the School of Medicine at Leeds found that by withholding the DOCK4 protein in mouse models, a particular part of the blood vessel did not form as quickly, meaning tumours grew at a slower rate. Dr Mavria said: "We want to understand how these tumours form and grow, but we still ...

Storing solar energy as hydrogen is a promising way for developing comprehensive renewable energy systems. To accomplish this, traditional solar panels can be used to generate an electrical current that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter being considered a form of solar fuel. However, the cost of producing efficient solar panels makes water-splitting technologies too expensive to commercialize. EPFL scientists have now developed a simple, unconventional method to fabricate high-quality, efficient solar panels for direct solar hydrogen production ...

Nine times more job offers after training Eases anxiety and boosts rapport with interviewer High unemployment for vets with PTSD and mentally ill CHICAGO --- Finding a job is difficult for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and individuals with severe mental illness, who have high unemployment rates even though many want to work. The job interview -- especially hard for those with mental illness -- can be a major hurdle. A virtual human -- based on software originally used to train FBI agents -- helped vets with PTSD and individuals with severe ...

This news release is available in French. Regular, structured extracurricular sports seem to help kids develop the discipline they need in order to engage effectively in the classroom, according to a new study led by Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital. "We worked with information provided by parents and teachers to compare kindergarteners' activities with their classroom engagement as they grew up," Pagani said. "By time they reached the fourth grade, kids who played structured sports were identifiably ...