March 19, 2015--(Bronx, NY)--Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and their international collaborators have developed a novel fluorescence microscopy technique that for the first time shows where and when proteins are produced. The technique allows researchers to directly observe individual messenger RNA molecules (mRNAs) as they are translated into proteins in living cells. The technique, carried out in living human cells and fruit flies, should help reveal how irregularities in protein synthesis contribute to developmental abnormalities ...

Prosthetics with a realistic sense of touch. Bridges that detect and repair their own damage. Vehicles with camouflaging capabilities. Advances in materials science, distributed algorithms and manufacturing processes are bringing all of these things closer to reality every day, says a review published today in the journal Science by Nikolaus Correll, assistant professor of computer science, and research assistant Michael McEvoy, both of the University of Colorado Boulder. The "robotic materials" being developed by Correll Lab and others are often inspired by nature, ...

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have developed a new method for generating mutations in both copies of a gene in a single generation that could rapidly accelerate genetic research on diverse species and provide scientists with a powerful new tool to control insect borne diseases such as malaria as well as animal and plant pests. Their achievement was published today in an advance online paper in the journal Science. It was accomplished by two biologists at UC San Diego working on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster who employed a new genomic technology ...

Berkeley -- Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have identified a new molecular pathway critical to aging, and confirmed that the process can be manipulated to help make old blood like new again. The researchers found that blood stem cells' ability to repair damage caused by inappropriate protein folding in the mitochondria, a cell's energy station, is critical to their survival and regenerative capacity. The discovery, to be published in the March 20 issue of the journal Science, has implications for research on reversing the signs of aging, a process ...

Without better local management, the world's most iconic ecosystems are at risk of collapse under climate change, say researchers in a study published in the journal Science. The international team of researchers say protecting places of global environmental importance such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Amazon rainforest from climate change requires reducing the other pressures they face, for example overfishing, fertilizer pollution or land clearing. The researchers warn that localised issues, such as declining water quality from nutrient pollution or deforestation, ...

The 2014 chemistry Nobel Prize recognized important microscopy research that enabled greatly improved spatial resolution. This innovation, resulting in nanometer resolution, was made possible by making the source (the emitter) of the illumination quite small and by moving it quite close to the object being imaged. One problem with this approach is that in such proximity, the emitter and object can interact with each other, blurring the resulting image. Now, a new JQI study has shown how to sharpen nanoscale microscopy (nanoscopy) even more by better locating the exact ...

Sifting through the center of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have made the first direct observations - using an infrared telescope aboard a modified Boeing 747 - of cosmic building-block dust resulting from an ancient supernova. "Dust itself is very important because it's the stuff that forms stars and planets, like the sun and Earth, respectively, so to know where it comes from is an important question," said lead author Ryan Lau, Cornell postdoctoral associate for astronomy, in research published March 19 in Science Express. "Our work strongly reinforces the theory ...

Researchers from Banner Alzheimer's Institute (BAI) have developed a new brain image analysis method to better track the progression of beta-amyloid plaque deposition, a characteristic brain abnormality in Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in the March issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Investigators also believe this new approach may make it easier to evaluate investigational anti-amyloid treatments in clinical trials. During the last decade, researchers have been using positron emission topography (PET) to assess amyloid plaque deposition in ...

A psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin sheds new light on today's standards of beauty, attributing modern men's preferences for women with a curvy backside to prehistoric influences. The study, published online in Evolution and Human Behavior, investigated men's mate preference for women with a "theoretically optimal angle of lumbar curvature," a 45.5 degree curve from back to buttocks allowing ancestral women to better support, provide for, and carry out multiple pregnancies. "What's fascinating about this research is that it is yet another scientific ...

WASHINGTON, March 19, 2015 -- It's a simple claim made on thousands of personal care products for adults and kids: hypoallergenic. But what does that actually mean? Turns out, it can mean whatever manufacturers want it to mean, and that can leave you feeling itchy. Speaking of Chemistry is back this week with Sophia Cai explaining why "hypoallergenic" isn't really a thing. Check it out here: http://youtu.be/lXh8bnqMOZs. Speaking of Chemistry is a production of Chemical & Engineering News, a weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. The program features fascinating, ...

The Canadian research community on high-temperature superconductivity continues to lead this exciting scientific field with groundbreaking results coming hot on the heels of big theoretical questions. The latest breakthrough, which will be published March 20 in Science, answers a key question on the microscopic electronic structure of cuprate superconductors, the most celebrated material family in our quest for true room-temperature superconductivity. This result is the product of a longstanding close collaboration between the University of British Columbia Quantum ...

Some 2.5 million years ago, early humans survived on a paltry diet of plants. As the human brain expanded, however, it required more substantial nourishment - namely fat and meat - to sustain it. This drove prehistoric man, who lacked the requisite claws and sharp teeth of carnivores, to develop the skills and tools necessary to hunt animals and butcher fat and meat from large carcasses. Among elephant remains some 500,000 years old at a Lower Paleolithic site in Revadim, Israel, Prof. Ran Barkai and his graduate students Natasha Solodenko and Andrea Zupanchich of Tel ...

DENVER, March 23, 2015 -- Since HIV emerged in the '80s, drug "cocktails" transformed the deadly disease into a manageable one. But the virus is adept at developing resistance to drugs, and treatment regimens require tweaking that can be costly. Now scientists at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) are announcing new progress toward affordable drugs that could potentially thwart the virus's ability to resist them. ACS, the world's largest scientific society, is holding the meeting here through Thursday. It features nearly 11,000 ...

Washington, D.C.--To combat global climate change caused by greenhouse gases, alternative energy sources and other types of environmental recourse actions are needed. There are a variety of proposals that involve using vertical ocean pipes to move seawater to the surface from the depths in order to reap different potential climate benefits. A new study from a group of Carnegie scientists determines that these types of pipes could actually increase global warming quite drastically. It is published in Environmental Research Letters. One proposed strategy--called Ocean ...

What if there were a pill that made you more compassionate and more likely to give spare change to someone less fortunate? UC Berkeley scientists have taken a big step in that direction. A new study by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco researchers finds that giving a drug that changes the neurochemical balance in the prefrontal cortex of the brain causes a greater willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, such as ensuring that resources are divided more equally. The researchers also say that future research may lead to a better understanding of the interaction between ...

URBANA, Ill. - Over the last several decades there have been substantial yield improvements in soybean. Because of new varieties and new agronomic practices, the yield potential in soybean is higher now than ever before. But a lack of updated information on the nutritional needs of soybean crops may be limiting the crop's potential. Researchers from the University of Illinois Crop Physiology Laboratory led by Fred Below have recently provided an updated set of nutrition needs for soybean, identifying exactly which nutrients the plant needs, when those nutrients are accumulated ...

Acne, a scourge of adolescence, may be about to meet its ultra high-tech match. By using a combination of ultrasound, gold-covered particles and lasers, researchers from UC Santa Barbara and the private medical device company Sebacia have developed a targeted therapy that could potentially lessen the frequency and intensity of breakouts, relieving acne sufferers the discomfort and stress of dealing with severe and recurring pimples. "Through this unique collaboration, we have essentially established the foundation of a novel therapy," said Samir Mitragotri, professor ...

Our eyes are drawn to several dimensions of an object--such as color, texture, and luminance--even when we need to focus on only one of them, researchers at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania have found. The study, which appears in the journal Current Biology, points to the ability of our visual system to integrate multiple components of an item while underscoring the difficulty we have in focusing on a particular aspect of it. "Even when we want and need to focus on one dimension of things we come across every day, such as the texture of your cat's ...

For in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technologies, selecting the healthiest and best swimming sperm from a sample of semen can dramatically increase success. Microfluidics--micro-scale technologies that were originally developed to enable high-throughput gene sequencing and for Point-Of-Care diagnostics--are now being adapted to enhance sperm sorting. These new methods, reviewed by engineers in the journal Trends in Biotechnology, are generating promising results in applications such as single-sperm genomics, in-home male fertility testing, and wildlife ...

A combination of human stem cell transplantation and antidiabetic drugs proved to be highly effective at improving body weight and glucose metabolism in a mouse model of type 2 diabetes. The findings, published March 19th by Stem Cell Reports, could set the stage for clinical trials to test the first stem cell-based approach for insulin replacement in patients with type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for 90%-95% of the now approaching 400 million cases of diabetes worldwide, is currently treated by oral medication, insulin injections, or both to control blood ...

Altered signaling through the vitamin D receptor on certain immune cells may play a role in causing the chronic inflammation that leads to cardiometabolic disease, the combination of type 2 diabetes and heart disease that is the most common cause of illness and death in Western populations. The research appears March 19 in the journal Cell Reports. "Because low vitamin D levels are associated with diabetes and heart disease, we looked at the connections between vitamin D, immune function, and these disease states," says senior author Carlos Bernal-Mizrachi, of the Washington ...

Scientists at the University of British Columbia and BetaLogics, part of Janssen Research & Development, LLC have shown for the first time that Type 2 diabetes can be effectively treated with a combination of specially-cultured stem cells and conventional diabetes drugs. Stem cells - generic cells that haven't yet taken on specialized form and function - have recently been used by scientists at UBC and elsewhere to reverse Type 1 diabetes in mice. In Type 1 diabetes, which usually begins in childhood, the pancreas produces little or no insulin, the hormone that enables ...

A research team at UC San Francisco has discovered an RNA molecule called Pnky that can be manipulated to increase the production of neurons from neural stem cells. The research, led by neurosurgeon Daniel A. Lim, MD, PhD, and published on March 19, 2015 in Cell Stem Cell, has possible applications in regenerative medicine, including treatments of such disorders as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and traumatic brain injury, and in cancer treatment. Pnky is one of a number of newly discovered long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), which are stretches of 200 or more ...

A new study has shown that the dottyback, a small predatory reef fish, can change the colour of its body to imitate a variety of other reef fish species, allowing the dottyback to sneak up undetected and eat their young. The dottyback also uses its colour-changing abilities to hide from larger predators by colour-matching to the background of its habitat - disappearing into the scenery. The research, published today in the journal Current Biology, reveals a sophisticated new example of 'mimicry': disguising as a different species to gain evolutionary advantage. ...

Stem cells can have a strong sense of identity. Taken out of their home in the hair follicle, for example, and grown in culture, these cells remain true to themselves. After waiting in limbo, these cultured cells become capable of regenerating follicles and other skin structures once transplanted back into skin. It's not clear just how these stem cells -- and others elsewhere in the body -- retain their ability to produce new tissue and heal wounds, even under extraordinary conditions. New research at Rockefeller University has identified a protein, Sox9, that takes the ...