This news release is available in Spanish. At these specialized facilities, which are linked to the UC3M-Airbus Group Joint Center, scientists are studying how structural elements react to applied loads at both low and high speeds. Phenomena of this sort can occur during maintenance operations (a tool falling in an aircraft) or while the elements are functioning. In the case of an airplane, for example, it can happen when a pebble hits an airplane during takeoff, or when a slab of ice comes off of a propeller or the leading edge of a wing and hits the fuselage. "Our ...

This news release is available in German. Imagine a tower builds itself into the desired structure only by choosing the appropriate bricks. Absurd – and however, in the nano world this is reality: There an unordered crowd of components can initiate the formation of an ordered structure – a process known as self-assembly. The physicists Christos Likos (University of Vienna), Emanuela Bianchi and Gerhard Kahl (both Vienna University of Technology) investigate how they can control the ordering of such self-assembling structures and found out how to switch the assembly ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS — A Kansas State University physicist's proposal may lead to a new way of creating tabletop light sources in the laboratory. Cheng Jin, research associate in physics; Chii-Dong Lin, university distinguished professor of physics; and collaborators are developing a way to greatly enhance the generation of high-order harmonics to create powerful small tabletop light sources that are important to science and technology. The researchers are building theoretical framework and providing experimental guidance in the area of strong-field physics. The work is ...

DENVER (June 2, 2014) – A new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows public health issues are often ignored in many transportation projects, especially when major roads are built through lower-income neighborhoods. Air pollution, crime and numerous traffic hazards, the study said, point to a serious and persistent gap between public health and planning. "The public health effects of heavy traffic are broad," said study author Carolyn McAndrews, PhD, assistant professor at the CU Denver College of Architecture and Planning, one of the largest schools of its ...

Chicago (June 2, 2014): Surgery patients are much less likely to get a blood clot in the lower extremities or lungs if they receive preventive treatment based on their individual clotting risk, in addition to walking soon after the operation. Results from a surgical quality improvement study, appearing in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, indicate that the odds of this common and potentially life-threatening postoperative complication steadily declined after the implementation of a multicomponent prevention program in a hospital's department ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that blue-enriched light exposure immediately before and during the evening meal may increase hunger and alter metabolism. Results show that blue-enriched light exposure, compared with dim light exposure, was associated with an increase in hunger that began 15 minutes after light onset and was still present almost two hours after the meal. Blue light exposure also decreased sleepiness and resulted in higher measures of insulin resistance. "It was very interesting to observe that a single three-hour exposure to blue-enriched light in ...

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of planet - a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth. Theorists believed such a world couldn't form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas giant. This planet, though, is all solids and much bigger than previously discovered "super-Earths," making it a "mega-Earth." "We were very surprised when we realized what we had found," says astronomer Xavier Dumusque of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led the data analysis and made ...

The planets of our solar system come in two basic flavors, like vanilla and chocolate ice cream. We have small, rocky terrestrials like Earth and Mars, and large gas giants like Neptune and Jupiter. We're missing the astronomical equivalent of strawberry ice cream - planets between about one and four times the size of Earth. NASA's Kepler mission has discovered that these types of planets are very common around other stars. New research following up on the Kepler discoveries shows that alien worlds, or exoplanets, can be divided into three groups - terrestrials, gas giants, ...

Life in the universe might be even rarer than we thought. Recently, astronomers looking for potentially habitable worlds have targeted red dwarf stars because they are the most common type of star, comprising 80 percent of the stars in the universe. But a new study shows that harsh space weather might strip the atmosphere of any rocky planet orbiting in a red dwarf's habitable zone. "A red-dwarf planet faces an extreme space environment, in addition to other stresses like tidal locking," says Ofer Cohen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Cohen ...

Two worlds orbiting a distant star are about to become a snack of cosmic proportions. Astronomers announced today that the planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c will be swallowed by their star in a short time by astronomical standards. Their ends will come in 130 million and 155 million years, respectively. "As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). She presented her research today in a press conference at a meeting ...

New Haven, CT — The first long-term follow-up results from a phase 1b immunotherapy trial combining drugs for advanced melanoma patients has shown encouraging results — long-lasting with high survival rates — researchers report. First author Mario Sznol, M.D., professor of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Center, is presenting the updated data at the 2014 annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. Sznol, clinical research leader of the melanoma research program at Yale Cancer Center, was the senior author on the original study of ...

The germ Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most stomach ulcers, but new research in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics suggests that treating the bacteria is linked to weight gain. It is estimated that 50% of the global population may be infected with H. pylori; however, only 20% of infected people experience symptoms. New evidence suggests that patients treated for the infection developed significant weight gain compared to subjects with untreated H. pylori colonization. By reviewing data taken from forty-nine studies with data from ten European countries, Japan, ...

Scientists from Cardiff University have found that Britain's urban rivers are the cleanest they've been in over two decades. The 21-year study of over 2300 rivers measured the presence of clean-river invertebrates - a yardstick for river health – which during the days of heavy industry and poor sewage treatment had declined considerably, but now appear to be making a comeback. Although climate change has warmed British rivers by around 1-2 degrees over recent decades, the findings suggest that improved pollution control has managed to offset its damaging effects on ...

Many people with cystic fibrosis develop diabetes. The reasons for this have been largely unknown, but now researchers at Lund University in Sweden and Karolinska institutet have identified a molecular mechanism that contributes to the raised diabetes risk. "The increased risk of diabetes has previously been explained by the fact that cystic fibrosis causes damage to the pancreas, where the blood-sugar regulating hormone insulin is produced. We are the first research group to show that the mutated gene that causes cystic fibrosis also plays an important role in the release ...

Montreal, June 2, 2014 - A new study finds a link between prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) and the development of symptoms of asthma and autism in children. A team of scientists from The Douglas Mental Health University Institute and from McGill University has been studying women who were pregnant during the January 1998 Quebec ice storm since June of that year and observing effects of their stress on their children's development (Project Ice Storm).The team examined the degree to which the mothers' objective degree of hardship from the storm and their subjective degree ...

A fungus that kills an estimated 30 percent of the world's rice crop may finally have met its match, thanks to a research discovery made by scientists at the University of Delaware and the University of California at Davis. The research team, led by Harsh Bais, associate professor of plant and soil sciences in UD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, has identified a naturally occurring microbe living right in the soil around rice plants — Pseudomonas chlororaphis EA105 — that inhibits the devastating fungus known as rice blast. What's more, the beneficial soil ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Obese, Caucasian females over age 50 with diabetes and on dialysis because their kidneys have failed are among those at highest risk for the rare and deadly condition calciphylaxis, according to an analysis of the United States Renal Data System. Calciphylaxis occurs when calcium and phosphorus bind to form a biological cement that blocks and inflames small blood vessels, putting patients at risk for major infection and skin ulcers as well as patches of dying skin, said Dr. Lu Huber, nephrologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. "It's ...

Until now, scientists have not known exactly how inflammation weakens the Blood-Brain Barrier, allowing toxins and other molecules access to the brain. A new research report appearing in the June 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal solves this mystery by showing that a molecule, called "microRNA-155," is responsible for cleaving epithelial cells to create microscopic gaps that let material through. Not only does this discovery help explain the molecular underpinnings of diseases like multiple sclerosis, but it also opens an entirely new avenue for developing therapies that ...

Here's more evidence that pregnant women should be careful about what they eat and drink: A new research report appearing in the June 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal shows that when taken during pregnancy, resveratrol supplements led to developmental abnormalities in the fetal pancreas. This study has direct relevance to human health--Resveratrol is widely used for its recognized health benefits, and is readily available over the counter. "The important message in this study is that women should be very careful about what they consume while pregnant, and they should not ...

CHICAGO – New research on innovative immunotherapies for advanced or high-risk melanoma and cervical cancer were presented today at the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). These treatments – used alone or in combination – fight cancer by activating and amplifying the body's immune response to the disease. The new studies find high activity with investigative drugs for advanced melanoma, and show for the first time that ipilimumab, a treatment already approved for advanced melanoma, can substantially decrease the risk of melanoma ...

Anyone involved in macromolecular crystallography will know that for many years scientists have had to rely on a multi-stage process utilizing protein, usually expressed in engineered cells, which is then extracted and purified before crystallization in vitro and finally prepared for analysis. As a counter to this time-consuming and substantial scientific effort, there are a number of examples of protein crystallization events occurring in vivo, with next to no human input. In a case presented in a recent paper an insect virus exploits the phenomenon as part of its life ...

New research confirms a vulnerability to lung cancer can be inherited and implicates the BRCA2 gene as harboring one of the involved genetic mutations. An international consortium of scientists including investigators at the Institute for Cancer Research in London, the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Harvard, and Dartmouth used integrated results from the 1000 Genomes Project with genetics studies of lung cancer to complete the investigation published on June 1, 2014 in Nature Genetics. The study scanned ...

Hydrogen is often touted as the fuel of the future. But because this gas is highly explosive, it must be stored and transported under pressure in specialized and expensive containers. Hydrogen therefore has issues in terms of safety, logistics, and profitability that could significantly limit its wider use. However, a solution might lie in research by EPFL scientists, who have developed a simple system based on two chemical reactions. The first reaction transforms hydrogen into formic acid, a liquid that is easy to store and less flammable than gasoline, while the second ...

Employees at small businesses are less likely to have access to worksite wellness programs, according to a research review in the May Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM). But smaller companies that can overcome the barriers and implement wellness programs can realize achieve meaningful improvements in employee health, report Kira McCoy, BA, of Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass., and colleagues. They write, "Preventative health initiatives and disease management ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy rapidly improves blood pressure and arterial tone in adults with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Results show that there was a significant reduction in systolic and diastolic blood pressures among sleep apnea patients who were compliant with CPAP therapy for three months. Successful treatment of sleep apnea also was associated with decreased vascular tone and arterial stiffness. Following one week of treatment withdrawal, these improvements disappeared and reverted to baseline values. "We ...