Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have grafted neurons reprogrammed from skin cells into the brains of mice for the first time with long-term stability. Six months after implantation, the neurons had become fully functionally integrated into the brain. This successful, because lastingly stable, implantation of neurons raises hope for future therapies that will replace sick neurons with healthy ones in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, for example. The Luxembourg researchers published their results ...

Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass. In other experiments, they extracted useful audio signals from videos of aluminum foil, the surface of a glass of water, and even the leaves of a potted plant. The researchers will present their findings in a paper at this year's Siggraph, ...

This news release is available in German. In a paper published this week in the journal Nature Chemistry, researchers from the Center for Electrochemical Sciences – CES at the Ruhr-University Bochum and from the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr report a novel concept to work with efficient and possibly cheaper catalysts. A kind of buffer protects the catalysts against the hostile conditions encountered in fuel cells, which have been to date dismissed utilization. The scientists report in the current issue of Nature Chemistry. Hydrogenases, ...

This news release is available in German. This was determined using Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) at BESSY II. A thorough examination with an electron microscope (TEM) confirmed their result. "The research on this phenomenon is now proceeding because we are convinced that such nanoclusters lend themselves as catalysts, whether in fuel cells, in photocatalytic water splitting, or for other important reactions in chemical engineering", explains Dr. Armin Hoell of HZB. The results have just appeared in two peer reviewed international academic journals. "What ...

A recent study in Manchester has found that a procedure to take tissue samples from lung cancer patients can be used safely in the elderly – allowing doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis and to choose appropriate treatment. Half of all lung cancer patients are over 70 years old when first diagnosed, but studies have shown that these older patients are less likely to receive an accurate diagnosis. A correct assessment of the stage of a patient's disease – how much their tumour has grown and spread – is key to ensuring they receive the right treatment. Non-invasive ...

Twist, Snail, Slug. They may sound like words in a children's nursery rhyme, but they are actually the exotic names given to proteins that can generate cells with stem cell-like properties that have the ability to form diverse types of tissue. One protein with the even more out-there name of ZEB1 (zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1), is now thought to keep breast cancer cells from being successfully treated with radiation therapy, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Li Ma, Ph.D., an assistant professor of experimental ...

Research led by the University of Adelaide has resulted in new insights into clinical depression that demonstrate there cannot be a "one-size-fits-all" approach to treating the disease. As part of their findings, the researchers have developed a new model for clinical depression that takes into account the dynamic role of the immune system. This neuroimmune interaction results in different phases of depression, and has implications for current treatment practices. "Depression is much more complex than we have previously understood," says senior author Professor Bernhard ...

LA JOLLA—For hundreds of years, healers in São Tomé e Príncipe—an island off the western coast of Africa—have prescribed cata-manginga leaves and bark to their patients. These pickings from the Voacanga africana tree are said to decrease inflammation and ease the symptoms of mental disorders. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered that the power of the plant isn't just folklore: a compound isolated from Voacanga africana protects cells from altered molecular pathways linked to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and the neurodegeneration ...

Previous studies show that violent video games increase adolescent aggressiveness, but new Dartmouth research finds for the first time that teen-agers who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games are more likely subsequently to engage in a wide range of deviant behaviors beyond aggression, including alcohol use, smoking cigarettes, delinquency and risky sex. More generally, such games – especially character-based games with anti-social protagonists – appear to affect how adolescents think of themselves, with potential consequences for their alter ego in the real ...

Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño, who in the 1980s endured harsh global media attention when she was subjected to unscientific gender tests, is co-author of a study that takes stock of current sexual verification policies in athletics. While such policies were originally designed to weed out men who impersonate women at female-only events, issues of privacy and confidentiality remain paramount to safeguard athletes from unnecessary embarrassment, says Nathan Ha of the University of California Los Angeles in the US, lead author of the review in Springer's journal ...

A new e-memo for the boss: Online breaks at work can refresh workers and boost productivity. Early findings from a University of Cincinnati study will be presented on Aug. 5, at the 74th annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Philadelphia. The study led by Sung Doo Kim, a doctoral candidate in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, opens a rare avenue of research into coping with technology-induced distractions in our contemporary society. Previous research has focused on breaks during off-job hours such as evening, weekend and vacation periods, or on traditional ...

A new study reveals surprising similarities between the way mammals and flies eat. What and how we eat is a crucial determinant of health and wellbeing. Model organisms such as fruit flies have provided crucial insights into how our brain decides what and how much to eat. But until now it was not clear how similar eating was in fruit flies and mammals (vertebrates). In a paper published today (Itskov et. al 2014) in the scientific journal Nature Communications, scientists from the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Lisbon, Portugal, in collaboration with the University ...

UPTON, NY-Using a new method to track the electrochemical reactions in a common electric vehicle battery material under operating conditions, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have revealed new insight into why fast charging inhibits this material's performance. The study also provides the first direct experimental evidence to support a particular model of the electrochemical reaction. The results, published August 4, 2014, in Nature Communications, could provide guidance to inform battery makers' efforts to optimize materials ...

PHILADELPHIA — Consumption of a type of starch that acts like fiber may help reduce colorectal cancer risk associated with a high red meat diet, according to a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Red meat and resistant starch have opposite effects on the colorectal cancer-promoting miRNAs, the miR-17-92 cluster," said Karen J. Humphreys, PhD, a research associate at the Flinders Center for Innovation in Cancer at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. "This finding supports consumption of resistant ...

A new study suggests video game-playing for less than an hour a day is linked with better-adjusted children and teenagers. The research, carried out by Oxford University, found that young people who indulged in a little video game-playing were associated with being better adjusted than those who had never played or those who were on video games for three hours or more. The study finds no positive or negative effects for young people who played 'moderately' between one to three hours a day. However, the study, published in the journal, Pediatrics, suggests that the influence ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—It's a given that, in numbers terms, the 20th Century was the most violent in history, with civil war, purges and two World Wars killing as many as 200 million people. But on a per-capita basis, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler has documented a particularly bloody period more than eight centuries ago on what is now American soil. Between 1140 and 1180, in the central Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado, four relatively peaceful centuries of pueblo living devolved into several decades of violence. Writing in the journal American Antiquity, ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 4, 2014 – Australia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. A University of Utah researcher found such man-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists. "We have uncovered a framework that allows us to predict when human subsistence practices might be detrimental to the environment and when they might be beneficial," says Brian Codding, an assistant professor of anthropology. "When ...

Cancer Research UK scientists have found a new use for an old drug by showing that it shrinks a particular type of pancreatic cancer tumour and stops it spreading, according to research published in Gut*. "It's a crucial step forward in developing new treatments for this devastating disease..." - Dr Jennifer Morton, study author The scientists, at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and the University of Glasgow, treated mice with pancreatic cancers caused by known genetic faults with the drug rapamycin**. Previous clinical trials did not find this drug to be ...

Demand for general practice appointments is rising rapidly, and in an attempt to deal with this, many practices have introduced systems of telephone triage. Patients are phoned by a doctor or nurse who either manages the problem on the phone, or agrees with the patient whether and how urgently they need to be seen. A new large study, published in The Lancet on 4 August 2014 and funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), has investigated the potential value of telephone triage for patients and for the NHS. It concluded that patients who receive a telephone ...

Although mutations in a gene dubbed "the guardian of the genome" are widely recognized as being associated with more aggressive forms of cancer, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found evidence suggesting that the deleterious health effects of the mutated gene may in large part be due to other genetic abnormalities, at least in squamous cell head and neck cancers. The study, published online August 3 in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations ...

New research has found rapid warming of the Atlantic Ocean, likely caused by global warming, has turbocharged Pacific Equatorial trade winds. Currently the winds are at a level never before seen on observed records, which extend back to the 1860s. The increase in these winds has caused eastern tropical Pacific cooling, amplified the Californian drought, accelerated sea level rise three times faster than the global average in the Western Pacific and has slowed the rise of global average surface temperatures since 2001. It may even be responsible for making El Nino events ...

Neurons are the cells of our brain, spinal cord, and overall nervous system. They form complex networks to communicate with each other through electrical signals that are carried by chemicals. These chemicals bind to structures on the surface of neurons that are called neuroreceptors, opening or closing electrical pathways that allow transmission of the signal from neuron to neuron. One neuroreceptor, called 5HT3-R, is involved in conditions like chemotherapy-induced nausea, anxiety, and various neurological disorders such as schizophrenia. Despite its clinical importance, ...

Issues of crime and punishment, vengeance and justice date back to the dawn of human history, but it is only in the last few years that scientists have begun exploring the basic nature of the complex neural processes in the brain that underlie these fundamental behaviors. Now a new brain imaging study – published online Aug. 3 by the journal Nature Neuroscience – has identified the brain mechanisms that underlie our judgment of how severely a person who has harmed another should be punished. Specifically, the study determined how the area of the brain that determines ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The tiny addition of a chemical mark atop a gene that is well known for its involvement in clinical depression and posttraumatic stress disorder can affect the way a person's brain responds to threats, according to a new study by Duke University researchers. The results, which appear online August 3 in Nature Neuroscience, go beyond genetics to help explain why some individuals may be more vulnerable than others to stress and stress-related psychiatric disorders. The study focused on the serotonin transporter, a molecule that regulates the amount of ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Every once in a while, we are forced to sort that stack of papers on the kitchen counter. Interspersed between the expired coupons and dozens of takeout menus are important documents like your car insurance or electric bill. So it isn't an option to simply drop it all in the trash at once – you need to read through the messages to be sure that you don't lose vital information. In the cell, proteins similarly read through messages to distinguish what needs to be saved and what needs to be discarded. But, here, the process takes on a much more ...