This news release is available in German. Overturning cars, flying missiles, and airplanes speeding across the screen -- on modern computers, 3D objects can be calculated in a flash. However, many surfaces still look unnatural. Whether it is skin, stone or wax -- on the computer screen, all materials look alike, as if the objects had all been cut out of the same kind of opaque material. This is about to change: TU Wien (Vienna), the University of Zaragoza and the video game company Activision-Blizzard have developed a new mathematical method which makes surfaces appear ...

Our view of what makes us happy has changed markedly since 1938. That is the conclusion of the psychologist Sandie McHugh from the Univeristy of Bolton who has recreated a famous study of happiness conducted in Bolton in 1938. She will present her study today, Tuesday 5 May 2015, to the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society in Liverpool. In 1938 Mass Observation placed an advertisement in the the Bolton Evening News asking readers to answer the question 'What is happiness?'. A total of 226 people sent letters in reply, and they were asked to help compile ...

Ribosomes are vital to the function of all living cells. Using the genetic information from RNA, these large molecular complexes build proteins by linking amino acids together in a specific order. Scientists have known for more than half a century that these cellular machines are themselves made up of about 80 different proteins, called ribosomal proteins, along with several RNA molecules and that these components are added in a particular sequence to construct new ribosomes, but no one has known the mechanism that controls that process. Now researchers from Caltech and ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a centimeter-accurate GPS-based positioning system that could revolutionize geolocation on virtual reality headsets, cellphones and other technologies, making global positioning and orientation far more precise than what is currently available on a mobile device. The researchers' new system could allow unmanned aerial vehicles to deliver packages to a specific spot on a consumer's back porch, enable collision avoidance technologies on cars and allow virtual ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (May 5, 2015)-- Acceptance of premarital sex is at an all-time high along with an acceptance of homosexuality, find researchers led by Jean M. Twenge from San Diego State University. The researchers -- also including Ryne Sherman from Florida Atlantic University and Brooke E. Wells from Hunter College -- analyzed data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey of more than 33,000 U.S. adults taken between 1972 and 2012. They found substantial generational shifts in attitudes toward non-marital sex and number of sexual partners. ...

Using proteomics techniques to study injured optic nerves, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have identified previously unrecognized proteins and pathways involved in nerve regeneration. Adding back one of these proteins--the oncogene c-myc--they achieved unprecedented optic nerve regeneration in mice when combined with two other known strategies. The findings were published online April 30 by the journal Neuron. Researchers have been trying for many decades to get injured nerves in the brain and spinal cord to regenerate. Various molecules have been targeted ...

"Imagine a tiny spotlight like those used in theatres but with a light ray measuring only a few nanometres, which shines light on a given spot but leaves everything else in the dark," explains Monica Mazzolini, SISSA research scientist, "That's how the optic fibres we used in our experiment work". Mazzolini, first author of a paper just published in PNAS, literally shut herself in a "darkroom" lit with infrared light only to stimulate rods, the light-sensitive cells of the retina (for night vision), with these extremely focused light beams in vitro. In their study, Mazzolini ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (May 5, 2015) - While it may be a stereotype, it's also true that women seek medical care more frequently than men do. And a recent study shows that women with acute asthma who are treated in the emergency department (ED) are 60 percent more likely than men treated in the ED to need hospitalization. The study, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), looked at the sex differences in patient characteristics, and risk of hospitalizations ...

DALLAS, May 4, 2015 -- More bystanders performing CPR contributed to more cardiac arrest survivors returning to work in a Danish study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. In the largest study to date to examine return to work after cardiac arrest, researchers studied 4,354 patients in Denmark who were employed before they suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests between 2001 to 2011. Researchers found: More than 75 percent of survivors who had a cardiac arrest outside a hospital were capable of returning to work. Chances of returning ...

Many of us take a healthy immune system for granted. But for certain infants with rare, inherited mutations of certain genes, severe infection and death are stark consequences of their impaired immune responses. Now, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have identified an important role for calcium signaling in immune responses to chronic infection resulting from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium causing tuberculosis (TB). Specifically, they determined that the immune systems in genetically altered mice lacking the critically important calcium channel ...

Uninsured people don't have any more difficulty getting appointments with primary care doctors than those with insurance, but they get them at prices that are likely unaffordable to a typical uninsured person, according to new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health-led research. And payment options are not very flexible, with only one in five people told they could be seen without paying the whole cost up front, suggests the new study published in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs. "There's a discouragement factor for uninsured people when it comes ...

A new screening method can detect twice as many women with ovarian cancer as conventional strategies, according to the latest results from the largest trial of its kind led by UCL. The method uses a statistical calculation to interpret changing levels in women's blood of a protein called CA125, which is linked to ovarian cancer. This gives a more accurate prediction of a woman's individual risk of developing cancer, compared to the conventional screening method which uses a fixed 'cut-off' point for CA125. The new method detected cancer in 86% of women with invasive epithelial ...

ATLANTA -- May 4, 2015 -- While black and white men under age 65 diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer received similar treatment, blacks had a 76% higher risk of death than whites, according to a new study. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that the disparity was significantly reduced after accounting for differences in insurance and income. Male breast cancer is a rare disease, accounting for less than 1% of all cancers in men and approximately 2% of all breast cancers in the United States. Black men have a higher incidence of breast ...

Oxidative stress has been long known to fuel disease, but how exactly it damages various organs has been challenging to sort out. Now scientists from Johns Hopkins say research in mice reveals why oxidation comes to be so corrosive to heart muscle. A report on the results, published online May 4 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, shows that oxidation inside the cardiac cells precipitates heart failure by disrupting the work of a heart-shielding protein called PKG, known to act as a natural "brake" against biological stressors like chronically elevated blood pressure, ...

Over the last ten years, public health campaigns in New York City around smoking, obesity, and HIV underwent a dramatic shift to use fear and disgust to spur behavior change, sometimes with the unintended consequence of stigmatizing affected populations. In a new article published in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs, scholars at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health explore the implications of this shift to fear-based campaigns in the present public health environment. Beginning in 2005, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Alzheimer's disease (AD) may affect as many as 5.5 million Americans. Scientists currently are seeking treatments and therapies found in common foods that will help stave off the disease or prevent it completely. Now, University of Missouri researchers have determined that a compound found in green tea, and voluntary exercise, slows the progression of the disease in mice and may reverse its effects. Further study of the commonly found extract could lead to advancements in the treatment and prevention ...

(NEW YORK - May 4) Applying palliative care principles to emergency departments may reduce the number of geriatric patients admitted to intensive care units, possibly extending lives and reducing Medicare costs, according to a three-year analysis by Mount Sinai researchers set to be published in the May edition of Health Affairs, which can be found online. "Data show that more than half of Americans ages 65 and older are seen in the emergency department in the last month of their lives, and that the number and rate of admissions to intensive care units among older adults ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- People with depression or bipolar disorder often feel their thinking ability has gotten "fuzzy", or less sharp than before their symptoms began. Now, researchers have shown in a very large study that effect is indeed real - and rooted in brain activity differences that show up on advanced brain scans. What's more, the results add to the mounting evidence that these conditions both fall on a spectrum of mood disorders, rather than being completely unrelated. That could transform the way doctors and patients think about, diagnose and treat them. In ...

Premature birth can alter the connectivity between key areas of the brain, according to a new study led by King's College London. The findings should help researchers to better understand why premature birth is linked to a greater risk of neurodevelopmental problems, including autistic spectrum disorders and attention deficit disorders. The NIHR-funded study, published in the journal PNAS, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at specific connections in the brains of 66 infants, 47 of whom were born before 33 weeks and were therefore at high risk ...

PITTSBURGH, May 4, 2015 -- A study team led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who used specially developed technologies to "follow the zinc" have uncovered a previously unknown pathway the brain uses to fine-tune neural signaling -- and that may play a role in Alzheimer's and other diseases. Their findings appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists have long observed the presence of bubble-like vesicles that contain the neurotransmitter glutamate and zinc at the synapses, specialized contacts ...

In the mountains of Virginia, millipedes have bright yellow and black colors to warn enemies that they are toxic and not worth eating. Their cousins in California convey this warning in a very different way -- by glowing in the dark. But bioluminescence at least in one millipede may have evolved as a way to survive in a hot, dry environment, not as a means to ward off predators, according to scientists publishing this week (Monday, May 4) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery, based on a millipede that hadn't been seen in 50 years, shows ...

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. - May 4, 2015 - The May issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE), features a meta-analysis pointing to botulinum toxin A as a possible obesity treatment; a study reporting that, in some cases, it may be safe to store endoscopes longer than five days after reprocessing; and an article reviewing a promising group of procedures for patients with advanced illness from gastric obstruction. "Effect of intragastric injection of botulinum toxin A for ...

Scooting around in the shallow, coastal waters of Puget Sound is one of the world's best suction cups. It's called the Northern clingfish, and its small, finger-sized body uses suction forces to hold up to 150 times its own body weight. These fish actually hold on better to rough surfaces than to smooth ones, putting to shame industrial suction devices that give way with the slightest uneven surface. Researchers at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island are studying this quirky little fish to understand how it can summon such massive ...

A recent study reported in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine compared use of the novel Ga-68-PSMA-ligand PET/CT with other imaging methods and found that it had substantially higher detection rates of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) in patients with biochemical recurrence after radical prostatectomy. Discovering a recurrence early can strongly influence further clinical management, so it is especially noteworthy that this hybrid PSMA-ligand identified a large number of positive findings in the clinically important range of low PSA-values ( END ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - As greater atmospheric carbon dioxide boosts sea temperatures, tropical corals face a bleak future. New climate model projections show that conditions are likely to increase the frequency and severity of coral disease outbreaks, reports a team of researchers led by Cornell University scientists, published today (May 4) in Nature Climate Change. Download study, FAQ and photos: https://cornell.box.com/coral-disease Conserving coral reefs is crucial to maintaining the biodiversity of our oceans and sustaining the livelihoods of the 500 million people that ...