DURHAM, N.C. -- Engineers and neuroscientists at Duke University have developed a method to measure the response of an individual neuron to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the brain. The advance will help researchers understand the underlying physiological effects of TMS -- a procedure used to treat psychiatric disorders -- and optimize its use as a therapeutic treatment. TMS uses magnetic fields created by electric currents running through a wire coil to induce neural activity in the brain. With the flip of a switch, researchers can cause a hand to move or ...

WASHINGTON — For a rare form of cancer called thymoma, researchers have discovered a single gene defining the difference between a fast-growing tumor requiring aggressive treatment and a slow-growing tumor that doesn't require extensive therapy. Thymoma is a cancer derived from the epithelial cells of the thymus, an organ critical to the lymphatic system where T-cells, or so-called "killer cells," mature. Very little is known about the role of the gene mutation GTF2l in human tumors, but scientists from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the National Cancer ...

The impact of the greenhouse gas CO2 on the Earth's temperature is well established by climate models and temperature records over the past 100 years, as well as coupled records of carbon dioxide concentration and temperature throughout Earth history. However, past temperature records have suggested that warming is largely confined to mid-to-high latitudes, especially the poles, whereas tropical temperatures appear to be relatively stable: the tropical thermostat model. The new results, published today in Nature Geoscience, contradict those previous studies and indicate ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (June 29, 2014) – A novel metamaterial enables a fast, efficient and high-fidelity terahertz radiation imaging system capable of manipulating the stubborn electromagnetic waves, advancing a technology with potential applications in medical and security imaging, a team led by Boston College researchers reports in the online edition of the journal Nature Photonics. The team reports it developed a "multiplex" tunable spatial light modulator (SLM) that uses a series of filter-like "masks" to retrieve multiple samples of a terahertz (THz) scene, which are ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a widely distributed group of marine bacteria that produce compounds nearly identical to toxic man-made fire retardants. Among the chemicals produced by the ocean-dwelling microbes, which have been found in habitats as diverse as sea grasses, marine sediments and corals, is a potent endocrine disruptor that mimics the human body's most active thyroid hormone. The study is published in the June 29 online issue of Nature Chemical Biology. "We find it very surprising and a tad alarming ...

Researchers have developed a new supercooling technique to increase the amount of time human organs could remain viable outside the body. This study was conducted in rats, and if it succeeds in humans, it would enable a world-wide allocation of donor organs, saving more lives. The research is supported by National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK), both parts of the National Institutes of Health. The first human whole organ transplant 60 years ago—a living kidney ...

A system developed by investigators at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Engineering in Medicine allowed successful transplantation of rat livers after preservation for as long as four days, more than tripling the length of time organs currently can be preserved. The team describes their protocol – which combines below-freezing temperatures with the use of two protective solutions and machine perfusion of the organ – in a Nature Medicine paper receiving advance online publication. "To our knowledge, this is the longest preservation time with subsequent ...

Researchers have developed new methods to trace the life history of individual cells back to their origins in the fertilised egg. By looking at the copy of the human genome present in healthy cells, they were able to build a picture of each cell's development from the early embryo on its journey to become part of an adult organ. During the life of an individual, all cells in the body develop mutations, known as somatic mutations, which are not inherited from parents or passed on to offspring. These somatic mutations carry a coded record of the lifetime experiences of ...

An international team of scientists studying Emperor penguin populations across Antarctica finds the iconic animals in danger of dramatic declines by the end of the century due to climate change. Their study, published today in Nature Climate Change, finds the Emperor penguin "fully deserving of endangered status due to climate change." The Emperor penguin is currently under consideration for inclusion under the US Endangered Species Act. Criteria to classify species by their extinction risk are based on the global population dynamics. The study was conducted by lead ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Optogenetics, a technology that allows scientists to control brain activity by shining light on neurons, relies on light-sensitive proteins that can suppress or stimulate electrical signals within cells. This technique requires a light source to be implanted in the brain, where it can reach the cells to be controlled. MIT engineers have now developed the first light-sensitive molecule that enables neurons to be silenced noninvasively, using a light source outside the skull. This makes it possible to do long-term studies without an implanted light source. ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — For his doctoral dissertation in the Goldman Superconductivity Research Group at the University of Minnesota, Yu Chen, now a postdoctoral researcher at UC Santa Barbara, developed a novel way to fabricate superconducting nanocircuitry. However, the extremely small zinc nanowires he designed did some unexpected — and sort of funky — things. Chen, along with his thesis adviser, Allen M. Goldman, and theoretical physicist Alex Kamenev, both of the University of Minnesota, spent years seeking an explanation for these extremely puzzling effects. ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have devised a new method for enriching a group of the world's most expensive chemical commodities, stable isotopes, which are vital to medical imaging and nuclear power, as reported this week in the journal Nature Physics. For many isotopes, the new method is cheaper than existing methods. For others, it is more environmentally friendly. A less expensive, domestic source of stable isotopes could ensure continuation of current applications while opening up opportunities for new medical therapies and fundamental ...

The new combination agent TAS-102 is able to improve overall survival compared to placebo in patients whose metastatic colorectal cancer is refractory to standard therapies, researchers said at the ESMO 16th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona. "Around 50% of patients with colorectal cancer develop metastases but eventually many of them do not respond to standard therapies," said Takayuki Yoshino of the National Cancer Centre Hospital East in Chiba, Japan, lead author of the phase III RECOURSE trial. "The RECOURSE study shows that TAS-102 improves overall ...

For patients with KRAS wild-type untreated colorectal cancer, adding cetuximab or bevacizumab to combination chemotherapy offers equivalent survival, researchers said at the ESMO 16th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona. "The CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial was designed and formulated in 2005, and the rationale was simple: we had new drugs --bevacizumab and cetuximab-- and the study was designed to determine if one was better than the other in first-line for patients with colon cancer," said lead study author Alan P. Venook, distinguished Professor of Medical ...

HIV and its transmission has long been associated with injecting drug use, where hypodermic syringes are used to administer illicit drugs. Now, a newly reported study by researchers affiliated with New York University's Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR) in the journal PLOS ONE, shows that HIV infection among heterosexual non-injecting drug users (no hypodermic syringe is used; drugs are taken orally or nasally) in New York City (NYC) has now surpassed HIV infection among persons who inject drugs. The study, "HSV-2 Co-Infection as a Driver of HIV Transmission ...

Without a steady supply of blood, neurons can't work. That's why one of the culprits behind Alzheimer's disease is believed to be the persistent blood clots that often form in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, contributing to the condition's hallmark memory loss, confusion and cognitive decline. New experiments in Sidney Strickland's Laboratory of Neurobiology and Genetics at Rockefeller University have identified a compound that might halt the progression of Alzheimer's by interfering with the role amyloid-β, a small protein that forms plaques in Alzheimer's brains, ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — New evidence suggests heinous behavior played out in a virtual environment can lead to players' increased sensitivity toward the moral codes they violated. That is the surprising finding of a study led by Matthew Grizzard, PhD, assistant professor in the University at Buffalo Department of Communication, and co-authored by researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Texas, Austin. "Rather than leading players to become less moral," Grizzard says, "this research suggests that violent video-game play may actually lead to increased moral ...

Climate scientists have long tried to explain why ice-age cycles became longer and more intense some 900,000 years ago, switching from 41,000-year cycles to 100,000-year cycles. In a paper published this week in the journal Science, researchers report that the deep ocean currents that move heat around the globe stalled or may have stopped at that time, possibly due to expanding ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere. "The research is a breakthrough in understanding a major change in the rhythm of Earth's climate, and shows that the ocean played a central role," says ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers with Oregon Health & Science University's Vollum Institute have given science a new and unprecedented 3-D view of one of the most important receptors in the brain — a receptor that allows us to learn and remember, and whose dysfunction is involved in a wide range of neurological diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia and depression. The unprecedented view provided by the OHSU research, published online June 22 in the journal Nature, gives scientists new insight into how the receptor — called the NMDA receptor ...

The politically expedient way to mitigate climate change is essentially no way at all, according to a comprehensive new study by University of Chicago climatologist Raymond Pierrehumbert. Among the climate pollutants humans put into the atmosphere in significant quantities, the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the longest-lived, with effects on climate that extend thousands of years after emissions cease. But finding the political consensus to act on reducing CO2 emissions has been nearly impossible. So there has been a movement to make up for that inaction by reducing ...

New research raises the prospect that some cancer patients with aggressive tumors may benefit from a class of anti-inflammatory drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Studying triple-negative breast cancer, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that some aggressive tumors rely on an antiviral pathway that appears to drive inflammation, widely recognized for roles in cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases. The tumors that activate this particular antiviral pathway always have dysfunctional forms of the proteins ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You wouldn't think that mechanical force — the simple kind used to eject unruly patrons from bars, shoe a horse or emboss the raised numerals on credit cards — could process nanoparticles more subtly than the most advanced chemistry. Yet, in a current paper in Nature Communications, Sandia National Laboratories researcher Hongyou Fan and colleagues appear to have achieved a start toward that end. Their newly patented and original method uses simple pressure — a kind of high-tech embossing — to produce finer and cleaner results in forming silver ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Scientists in the United States and India have successfully modified the precursor to one of the drugs used to treat tuberculosis, an important first step toward new drugs that can transcend antibiotic resistance issues that experts consider a serious threat to global health. The findings, reported in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, indicate that a new compound, 24-desmethylrifampicin, has much better antibacterial activity than rifampicin against multi-drug-resistant strains of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. Rifampicin and related drugs ...

AUDIO: Twitter has become one of the most popular social media sites among young people, and researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been looking at Twitter.... Click here for more information. Hundreds of thousands of American youth are following marijuana-related Twitter accounts and getting pro-pot messages several times each day, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. The tweets are cause for ...

A small, drab and highly inconspicuous moth has been flitting nameless about its special niche among the middle elevations of one of the world's oldest mountain ranges, the southern Appalachian Mountains in North America. A team of American scientists has now identified this new to science species as Cherokeea attakullakulla and described it in a special issue of the open access journal ZooKeys. In all probability, it has been frequenting these haunts for tens of millions of years before the first humans set foot on this continent, all the while not caring in the least ...