Alan Turing, the British mathematician (1912-1954), is famous for a number of breakthroughs, which altered the course of the 20th century. In 1936 he published a paper, which laid the foundation of computer science, providing the first formal concept of a computer algorithm. He next played a pivotal role in the Second World War, designing the machines which cracked the German military codes, enabling the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles. And in the late 1940's he turned his attention to artificial intelligence and proposed a challenge, now called the ...

UPTON, NY-Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a new catalytic system for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) to methanol-a key commodity used to create a wide range of industrial chemicals and fuels. With significantly higher activity than other catalysts now in use, the new system could make it easier to get normally unreactive CO2 to participate in these reactions. "Developing an effective catalyst for synthesizing methanol from CO2 could greatly expand the use of this abundant gas as an economical feedstock," ...

Below a specific transition temperature superconductors transmit electrical current nearly loss-free. For the best of the so-called high-temperature superconductors, this temperature lies around -180 °C – a temperature that can be achieved by cooling with liquid nitrogen. The location of atomic nuclei and binding electrons in a material is determined by its crystal structure. However, electrons additionally have an electromagnetic angular momentum, referred to as spin. When many spins become coupled in a material, electromagnetic disturbances with a preferential orientation ...

MANHATTAN — Kansas State University researchers have completed a 20-year study that looks at the consequences of burning Flint Hills prairie at different times of the year. It finds that burning outside of the current late spring time frame has no measurable negative consequences for the prairie and, in fact, may have multiple benefits. The study was conducted by Gene Towne, research associate and the Konza Prairie Biological Station fire chief, and Joseph Craine, research assistant professor, both in the Division of Biology. They recently published the study, "Ecological ...

TEMPE, Ariz. - The Universe is home to a variety of exotic objects and beautiful phenomena, some of which can generate almost inconceivable amounts of energy. ASU Regents' Professor Sumner Starrfield is part of a team that used the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope satellite to discover very high energy gamma rays (the most energetic form of light) being emitted by an exploding star. The surprising discovery dispels the long-held idea that classical nova explosions are not powerful enough to produce such high-energy radiation. In ...

The resurrected Tropical Depression Genevieve appears squeezed between three other developing areas of low pressure. Satellite data from NOAA and NASA continue to show a lot of tropical activity in the Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans on July 31. NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has been kept busy, providing visible and infrared satellite imagery of the Eastern and Central Pacific Oceans. The project uses data from NOAA's GOES-West and GOES-East satellites to create images and animations. All four systems were captured ...

DENVER (July 31, 2014) – A recently released study by a researcher at the University of Colorado Denver and published in the Journal of Humanistic Counseling explores why people of Latin American descent self-identify using terms like Latina/o, Hispanic, and Chicana/o. Carlos Hipolito-Delgado, an associate professor in the School of Education & Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver, found a difference between preferred ethnic labels and how a person identifies with their cultural heritage and United States values. An expert in ethnic identity development, ...

PITTSBURGH—Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a novel method for creating self-assembled protein/polymer nanostructures that are reminiscent of fibers found in living cells. The work offers a promising new way to fabricate materials for drug delivery and tissue engineering applications. The findings were published in the July 28 issue of Angewandte Chemie International Edition. "We have demonstrated that, by adding flexible linkers to protein molecules, we can form completely new types of aggregates. These aggregates can act as a structural material ...

New research from Northeastern University has mapped the intellectual migration network in North America and Europe over a 2,000-year span. The team of network scientists used the birth and death locations of more than 150,000 intellectuals to map their mobility patterns in order to identify the major cultural centers on the two continents over two millennia. In the new paper, to be published Friday in the journal Science, the researchers found how locations such as Rome, London, and Paris have emerged as cultural hubs as more intellectuals died in these cities than ...

A hidden hazard lurks beneath many of the roughly 156,000 gas stations across the United States. The hazard is corrosion in parts of underground gas storage tanks—corrosion that could result in failures, leaks and contamination of groundwater, a source of drinking water. In recent years, field inspectors in nine states have reported many rapidly corroding gas storage tank components such as sump pumps. These incidents are generally associated with use of gasoline-ethanol blends and the presence of bacteria, Acetobacter aceti, which convert ethanol to acetic acid, a component ...

ANN ARBOR—A new bill introduced in Congress with bipartisan support would allow Medicare to test a concept born from University of Michigan research, which could improve the health of patients with chronic illness while reducing what they spend on the medicines and tests they need most. The bill, introduced last week by U.S. Reps. Diane Black and Earl Blumenauer, grew out of a decade of work by health policy researchers affiliated with the U-M's Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. It would allow Medicare Advantage plans to use innovative "value-based" insurance ...

Parenting skills of adults with ADHD improve when their ADHD is treated with medication, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. At least 25 percent of clinic-referred children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder have a parent with ADHD. "Parents with ADHD are at increased risk to engage in problematic parenting techniques, including inconsistent disciplinary practices, making ineffectual commands and diminished use of praise," said James Waxmonsky, associate professor of psychiatry. "Having a parent with ADHD also decreases the chances that ...

During the winter of 1944, the Nazis blocked food supplies to the western Netherlands, creating a period of widespread famine and devastation. The impact of starvation on expectant mothers produced one of the first known epigenetic "experiments" — changes resulting from external rather than genetic influences — which suggested that the body's physiological responses to hardship could be inherited. The underlying mechanism, however, remained a mystery. In a paper published recently in the journal Cell, Dr. Oded Rechavi, Dr. Leah Houri-Ze'ev and Dr. Sarit Anava of Tel ...

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM Satellite passed over Guam as heavy rain fell over the island while Tropical Storm Halong's center passed just to the north of the island. The TRMM satellite flew above tropical storm Halong on July 31, 2014 at 0904 UTC (August 1, 2014 at 7:04 p.m. local time, Guam). At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland TRMM data was used to create a rainfall analysis. The analysis derived TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data was overlaid on a visible/infrared image from Japan's MTSAT-2 ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – New research shows that more than four billion years ago, the surface of Earth was heavily reprocessed – or mixed, buried and melted – as a result of giant asteroid impacts. A new terrestrial bombardment model based on existing lunar and terrestrial data sheds light on the role asteroid bombardments played in the geological evolution of the uppermost layers of the Hadean Earth (approximately 4 to 4.5 billion years ago). An international team of researchers published their findings in the July 31, 2014 issue of Nature. "When we look at the present day, ...

HOUSTON – (July 31, 2014) – Scientists have long speculated that mosaicism – a biological phenomenon, in which cells within the same person have a different genetic makeup – plays a bigger role in the transmission of rare disease mutations than is currently known. A study conducted by an international team of scientists led by Baylor College of Medicine sheds new light on the frequency of mosaicism in genomic disorders and its influence on recurrence risk. The study, which was published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics, also included scientists from the ...

When goalkeepers are pitted against multiple kickers in tense penalty shootouts, their attempts to dive for the ball show a predictable pattern that kickers would do well to exploit. After kickers repeatedly kick in one direction, goalkeepers become increasingly likely to dive in the opposite direction, according to an analysis of all 361 kicks from the 37 penalty shootouts that occurred in World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup matches over a 36-year period. The findings reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 31 highlight the importance of monitoring and predicting ...

The selective logging of trees in otherwise intact tropical forests can take a serious toll on the number of animal species living there. Mammals and amphibians are particularly sensitive to the effects of high-intensity logging, according to researchers in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 31 who conducted a meta-analysis of almost 50 previously published studies from around the world. "Selective logging in the tropics is not a new phenomenon, and it will continue to be a common use of the forest," says Zuzana Burivalova of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. "We hope ...

The ability to see through organs and even the entire body to visualize long-range connections between cells as well as fine-grained cellular structures has been a long-time dream of biologists. A study published by Cell Press July 31st in the journal Cell has now made that dream a reality, revealing simple methods for making opaque organs, bodies, and human tissue biopsies transparent, while keeping the cellular structures and connections intact. The protocols could pave the way for a better understanding of brain-body interactions, more accurate clinical diagnoses and ...

After a string of penalties aimed in the same direction, goalkeepers are more likely to dive in the opposite direction on the next penalty but kickers fail to exploit this pattern, finds new UCL research. The study, published in Current Biology, shows that penalty shoot-outs in international tournaments resemble a psychological game. The researchers studied penalty shoot-out videos from all World Cup and Euro finals tournaments between 1976 and 2012. They found that each team of kickers produced more or less random sequences of kicks to the left or the right of the ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have evidence suggesting that neurons in the developing brains of mice are guided by a simple but elegant birth order rule that allows them to find and form their proper connections. The study is published online July 31 in Cell Reports. "Nothing about brain wiring is haphazard," said senior author Andrew Huberman, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosciences, Division of Biological Sciences and Department of Ophthalmology, UC San Diego. A mature, healthy brain has billions ...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have mapped the sound-processing part of the mouse brain in a way that keeps both the proverbial forest and the trees in view. Their imaging technique allows zooming in and out on views of brain activity within mice, and it enabled the team to watch brain cells light up as mice "called" to each other. The results, which represent a step toward better understanding how our own brains process language, appear online July 31 the journal Neuron. In the past, researchers often studied sound processing in various animal brains by poking tiny electrodes ...

VIDEO: TRAP-1 is a protein vital for the production of chemical energy in the mitochondria of cells, but it is over-produced in tumor cells. The laboratory of Dr. Dario Altieri at... Click here for more information. While developing a new cancer drug, researchers at The Wistar Institute discovered that mice lacking a specific protein live longer lives with fewer age-related illnesses. The mice, which lack the TRAP-1 protein, demonstrated less age related tissue degeneration, ...

In what is believed to be the largest genetic analysis of what triggers and propels progression of tumor growth in a common childhood blood cancer, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center report that they have identified a possible new drug target for treating the disease. T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia is one of the most common and aggressive childhood blood cancers. An estimated quarter of the 500 adolescents and young adults diagnosed with the cancer each year in the U.S. fail to achieve remission with standard chemotherapy drugs. In a cover-story report ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Harnessing a natural process in the body that pumps lethal doses of copper to fungi and bacteria shows promise as a new way to kill infectious microbes, a team of scientists at Duke University report. Publishing in the July 31, 2014, issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, the researchers describe a way of exploiting the unique chemical response from the body's immune system to attack pathogens using copper, long known for its antimicrobial properties, in a way that minimizes harm to the rest of the body. The findings in cell and animal models represent ...