Using ultra-short X-ray flashes, an international team of researchers watched electrons jumping between the fragments of exploding molecules. The study reveals up to what distance a charge transfer between the two molecular fragments can occur, marking the limit of the molecular regime. The technique used can show the dynamics of charge transfer in a wide range of molecular systems, as the scientists around Dr. Benjamin Erk and Dr. Daniel Rolles of DESY and Professor Artem Rudenko of Kansas State University report in the scientific journal Science. Such mechanisms play ...

PITTSBURGH, July 17, 2014 – Cystic fibrosis (CF) could be considered two diseases, one that affects multiple organs including the lungs, and one that doesn't affect the lungs at all, according to a multicenter team led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The research, published online today in PLOS Genetics, showed that nine variants in the gene associated with cystic fibrosis can lead to pancreatitis, sinusitis and male infertility, but leave the lungs unharmed. People with CF inherit from each parent a severely mutated copy of a gene ...

LA JOLLA, CA AND JUPITER, FL—Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and their collaborators have found that ancient enzymes, known for their fundamental role in translating genetic information into proteins, evolved myriad other functions in humans. The surprising discovery highlights an intriguing oddity of protein evolution as well as a potentially valuable new class of therapeutic proteins and therapeutic targets. "These new protein variants represent a previously unrecognized layer of biology—the ...

Perovskite solar cells show tremendous promise in propelling solar power into the marketplace. The cells use a hole-transportation layer, which promotes the efficient movement of electrical current after exposure to sunlight. However, manufacturing the hole-transportation organic materials is very costly and lack long term stability. Publishing in Science, a team of scientists in China, led by Professor Hongwei Han in cooperation with Professor Michael Grätzel at EPFL, have developed a perovskite solar cell that does not use a hole-transporting layer, with 12.8% conversion ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas — Several Kansas State University researchers were essential in helping scientists assemble a draft of a genetic blueprint of bread wheat, also known as common wheat. The food plant is grown on more than 531 million acres around the world and produces nearly 700 million tons of food each year. The International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, which also includes faculty at Kansas State University, recently published a chromosome-based draft sequence of wheat's genetic code, which is called a genome. "A chromosome-based draft sequence of the hexaploid ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas — Ultrafast X-ray laser research led by Kansas State University has provided scientists with a snapshot of a fundamental molecular phenomenon. The finding sheds new light on microscopic electron motion in molecules. Artem Rudenko, assistant professor of physics and a member of the university's James R. Macdonald Laboratory; Daniel Rolles, currently a junior research group leader at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany, who will be joining the university's physics department in January 2015; and an international group of collaborators ...

In a recent study, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder found no evidence that a California ban on using hand-held cellphones while driving decreased the number of traffic accidents in the state in the first six months following the ban. The findings, published in the journal Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, are surprising given prior research that suggests driving while using a cellphone is risky. For example, past laboratory studies have shown that people who talk on a cellphone while using driving simulators are as impaired as people ...

Lawrence Livermore scientists for the first time have experimentally re-created the conditions that exist deep inside giant planets, such as Jupiter, Uranus and many of the planets recently discovered outside our solar system. Researchers can now re-create and accurately measure material properties that control how these planets evolve over time, information essential for understanding how these massive objects form. This study focused on carbon, the fourth most abundant element in the cosmos (after hydrogen, helium and oxygen), which has an important role in many types ...

DALLAS (SMU) – Training principals for new roles is key to U.S. Department of Education school reforms, according to a new report by SMU researchers. But insufficient training and support for principals to meet the new expectations is leading to a leadership crisis. Twenty percent of newly minted principals leave the profession after two years and seasoned professionals are opting for early retirement. Education researchers Lee Alvoid and Watt Lesley Black Jr. examine school districts at the forefront of supporting and training effective principals in their report "The ...

An organism is healthy thanks to a good maintenance system: the normal functioning of organs and environmental exposure cause damage to tissues, which need to be continuously repaired. This process is not yet well understood, but it is known that stem cells in the organs play a key role, and that when repair fails, the organism ages more quickly. Researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have "discovered one of the key genes that make up the maintenance mechanism for tissues" says Miguel Foronda, the first author of the manuscript. The study ...

One of the major road blocks to the design and development of new, more efficient solar cells may have been cleared. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed the first ab initio method – meaning a theoretical model free of adjustable or empirical parameters – for characterizing the properties of "hot carriers" in semiconductors. Hot carriers are electrical charge carriers - electrons and holes – with significantly higher energy than charge carriers at thermal equilibrium. "Hot carrier thermalization is a major source of ...

For decades, the story of spider evolution went like this: As insects became more and more diverse, with some species taking to the skies, spiders evolved new hunting strategies, including the ability to weave orb-shaped webs to trap their prey. From that single origin, the story goes, orb-weaver spiders diverged along different evolutionary paths, leading to today, where several species weave similar – though not identical – webs. It's a good story, but there's just one problem – Harvard scientists now know it's not true. The largest-ever phylogenetic study of ...

Soul singer Betty Everett once proclaimed, "If you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss." But a new study by University of Chicago researchers suggests the difference between love and lust might be in the eyes after all. Specifically, where your date looks at you could indicate whether love or lust is in the cards. The new study found that eye patterns concentrate on a stranger's face if the viewer sees that person as a potential partner in romantic love, but the viewer gazes more at the other person's body if he or she is feeling sexual desire. That automatic ...

Populations of Atlantic salmon have a surprisingly good capacity to adjust to warmer temperatures that are being seen with climate change, a group of scientists at the University of Oslo and University of British Columbia have discovered. The finding about Atlantic species adds to recent UBC-supported research on heat tolerance of Pacific salmon. The new study, a collaboration between Norwegian and Canadian researchers, was recently published in Nature Communications. Funded by the Norwegian Research Council, it addressed questions around how climate change might affect ...

Contrary to conventional wisdom, a growing body of evidence shows that eating lean beef can reduce risk factors for heart disease, according to recent research by nutritional scientists. "This research adds to the significant evidence, including work previously done in our lab, that supports lean beef's role in a heart-healthy diet," said Penny M. Kris-Etherton, Distinguished Professor of Nutrition, Penn State. "This study shows that nutrient-rich lean beef can be included as part of a heart-healthy diet that reduces blood pressure, which can help lower the risk for cardiovascular ...

Colorectal cancer has been linked to carbohydrate-rich western diets, but the underlying mechanisms have been unclear. A study published by Cell Press July 17th in the journal Cell shows that gut microbes metabolize carbohydrates in the diet, causing intestinal cells to proliferate and form tumors in mice that are genetically predisposed to colorectal cancer. Treatment with antibiotics or a low-carbohydrate diet significantly reduced tumors in these mice, suggesting that these easy interventions could prevent a common type of colorectal cancer in humans. "Because hereditary ...

VIDEO: Many patients with advanced stages of cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases die from a condition called cachexia, which is characterized as a "wasting " syndrome that causes extreme thinness with... Click here for more information. Many patients with advanced stages of cancer, AIDS, tuberculosis, and other diseases die from a condition called cachexia, which is characterized as a "wasting" syndrome that causes extreme thinness with muscle weakness. ...

Obese women have a deficit in reward-based learning, but only when food is involved. Importantly, say researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 17, those same women have no trouble at all forming accurate associations when the reward is money instead of food. The findings may lead to new, gender-appropriate ways to tackle the obesity epidemic. "Our study shows that obesity may involve a specific impairment not in the processing of food itself, but rather in how obese individuals—or at least obese women—learn about cues in ...

Scientists have identified a crucial molecular key to healthy embryo implantation and pregnancy in a study that may offer new clues about the medical challenges of infertility/subfertility, abnormal placentation, and placenta previa. Multi-institutional teams led by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report their results in Cell Reports on July 17. The authors found that uterine expression of a gene called Wnt5a – a major signaling molecule in cell growth and movement in both embryo development and disease – is also critical to healthy embryo ...

Researchers have created the first comprehensive library of genetic switches in plants, setting the stage for scientists around the globe to better understand how plants adapt to environmental changes and to design more robust plants for future food security. The collection, which took more than 8 years and $5 million to create, contains about 2,000 clones of plant transcription factors, nature's genetic on/off switches. Manipulating these transcription factors enables scientists to improve plant traits such as cold resistance or seed quantity. The research will be published ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (July 17, 2014) – From fertilized egg to adult, the cells of the human body go through an astronomical number of divisions. During division of any of the body's roughly 30 trillion cells, DNA from the initial cell must be split precisely between the two resulting cells. Critical to successful cell division is the integrity of the centromere—a region of DNA on each chromosome where the cell division machinery attaches to segregate the chromosomes. For the segregation machinery to recognize this region, it must contain many copies of a pivotal protein known ...

VIDEO: One third of cancer patients are killed by a 'fat-burning' process known as cachexia. Click here for more information. Most cancer researchers are working on the biology of the tumour. However, Michele Petruzzelli, a member of Erwin Wagner's group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has been looking for ways to attack the disease indirectly. He focused on the effects of tumours on the rest of the body, and not on the tumour itself. His work on the body's ...

La Jolla, Calif., July 17, 2014 - A new study by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) has identified a new signal that triggers the events leading to insulin resistance in obesity. The signal causes inflammation in adipose tissue and leads to metabolic disease. The study, published July 17 in Cell Metabolism, suggests that blocking this signal may protect against the development of metabolic disease, type 2 diabetes, and other disorders caused by obesity-linked inflammation. "We have uncovered a precise mechanism that explains how ...

VIDEO: Salk scientists have discovered the gene responsible for the aggressive spread of a common lung cancer. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA—Scientists at the Salk Institute have identified a gene responsible for stopping the movement of cancer from the lungs to other parts of the body, indicating a new way to fight one of the world's deadliest cancers. By identifying the cause of this metastasis—which often happens quickly in lung cancer and results in a bleak ...

The mysterious condition once known as "water on the brain" became just a bit less murky this week thanks to a global research group led in part by a Case Western Reserve researcher. Professor Anthony Wynshaw-Boris, MD, PhD, is the co-principal investigator on a study that illustrates how the domino effect of one genetic error can contribute to excessive cerebrospinal fluid surrounding the brains of mice — a disorder known as hydrocephalus. The findings appear online July 17 in the journal Neuron. Cerebrospinal fluid provides a cushion between the organ and the skull, ...