ANN ARBOR—When we think of ill effects from lead exposure various neurologic problems usually come to mind. Now researchers at the University of Michigan say another health impact can be added to the list: obesity. Even at low levels, lead is associated with obesity in mice whose mothers were exposed to the chemical, researchers at the U-M School of Public Health found. Specifically male mice exposed to lead had an 8-10 percent increase in weight. "The data support the obesogen hypothesis that toxicant exposures in the womb contribute to the higher rate of obesity," ...

Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual's hairstyle as well. The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Vancouver, Aug. 10-14. Miniature statues with a person's likeness are nowadays produced by scanning the individual's face with ...

"When compared to learners expecting a test, learners expecting to teach recalled more material correctly, they organized their recall more effectively and they had better memory for especially important information," said lead author John Nestojko, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology in Arts & Sciences at WUSTL. The study, published recently in the journal Memory & Cognition, is based on a series of reading-and-recall experiments in which one group of students is told they will be tested on a selection of written material, and another group is led to believe ...

MADISON, Wis. — A multi-institutional team has resolved a long-unanswered question about how two of the world's most common substances interact. In a paper published recently in the journal Nature Communications, Manos Mavrikakis, professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his collaborators report fundamental discoveries about how water reacts with metal oxides. The paper opens doors for greater understanding and control of chemical reactions in fields ranging from catalysis to geochemistry and atmospheric chemistry. "These ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have hijacked a defense system normally used by bacteria to fend off viral infections and redirected it against the human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical, head and neck, and other cancers. Using the genome editing tool known as CRISPR, the Duke University researchers were able to selectively destroy two viral genes responsible for the growth and survival of cervical carcinoma cells, causing the cancer cells to self-destruct. The findings, appearing online August 7 in the Journal of Virology, give credence to an approach ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 8, 2014) ­– A multicenter study including University of Kentucky researchers found that a new nerve repair technique yields better results and fewer side effects than other existing techniques. Traumatic nerve injuries are common, and when nerves are severed, they do not heal on their own and must be repaired surgically. Injuries that are not clean-cut – such as saw injuries, farm equipment injuries, and gunshot wounds – may result in a gap in the nerve. To fill these gaps, surgeons have traditionally used two methods: a nerve autograft (bridging ...

The planet's largest and most powerful driver of climate changes from one year to the next, the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean, was widely thought to have been weaker in ancient times because of a different configuration of the Earth's orbit. But scientists analyzing 25-foot piles of ancient shells have found that the El Niños 10,000 years ago were as strong and frequent as the ones we experience today. The results, from the University of Washington and University of Montpellier, question how well computer models can reproduce historical El ...

WEST ORANGE, NJ August 8, 2014. Kessler Foundation researchers published long-term followup results of their MEMREHAB trial, which show that in individuals with MS, patterns of brain activity associated with learning were maintained at 6 months post training. The article, A pilot study examining functional brain activity 6 months after memory retraining in MS: the MEMREHAB trial, was published online ahead of print on June 14 by Brain Imaging and Behavior (doi: 10.1007/s11682-014-9309-9). The article appeared in the Neuroimaging and Rehabilitation Special Issue. The authors ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — We may not be able control the weather outside, but thanks to a new algorithm being developed by Brown University computer scientists, we can control it in photographs. The new program enables users to change a suite of "transient attributes" of outdoor photos — the weather, time of day, season, and other features — with simple, natural language commands. To make a sunny photo rainy, for example, just input a photo and type, "more rain." A picture taken in July can be made to look a bit more January simply by typing "more winter." ...

CHICAGO -- Office workers with more light exposure at the office had longer sleep duration, better sleep quality, more physical activity and better quality of life compared to office workers with less light exposure in the workplace, reports a new study from Northwestern Medicine and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The study highlights the importance of exposure to natural light to employee health and the priority architectural designs of office environments should place on natural daylight exposure for workers, the study authors said. Employees with ...

A new study suggests uric acid may play a role in causing metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors that increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Uric acid is a normal waste product removed from the body by the kidneys and intestines and released in urine and stool. Elevated levels of uric acid are known to cause gout, an accumulation of the acid in the joints. High levels also are associated with the markers of metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by obesity, high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar and high cholesterol. But it has been unclear ...

WASHINGTON -- Learning to play a musical instrument or to sing can help disadvantaged children strengthen their reading and language skills, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention. The findings, which involved hundreds of kids participating in musical training programs in Chicago and Los Angeles public schools, highlight the role learning music can have on the brains of youth in impoverished areas, according to presenter Nina Kraus, PhD, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University. "Research has shown that ...

The air pressure that makes inflatable parade floats, foil balloons and even inflatable buildings easy to deploy and cost effective can be challenging to designers of those same inflatables due to limitations in today's fabrication process, but a new interactive computational tool enables even non-experts to create intricate inflatable structures. Developed by a team from Disney Research Zurich, ETH Zurich and Columbia University, the method reverse-engineers the physics of inflation as the designer sketches the shape of the structure and the placement of seams. As a ...

Tops and yo-yos are among the oldest types of playthings but researchers at Disney Research Zurich and ETH Zurich have given them a new spin with an algorithm that makes it easier to design these toys so that they have asymmetric shapes. The algorithm can take a 3D model of an object and, within less than a minute, calculate how mass can be distributed within the object to enable a stable spin around a desired axis. Sometimes, adding voids within the object is sufficient to provide stability; in other cases, the object's shape might need to be altered a bit or a heavier ...

Sound effects and visual effects have long been standard tools for entertaining audiences, but even as storytellers increasingly turn to haptic feedback to engage the sense of touch in games, theme park rides and movies, they have lacked a common vocabulary to describe or access these "feel effects." Researchers at Disney Research Pittsburgh are beginning to fill that gap. In a study to be presented at the ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, Aug. 8-9, in Vancouver, Canada, Disney researchers worked with human participants and a Carnegie Mellon University psychologist ...

Perhaps no aspect of 3D printing has captured the popular imagination more than personalized figurines with the facial features of real people. Now, researchers at Disney Research Zurich and the University of Zaragoza have developed a method that can incorporate an individual's hairstyle as well. The researchers will present their new method at ACM SIGGRAPH 2014, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Vancouver, Aug. 10-14. Miniature statues with a person's likeness are nowadays produced by scanning the individual's face with ...

For centuries, horse riding was largely restricted to males. The previous situation is in stark contrast to the present day, when nearly 80 percent of riders are women. Modern-day equestrian sports are unique in that men and women compete directly against one another at all levels, from beginners in gymkhanas to national champions in the Olympic Games. "For this reason it is interesting to consider whether a theory of riding that was developed exclusively for men can be applied to women," explains Natascha Ille, the first author of the recent publication. A rider is ...

The immediate aftermath of an oil spill The fate of oil during the first day after an accidental oil spill is still poorly understood, with researchers often arriving on the scene only after several days. New findings from a field experiment carried out in the North Sea provide valuable insight that could help shape the emergency response in the immediate wake of disasters. It is well known that oil and water don't mix. Less well known is the fact that when petroleum is spilt onto a water surface, a fraction of the oil immediately begins to evaporate into the air or ...

(PHILDELPHIA) – MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate protein-coding gene abundance levels by interacting with the 3´ end of various messenger RNAs. Each target site matches the first few nucleotides of the targeting miRNA, the so called "seed" region, and this interaction leads to the degradation of the target or prevents its translation into amino acids. This dogma has led researchers to largely look for perfect base-pair matching of the "seed" region among candidate targets. New research published today (August 8th) in Nature's open access journal Scientific Reports suggests ...

In the developing brain, special proteins that act like molecular tugboats push or pull on growing nerve cells, or neurons, helping them navigate to their assigned places amidst the brain's wiring. How a single protein can exert both a push and a pull force to nudge a neuron in the desired direction is a longstanding mystery that has now been solved by scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborators in Europe and China. Jia-huai Wang, PhD, who led the work at Dana-Farber and Peking University in Beijing, is a corresponding author of a report published ...

After injury, damaged axons have the capacity to regenerate, but the regenerative capacity of the axon, particularly axons of the central nervous system, is quite limited. This is because the damaged axons tend to retract, because they encounter obstacles such as scar tissue and inhibitory molecules, and because their growth rates simply do not match those of a juvenile axon. Prof. Peter W. Baas from Drexel University, USA focus on microtubules as among the most important factors in encouraging injured adult axons to regenerate. Microtubules are hollow polymeric filaments ...

Recent studies have demonstrated that Notch-1 expression is increased in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's disease patients. Huimin Liang and co-workers from Second Affliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, China speculate that Notch-1 signaling may be involved in PC12 cell apoptosis induced by amyloid beta-peptide (25-35) (Aβ25-35). In a study reported on the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 13, 2014), PC12 cells were cultured with different doses (0, 0.1, 1.0, 10 and 100 nmol/L) of N-[N-(3,5-Difuorophen-acetyl)-L-alanyl]-S-phenylglycine t-butyl ester, a Notch-1 ...

Curtin University planetary scientists have shed some light on the bombardment history of our solar system by studying a unique volcanic meteorite recovered in Western Australia. Captured on camera seven years ago falling on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain, the Bunburra Rockhole Meterorite has unique characteristics that suggest it came from a large asteroid that has never before been identified. Associate Professor Fred Jourdan, along with colleagues Professor Phil Bland and Dr Gretchen Benedix from Curtin's Department of Applied Geology, believe the meteorite is ...

Scientists at A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) and the Bioinformatics Institute (BII) have found new clues to early detection and personalised treatment of ovarian cancer, currently one of the most difficult cancers to diagnose early due to the lack of symptoms that are unique to the illness. There are three predominant cancers that affect women – breast, ovarian and womb cancer. Of the three, ovarian cancer is of the greatest concern as it is usually diagnosed only at an advanced stage due to the absence of clear early warning symptoms. Successful treatment ...

WASHINGTON –- Even when not under arrest, juvenile suspects being interrogated for a crime may be strikingly unaware of their constitutional rights and confess without legal counsel or even a parent present, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention. An analysis of 57 videotaped juvenile interrogations at 17 police departments around the country revealed none of the suspects, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, had an attorney present while they were questioned, according to Hayley Cleary, PhD, of Virginia Commonwealth ...