WASHINGTON D.C., November 18, 2014 -- A research team from Germany developed an analytical model to describe the structural dynamics of photoexcited thin films and verified it by ultrafast X-ray diffraction. Lattice dynamics, atomic movements in a crystal structure, can influence the physical and chemical properties of a material. The phenomenon can be directly studied using ultrafast X-ray diffraction, in which femtosecond X-ray pulses take snapshots of the atomic positions in a crystal by interacting with the structure at the core electronic level. However, no comprehensive ...

An investigational treatment for Marfan syndrome is as effective as the standard therapy at slowing enlargement of the aorta, the large artery of the heart that delivers blood to the body, new research shows. The findings indicate a second treatment option for Marfan patients, who are at high risk of sudden death from tears in the aorta. The results are being presented Nov. 18 at the American Heart Association's annual meeting in Chicago and will appear online the same day in the New England Journal of Medicine. "For years, standard medical therapy for Marfan syndrome ...

Each cell contains thousands of proteins, each one of which bears a unique signature. All proteins, distinct in shape and function, are built from the same amino acid strings. Many proteins are vital, as evidenced by the plethora of diseases linked to their absence or malfunction. But how exactly did proteins first come to be? Do they all share a single common ancestor? Or did proteins evolve from many different origins? Forming a global picture of the protein universe is crucial to addressing these and other important questions, but it's nearly impossible to do. Such ...

URBANA, Ill. - Most Americans don't get the daily recommended amount of fiber in their diet, though research has shown that dietary fiber can cause a shift in the gut toward beneficial bacteria, reducing the risk of colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases. A new study from the University of Illinois shows that two specific functional fibers may also have the potential to assist in weight loss when made part of a long-term, daily diet. Kelly Swanson, a U of I professor of nutrition, and his team had previously been able to see a "snapshot" of what bacteria were ...

When NASA's Terra satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean, the MODIS instrument aboard captured a picture of Tropical Cyclone Adjali that showed it developed a "tail," which is actually band of thunderstorms extending south of the center. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite took a visible picture of Tropical Storm Adjali on Nov. 18 at 05:35 UTC (12:35 a.m. EST). The MODIS image showed a concentration of strong storms around the center of Adjali's circulation and a band of thunderstorms ...

A peek inside the brains of professional musicians has given University of Texas at Arlington psychology researchers what may be the first links between music expertise and advantages in long-term memory. Heekyeong Park, assistant professor of psychology, and graduate student James Schaeffer used electroencephalography (EEG) technology to measure electrical activity of neurons in the brains of 14 musicians and 15 non-musicians and noted processing differences in the frontal and parietal lobe responses. The team will present initial results of their new research Tuesday ...

Motor vehicle crashes are the most common cause of unintentional life lost around the world, with about 30,000 deaths occurring annually in the U.S. due to motor-vehicle crashes. A study by a doctoral student in epidemiology at the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis showed that vehicle inequities have a significant impact on survivability in head-on collisions. Uzay Kirbiyik conducted a study of risk factors associated with drivers' survival in head-on vehicle collisions by examining ...

Chicago, November 18, 2014--The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has released an issue brief containing results of a survey about Hispanics' experiences with long-term care in the United States. The issue brief provides new data on how Hispanics age 40 and older are, or are not, planning for long-term care, details how their experiences compare to those of non-Hispanics, and highlights ways in which demographic differences among Hispanics affect their experiences. The study also addresses how Hispanics' familial relationships are impacted by providing ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, November 18, 2014 -- The next time you berate yourself for wasting an evening playing Farmville on Facebook, think again. If you were playing with Mom, Dad or Aunt Carmen, you were actually helping to strengthen family bonds. New research from Concordia University, published in Information, Communication and Society, shows that, beyond being a fun distraction, social network games (SNGs) can offer family members a meaningful way to interact and meet social obligations. "Maintaining those connections is especially ...

URBANA, Ill. - If an in-the-flesh Extension specialist isn't available to provide training, is a video of the specialist's presentation or a video of a new agricultural practice a good substitute? The answer, according to a University of Illinois study with farmers in rural Uganda, isn't simple, particularly when gender is factored into the equation. "The literature in the field says communication materials like videos work best to support face-to-face communication," said U of I agricultural communications professor Lulu Rodriguez. "But if you don't have an Extension ...

CHICAGO - An important new study of men who have undergone testosterone replacement therapy has found that taking supplemental testosterone does not increase their risk of experiencing a major adverse cardiac event, such as a heart attack or stroke. Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Murray, Utah, which is the flagship facility for the Intermountain Healthcare system, studied 5,695 men between the ages of 53 and 71. The men, all patients at Intermountain Healthcare hospitals, had initial low testosterone levels. Researchers found that ...

WASHINGTON, DC - November 18, 2014 - Certain subtypes of avian influenza viruses have the potential to cause more severe disease in humans than other avian influenza subtypes and should be monitored carefully to prevent spread of disease, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The work, directed by researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md., found that flu viruses expressing the low pathogenicity avian H1, H6, H7, H10 or H15 hemagglutinins ...

(WASHINGTON, November 18, 2014) - New evidence suggests that therapeutic plasma exchange and appropriate blood testing could help patients who are in urgent need of heart surgery, but have a history of an adverse reaction to the blood thinner heparin, according to a study, published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Many patients who take blood thinners will eventually require some form of heart surgery, which requires the administration of large quantities of heparin to prevent clots. Some patients who have taken heparin ...

Mycoplasma gallisepticum causes chronic respiratory disease in birds. The illness particularly affects domestic chicken and turkey flocks. The bacteria are especially life-threatening for the animals when they occur in combination with other infections. In order to control the spread of the disease, poultry farms in the EU must be proven free from Mycoplasma gallisepticum or face being closed. Mycoplasma gallisepticum is related to the human pathogen Mycoplasma pneumoniae, the causative agent of human bronchitis and pneumonia. Mycoplasmas are among the world's smallest ...

New research by a team of European physicists could explain why the universe did not collapse immediately after the Big Bang. Studies of the Higgs particle - discovered at CERN in 2012 and responsible for giving mass to all particles - have suggested that the production of Higgs particles during the accelerating expansion of the very early universe (inflation) should have led to instability and collapse. Scientists have been trying to find out why this didn't happen, leading to theories that there must be some new physics that will help explain the origins of the universe ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Nov. 18, 2014 - Although every person's DNA remains the same throughout their lives, scientists know that it functions differently at different ages. As people age, drastic changes occur in their DNA methylation patterns, which are thought to act as a "second code" on top of the DNA that can lock genes in the on or off position. However, what the consequences of these changes are remains a mystery. To begin deciphering this process, scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center studied methylation patterns in the blood cells of 1,264 persons ...

This news release is available in German. Are the fundamental constants really constant? Recent investigations carried out at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have shown that one essential fundamental constant - namely the mass ratio of protons to electrons - can have changed only by a maximum of one part in a million over the age of our solar system (i.e. extrapolated over approx. 5 billion years). Previously, scientists deemed the possible changes to be twice as high. To obtain this result, physicists from PTB compared caesium and ytterbium atomic ...

Spices and herbs are rich in antioxidants, which may help improve triglyceride concentrations and other blood lipids, according to Penn State nutritionists. Triglyceride levels rise after eating a high-fat meal -- which can lead to an increased risk of heart disease. If a high-antioxidant spice blend is incorporated into the meal, triglyceride levels may be reduced by as much as 30 percent when compared to eating an identical meal without the spice blend. The spiced meal included garlic powder, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon, cloves, paprika, turmeric, ginger and black pepper. Sheila ...

Scientists have discovered how a gene mutation can lead to diseases that occur when the immune system attacks the body by mistake. Understanding how these mechanisms work could help scientists to develop new treatments for autoimmune diseases such as Lupus and neurodegenerative conditions including Motor Neurone Disease. Researchers found that a mutation in the gene - called ADAR1 - causes a defect in an alarm system in our cells that normally protects the body from viruses and other infections. This means that the alarm system is tripped by the cell's own molecules, ...

A new method for examining the Ebola virus genome could make surveillance quicker and cheaper for West African nations, and help detect new forms of the virus. The detailed procedure is being shared with the research community along with the study paper, which is freely available in the open access journal Genome Biology. With over 13,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths in eight affected countries, the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest to date, the first to spread to densely populated urban areas, and represents the first time the virus has been diagnosed ...

Celiac disease patients suffer from gluten intolerance and must adjust to a life without gluten from food sources like wheat, rye and barley. There is no treatment of the disease except lifelong gluten-free diet, but now a Danish/Norwegian research team publishes new research, that may lead to the development of a drug against the disease. Gluten intolerance is often caused by celiac disease, which makes the human organism sensitive to gluten proteins from certain cereals. No known drug can cure the disease or make the patient able to eat gluten again, and therefore the ...

A new study has shown for the first time how people can be trained to "see" letters of the alphabet as colours in a way that simulates how those with synaesthesia experience their world. The University of Sussex research, published today (18 November 2014) in Scientific Reports, also found that the training might potentially boost IQ. Synaesthesia is a fascinating though little-understood neurological condition in which some people (estimated at around 1 in 23) experience an overlap in their senses. They "see" letters as specific colours, or can "taste" words, or ...

Researchers at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and doctors at University Hospital of Bellvitge, together with a team of researchers from the University of California, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, California Pacific Medical Center, University of Pittsburgh, University Emory and Stanford University (USA) and the Children's Hospital of Mexico Federico Gomez, have developed a genetic test that identifies patients at high risk of kidney transplant rejection. From a peripheral blood sample and test development easier, you can tell noninvasively and before ...

For years physicists have been looking for the universe's elusive dark matter, but so far no one has seen any trace of it. Maybe we are looking in the wrong place? Now physicists from University of Southern Denmark propose a new technique to detect dark matter. The universe consists of atoms and particles - and a whole lot more that still needs to be detected. We can only speculate about the existence of this unknown matter and energy. "We know that app. 5 pct. of the universe consists of the known matter we are all made of. The rest is unknown. This unknown matter ...

In 1966, it was Roger Penrose who won the prestigious Adams Prize for his essay "An analysis of the structure of space-time." The Adams Prize - named after the British mathematician John Couch Adams - is awarded each year by the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge to a young, UK-based mathematician. At the same time, Steven Hawking won an auxiliary to the Adams Prize for an essay entitled Singularities and the Geometry of Spacetime, shortly after completing his PhD. A copy of the original Hawking submission has now been reproduced in EPJ H. That year, ...