Imagine a technology that could allow us to see through opaque surfaces without exposure to harmful x-rays, that could give us the ability to detect harmful chemicals and bio-agents from a safe distance, and that could enable us to peer so deeply into space that scientists could better understand the formation of the universe. All of these scenarios are possible with terahertz radiation, electromagnetic waves with lengths that fall between microwaves and infrared light. However, the potential of terahertz waves has yet to be reached because they are difficult to generate ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The national survival rates for African-Americans diagnosed with head and neck cancer have not improved in the last 40 years despite advances in the treatment and management of the disease, University of Missouri School of Medicine researchers have found in a new study. More than 52,000 men and women in the United States currently are living with head and neck cancer. Using data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and Ends Results (SEER) program, MU researchers under the guidance of Mosharraf Hossain, M.D., assistant professor ...

Scientists have routinely used mice to replicate aspects of human breast cancer in an effort to find a cure to the most common type of cancer among women. But how effective are these preclinical models in actually mimicking the disease and giving scientists the ability to develop real comparisons? Eran Andrechek, a physiology professor in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University, has discovered that many of the various models used in breast cancer research can replicate several characteristics of the human disease, especially at the gene level. The ...

A route for constructing protein nanomachines engineered for specific applications may be closer to reality. Biological systems produce an incredible array of self-assembling, functional protein tools. Some examples of these nanoscale protein materials are scaffolds to anchor cellular activities, molecular motors to drive physiological events, and capsules for delivering viruses into host cells. Scientists inspired by these sophisticated molecular machines want to build their own, with forms and functions customized to tackle modern-day challenges. The ability to ...

African-Americans such as Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, and of course President Barack Obama have reached the pinnacle of success in historically white domains. But a new study finds there is a downside to African-American success stories: these positive examples prompt white Americans to think less successful African-Americans simply need to apply more effort to achieve their own success. The findings are reported in the paper, "If He Can Do It, So Can They: Exposure to Counterstereotypically Successful Exemplars Prompts Automatic ...

A recent study demonstrates the existence of significant resonance cycles and high correlations between solar activity and the Earth's averaged surface temperature during centuries. This provides a new clue to reveal the phenomenon of global warming in recent years. Their work, entitled "Periodicities of solar activity and the surface temperature variation of the Earth and their correlations" was published in CHINESE SCIENCE BULLETIN (In Chinese) 2014 No.14 with the co-corresponding authors of Dr. Zhao Xinhua and Dr. Feng Xueshang from State key laboratory of space weather, ...

Young children instinctively use a 'language-like' structure to communicate through gestures. Research led by the University of Warwick suggests when young children are asked to use gestures to communicate, their gestures segment information and reorganise it into language-like sequences. This suggests that children are not just learning language from older generations, their preference for communication has shaped how languages look today. Dr Sotaro Kita from Warwick's Department of Psychology led the study with Dr Zanna Clay at the University of Neuchatel, Ms Sally ...

Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), is the term used to refer to the biologically active component of a drug product (e.g. tablet, capsule). Drug products are usually composed of several components. The aforementioned API is the primary ingredient. Other ingredients are commonly known as "excipients" and these substances are always required to be biologically safe, often making up a variable fraction of the drug product. The procedure for optimizing and compositing this mixture of components used in the drug is known as "formulation". For example, if the API is a solid ...

Anaheim, Calif., June 5, 2014 – Whether through the use of alcohol-containing caps or basic cleaning of the injection port of the central line, infection preventionists at three hospitals are finding successful ways to stop germs from entering central line catheters and causing bloodstream infections in patients. A trio of abstracts, to be presented on June 7 at the 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), addresses the challenge of keeping bacteria from entering the bloodstream through a central line, a ...

To ensure the survival of Moore's law and the success of the nanoelectronics industry, alternative patterning techniques that offer advantages beyond conventional top-down patterning are aggressively being explored. Can self-assembly based technologies offer advantages beyond conventional top-down lithography approaches? A joint effort of the Aalto University of Helsinki, the Politecnico di Milano, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has now demonstrated that it is possible to align molecular self-assemblies from nanometers to millimeters without the intervention ...

YOUNG people from disadvantaged communities in Northern Ireland should be provided with "safe spaces" in which to protest and make their views known. This would help prevent them falling under the sway of extremists, argue researchers at the University of Huddersfield who played a major role in organising a conference in Belfast that investigated the "culture wars" of Ulster. One of the key themes to emerge was that many working-class communities felt they had gained little from the province's "peace dividend", with jobs hard to find and segregation still common. As a ...

Turku, FI – An international team led by scientists at the University of Turku in Finland studied thermally-adapted fish populations to discover that the more biological functions a gene has, the less it responds to environmental change. "In addition to having important implications for climate change adaptation, these findings could radically change the way we study gene responses to any external stimulus like for example to drug treatments", the authors suggest. Their findings are reported on June 3 2014 in the journal Nature Communications. When organisms need more ...

Researchers from the Missouri Botanical Garden have discovered in dry forests and transient sand dunes in Bolivia and Paraguay, a new plant species in the moonseed family Menispermaceae. The discovery was reported in the open access journal PhytoKeys. The new species was described in the genus Cissampelos, which includes vining species that for the most part are found in disturbed habitats of the tropical and subtropical regions of the World. This new Cissampelos is morphologically unique by its small leaves, its 8 anther-cells in the male flowers, and a large endocarp–a ...

Allergies in humans and animals are on the increase. An allergic reaction may cause unpleasant symptoms like hay fever, food intolerance or skin rashes. Allergic reactions may also cause acute and life-threatening symptoms, such as asthma or anaphylactic shock. A single pollen protein is responsible for allergies One of the most well known allergens, i.e. substances that cause allergies, is so-called "Bet v 1" from birch pollen (Betula verrucosa). The protein was first produced artificially in the laboratory 25 years ago in Vienna, and is being used as an allergen ...

Shorter TB treatment regimens will reduce the out-of-pocket expenses incurred by both patients and their family members, who often act as the patients' guardians. In addition, shorter TB regimens may allow an earlier return to productive activities for patients and their families. These conclusions come from an international alliance of researchers, led by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), who carried out a comparative study in Tanzania and Bangladesh looking at the out-of-pocket costs incurred by TB patients in both countries. These patients were taking ...

Computer scientists at Microsoft Research and the University of California, San Diego have developed a system that combines a mobile application and sensor to detect stress in parents and delivers research-based strategies to help decrease their stress during emotionally charged interactions with their children. The system was initially tested on a small group of parents of children with ADHD. The system, called ParentGuardian, is the first to detect stress and present interventions in real-time—at the right time and in the right place. It combines a sensor worn on the ...

The current state of science on the adverse health effects of marijuana use links the drug to several significant adverse effects including addiction, a review reports. The article, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, is authored by scientists from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health. The review describes the science establishing that marijuana can be addictive and that this risk for addiction increases for daily or young users. It also offers insights into research on the gateway theory indicating ...

Fish and aquatic life living in the high seas are more valuable as a carbon sink than as food and should be better protected, according to research from the University of British Columbia. The study found fish and aquatic life remove 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, a service valued at about $148 billion US. This dwarfs the $16 billion US paid for 10 million tonnes of fish caught on the high seas annually. "Countries around the world are struggling to find cost effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions," says Rashid Sumaila, ...

AUDIO: Edward Awh briefly describes the finding of his study on tracking early processing of working memory, and the differences between EEG and fMRI is studying the process. (41 seconds) Click here for more information. EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 5, 2014) -- University of Oregon researchers have tapped the rhythm of memories as they occur in near real time in the human brain. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes attached to the scalps of 25 student subjects, a UO team led by ...

The 43rd Annual Meeting of the American Aging Association (AGE) held May 30-June 2, 2014, at the Westin Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio, Texas, featured the latest scholarship and research findings in the field of aging research from more than 70 leading experts. The event has long been recognized as a launching pad for researchers to share cutting-edge discoveries into the underlying mechanisms of the causes of aging as well as the possible breakthroughs in finding ways to increase healthspan. "The talks at this year's meeting were of exceptionally high quality with really ...

The first genotyping of grey squirrels sampled from Italy and the UK shows a direct link between their genetic diversity and their ability to invade new environments. In this new study, published in Diversity and Distributions, an international team of scientists from Imperial College London and the Zoological Society of London compared 12 DNA markers from grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in Piedmont in Northern Italy with the same markers from squirrel populations in Northern Ireland, Northumberland and East Anglia. After correlating genetic diversity against ...

Quebec City, June 5, 2014—A recent study published in Annals of Neurology reports that healthy human tissue grafted to the brains of patients with Huntington's disease in the hopes of treating the neurological disorder also developed signs of the illness, several years after the graft. This discovery will have profound implications on our understanding of the disease and how to treat it, and may also lead to the development of new therapies for neurodegenerative disorders. Huntington's disease is a hereditary illness that causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells ...

Entitled attitudes appear to be linked to sexism—even among women, according to a personality study by psychologists from Case Western Reserve University and San Diego State University. In general, entitled men are more likely to endorse hostile views of women and entitled women are more likely to endorse views of women as frail and needing extra care. The researchers found that, for men, entitlement was associated with hostile views of women. Entitled men were more likely to endorse views of women as manipulative, deceptive, and untrustworthy—attitudes, which past ...

If you're trying to outwit the competition, it might be better to have been born a chimpanzee, according to a study by researchers at Caltech, which found that chimps at the Kyoto University Primate Research Institute consistently outperform humans in simple contests drawn from game theory. The study, led by Colin Camerer, Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics, and appearing on June 5 in the online publication Scientific Reports, involved a simple game of hide-and-seek that researchers call the Inspection Game. In the game, two players (either a pair of chimps ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 5, 2014 – A mouse model of endometriosis has been developed that produces endometriosis lesions similar to those found in humans, according to a report published in The American Journal of Pathology. This model closely mirrors the human condition as an estrogen-dependent inflammatory disorder, and findings from the study suggest that macrophages present in shed endometrium contribute to the development of the lesions. "One in 10 women of reproductive age have endometriosis; it is as common as asthma or diabetes, but it can take up to seven years ...