MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (August 28, 2014) – Researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed an animal research model for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) to be used for muscle regeneration research as well as studies of the effectiveness of potential therapies for FSHD. The research is published in the current edition of the journal Cell Reports. There is no treatment for FSHD, which is thought by many to be the most common type of muscular dystrophy. FSHD is an unusual genetic disorder because, unlike most genetic diseases, it is not caused by the ...

Athens, Ga. – The support of peer groups and clinicians is critical to the development of effective breastfeeding programs, according to recent University of Georgia research. A qualitative study of 21 mothers in the Athens-Clarke County area determined that role models for successful breastfeeding help positively shape the outcomes of mothers of infants. "Mothers who received that support are more likely to be successful at breastfeeding," said study co-author Alex Anderson, an associate professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences department of foods and ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 28, 2014) – Rice University scientists have produced a detailed analysis of water produced by hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) of three gas reservoirs and suggested environmentally friendly remedies are needed to treat and reuse it. More advanced recycling rather than disposal of "produced" water pumped back out of wells could calm fears of accidental spillage and save millions of gallons of fresh water a year, said Rice chemist Andrew Barron, who led the study that appeared this week in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Environmental Science: ...

CHICAGO --- A new study from Northwestern Medicine® has found that surgical researchers rarely use female animals or female cells in their published studies -- despite a huge body of evidence showing that sex differences can play a crucial role in medical research. Editors of the five major surgical journals reviewed in this study have responded to this finding and will now require authors to state the sex of animals and cells used in their studies. If they use only one sex in their studies, they will be asked to justify why. "Women make up half the population, but ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 28, 2014) — Solid-head power toothbrushes retain less bacteria compared to hollow-head toothbrushes, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Dentistry. The results of the study are published in the August issue of the Journal of Dental Hygiene. Lead author and professor at the UTHealth School of Dentistry, Donna Warren Morris, R.D.H., M.Ed., notes that microbial counts were lower in the solid-head toothbrush group than in the two hollow-head toothbrush groups in 9 out of 10 comparisons. "Toothbrushes ...

As technology advances, science has become increasingly about data—how to gather it, organize it, and analyze it. The creation of key databases to analyze and share data lies at the heart of bioinformatics, or the collection, classification, storage, and analysis of biochemical and biological information using computers and software. The tools and methods used in bioinformatics have been instrumental in the development of fields such as molecular genetics and genomics. But, in the plant sciences, bioinformatics and biometrics are employed in all fields—not just genomics—to ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A new research platform uses a laser to measure the "nanomechanical" properties of tiny structures undergoing stress and heating, an approach likely to yield insights to improve designs for microelectronics and batteries. This new technique, called nanomechanical Raman spectroscopy, reveals information about how heating and the surface stress of microscale structures affect their mechanical properties. Researchers have discussed the merits of surface-stress influence on mechanical properties for decades. However, the nanomechanical Raman spectroscopy ...

A unique method for delivering compounds that could positively impact the global battle against HIV and AIDS may be possible, thanks to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. A semi-soft vaginal suppository made from the seaweed-derived food ingredient carrageenan and loaded with the antiviral drug Tenofovir provides a woman-initiated, drug-delivery vehicle that can protect against the spread of sexually transmitted infections during unprotected heterosexual intercourse, the researchers said. With more than 34 million people worldwide living with ...

Respiratory infection control measures – which have been adopted by most health agencies to deal with the Ebola epidemic in west Africa – are unnecessary, and may heighten panic and fear among the public, according to the authors of a new letter, published in The Lancet, and written by Professor Jose M. Martin-Moreno from the University of Valencia in Spain, and colleagues. Ebola virus is primarily transmitted through contact with infected patients' blood, vomit, faeces and other secretions, both direct and indirect, from contaminated needles and other materials. This ...

Damp and mould in homes could pose a significant health risk to people with asthma according to a new study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. By critically reviewing the findings from 17 studies in eight different countries, the research has found that the presence of several types of mould can lead to breathing problems in asthma sufferers, as well as increasing the likelihood of developing the condition. The research has been conducted by a team at the University of Exeter Medical School and is the first time all of the information relating ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 28, 2014) – A fortuitous collaboration at Rice University has led to the total synthesis of a recently discovered natural antibiotic. The laboratory recreation of a fungus-derived antibiotic, viridicatumtoxin B, may someday help bolster the fight against bacteria that evolve resistance to treatments in hospitals and clinics around the world. As part of the process, Rice organic chemist K.C. Nicolaou and structural biologist Yousif Shamoo and their colleagues created and tested a number of variants of viridicatumtoxin B that could lead to the simplified ...

Energy production systems are good examples of complex systems. Their infrastructure equipment requires ancillary sub-systems structured like a network—including water for cooling, transport to supply fuel, and ICT systems for control and management. Every step in the network chain is interconnected with a wider network and they are all mutually dependent. A team of UK-based scientists has studied various aspects of inter-network dependencies, not previously explored. The findings have been published in EPJ B by Gaihua Fu from Newcastle University, UK, and colleagues. These ...

This news release is available in German. Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ), and the University of Vienna have developed a fundamentally new quantum imaging technique with strikingly counterintuitive features. For the first time, an image has been obtained without ever detecting the light that was used to illuminate the imaged object, while the light revealing the image never touches the imaged object. In general, to obtain an image of an object one has to illuminate ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28, 2014—A new method for measuring and imaging how quickly blood flows in the brain could help doctors and researchers better understand how drug abuse affects the brain, which may aid in improving brain-cancer surgery and tissue engineering, and lead to better treatment options for recovering drug addicts. The new method, developed by a team of researchers from Stony Brook University in New York, USA and the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was published today in The Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express. The researchers ...

In 1934, American archaeologist Nelson Glueck named one of the largest known copper production sites of the Levant "Slaves' Hill." This hilltop station, located deep in Israel's Arava Valley, seemed to bear all the marks of an Iron Age slave camp – fiery furnaces, harsh desert conditions, and a massive barrier preventing escape. New evidence uncovered by Tel Aviv University archaeologists, however, overturns this entire narrative. In the course of ongoing excavations at Timna Valley, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef and Dr. Lidar Sapir-Hen of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Near ...

Wally Broeker, the first person to alert the world to Global Warming, has called for atmospheric CO2 to be captured and stored underground. He says that Carbon Capture, combined with limits on fossil fuel emissions, is the best way to avoid global warming getting out of control over the next fifty years. Professor Broeker (Columbia University, New York) made the call during his presentation to the International Carbon Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, where 150 scientists are meeting to discuss Carbon Capture and Storage. He was presenting an analysis which showed that ...

"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one," sang John Lennon in his 1971 song Imagine. And thanks to the dreams of a BYU student, we now know more about where and how imagination happens in our brains. Stefania Ashby and her faculty mentor devised experiments using MRI technology that would help them distinguish pure imagination from related processes like remembering. "I was thinking a lot about planning for my own future and imagining myself in the future, and I started wondering how memory and imagination work together," Ashby said. "I wondered if they ...

Protected areas conserve biodiversity and more action is needed to ensure safeguards are in place to protect these areas, researchers say. Published in PLOS ONE, researchers from Monash University, Stellenbosch University and the University of Exeter, used meta-analysis - combining results from different studies - to look at the past 30 years of research into these areas, to determine whether they actually protect biodiversity. Dr Bernard Coetzee, School of Biological Sciences, said protecting an area from human exploitation made common sense, however, up until now ...

In the central nervous system, serotonergic transmission is critically regulated by serotonin reuptake through the serotonin transporter. As a crucial pharmacological target of antidepressants, the role of erotonin transporter in treatment of major depression is well-established. Dr. Chaokun Li and co-workers from Xinxiang Medical University in China cloned the human brain serotonin transporter into Xenopus oocytes, to establish an in vitro expression system. Two-electrode voltage clamp recordings were used to detect serotonin transporter activity. Their results show that ...

Epinephrine has been shown to be a first-choice drug for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Nevertheless, its β-adrenergic effect probably increases myocardial oxygen consumption and leads to severe cardiac and cerebral injuries; moreover, epinephrine does not elevate long-term survival rates. The American Heart Association and the European Resuscitation Council recently recommended that vasopressin can be used for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, instead of epinephrine. However, the guidelines do not discuss the effects of vasopressin during cerebral resuscitation. According ...

When repairing nerves with adhesives, most researchers place glue directly on the nerve stumps, but this method does not fix the nerve ends well and allows glue to easily invade the nerve ends. Ordinarily, nerve conduits are cylindrical. However, it is difficult to insert the nerve ends into the conduit because the nerve is soft and there is frictional resistance. Xiangdang Liang and co-workers from the General Hospital of Chinese PLA designed a special conduit for the adhesive technique and defined the best parameters for its use through in vitro testing, and then repaired ...

The result of every possible measurement on a quantum system is coded in its wave function, which until recently could be found only by taking many different measurements of a system and estimating a wave function that best fit all those measurements. Just two years ago, with the advent of a technique called direct measurement, scientists discovered they could reliably determine a system's wave function by "weakly" measuring one of its variables (e.g. position) and "strongly" measuring a complementary variable (momentum). Researchers at the University of Rochester have ...

WASHINGTON, August 28, 2014 — Works of art can take years to create and just seconds to deface. It happened to Mark Rothko's "Black on Maroon" while on display at the Tate Modern gallery in London in 2012. A vandal tagged the painting, landing him two years in jail. Restoration experts teamed up with Dow Chemical to create a cleanser that would get rid of the graffiti and leave the art intact. Learn all about it in this episode of Speaking of Chemistry. The video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGR_AxXdSk0 . INFORMATION: Speaking of Chemistry is a production ...

Parents have long told their children to mind their Ps and Qs, and remember to say thank you. Now the evidence is in on why it matters. A UNSW Australia-led study has shown for the first time that thanking a new acquaintance for their help makes them more likely to seek an ongoing social relationship with you. "Saying thank you provides a valuable signal that you are someone with whom a high quality relationship could be formed," says UNSW psychologist Dr Lisa Williams, who conducted the research with Dr Monica Bartlett of Gonzaga University in the US. The study, to ...

Human articular cartilage defects can be treated with nasal septum cells. Researchers at the University and the University Hospital of Basel report that cells taken from the nasal septum are able to adapt to the environment of the knee joint and can thus repair articular cartilage defects. The nasal cartilage cells' ability to self-renew and adapt to the joint environment is associated with the expression of so-called HOX genes. The scientific journal Science Translational Medicine has published the research results together with the report of the first treated patients. ...