The Bureau of Reclamation has released a report summarizing six years of testing coatings to control the attachment of quagga and zebra mussels to water and power facilities. Since the study began in 2008, Reclamation has tested more than 100 coatings and materials. "Controlling attachment of invasive quagga and zebra mussels on Bureau of Reclamation facilities is important to ensure water delivery and hydropower generation," principal researcher Allen Skaja said. "Though we have tested many different coatings, three durable foul-release coatings are showing promise ...

Worcester, Mass. – People paralyzed by spinal cord injuries lose mechanical strength in their leg bones faster, and more significantly, than previously believed, putting them at greater risk for fractures from minor stresses, according to a new study by a research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The results suggest that physicians need to begin therapies for spinal cord injury patients sooner to maintain bone mass and strength. The data also serve as warning to physicians treating patients with osteoporosis to think beyond the standard bone density ...

Combining a PET scanner with a new chemical tracer that selectively tags specific types of bacteria, Johns Hopkins researchers working with mice report they have devised a way to detect and monitor in real time infections with dangerous Gram-negative bacteria. These increasingly drug-resistant bacteria are responsible for a range of diseases, including fatal pneumonias and various bloodstream or solid-organ infections acquired in and outside the hospital. "What we have produced is essentially a system that localizes the epicenter of infection and provides real-time tracking ...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the final version of the US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Volumes I and II. The roadmap focuses on strategic and tactical objectives to support the federal government's accelerated adoption of cloud computing. This final document reflects the input from more than 200 comments on the initial draft received from around the world. The roadmap leverages the strengths and resources of government, industry, academia and standards development organizations to support technology innovation ...

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Prostate offers compelling evidence that inflammation may be the link between Vitamin D and prostate cancer. Specifically, the study shows that the gene GDF-15, known to be upregulated by Vitamin D, is notably absent in samples of human prostate cancer driven by inflammation. "When you take Vitamin D and put it on prostate cancer cells, it inhibits their growth. But it hasn't been proven as an anti-cancer agent. We wanted to understand what genes Vitamin D is turning on or off in prostate cancer ...

Though it garners few public headlines, carbonic acid, the hydrated form of carbon dioxide, is critical to both the health of the atmosphere and the human body. However, because it exists for only a fraction of a second before changing into a mix of hydrogen and bicarbonate ions, carbonic acid has remained an enigma. A new study by Berkeley Lab researchers, has yielded valuable new information about carbonic acid with important implications for both geological and biological concerns. Richard Saykally, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and a professor ...

When studying extremely fast reactions in ultrathin materials, two measurements are better than one. A new research tool invented by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) captures information about both temperature and crystal structure during extremely fast reactions in thin-film materials.* The combined device will help scientists study new materials and processes used to make advanced technologies, including state-of-the-art semiconductors and flat-screen ...

Abandoned penguin chicks that were hand-reared and returned to the wild showed a similar survival rate to their naturally-reared counterparts, according to a study published October 22, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Richard Sherley from University of Cape Town and colleagues. The Endangered African penguin population has been rapidly decreasing since 2001. In the Western Cape of South Africa, penguins breed from February to September and moult between September and January, once chicks have fledged. If adult penguins begin the moulting process, a 21 day ...

Wild chimpanzees living in disturbed habitat may use innovative strategies, like foraging crops at night, to coexist with nearby human activities, according to a study published October 22, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sabrina Krief from Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and colleagues. People expanding land use for agriculture and other activities are increasingly encroaching on wild chimpanzee habitat. To understand how chimpanzees are adjusting, researchers used camera-traps to observe chimpanzee behavior during incursions out of the forest into ...

VIDEO: This video shows treatment with OTS964 induced cytokinetic defect with inter-cellular bridges that eventually led to cell apoptosis. Cell pictures were taken every 10 min. Click here for more information. A new drug, known as OTS964, can eradicate aggressive human lung cancers transplanted into mice, according to a report in Science Translational Medicine. The drug, given as a pill or by injection, inhibits the action of a protein that is overproduced by several tumor types, ...

Males of great bustard consume small doses of poison with a dual purpose: to eliminate intern parasites and, especially, to look healthier and stronger before females, allowing them to achieve a greater reproductive success. A team of researchers from the Spanish National Research Council has now suggested for the first time that this function of self-medication could be a mechanism of sexual selection. The study results are published in the PLOS ONE journal. Juan Carlos Alonso, who led the project, CSIC researcher at the Department of Evolutive Ecology of the Spanish ...

A new study conducted by University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers provides the first known evidence of how a similar acoustic characteristic in the cry sounds of human infants and rat pups may be used to detect the harmful effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on nervous system development. "These findings are important because studies of prenatal drug exposure in humans are always limited by not knowing if infant nervous system damage was due to the effects of a specific drug, such as cocaine, or the effects of other associated factors, such as maternal ...

Bright colours appear on a fruit fly's transparent wings against a dark background as a result of light refraction. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have now demonstrated that females choose a mate based on the males' hidden wing colours. "Our experiment shows that this newly-discovered trait is important in female choice in fruit flies, and is the first evidence that wing interference patterns have a biological signalling function between the sexes during sexual selection", said Jessica Abbott, a biologist at Lund University. The extremely thin wings of the ...

Following the study of a hospital that logged more than 2.5 million patient monitoring alarms in just one month, researchers at UC San Francisco have, for the first time, comprehensively defined the detailed causes as well as potential solutions for the widespread issue of alarm fatigue in hospitals. Their study is in the Oct. 22 issue of PLOS ONE and available online. The issue of alarm fatigue has become so significant that The Joint Commission, a national organization that accredits hospitals, named it a National Patient Safety Goal. This goal requires hospitals ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2014—At first glance, the static, greyscale display created by a group of researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China might not catch the eye of a thoughtful consumer in a market saturated with flashy, colorful electronics. But a closer look at the specs could change that: the ultra-thin LCD screen described today in a paper in The Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics Letters is capable of holding three-dimensional images without a power source, making it a compact, energy-efficient way to display visual information. Liquid ...

Tropical Depression Nine formed over the western Bay of Campeche, Gulf of Mexico and is forecast to make a quick landfall on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. NOAA's GOES-East Satellite captured the birth of the depression. NOAA's GOES-East Satellite captured an image of the birth of Tropical Depression 9 on Oct. 22 at 1600 UTC (12 p.m. EDT) in the western Bay of Campeche. The clouds associated with the depression stretched over the Yucatan Peninsula and into the western Caribbean Sea. On Oct. 22, a Tropical Storm Warning was in effect from Celestun to Frontera, Mexico. The ...

Beta Pictoris is a young star located about 63 light-years from the Sun. It is only about 20 million years old and is surrounded by a huge disc of material — a very active young planetary system where gas and dust are produced by the evaporation of comets and the collisions of asteroids. Flavien Kiefer (IAP/CNRS/UPMC), lead author of the new study sets the scene: "Beta Pictoris is a very exciting target! The detailed observations of its exocomets give us clues to help understand what processes occur in this kind of young planetary system." For almost 30 years ...

Tiny soil microbes are among the world's biggest potential amplifiers of human-caused climate change, but whether microbial communities are mere slaves to their environment or influential actors in their own right is an open question. Now, research by an international team of scientists from the U.S., Sweden and Australia, led by University of Arizona scientists, shows that a single species of microbe, discovered only very recently, is an unexpected key player in climate change. The findings, published in the journal Nature, should help scientists improve their simulations ...

CANCER RESEARCH UK and UCL scientists have discovered that the same specialised immune cells that patrol the body and spot infections also trigger the expansion of immune organs called lymph nodes, according to a study* published in Nature today (Wednesday). The immune system defends the body from infections and can also spot and destroy cancer cells. Lymph nodes are at the heart of this response, but until now it has never been explained how they expand during disease. The researchers – at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute – found that when ...

Sequencing the genomes of tumor cells has revealed thousands of genetic mutations linked with cancer. However, sifting through this deluge of information to figure out which of these mutations actually drive cancer growth has proven to be a tedious, time-consuming process. MIT researchers have now developed a new way to model the effects of these genetic mutations in mice. Their approach, based on the genome-editing technique known as CRISPR, is much faster than existing strategies, which require genetically engineering mice that carry the cancerous mutations. "It's ...

Thermal paper, sometimes used in cash register receipts, may be a potential source of exposure to the hormone disruptor bisphenol-A (BPA), according to a study published October 22, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Annette Hormann from University of Missouri and colleagues. Results showed that when men and women handled a thermal receipt after using a hand sanitizer, there was a very large amount of BPA transferred from the receipt to the hand, resulting in a rapid increase in blood levels of BPA. Bisphenol A (BPA) is used in a wide variety of products, and ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical that is used in a variety of consumer products, such as water bottles, dental composites and resins used to line metal food and beverage containers, and also is used in thermal paper cash register receipts. Now, research conducted at the University of Missouri is providing the first data that BPA from thermal paper used in cash register receipts accounts for high levels of BPA in humans. Subjects studied showed a rapid increase of BPA in their blood after using a skin care product and then touching a store receipt with ...

A report by Chinese researchers in the journal Nature a few months ago was a small sensation: they appeared to have found the cause for why organisms age. An international team of scientists, headed by the University of Bonn, has now refuted a basic assumption of the Nature article. The reasons for aging thus remain elusive. The Chinese article caused a stir amongst experts worldwide. Using a simple measurement in young nematode worms, the researchers reported they had been able to predict how long they would live . The researchers had introduced a fluorescent probe ...

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, can collect detailed information in real time at relatively low cost for ecological research. In a new Opinion piece published in the Cell Press journal Trends in Parasitology, experts demonstrate that drones can be used to understand how environmental factors influence the spread of infectious diseases. "Drones can provide highly accurate information on changes to land, such as deforestation or changing types of agriculture. This helps to understand the impact on the movement and distribution of people, animals, and insects that carry ...

Complex biochemical signals that coordinate fast and slow changes in neuronal networks keep the brain in balance during learning, according to an international team of scientists from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, UC San Francisco (UCSF), and Columbia University in New York. The work, reported on October 22 in the journal Neuron, culminates a six-year quest by a collaborative team from the three institutions to solve a decades-old question and opens the door to a more general understanding of how the brain learns and consolidates new experiences on dramatically ...