An enzyme called 12-LO promotes the obesity-induced oxidative stress in the pancreatic cells that leads to pre-diabetes, and diabetes. 12-LO's enzymatic action is the last step in the production of certain small molecules that harm the cell, according to a team from Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis. The findings will enable the development of drugs that can interfere with this enzyme, preventing or even reversing diabetes. The research is published ahead of print in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology. Nearly 40 percent of Americans—more than ...

It has been speculated that soil-dwelling parasitic worms use their sense of smell to find suitable hosts for infection. Research published on August 14th in PLOS Pathogens comparing odor-driven behaviors in different roundworm species reveals that olfactory preferences reflect host specificity rather than species relatedness, suggesting that olfaction indeed plays an important role in host location. To study worm olfaction, Elissa Hallem, from the University of California Los Angeles, USA, and colleagues examined the host-seeking strategies and sensory behaviors of different ...

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors have shown promise in "flushing out" HIV from latently infected cells, potentially exposing the reservoirs available for elimination by cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL), also called killer T cells. However, findings published on August 14th in PLOS Pathogens now suggest that treatment with HDAC inhibitors might suppress CTL activity and therefore compromise the "kill" part of a two-pronged "flush-and-kill" HIV eradication strategy. At least three different HDAC inhibitors, romidepsin, panobinostat, and SAHA, are under investigation as ...

VIDEO: This time-lapse video shows how the parasitic plant dodder attacks tomatoes. But beyond stealing nutrients from the host plants, a Virginia Tech researcher has discovered that the two plants also... Click here for more information. A Virginia Tech scientist has discovered a potentially new form of plant communication, one that allows them to share an extraordinary amount of genetic information with one another. The finding by Jim Westwood, a professor of plant pathology, ...

This news release is available in German. The ongoing global glacier retreat causes rising sea-levels, changing seasonal water availability and increasing geo-hazards. While melting glaciers have become emblematic of anthropogenic climate change, glacier extent responds very slowly to climate changes. "Typically, it takes glaciers decades or centuries to adjust to climate changes," says climate researcher Ben Marzeion from the Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics of the University of Innsbruck. The global retreat of glaciers observed today started around the middle ...

Since 2006, when NASA's Stardust spacecraft delivered its aerogel and aluminum foil dust collectors to Earth, a team of scientists has combed through the collectors in search of rare, microscopic particles of interstellar dust. The team now reports that they have found seven dust motes that probably came from outside our solar system, perhaps created in a supernova explosion millions of years ago and altered by eons of exposure to the extremes of space. They would be the first confirmed samples of contemporary interstellar dust. "They are very precious particles," ...

Using a deceptively simple set of experiments, researchers at Johns Hopkins have learned why people learn an identical or similar task faster the second, third and subsequent time around. The reason: They are aided not only by memories of how to perform the task, but also by memories of the errors made the first time. "In learning a new motor task, there appear to be two processes happening at once," says Reza Shadmehr, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "One is the learning of the motor ...

Bacteria's ability to destroy viruses has long puzzled scientists, but researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health say they now have a clear picture of the bacterial immune system and say its unique shape is likely why bacteria can so quickly recognize and destroy their assailants. The researchers drew what they say is the first-ever picture of the molecular machinery, known as Cascade, which stands guard inside bacterial cells. To their surprise, they found it contains a two-strand, unencumbered structure that resembles a ladder, freeing it to ...

There's now overwhelming evidence that a child's future health is influenced by more than just their parents' genetic material, and that children born of unhealthy parents will already be pre-programmed for greater risk of poor health, according to University of Adelaide researchers. In a feature paper called "Parenting from before conception" published in today's issue of the top international journal Science, researchers at the University's Robinson Research Institute say environmental factors prior to conception have more influence on the child's future than previously ...

Cambridge, Mass. – August 14, 2014 – The first thousand-robot flash mob has assembled at Harvard University. "Form a sea star shape," directs a computer scientist, sending the command to 1,024 little bots simultaneously via an infrared light. The robots begin to blink at one another and then gradually arrange themselves into a five-pointed star. "Now form the letter K." The 'K' stands for Kilobots, the name given to these extremely simple robots, each just a few centimeters across, standing on three pin-like legs. Instead of one highly-complex robot, a "kilo" of robots ...

A team of researchers led by the University of Chicago has developed a technique to record the quantum mechanical behavior of an individual electron contained within a nanoscale defect in diamond. Their technique uses ultrafast pulses of laser light both to control the defect's entire quantum state and observe how that single electron state changes over time. The work appears in this week's online Science Express and will be published in print later this month in Science. This research contributes to the emerging science of quantum information processing, which demands ...

The first analysis of space dust collected by a special collector onboard NASA's Stardust mission and sent back to Earth for study in 2006 suggests the tiny specks, which likely originated from beyond our solar system, are more complex in composition and structure than previously imagined. The analysis, completed at a number of facilities including the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) opens a door to studying the origins of the solar system and possibly the origin of life itself. "Fundamentally, the solar system and everything ...

An international team of sky scholars, including a key researcher from Johns Hopkins, has produced new maps of the material located between the stars in the Milky Way. The results should move astronomers closer to cracking a stardust puzzle that has vexed them for nearly a century. The maps and an accompanying journal article appear in the Aug. 15 issue of the journal Science. The researchers say their work demonstrates a new way of uncovering the location and eventually the composition of the interstellar medium—the material found in the vast expanse between star systems ...

VIDEO: This is a 3-D reconstruction from time-lapse CT-scans of a CF pig lung. Images show the trachea and bronchi. Colored round dots represent positions of particles that were... Click here for more information. Mucus is key to keeping our lungs clean and clear of bacteria, viruses, and other foreign particles that can cause infection and inflammation. When we inhale microbes and dust, they are trapped in the mucus and then swept up and out of the lungs via a process called ...

Anyone who has suffered from kidney stones is keenly aware of the lack of drugs to treat the condition, which often causes excruciating pain. A new mouse study, however, suggests that a class of drugs approved to treat leukemia and epilepsy also may be effective against kidney stones, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. The drugs are histone deacetylase inhibitors, or HDAC inhibitors for short. The researchers found that two of them — Vorinostat and trichostatin A — lower levels of calcium and magnesium in the urine. Both calcium ...

New research shows that broader sharing of deceased donor livers will not significantly increase cold ischemia time (CIT)—the time the liver is in a cooled state outside the donor suggesting that this is not a barrier to broader sharing of organs. However, findings published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, do indicate that broader sharing of organs will significantly increase the percentage of donor organs that are transported by flying rather than driving. ...

AUDIO: These are vocalizations made between adults and hatchlings (individual sounds repeated for the listener's benefit). Click here for more information. Turtles are well known for their longevity and protective shells, but it turns out these reptiles use sound to stick together and care for young, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and other organizations. Scientists working in the Brazilian Amazon have found that Giant South American river turtles actually ...

RNA origami is a new method for organizing molecules on the nanoscale. Using just a single strand of RNA, many complicated shapes can be fabricated by this technique. Unlike existing methods for folding DNA molecules, RNA origamis are produced by enzymes and they simultaneously fold into pre-designed shapes. These features may allow designer RNA structures to be grown within living cells and used to organize cellular enzymes into biochemical factories. The method, which was developed by researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark) and California Institute of Technology ...

MADISON, Wis. — What limits the height of trees? Is it the fraction of their photosynthetic energy they devote to productive new leaves? Or is it their ability to hoist water hundreds of feet into the air, supplying the green, solar-powered sugar factories in those leaves? Both factors — resource allocation and hydraulic limitation — might play a role, and a scientific debate has arisen as to which factor (or what combination) actually sets maximum tree height, and how their relative importance varies in different parts of the world. In research to be published in ...

DALLAS – August 14, 2014 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers successfully used a new gene editing method to correct the mutation that leads to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in a mouse model of the condition. Researchers used a technique called CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing, which can precisely remove a mutation in DNA, allowing the body's DNA repair mechanisms to replace it with a normal copy of the gene. The benefit of this over other gene therapy techniques is that it can permanently correct the "defect" in a gene rather than just transiently adding ...

Pregnant women living near the World Trade Center during 9/11 experienced higher-than-normal negative birth outcomes, according to a new working paper by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. These mothers were more likely to give birth prematurely and deliver babies with low birth weights. Their babies - especially baby boys - were also more likely to be admitted to neonatal intensive care units after birth. The study, led by the Wilson School's Janet Currie and Hannes Schwandt, was released by the National Bureau of Labor ...

Washington, DC—Men, women and children exposed to high levels of phthalates - endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastics and some personal care products – tended to have reduced levels of testosterone in their blood compared to those with lower chemical exposure, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Testosterone is the main sex hormone in men. It contributes to a variety of functions in both sexes, including physical growth and strength, brain function, bone density and cardiovascular ...

Washington, DC—Women with a vitamin D deficiency were nearly half as likely to conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) as women who had sufficient levels of the vitamin, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Long known for its role in bone health, vitamin D is a steroid hormone that is emerging as a factor in fertility. Animal studies have shown that the hormone, which is produced in the skin as a result of sun exposure as well as absorbed from some fortified foods, affects fertility ...

LA JOLLA, CA—August 14, 2014—Chemists led by Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have used his click chemistry to uncover unprecedented, powerful reactivity for making new drugs, diagnostics, plastics, smart materials and many other products. The new SuFEx—Sulfur Fluoride Exchange—reactions enable chemists to link molecules of their choice together using derivatives of a common commercial chemical considered essentially inert. The Sharpless team made this chemical reliably and predictably reactive. Astonishingly, acid-base constraints ...

Adults with autism are at a higher risk of sexual victimization than adults without, due to lack of sex education, but with improved interventions that focus on sexual knowledge and skill building, the risk could be reduced, according to a recent study by York University researchers. "Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) gain more of their sexual knowledge from external sources such as the internet and the television whereas social sources would include parents, teachers and peers," says Professor Jonathan Weiss in the Faculty of Health and the CIHR Chair in Autism ...