CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Materials that can be used for thermoelectric devices — those that turn a temperature difference into an electric voltage — have been known for decades. But until now there has been no good explanation for why just a few materials work well for these applications, while most others do not. Now researchers at MIT and elsewhere say they have finally found a theoretical explanation for the differences, which could lead to the discovery of new, improved thermoelectric materials. The findings — by MIT graduate student Sangyeop Lee; Gang Chen, the Carl Richard ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Researchers in the UNC School of Medicine found that the protein DAZAP1 plays a key role in the regulation of many genes through a process known as alternative splicing, and when highly expressed in cancer cell line experiments, DAZAP1 was shown to inhibit several types of cancer cells from dividing and moving. The discovery, published in the journal Nature Communications, marks the first time this little-known protein has been characterized in relation to cancer development and tumor growth. "If you knock down DAZAP1, then most of the genes involved ...

Preeclampsia, the most common complication of pregnancy, is a major cause of premature delivery and both maternal and fetal death, yet what causes the syndrome remains unclear. A new study indicates that molecules that send detrimental signals are abundant in certain tissues in preeclampsia patients. The study also documented some of the complications experienced by babies born to mothers with preeclampsia. "Preeclampsia is a multifaceted complication found uniquely in the pregnant patient and one that has puzzled scientists for years," says the leader of the study, ...

Tumour cells can accumulate hundreds or even thousands of DNA mutations which induce the growth and spread of cancer. The number and pattern of mutations differs according to the type of tumour, even among those that are classified as part of the same type of tumours. This complexity, which researchers were not aware of just a few years ago, calls for new tools to filter relevant genetic information for the implementation and development of personalised therapies targeted at specific characteristics within each individual tumour. Researchers led by Manuel Hidalgo, Vice-Director ...

Mathematicians have found a framework for the celebrated Rogers-Ramanujan identities and their arithmetic properties, solving another long-standing mystery stemming from the work of Indian math genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. The findings, by mathematicians at Emory University and the University of Queensland, yield a treasure trove of algebraic numbers and formulas to access them. "Algebraic numbers are among the first numbers you encounter in mathematics," says Ken Ono, a number theorist at Emory "And yet, it's surprisingly difficult to find functions that return them ...

WASHINGTON D.C., April 29, 2014 -- Nearly 90 years after Werner Heisenberg pioneered his uncertainty principle, a group of researchers from three countries has provided substantial new insight into this fundamental tenet of quantum physics with the first rigorous formulation supporting the uncertainty principle as Heisenberg envisioned it. In the Journal of Mathematical Physics, the researchers reports a new way of defining measurement errors that is applicable in the quantum domain and enables a precise characterization of the fundamental limits of the information accessible ...

Toronto, ON, Canada, April 29, 2014 – Quality of life (QOL) is rarely reported in surgical publications, yet it can be an important metric that can be of use to physicians and patients when making treatment decisions. Prior studies of average-risk patients undergoing lobectomy suggested that low baseline QOL scores predict worse survival in patients undergoing non-small cell lung cancer surgery. The results of a multi-center, longitudinal study of high-risk lung cancer patients who underwent sublobar resection counters this idea, finding that poor baseline global QOL scores ...

A mother's diet before conception can permanently affect how her child's genes function, according to a study published in Nature Communications. The first such evidence of the effect in humans opens up the possibility that a mother's diet before pregnancy could permanently affect many aspects of her children's lifelong health. Researchers from the MRC International Nutrition Group, based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and MRC Unit, The Gambia, utilised a unique 'experiment of nature' in rural Gambia, where the population's dependence on own grown ...

Biogeographical data is useful in screening for disease risk and drug sensitivity associated with certain ethnic groups. A team of researchers, including an investigator from Children's Hospital Los Angeles, has developed a tool to accurately identify the biogeography of worldwide individuals. Previous tools were accurate in identifying place of origin within homogeneous European populations but highly inaccurate for places with significant immigration, such as the U.S. Tatiana Tatarinova, PhD, of The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Eran ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – About 25 percent of parents who have children aged two to five say their children get three or more hours of entertainment screen time a day, well beyond recommended limits, according to a new poll from the University of Michigan. In the latest University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, a little more than half of those parents do try to set some limits by location: banning media devices from places like the bedroom or at mealtime. In 2013, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued updated guidelines to recommend ...

You know what you're going to say before you say it, right? Not necessarily, research suggests. A study from researchers at Lund University in Sweden shows that auditory feedback plays an important role in helping us determine what we're saying as we speak. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Our results indicate that speakers listen to their own voices to help specify the meaning of what they are saying," says researcher Andreas Lind of Lund University, lead author of the study. Theories about how ...

U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $199 billion in sales in 2012, a gain of seven percent over the previous year, with the economic impact of fishing jobs increasing three percent from 2011 to 2012, according to a new NOAA Fisheries economics report. Further, two more fish stocks were rebuilt to target levels in 2013, bringing the number of rebuilt U.S. marine fish stocks to 34 since 2000, according to another NOAA Fisheries report also released today. Taken together, the two reports, Fisheries Economics of the United States 2012 ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A review of more than 25,000 admissions of Medicare beneficiaries to Rhode Island hospitals has found that patients with a documented diagnosis of dementia are nearly 20 percent more likely to be readmitted within 30 days than those without dementia. The study by Rhode Island Hospital researchers is published online in advance of print in the journal Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics. "Persons with dementia may have difficulties comprehending and following important discharge instructions, (e.g. medication changes, decision making, self care)," ...

A new study has provided insight into the behavioral damage caused by repeated blows to the head. The research provides a foundation for scientists to better understand and potentially develop new ways to detect and prevent the repetitive sports injuries that can lead to the condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The research – which appears online this week in the Journal of Neurotrauma – shows that mice with mild, repetitive traumatic brain injury (TBI) develop many of the same behavioral problems, such as difficultly sleeping, memory problems, ...

WASHINGTON — April 29, 2014 - According to a new study by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Policy Program, a risk management framework can improve the resilience of healthcare facilities and services to high-impact weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes. The report is based on a recent AMS Policy Program workshop, A Prescription for the 21st Century: Improving Resilience to High-Impact Weather for Healthcare Facilities and Services, held in Washington, DC in October 2013. The purpose of the study was to explore methods for improving the resilience of the health ...

Working together, Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers and neurosurgeons report that they have created tiny, biodegradable "nanoparticles" able to carry DNA to brain cancer cells in mice. The team says the results of their proof of principle experiment suggest that such particles loaded with "death genes" might one day be given to brain cancer patients during neurosurgery to selectively kill off any remaining tumor cells without damaging normal brain tissue. A summary of the research results appeared online on April 26 in the journal ACS Nano. "In our experiments, ...

Toronto, ON, Canada, April 29, 2014 – A major new study using data from the National Cancer Data Base details the impact of annual hospital volume on 30- and 90-day mortality rates. Investigators found that major lung surgery has become progressively safer over the last few decades, although higher death rates at low-volume hospitals and an unexpected increase in mortality at 90 days compared to 30 days were observed. The study further suggests that choosing a center that performs major lung surgery regularly can have a strong impact on survival. Lung cancer is the leading ...

An image similar in shape to a Swallow's tail has been identified as a new and accurate test for Parkinson's disease. The image, which depicts the healthy state of a group of cells in the sub-region of the human brain, was singled out using 3T MRI scanning technology – standard equipment in clinical settings today. The research was led by Dr Stefan Schwarz and Professor Dorothee Auer, experts in neuroradiology in the School of Medicine at The University of Nottingham and was carried out at the Queen's Medical Centre in collaboration with Dr Nin Bajaj, an expert in Movement ...

A study from the Case Western Reserve University nursing school provides a profile of women with the dual responsibilities of full-time paid work and unpaid care for an elderly family member. "We often hear caregivers talk about 'how much time and effort it takes' to provide care for their family members or neighbors," said Evanne Juratovac, PhD, RN (GCNS-BC), assistant professor of nursing at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and the study's lead researcher, "so we examined the experience of doing the workload on these women caregivers as the 'workers." She ...

TAMPA, Fla. (April 29, 2014) – When six university leaders took the stage at the 2013 Annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), held just over a year ago at the University of South Florida, they began a national conversation on changing the academic culture to recognize faculty patents and commercialization activity toward tenure and promotion. That conversation, according to NAI president Paul R. Sanberg, was long overdue. The question posed to the panel, "Would Thomas Edison Receive Tenure," was answered with a clear "yes" and the paper that resulted, ...

WASHINGTON -- Despite the stereotype that boys do better in math and science, girls have made higher grades than boys throughout their school years for nearly a century, according to a new analysis published by the American Psychological Association. "Although gender differences follow essentially stereotypical patterns on achievement tests in which boys typically score higher on math and science, females have the advantage on school grades regardless of the material," said lead study author Daniel Voyer, PhD, of the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada. ...

Streaming jets of high-speed matter produce some of the most stunning objects seen in space. Astronomers have seen them shooting out of young stars just being formed, X-ray binary stars and even the supermassive black holes at the centers of large galaxies. Theoretical explanations for what causes those beam-like jets have been around for years, but now an experiment by French and American researchers using extremely high-powered lasers offers experimental verification of one proposed mechanism for creating them. "This research is an example of how laboratory experiments ...

A new physics discovery made by a University of Virginia-led team may lead to more efficient refrigerators, heat pumps and airport scanners, among many possible uses –perhaps within a decade. The team of physicists and materials scientists have discovered a universal law governing the magnetic properties of metamagnets – metal alloys that can undergo dramatic increases in magnetization when a small external magnetic field is applied, such as from a permanent magnet or an electromagnet. The scientists have discovered that the magnetic effect of apparently all metamagnets ...

Policy to reduce bullying in the schoolyard needs to span all levels of society, say researchers from the University of Warwick, who warn that socioeconomic status is not a reliable indicator of whether a child is likely to become a bully. Up to one third of children are involved in bullying, and a growing body of evidence has shown that bullying is a significant public health concern, which can cause long lasting health and social problems. The new review, published in the American Journal of Public Health, advises that policy makers should be wary of assuming that ...

SAN DIEGO (April 29, 2014) – As the number of people with type 2 diabetes continues to rise and its toll increases, scientists are scrambling to unravel the complex genetic and lifestyle factors behind the disease. A new study finds that African American children with a genetic predisposition to diabetes may be able to reduce their risk by getting the USDA-recommended dose of calcium. "Even though life expectancy for people with diabetes has gone up, the disease has a significant impact on quality of life, so finding ways to prevent people from developing diabetes is ...