Oxford, August 20, 2014 – Researchers at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls and TerraPower based in Bellevue, Washington, have demonstrated the power of high-energy beams of charged particles (ions). The ions can rapidly and consistently damage samples of ferritic-martensitic steel, the material used in certain nuclear reactor components. The significance of the result is that the breakdown closely replicates that seen when high-energy neutrons from a nuclear reactor interact with the material - ...

Chemically extracted acellular allogeneic nerve, from which Schwann cells, myelin sheath and disintegrating fragments have been removed, reduced postoperative immune rejection. Simultaneously, chemically extracted acellular allogeneic nerve retains neural substrates and base materials, such as the bottom layer of Schwann cells, which can provide a good scaffold in the process of nerve regeneration. Chemically extracted acellular allogeneic nerve, similar to autologous nerve transplantation, can guide nerve regeneration and provide a favorable local environment for neural ...

VIDEO: This is a model DNA chain inside a nanochannel that is 100nm wide. The spontaneous dynamical evolution of the DNA is accompanied by frequent knotting and entanglement at the chain ends.... Click here for more information. With the widespread use of methods for DNA analysis and manipulation, it's certainly useful to find a way to unravel and relax the strands of this molecule that tends to form tangles spontaneously. One way is to use channels, or rather nano-channels, ...

A newborn screening test for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) reliably identifies infants with this life-threatening inherited condition, leading to prompt treatment and high survival rates, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers led by Jennifer Puck, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, also found that SCID affects approximately 1 in 58,000 newborns, indicating that the disorder is less rare than previously thought. The study was funded in part by NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ...

Facebook groups for mothers are overtaking the traditional mums-and-bubs and playgroup environments as a source of trusted advice, and offers a largely untapped marketing tool for businesses wanting to sell their products, an Australian study has found. QUT educationalist Dr Rebecca English and marketing expert Dr Raechel Johns from the University of Canberra said word-of-mouth in mothers' groups and communities had fast become a major influence in mothers' buying habits. The study, Mothers' influencing mothers: the use of virtual discussion boards and their influence ...

The sweet and salty aroma of sunscreen and seawater signals a relaxing trip to the shore. But scientists are now reporting that the idyllic beach vacation comes with an environmental hitch. When certain sunblock ingredients wash off skin and into the sea, they can become toxic to some of the ocean's tiniest inhabitants, which are the main course for many other marine animals. Their study appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Antonio Tovar-Sanchez and David Sánchez-Quiles point out that other than staying indoors, slathering on sunscreen is currently ...

A new online tool will help doctors predict which patients are most likely to develop diabetes. The calculator will help doctors identify high risk patients so that they can be tested for the disease and offered lifestyle advice. The test is targeted at people who have been admitted to hospital for emergency care. Experts say it could offer a cost-effective way to identify people with diabetes in Scotland as it avoids the need for significant investment in screening. The test calculates a person's risk of developing diabetes over the next three years based on their ...

For the first time, chemists have succeeded in measuring vibrational motion of a single molecule with a femtosecond time resolution. The study reveals how vibration of a single molecule differs from the behaviour of larger molecular groups. The study was performed at the University of California, Irvine, where post-doctoral researcher Eero Hulkko from the University of Jyväskylä works as a visiting fellow under professor Vartkess A. Apkarian, whose team participated in the study. The second team was lead by Professor Eric O. Potma. The results of the study made the cover ...

Biting into a chili pepper causes a burning spiciness that is irresistible to some, but intolerable to others. Scientists exploring the chili pepper's effect are using their findings to develop a new drug candidate for many kinds of pain, which can be caused by inflammation or other problems. They reported their progress on the compound, which is being tested in clinical trials, in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Laykea Tafesse and colleagues explain that decades ago, scientists had pegged a compound called capsaicin as the active ingredient in chili peppers that ...

LOS ANGELES — Research by Keck Medicine of USC ophthalmology scientists demonstrates that African Americans bear heavier burden of diabetic macular edema (DME), one of the leading causes of blindness in diabetic patients in the United States. The research published online today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Ophthalmology, indicates a higher burden of diabetes-related vision loss among certain ethnic populations because of problems with access to care, said corresponding author Rohit Varma, M.D., M.P.H., director of the USC Eye Institute and ...

Religion is a key factor in demography, important for projections of future population growth as well as for other social indicators. A new journal, Yearbook of International Religious Demography, is the first to bring a quantitative demographic focus to the study of religion. The journal is co-edited by IIASA researcher Vegard Skirbekk, an expert in the field of religious demography. The first edition of the journal includes three studies by IIASA researchers: Vienna: Growing diversity in religion and ethnicity The city of Vienna is growing increasingly diverse in both ...

Endothelial cells residing in the coronary arteries can function as cardiac stem cells to produce new heart muscle tissue, Vanderbilt University investigators have discovered. The findings, published recently in Cell Reports, offer insights into how the heart maintains itself and could lead to new strategies for repairing the heart when it fails after a heart attack. The heart has long been considered to be an organ without regenerative potential, said Antonis Hatzopoulos, Ph.D., associate professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology. "People thought ...

Where the river meets the sea, there is the potential to harness a significant amount of renewable energy, according to a team of mechanical engineers at MIT. The researchers evaluated an emerging method of power generation called pressure retarded osmosis (PRO), in which two streams of different salinity are mixed to produce energy. In principle, a PRO system would take in river water and seawater on either side of a semi-permeable membrane. Through osmosis, water from the less-salty stream would cross the membrane to a pre-pressurized saltier side, creating a flow ...

Almost one-third of acute heart failure syndrome patients seen in hospital emergency departments (EDs) in Florida and California during 2010 had ED visits during the following year, findings that suggest a lack of appropriate outpatient care. A study by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators also finds that patients with frequent ED visits for the syndrome accounted for more than half of all such ED visits and hospitalizations, contributing to significant health care costs. "The high proportion of patients with frequent ED visits reflects the failure of ...

DENVER (August 20, 2014) – Women who are poor experience higher cortisol levels in pregnancy and give birth to infants with elevated levels of the stress hormone, putting them at greater risk for serious disease later in life, according to a new research from the University of Colorado Denver. The study, published online recently in the American Journal of Human Biology, is the first to measure cortisol in infants and relate it directly to the socioeconomic status of their mothers during pregnancy. "There have been several studies relating cortisol levels in teenagers ...

Computer security researchers from North Carolina State University and Technische Universität Darmstadt/CASED in Germany have developed a modification to the core Android operating system that allows developers and users to plug in new security enhancements. The new Android Security Modules (ASM) framework aims to eliminate the bottleneck that prevents developers and users from taking advantage of new security tools. "In the ongoing arms race between white hats and black hats, researchers and developers are constantly coming up with new security extensions," says Dr. ...

When a colony of honeybees grows to about 4,000 members, it triggers an important first stage in its reproductive cycle: the building of a special type of comb used for rearing male reproductive, called drones. A team of experts from the Department of Neurobiology and Behaviour at Cornell University, led by Michael Smith, studied what starts the reproductive cycle of honeybee colonies. The results are published in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature. Reproduction isn't always a honeybee colony's top priority. Early in a colony's development, ...

North Carolina State University researchers have developed methods for electronically manipulating the flight muscles of moths and for monitoring the electrical signals moths use to control those muscles. The work opens the door to the development of remotely-controlled moths, or "biobots," for use in emergency response. "In the big picture, we want to know whether we can control the movement of moths for use in applications such as search and rescue operations," says Dr. Alper Bozkurt, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and co-author ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Supervisors who are abusive to individual employees can actually throw the entire work team into conflict, hurting productivity, finds new research led by a Michigan State University business scholar. The study, conducted in China and the United States, suggests the toxic effect of nonphysical abuse by a supervisor is much broader than believed. Published online in the Journal of Applied Psychology, it's one of the first studies to examine the effect of bad bosses in employee teams. Teams are increasingly popular in the business world. Lead ...

Work by scientists at the Universities of Manchester and Auckland suggest that both major forms of diabetes are the result of the same mechanism. The findings, published today in the FASEB Journal (20 August), provide compelling evidence that juvenile-onset or type-1 diabetes and type-2 diabetes are both caused by the formation of toxic clumps of a hormone called amylin. The results, based on 20 years' work in New Zealand, suggest that type-1 and type-2 diabetes could both be slowed down and potentially reversed by medicines that stop amylin forming these toxic clumps. ...

In leaves, photosystem 1 (PS1) absorbs light and its energy is finally utilized for the conversion of carbon dioxide to biomass. Photovoltaic devices, mostly build from silicon based semiconductors, also harness solar light but produce electricity. One approach for the development of cheaper and renewable photovoltaics consists in replacing the semi-conductor with the isolated membrane protein complexes of photosynthesis. Prof. Dr. Matthias Rögner's team isolates a highly stable PS1 from thermophilic cyanobacteria that live in a hot spring in Japan. However, the integration ...

NGC 3603 is a very bright star cluster and is famed for having the highest concentration of massive stars that have been discovered in our galaxy so far. At the centre lies a Wolf–Rayet multiple star system, known as HD 97950. Wolf–Rayet stars are at an advanced stage of stellar evolution, and start off with around 20 times the mass of the Sun. But, despite this large mass, Wolf–Rayet stars shed a considerable amount of their matter due to intense stellar winds , which blast the star's surface material off into space at several million kilometres per hour, a crash diet ...

BOSTON – As people grow older, they often have difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep, and tend to awaken too early in the morning. In individuals with Alzheimer's disease, this common and troubling symptom of aging tends to be especially pronounced, often leading to nighttime confusion and wandering. Now, a study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the University of Toronto/Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center helps explain why sleep becomes more fragmented with age. Reported online today in the journal Brain, the new findings demonstrate ...

Efforts must be made to decrease China's increasing caesarean section rate, suggests a new commentary published today (20 August) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG). China has one of the highest caesarean delivery rates in the world. Of 16 million babies born in 2010, approximately half were by caesarean. Although the exact rate is not known, the current Chinese language literature on caesarean rates in China reports total caesarean rates ranging from 36% to 58%. However, before the 1980s, the caesarean rate was below 5% and it did ...

(Boston) – An editorial published in this week's JAMA highlights the importance of physicians using all available clinical assessment tools when considering how to treat patients. Written by Robert Vinci, MD, chief of pediatrics at Boston Medical Center and chair of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and Howard Bauchner, MD, editor-in-chief of JAMA, the editorial examines results of a study published in the same issue of the journal as an example of how doctors can often over-emphasize certain types of data. The study examined how pediatric emergency medicine ...