Visual impairment comes in many forms, and it's on the rise in America. A University of Cincinnati experiment aimed at this diverse and growing population could spark development of advanced tools to help all the aging baby boomers, injured veterans, diabetics and white-cane-wielding pedestrians navigate the blurred edges of everyday life. These tools could be based on a device called the Enactive Torch, which looks like a combination between a TV remote and Captain Kirk's weapon of choice. But it can do much greater things than change channels or stun aliens. Luis ...

The protein mTOR is a central controller of growth and metabolism. Deregulation of mTOR signaling increases the risk of developing metabolic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and cancer. In the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel describe how aberrant mTOR signaling in the liver not only affects hepatic metabolism but also whole body physiology. The protein mTOR regulates cell growth and metabolism and thus plays a key role in the development of human disorders. In the ...

Blood stem cells have the potential to turn into any type of blood cell, whether it be the oxygen-carrying red blood cells, or the many types of white blood cells of the immune system that help fight infection. How exactly is the fate of these stem cells regulated? Preliminary findings from research conducted by scientists from the Weizmann Institute and the Hebrew University are starting to reshape the conventional understanding of the way blood stem cell fate decisions are controlled thanks to a new technique for epigenetic analysis they have developed. Understanding ...

At the ends of the Universe there are black holes with masses equaling billions of our sun. These giant bodies – quasars – feed on interstellar gas, swallowing large quantities of it non-stop. Thus they reveal their existence: The light that is emitted by the gas as it is sucked in and crushed by the black hole's gravity travels for eons across the Universe until it reaches our telescopes. Looking at the edges of the Universe is therefore looking into the past. These far-off, ancient quasars appear to us in their "baby photos" taken less than a billion years after the Big ...

Nanocubes are anything but child's play. Weizmann Institute scientists have used them to create surprisingly yarn-like strands: They showed that given the right conditions, cube-shaped nanoparticles are able to align into winding helical structures. Their results, which reveal how nanomaterials can self-assemble into unexpectedly beautiful and complex structures, were recently published in Science. Dr. Rafal Klajn and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Gurvinder Singh of the Institute's Organic Chemistry Department used nanocubes of an iron oxide material called magnetite. As ...

Designing structures and devices that protect the body from shock and vibrations during high-velocity impacts is a universal challenge. Scientists and engineers focusing on this challenge might make advances by studying the unique morphology of the woodpecker, whose body functions as an excellent anti-shock structure. The woodpecker's brain can withstand repeated collisions and deceleration of 1200 g during rapid pecking. This anti-shock feature relates to the woodpecker's unique morphology and ability to absorb impact energy. Using computed tomography and the construction ...

Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have found between Greenland and Spitsbergen the scours left behind on the sea bed by gigantic icebergs. The five lineaments, at a depth of 1,200 metres, are the lowest-lying iceberg scours yet to be found on the Arctic sea floor. This finding provides new understanding of the dynamics of the Ice Age and the extent of the Arctic ice sheet thousands of years ago. In addition, the researchers could draw conclusions about the export of fresh water from the Arctic into the ...

Visitors to the Western Wall in Jerusalem can see that some of its stones are extremely eroded. This is good news for people placing prayer notes in the wall's cracks and crevices, but presents a problem for engineers concerned about the structure's stability. The Western Wall is a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the courtyard of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. It is located in Jerusalem's Old City at the foot of the Temple Mount. To calculate the erosion in the different kinds of limestone that make up the Western Wall, researchers from the Hebrew University ...

Celebrity promotion of charities is ineffective at raising awareness, but can make the stars more popular with the public, new research says. According to journal articles by three UK academics, "the ability of celebrity and advocacy to reach people is limited" and celebrities are "generally ineffective" at encouraging people to care about "distant suffering". The research, by Professor Dan Brockington, of The University of Manchester, Professor Spensor Henson, University of Sussex, and Dr Martin Scott, University of East Anglia, is published at time when many celebrities ...

A new mechanism of joint destruction caused by a natural material that grinds away healthy cartilage and worsens osteoarthritis has been identified in human hip joints for the first time by University of Liverpool scientists. The scientists, with Professor Alan Boyde and colleagues from Queen Mary University of London, were studying the hip of a man with the genetic condition, alkaptonuria (AKU), This is a metabolic disease in which a substance called homogentisic acid accumulates in joint cartilage, causing changes to its physical properties. The study revealed ...

As a national push continues to recruit talented girls and young women into math and science-related careers, a new study underlines the importance of mentoring and other social support systems for women pursuing those research professions. Mary Jean Amon, a doctoral student in the University of Cincinnati's psychology program, will present her findings at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C. Amon's study uncovered three themes that emerged as women examined the effects of gender stereotypes in STEM fields: career strategies, ...

This news release is available in German. Many human metabolic functions only run smoothly if the acid level in the body remains neutral and stable. For humans, normal blood pH values lie between 7.35 and 7.45. By way of comparison, an empty stomach is extremely acidic, with a pH value of 1.5. The body constantly monitors this narrow pH band and quickly restores the ideal pH values in the event of any deviations. This is because many proteins cease to function properly if fluids in the body become even slightly more acidic. These proteins become unstable and alter ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 11, 2014 – Testosterone, a steroid hormone, is well known to contribute to aggressive behavior in males, but the neural circuits through which testosterone exerts these effects have not been clear. Prior studies found that the administration of a single dose of testosterone influenced brain circuit function. Surprisingly, however, these studies were conducted exclusively in women. Researchers, led by Dr. Justin Carré, sought to rectify this gap by conducting a study of the effects of testosterone on the brain's response to threat cues in healthy ...

Rochester, Minn. — Gallstone pain is one of the most common reasons patients visit emergency rooms. Figuring out who needs emergency gallbladder removal and who can go home and schedule surgery at their convenience is sometimes a tricky question, and it isn't always answered correctly. A new Mayo Clinic study found that 1 in 5 patients who went to the emergency room with gallbladder pain and were sent home to schedule surgery returned to the ER within 30 days needing emergency gallbladder removal. The surgical complication rate rises with the time lag before surgery, the ...

New research published in the September issue of the British Journal of Nutrition and featured in the just released Global Phytonutrient Report highlights a significant shortfall in fruit and vegetable consumption in people's diets around the world. Commissioned by the Nutrilite Health Institute of Amway, the research finds the majority of adults worldwide would have to at least double their current consumption of fruits and vegetables to meet the World Health Organization's minimum recommendation of five servings (400 grams) per day. Additionally, the vast majority of ...

New Orleans, LA – Research led by Dr. Melinda Sothern, Professor and Director of Behavioral & Community Health at the LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Public Health, reports that a turn-key intervention program significantly increased physical activity levels among children in daycare. The treatment groups also achieved 91% of the physical activity goals in the improvement plans submitted by the directors of the daycare centers where the program was implemented. The results are published in the August 2014 issue of the journal, Childhood Obesity. "Physical ...

In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court forced California to deal with the massive overcrowding in its prison system. The resulting reform shifted administrative and budgetary responsibility for low-level criminals from the state prison system to county jails. As a result, local California jails now face more overcrowding than ever, and local law enforcement is saddled with additional costs for imprisoning arrestees. A new study evaluating the exact opposite reform in Israel, published in the Journal of Public Economics, offers insight into the long-term impact of the California ...

DENVER (August 11, 2014) – In a rare study of how street network design affects public health, researchers at the University of Colorado Denver and the University of Connecticut have discovered that older, more compact cities promote more walking and biking and are generally healthier than many newer cities. "Previously we had found that people drive less and walk more in more compact cities with more intersections per square mile," said study co-author Wesley Marshall, PhD, PE, assistant professor of engineering at the CU Denver, a major center of timely, topical and ...

A recent survey of mountain yellow-legged frogs released into the wild by San Diego Zoo Global wildlife conservationists indicates that the populations are showing signs of stress related to drought conditions in California. The juvenile frogs, released into the San Jacinto mountains in two protected sites, are representatives of a species brought to the brink of extinction by the threat of wildfire, habitat destruction and chytrid fungus. The young frogs hatched at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research and were introduced as tadpoles into the wild in 2013. "When ...

Researchers from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have reported registering three possible occasions of the total destruction of stars by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. Details are given in an article by IldarKhabibullin and Sergei Sazonov, accepted for publication by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal(a preprint is available at http://www.arXiv.org. The astrophysicists used data obtained by X-ray orbiting observatories ROSAT and XMM-Newton. ...

Discovery of a new mechanism of drug action could lead to the next generation of drugs to treat schizophrenia. Affecting one per cent of the world's population, schizophrenia is a major health condition. It affects a person's ability to think, feel and act and is associated with distressing symptoms including hallucinations and delusions. New Monash University findings, published today in the journal, Nature Chemical Biology, offer hope of a new class of drug that can act as a "dimmer switch" to control schizophrenia, without causing some of the common side effects ...

Experts believe a molecule in parasitic worms could help explain why worm infections can effectively treat a range of autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The Monash University study, published in the FASEB Journal, successfully identified peptides from parasitic worms that suppress the body's immune response. Researchers believe this could pave the way for a new drug containing the peptide to provide relief from the symptoms of autoimmune diseases. Affecting as many as one in 20 Australians, autoimmune diseases ...

Autophagy is a basic catabolic mechanism by which unnecessary or dysfunctional cellular components are degraded by lysosomes. Damaged organelles such as mitochondria are scavenged by autophagic processes to maintain the stability of nerve cells. Excessive activation of autophagy leads to cell death. However, it remains unclear whether autophagy affects hippocampal neuronal injury in vascular dementia. Prof. Bin Liu and co-workers from the Affiliated Hospital of Hebei United University, China intraperitoneally injected wortmannin into a rat model of vascular dementia. They ...

In the central nervous system, Asiaticoside has been shown to attenuate in vitro neuronal damage caused by exposure to β-amyloid. However, its potential neuroprotective properties in glutamate-induced excitotoxicity have not been fully studied. Researchers from Fourth Military Medical University of Chinese PLA, China reported that pretreatment with Asiaticoside decreased neuronal cell loss in a concentration-dependent manner and restored changes in expression of apoptotic-related proteins Bcl-2 and Bax. Asiaticoside pretreatment also attenuated the upregulation of ...

The fornix, a part of the Papez circuit, transfers information of episodic memory between the medial temporal lobe and the medial diencephalon. It is difficult to precisely assess the fornix due to its long, thin appearance and its location within the brain. In addition, discrimination of the whole fornix from adjacent neural structure using conventional brain CT or MRI is impossible. By contrast, diffusion tensor tractography (DTT) has enabled three-dimensional visualization of the fornix, and many studies have reported on fornix injury using DTT. Dr. Sung Ho Jang and ...