(PHILDELPHIA) – MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate protein-coding gene abundance levels by interacting with the 3´ end of various messenger RNAs. Each target site matches the first few nucleotides of the targeting miRNA, the so called "seed" region, and this interaction leads to the degradation of the target or prevents its translation into amino acids. This dogma has led researchers to largely look for perfect base-pair matching of the "seed" region among candidate targets. New research published today (August 8th) in Nature's open access journal Scientific Reports suggests ...

In the developing brain, special proteins that act like molecular tugboats push or pull on growing nerve cells, or neurons, helping them navigate to their assigned places amidst the brain's wiring. How a single protein can exert both a push and a pull force to nudge a neuron in the desired direction is a longstanding mystery that has now been solved by scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborators in Europe and China. Jia-huai Wang, PhD, who led the work at Dana-Farber and Peking University in Beijing, is a corresponding author of a report published ...

After injury, damaged axons have the capacity to regenerate, but the regenerative capacity of the axon, particularly axons of the central nervous system, is quite limited. This is because the damaged axons tend to retract, because they encounter obstacles such as scar tissue and inhibitory molecules, and because their growth rates simply do not match those of a juvenile axon. Prof. Peter W. Baas from Drexel University, USA focus on microtubules as among the most important factors in encouraging injured adult axons to regenerate. Microtubules are hollow polymeric filaments ...

Recent studies have demonstrated that Notch-1 expression is increased in the hippocampus of Alzheimer's disease patients. Huimin Liang and co-workers from Second Affliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, China speculate that Notch-1 signaling may be involved in PC12 cell apoptosis induced by amyloid beta-peptide (25-35) (Aβ25-35). In a study reported on the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 13, 2014), PC12 cells were cultured with different doses (0, 0.1, 1.0, 10 and 100 nmol/L) of N-[N-(3,5-Difuorophen-acetyl)-L-alanyl]-S-phenylglycine t-butyl ester, a Notch-1 ...

Curtin University planetary scientists have shed some light on the bombardment history of our solar system by studying a unique volcanic meteorite recovered in Western Australia. Captured on camera seven years ago falling on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain, the Bunburra Rockhole Meterorite has unique characteristics that suggest it came from a large asteroid that has never before been identified. Associate Professor Fred Jourdan, along with colleagues Professor Phil Bland and Dr Gretchen Benedix from Curtin's Department of Applied Geology, believe the meteorite is ...

Scientists at A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) and the Bioinformatics Institute (BII) have found new clues to early detection and personalised treatment of ovarian cancer, currently one of the most difficult cancers to diagnose early due to the lack of symptoms that are unique to the illness. There are three predominant cancers that affect women – breast, ovarian and womb cancer. Of the three, ovarian cancer is of the greatest concern as it is usually diagnosed only at an advanced stage due to the absence of clear early warning symptoms. Successful treatment ...

WASHINGTON –- Even when not under arrest, juvenile suspects being interrogated for a crime may be strikingly unaware of their constitutional rights and confess without legal counsel or even a parent present, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention. An analysis of 57 videotaped juvenile interrogations at 17 police departments around the country revealed none of the suspects, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, had an attorney present while they were questioned, according to Hayley Cleary, PhD, of Virginia Commonwealth ...

WASHINGTON –- Parents play a direct role in distracted teen driving, with more than half of teens talking on cellphones with their mother or father while driving, according to new research presented at the American Psychological Association's 122nd Annual Convention. Researchers interviewed or surveyed more than 400 teen drivers, ages 15 to 18, from 31 states to find out why they continue to talk and text behind the wheel, despite warnings about the serious hazards of distracted driving. "Teens said parents expect to be able to reach them, that parents get mad if they ...

A stroke therapy using stem cells extracted from patients' bone marrow has shown promising results in the first trial of its kind in humans. Five patients received the treatment in a pilot study conducted by doctors at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and scientists at Imperial College London. The therapy was found to be safe, and all the patients showed improvements in clinical measures of disability. The findings are published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine. It is the first UK human trial of a stem cell treatment for acute stroke to be published. The ...

Half-metallic ferromagnet CrO2 has attracted much attention not only because of its fundamental physics related with high spin polarization but also because of its possible applications in the emerging area of spintronics. In these applications, synthesis of CrO2 films is of fundamental importance, primarily because of the difficulty in its synthesis, as it is not known to form under ambient pressures in a pure form. Extensive efforts have been made to grow high quality CrO2 films, but the growth technology still deserves research. The high quality CrO2 film on the ...

New 3D printing techniques have made it possible for just about anybody to fabricate fanciful plastic characters and sculptures, two new computational design methods developed by Disney Research Zurich are making it possible for even casual users to bring these creations to life by adding mechanical motion. The methods apply to two specific types of characters – planar mechanical characters that are similar to shadow puppets, and linkage-based characters formed by networks of rigid links and hinged joints. In either case, the researchers have developed tools that lead ...

Video cameras that people wear to record daily activities are creating a novel form of creative and informative media. But this footage also poses a challenge: how to expeditiously edit hours of raw video into something watchable. One solution, according to Disney researchers, is to automate the editing process by leveraging the first-person viewpoints of multiple cameras to find the areas of greatest interest in the scene. The method they developed can automatically combine footage of a single event shot by several such "social cameras" into a coherent, condensed video. ...

Oil might not, at first sight, seem like an inhabited terrain. Within the oil, however, are tiny, suspended water droplets. "Inside them we found complex microbial communities, which play an active part in oil degradation in situ," says first author Prof. Rainer Meckenstock from the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU). Previously it was assumed that microbial oil degradation only occurred at the oil-water interface. The team headed by Prof. Meckenstock from the Institute of Groundwater Ecology and the Department of Biogeochemistry at HMGU along with international colleagues ...

Disney Research Zurich has developed a new tool to help video editors synchronize multiple video clips based on the visual content of the videos, rather than relying on timecodes or other external markers. Current editing tools include a "snapping" interface that aligns video clips based on start-and-end times; by contrast, Disney Research's VideoSnapping method is based on an analysis of the content of the video. This makes it easier to synchronize multiple clips without such cues as global timecodes or audio, and even when clips are shot at different trajectories and ...

Resistance switching of random access memory has been widely explored due to its potential for replacement of flash memory in the next-generation nonvolatile memory applications. One of the problems with resistive switching materials is the variations of switching parameters, which will deteriorate the device endurance. How do we solve this problem? Many methods have been tried to improve the resistive switching performances, such as doping in the insulator film, using appropriate electrodes and inserting interlayer between the electrode and the insulator ...

Workplace stress can have a range of adverse effects on health with an increased risk of cardio-vascular diseases in the first line. However, to date, convincing evidence for a strong association between work stress and incident Type 2 diabetes mellitus is missing. Risk of diabetes about 45 percent higher As the team of scientists headed by Dr. Cornelia Huth and Prof. Karl-Heinz Ladwig has now discovered that individuals who are under a high level of pressure at work and at the same time perceive little control over the activities they perform face an about 45 percent ...

A commonly held belief that global warming will diminish oxygen concentrations in the ocean looks like it may not be entirely true. According to new research published in Science magazine, just the opposite is likely the case in the eastern tropical northern Pacific, with its anoxic zone expected to shrink in coming decades because of climate change. An international team of scientists came to that surprising conclusion after completing a detailed assessment of changes since 1850 in the eastern tropical northern Pacific Ocean's oxygen minimum zone (OMZ). An ocean layer ...

Much of our daily lives are taken up by habits that we've formed over our lifetime. An important characteristic of a habit is that it's automatic-- we don't always recognize habits in our own behavior. Studies show that about 40 percent of people's daily activities are performed each day in almost the same situations. Habits emerge through associative learning. "We find patterns of behavior that allow us to reach goals. We repeat what works, and when actions are repeated in a stable context, we form associations between cues and response," Wendy Wood explains in her session ...

Diversity in the workplace has been a contentious issue for many employers. In May 2014, Google disclosed that 70% of its employees are male, and in terms of racial diversity, the company is 61% White, 30% Asian, 3% Hispanic and 2% Black. Does that breakdown sound diverse to you? If not, what would an ideal diverse team look like? A study publishing in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin sheds light on the complexity in defining diversity. Previous research has shown that higher levels of diversity are associated with more trust, increased feelings of safety and ...

Advice on how we should brush our teeth from dental associations and toothpaste companies is 'unacceptably inconsistent', finds new UCL (University College London) research. The study, published in the British Dental Journal, looked at the brushing advice given by dental associations across ten countries, toothpaste and toothbrush companies and in dental textbooks. They found a wide range of recommendations on what brushing method to use, how often to brush and for how long. The researchers found no clear consensus between the various sources, and a 'worrying' lack ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study by a team of Chinese and American conservation biologists quantifies the serious consequences of China's recent economic growth on its coastal ecosystems. By several measures, 1978 was the beginning of a hugely successful surge in the nation's ability to produce economic value, but that surge brought accelerated degradation in the vitality of its coastal ecosystems. The combined analysis of economic growth, human activities and impacts, and environmental quality data appears in the journal Scientific Reports. It shows ...

The dynamic behavior of electrons in magnetic fields is crucial for understanding physical processes, such as the quantum Hall effect, which are important in many areas of solid state physics, including electrical conductivity. Yet, there is much that remains unknown about exactly how electrons behave in a magnetic field. In research published today in Nature Communications, researchers Franco Nori and Konstantin Bliokh from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan, in collaboration with an experimental team in Austria, have made the first direct observations ...

Children affected by trisomy 21 (or Down syndrome) are 50 to 500 times more likely to develop leukemia than other children. A group of geneticists working in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) focused for many years on the genetic characteristics of Down syndrome. They have sequenced the exome, a specific part of our genome, in a cohort of patients affected both by Down Syndrome and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (DS-ALL), a type of cancer relative to the cells of the immune system in the bone marrow. They were able to sketch an outline of ...

Patients treated with a drug widely prescribed for type 2 diabetes can live longer than people without the condition, a large-scale study involving over 180,000 people has shown. The findings indicate that a drug known as metformin, used to control glucose levels in the body and already known to exhibit anticancer properties, could offer prognostic and prophylactic benefits to people without diabetes. Published in a leading diabetes journal, Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism by scientists from Cardiff University, the study set out to compare the survival of diabetes ...

A research team led by astronomers and astrophysicists at the University of Warwick have found that some of the Universe's loneliest supernovae are likely created by the collisions of white dwarf stars into neutron stars. Dr Joseph Lyman from the University of Warwick is the lead researcher on the paper, The progenitors of calcium-rich transients are not formed in situ, published today by the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (to appear on astro-ph 8 August 2014). "Our paper examines so-called `calcium-rich' transients" says Dr Lyman. "These ...