Why are some 75-year-olds downright spry while others can barely get around? Part of the explanation, say researchers writing in the Cell Press journal Trends in Molecular Medicine on May 28, is differences from one person to the next in exposure to harmful substances in the environment, chemicals such as benzene, cigarette smoke, and even stress. While the birth date on your driver's license can tell you your chronological age, that might mean little in terms of the biological age of your body and cells. The researchers say that what we need now is a better understanding ...

This news release is available in French. Listening to a conversation in the context of a cocktail party presents a great challenge for the auditory system. Without realizing it, one must extract, from a complex mixture of sound, the sound of a single voice to understand and track it. Researchers at Queen's University, lead by Dr. Ingrid Johnsrude, are studying how our brains meet that challenge, and allow us to distinguish specific voices in crowded, noisy and distracting environments. Her studies have revealed that the brain does not simply rely on the incoming ...

This news release is available in French. Research presented by Morris Moscovitch, from the Rotman Research Institute at the University of Toronto, shows that memory is more dynamic and changeable than previously thought. Dr. Moscovich's results reveal that important interactions between the hippocampus and the neocortex, two regions of the brain, have different yet complementary roles in remembering places and events. These results highlight that different forms of memories exist in the brain, and that these are encoded in different, but interacting parts of the ...

NEW YORK, NY (May 21, 2014) — The overall number and nature of mutations—rather than the presence of any single mutation—influences an individual's risk of developing schizophrenia, as well as its severity, according to a discovery by Columbia University Medical Center researchers published in the latest issue of Neuron. The findings could have important implications for the early detection and treatment of schizophrenia. Maria Karayiorgou, MD, professor of psychiatry and Joseph Gogos, MD, PhD, professor of physiology and cellular biophysics and of neuroscience, and their ...

Making a tabletop particle accelerator just got easier. A new study shows that certain requirements for the lasers used in an emerging type of small-area particle accelerator can be significantly relaxed. Researchers hope the finding could bring about a new era of accelerators that would need just a few meters to bring particles to great speeds, rather than the many kilometers required of traditional accelerators. The research, from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), is presented as the cover story in ...

A cost-analysis of post-traumatic stress disorder treatments shows that letting patients choose their course of treatment – either psychotherapy or medication – is less expensive than assigning a treatment and provides a higher quality of life for patients. In a recent study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, PTSD patients allowed to choose between therapies ended up costing about $1,622 less on average per patient per year compared with patients who were assigned treatment. Among patients not given a choice, treatment with prolonged exposure psychotherapy ...

Toronto – If you want grandpa to start using the bank machine instead of standing in line for the teller, the best way to do it is to tell him to "Act now!" with a limited time offer for a banking card, shows new research. A new study from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management suggests marketers should pay attention to where consumers are in their lifecycles when determining how to get them to adopt new technologies. Marketers may have incorrectly assumed that older consumers avoid products such as debit or credit cards because they are technophobic ...

A simple, inexpensive spray method that deposits a graphene film can heal manufacturing defects and produce a high quality graphene layer on a range of substrates, report researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Korea University. Their study is available online in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. Graphene, a two-dimensional wonder-material composed of a single layer of carbon atoms, is strong, transparent, and an excellent conductor of electricity. It has potential in a wide range of applications, such as reinforcing and lending electrical ...

The tropical low pressure area known as System 92B finally dissipated on the east central coast of India on May 27 after six days of struggling to develop. System 92B developed in the Bay of Bengal, Northern Indian Ocean basin on May 21. NASA's TRMM, Aqua and Suomi NPP satellites captured data on the low throughout the ups and downs it experienced until wind shear finally took its toll on the system. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over System 92B on May 19 and 20 and captured data on System ...

The botched execution in April of a man convicted of murder brought to the fore of national consciousness the precarious state of capital punishment. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, details the history of lethal injection, what went wrong in April and how states are currently handling the practice, once deemed the most humane way to execute prisoners. Jyllian Kemsley, a senior editor at C&EN, explains that the three-compound procedure prison officials use to carry out executions by lethal injection ...

Tampa, Fla. (May 28, 2014) – To be suitable for medical transplantation, one idea is that human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) need to remain "undifferentiated" i.e. they are not changing into other cell types. In determining the best way to culture hESCs so that they remain undifferentiated and also grow, proliferate and survive, researchers have used blood cell "feeder-layer" cultures using animal-derived feeder cells, often from mice (mouse embryonic fibroblasts [MEFs]). This approach has, however, been associated with a variety of contamination problems, including pathogen ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (May 28, 2014) – Tai Chi, a traditional Chinese martial art and sport, has been found to be beneficial in raising the numbers of an important type of cell when three groups of young people were tested to discover the benefits of Tai Chi, brisk walking or no exercise. The group performing Tai Chi saw a rise in their cluster of differentiation 34 expressing (CD34+) cells, a stem cell important to a number of the body's functions and structures. The study was published in issue 23(4/5) of Cell Transplantation and is freely available on-line at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/2014/00000023/F0020004/art00020. "To ...

In a new study, published in this week's issue of the journal Science, researchers show for the first time how the brain re-wires and fine-tunes its connections differently depending on the relative timing of sensory stimuli. In most neuroscience textbooks today, there is a widely held model that explains how nerve circuits might refine their connectivity based on patterned firing of brain cells, but it has not previously been directly observed in real time. This "Hebbian Theory", named after the McGill University psychologist Donald Olding Hebb who first proposed it in ...

Acute concerns about e-waste management in developing countries were highlighted in expert presentations at a recent E-waste Academy for Managers (EWAM) in El Salvador organized by UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS) hosted Step (Solving the E-Waste Program) Initiative. The week-long Academy ended April 4 was the second in a series inaugurated in Ghana in 2012. By sharing insights on "urban mining" and fostering international linkages and collaboration, the academies for e-waste managers, along with complementary events for e-waste-related ...

Cats eat more during the winter and owners should give their pet more food during this time, University of Liverpool research has found. Researchers from the University's School of Veterinary Science, in collaboration with colleagues at the Royal Canin Research Centre in France, spent four years monitoring how much cats chose to eat, and found that food intake increased in colder months and decreased during the summer. The 38 cats studied had a microchip on their collar which allowed them to take as much food as they wanted from a dispenser which only opened for them. ...

In a recent study involving researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich, the desorption of oxygen molecules from a silver surface was successfully visualized for the first time. The effects account for the shortcomings of conventional models of desorption. In a recent study involving LMU researchers, the desorption of oxygen molecules from a silver surface was successfully visualized for the first time. The effects account for the shortcomings of conventional models of desorption. In heterogeneous catalytic reactions, which take place at the boundary ...

Lobbying senior business executives informally — whether in hallways or after work at Starbucks and fitness centers — is a savvy way for corporate communicators to perform their jobs successfully, according to a Baylor University study. While other scholars have touted being a member of the "C-suite" as the ideal for public relations and corporate communicators, the Baylor study of four corporations — three ranked as Fortune 500 companies — showed that being an influential insider does not always require being in the board room with the "chiefs," said Marlene Neill, Ph.D., ...

The Republic of Panama's proposal to implement four Traffic Separation Schemes for commercial vessels entering and exiting the Panama Canal and ports was approved unanimously by the International Maritime Organization in London, May 23. Based on studies by Smithsonian marine ecologist Hector Guzman, the new shipping lanes are positioned to minimize overlap between shipping routes and humpback whale migration routes and reduce vessel speed four months a year at the peak of the whale overwintering season. Several cetacean species move through the tropical waters near the ...

LOS ANGELES – (May 28, 2014) – With the rate of chronic kidney disease on the rise among older Americans, researchers seeking to improve patients' quality of life studied a group of adults undergoing hemodialysis and found their higher rates of depression and anxiety could be associated with their impaired physical exercise capability and reduced daily physical activity, according a new study published online by the Journal of Renal Nutrition. The researchers studied 72 relatively healthy maintenance hemodialysis patients and compared them to 39 healthy adults who were ...

Fathers who help with household chores are more likely to raise daughters who aspire to less traditional, and potentially higher paying, careers. So finds a new study that suggests how parents share dishes, laundry and other domestic duties plays a key role in shaping the gender attitudes and aspirations of their children, especially daughters. While mothers' gender and work equality beliefs were key factors in predicting kids' attitudes toward gender, the strongest predictor of daughters' own professional ambitions was their fathers' approach to household chores. ...

WASHINGTON, May 28—Augmented reality is increasingly becoming… well … a reality. Smartphone apps can point out restaurants as you scan the street with your phone camera or even identify constellations when you point your phone at the night sky. And goggle-like devices—akin to Google Glass—that you wear on your head can superimpose computer-generated images onto your direct view of the physical world. But one major limitation of this kind of augmented reality (AR) technology is that moving back and forth between a 2-D image on the screen and a 3-D world in front of you ...

SAN FRANCISCO (May 28, 2014) – A team of researchers, led by Dr. Matthew Lewin of the California Academy of Sciences and Dr. Stephen P. Samuel of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland has taken another promising step toward developing a universal antidote for snakebite. Last summer, the team tested the effectiveness of a nasally administered antiparalytic drug on mice injected with high doses of Indian cobra (Naja naja) venom. Mice injected with otherwise fatal doses of venom outlived and in many cases survived after being treated with the antiparalytic agent, neostigmine. These ...

New York, NY—May 27, 2014—Researchers at Columbia Engineering, led by Computer Science Professor Peter Belhumeur, have taken bird-watching to a new level. Using computer vision and machine learning techniques, they have developed Birdsnap, a new iPhone app that is an electronic field guide featuring 500 of the most common North American bird species. The free app, which enables users to identify bird species through uploaded photos, accompanies a visually beautiful, comprehensive website that includes some 50,000 images. Birdsnap, which also features birdcalls for each ...

Every year, more than 1 million people in the U.S. who have suffered heart attacks or chest pain from blocked arteries have little mesh tubes called stents inserted into their blood vessels to prop them open. The procedure has saved many lives, but it still has potentially deadly downsides. Now scientists are reporting in the ACS journal Langmuir that coating stents with vitamin C could lower the implants' risks even further. Eagappanath Thiruppathi and Gopinath Mani note that today's stents have come a long way since their first introduction. Today, they come coated ...

WASHINGTON - Having regular positive interactions with family and friends and being involved in several different social networks can help older adults be healthier, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "Close connections with others are likely to promote but can also sometimes detract from good health by shaping daily behavior that directly affects physical health," said Lynn M. Martire, PhD, of The Pennsylvania State University. Martire and Melissa M. Franks, PhD, of Purdue University, were guest editors for a special issue ...