University of York scientists have shed new light on why teenagers and young adults are particularly susceptible to meningitis and septicaemia. The team from the University's Department of Biology has discovered a novel metabolic pathway in the bacterium Neisseria meningitidis that may explain why this age group is particularly at risk of infection. The results of the research, which was supported by the Centre for Chronic Diseases and Disorders (C2D2), are reported in the journal Molecular Microbiology. N. meningitidis is a major cause of meningitis and septicaemia, ...

SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 2, 2014) ― Scientists studying depression in teens have discovered that subtle changes in a gene can predict how the brain reacts to stress, which can cause such health issues as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and obesity. The research, published Aug. 2 in the journal Nature, focuses on two longitudinal studies led by Douglas E. Williamson, Ph.D., from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and Ahmad Hariri, Ph.D., from Duke University. Scientists from Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh are ...

VIDEO: Researchers show that suppressing expression of a key protein causes major changes in the shape of T. brucei (shown here), the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness. Click here for more information. Crafty parasites frequently undergo dramatic shape changes during their life cycles that enable them to adapt to different living conditions and thrive. But these transformations might not be as difficult as they appear, according to a study in The Journal of Cell Biology. African ...

WASHINGTON, August 4, 2014 — This week, Reactions is blasting off with an episode that's all about rockets. Featuring Doane College Postdoctoral Fellow Raychelle Burks, Ph.D., we examine the chemistry of solid and liquid propellants, orbital maneuvering and the "ride-able explosion" that is a rocket launch. You can "launch" the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqiq2lQrqGI. INFORMATION: Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit ...

Tropical Storm Bertha took a "vacation" in the Bahamas on August 3 and NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the storm that appeared be centered over "Crooked Island." On August 2, before Bertha visited the Bahamas, the western half of the storm passed over Puerto Rico. A visible image captured by NASA's Terra satellite showed Bertha's clouds stretched from Puerto Rico east, over the British Virgin Islands. NOAA's National Weather Service office in San Juan, Puerto Rico reported 1.36 inches of rainfall from Bertha on August 2. On August 3 at 15:35 UTC (11:35 a.m. ...

A recent study completed at the University of Eastern Finland provides new information on the limitations and potential new directions for the future development of transcranial ultrasound therapy. Active research is taking place in the field of transcranial ultrasound therapy, which in the future can potentially be applied to the treatment of brain tumours and targeted drug delivery. The therapy modality has already been successfully applied to the treatment of neuropathic pain disorder and essential tremors. The benefits of transcranial ultrasound therapy include minimal ...

Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have grafted neurons reprogrammed from skin cells into the brains of mice for the first time with long-term stability. Six months after implantation, the neurons had become fully functionally integrated into the brain. This successful, because lastingly stable, implantation of neurons raises hope for future therapies that will replace sick neurons with healthy ones in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, for example. The Luxembourg researchers published their results ...

Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass. In other experiments, they extracted useful audio signals from videos of aluminum foil, the surface of a glass of water, and even the leaves of a potted plant. The researchers will present their findings in a paper at this year's Siggraph, ...

This news release is available in German. In a paper published this week in the journal Nature Chemistry, researchers from the Center for Electrochemical Sciences – CES at the Ruhr-University Bochum and from the Max-Planck-Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr report a novel concept to work with efficient and possibly cheaper catalysts. A kind of buffer protects the catalysts against the hostile conditions encountered in fuel cells, which have been to date dismissed utilization. The scientists report in the current issue of Nature Chemistry. Hydrogenases, ...

This news release is available in German. This was determined using Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) at BESSY II. A thorough examination with an electron microscope (TEM) confirmed their result. "The research on this phenomenon is now proceeding because we are convinced that such nanoclusters lend themselves as catalysts, whether in fuel cells, in photocatalytic water splitting, or for other important reactions in chemical engineering", explains Dr. Armin Hoell of HZB. The results have just appeared in two peer reviewed international academic journals. "What ...

A recent study in Manchester has found that a procedure to take tissue samples from lung cancer patients can be used safely in the elderly – allowing doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis and to choose appropriate treatment. Half of all lung cancer patients are over 70 years old when first diagnosed, but studies have shown that these older patients are less likely to receive an accurate diagnosis. A correct assessment of the stage of a patient's disease – how much their tumour has grown and spread – is key to ensuring they receive the right treatment. Non-invasive ...

Twist, Snail, Slug. They may sound like words in a children's nursery rhyme, but they are actually the exotic names given to proteins that can generate cells with stem cell-like properties that have the ability to form diverse types of tissue. One protein with the even more out-there name of ZEB1 (zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1), is now thought to keep breast cancer cells from being successfully treated with radiation therapy, according to a study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Li Ma, Ph.D., an assistant professor of experimental ...

Research led by the University of Adelaide has resulted in new insights into clinical depression that demonstrate there cannot be a "one-size-fits-all" approach to treating the disease. As part of their findings, the researchers have developed a new model for clinical depression that takes into account the dynamic role of the immune system. This neuroimmune interaction results in different phases of depression, and has implications for current treatment practices. "Depression is much more complex than we have previously understood," says senior author Professor Bernhard ...

LA JOLLA—For hundreds of years, healers in São Tomé e Príncipe—an island off the western coast of Africa—have prescribed cata-manginga leaves and bark to their patients. These pickings from the Voacanga africana tree are said to decrease inflammation and ease the symptoms of mental disorders. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered that the power of the plant isn't just folklore: a compound isolated from Voacanga africana protects cells from altered molecular pathways linked to Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and the neurodegeneration ...

Previous studies show that violent video games increase adolescent aggressiveness, but new Dartmouth research finds for the first time that teen-agers who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games are more likely subsequently to engage in a wide range of deviant behaviors beyond aggression, including alcohol use, smoking cigarettes, delinquency and risky sex. More generally, such games – especially character-based games with anti-social protagonists – appear to affect how adolescents think of themselves, with potential consequences for their alter ego in the real ...

Spanish hurdler María José Martínez-Patiño, who in the 1980s endured harsh global media attention when she was subjected to unscientific gender tests, is co-author of a study that takes stock of current sexual verification policies in athletics. While such policies were originally designed to weed out men who impersonate women at female-only events, issues of privacy and confidentiality remain paramount to safeguard athletes from unnecessary embarrassment, says Nathan Ha of the University of California Los Angeles in the US, lead author of the review in Springer's journal ...

A new e-memo for the boss: Online breaks at work can refresh workers and boost productivity. Early findings from a University of Cincinnati study will be presented on Aug. 5, at the 74th annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Philadelphia. The study led by Sung Doo Kim, a doctoral candidate in the Carl H. Lindner College of Business, opens a rare avenue of research into coping with technology-induced distractions in our contemporary society. Previous research has focused on breaks during off-job hours such as evening, weekend and vacation periods, or on traditional ...

A new study reveals surprising similarities between the way mammals and flies eat. What and how we eat is a crucial determinant of health and wellbeing. Model organisms such as fruit flies have provided crucial insights into how our brain decides what and how much to eat. But until now it was not clear how similar eating was in fruit flies and mammals (vertebrates). In a paper published today (Itskov et. al 2014) in the scientific journal Nature Communications, scientists from the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Lisbon, Portugal, in collaboration with the University ...

UPTON, NY-Using a new method to track the electrochemical reactions in a common electric vehicle battery material under operating conditions, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have revealed new insight into why fast charging inhibits this material's performance. The study also provides the first direct experimental evidence to support a particular model of the electrochemical reaction. The results, published August 4, 2014, in Nature Communications, could provide guidance to inform battery makers' efforts to optimize materials ...

PHILADELPHIA — Consumption of a type of starch that acts like fiber may help reduce colorectal cancer risk associated with a high red meat diet, according to a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Red meat and resistant starch have opposite effects on the colorectal cancer-promoting miRNAs, the miR-17-92 cluster," said Karen J. Humphreys, PhD, a research associate at the Flinders Center for Innovation in Cancer at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. "This finding supports consumption of resistant ...

A new study suggests video game-playing for less than an hour a day is linked with better-adjusted children and teenagers. The research, carried out by Oxford University, found that young people who indulged in a little video game-playing were associated with being better adjusted than those who had never played or those who were on video games for three hours or more. The study finds no positive or negative effects for young people who played 'moderately' between one to three hours a day. However, the study, published in the journal, Pediatrics, suggests that the influence ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—It's a given that, in numbers terms, the 20th Century was the most violent in history, with civil war, purges and two World Wars killing as many as 200 million people. But on a per-capita basis, Washington State University archaeologist Tim Kohler has documented a particularly bloody period more than eight centuries ago on what is now American soil. Between 1140 and 1180, in the central Mesa Verde of southwest Colorado, four relatively peaceful centuries of pueblo living devolved into several decades of violence. Writing in the journal American Antiquity, ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 4, 2014 – Australia's Aboriginal Martu people hunt kangaroos and set small grass fires to catch lizards, as they have for at least 2,000 years. A University of Utah researcher found such man-made disruption boosts kangaroo populations – showing how co-evolution helped marsupials and made Aborigines into unintentional conservationists. "We have uncovered a framework that allows us to predict when human subsistence practices might be detrimental to the environment and when they might be beneficial," says Brian Codding, an assistant professor of anthropology. "When ...

Cancer Research UK scientists have found a new use for an old drug by showing that it shrinks a particular type of pancreatic cancer tumour and stops it spreading, according to research published in Gut*. "It's a crucial step forward in developing new treatments for this devastating disease..." - Dr Jennifer Morton, study author The scientists, at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and the University of Glasgow, treated mice with pancreatic cancers caused by known genetic faults with the drug rapamycin**. Previous clinical trials did not find this drug to be ...

Demand for general practice appointments is rising rapidly, and in an attempt to deal with this, many practices have introduced systems of telephone triage. Patients are phoned by a doctor or nurse who either manages the problem on the phone, or agrees with the patient whether and how urgently they need to be seen. A new large study, published in The Lancet on 4 August 2014 and funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), has investigated the potential value of telephone triage for patients and for the NHS. It concluded that patients who receive a telephone ...