This news release is available in German. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Leicester, has solved a long-standing mystery in biology, by identifying the molecular structure of a vital biological chemical. The debate – which has raged within the scientific community for years – boils down to something as simple as a hydrogen atom: is it there, or is it not? The controversy centres around a form of enzyme called a heme (or haem, as in haemoglobin) at the centre of which is an iron atom (Fe) called a 'ferryl' which becomes oxidised when ...

Decades of overfishing in the English Channel has resulted in the removal of many top predators from the sea and left fishermen 'scraping the barrel' for increasing amounts of shellfish to make up their catch. Sharks, rays, cod, haddock and many other species at the head of the food chain are at historic lows with many removed from the area completely. These are some of the findings of a study led by marine biologists at Plymouth University, in association with international non-profit research organization WorldFish. They analysed catches over the past 90 years and found ...

Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a way to estimate uncertainties in computer calculations that are widely used to speed the search for new materials for industry, electronics, energy, drug design and a host of other applications. The technique, reported in the July 11 issue of Science, should quickly be adopted in studies that produce some 30,000 scientific papers per year. "Over the past 10 years our ability to calculate the properties of materials and chemicals, such as reactivity and mechanical ...

As scientists learn more about earthquakes that rupture at fault zones near the planet's surface—and the mechanisms that trigger them—an even more intriguing earthquake mystery lies deeper in the planet. Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have discovered the first evidence that deep earthquakes, those breaking at more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) below Earth's surface, can rupture much faster than ordinary earthquakes. The finding gives seismologists new clues about the forces behind deep earthquakes as well as fast-breaking earthquakes ...

Microplastics – microscopic particles of plastic debris – are of increasing concern because of their widespread presence in the oceans and the potential physical and toxicological risks they pose to organisms. This is the view of two of the world's most eminent authorities on the subject, Professor Kara Lavender Law, of Sea Education Association (Woods Hole, MA), and Professor Richard Thompson of Plymouth University (UK). In an article published today in the journal Science, the two scientists have called for urgent action to "turn off the tap" and divert plastic waste ...

Mosquitoes infected with the bacteria Wolbachia are more likely to become infected with West Nile virus and more likely to transmit the virus to humans, according to a team of researchers. "Previous research has shown that Wolbachia -- a genus of bacteria that live inside mosquitoes -- render mosquitoes resistant to pathogen infection, thereby preventing the mosquitoes from infecting humans with the pathogens," said Jason Rasgon, associate professor of entomology, Penn State. "As a result, researchers are currently releasing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes into the wild ...

PHILADELPHIA – Reducing the amount of alcoholic beverages consumed, even for light-to-moderate drinkers, may improve cardiovascular health, including a reduced risk of coronary heart disease, lower body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure, according to a new multi-center study published in The BMJ and co-led by the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The latest findings call into question previous studies which suggest that consuming light-to-moderate amounts of alcohol (0.6-0.8 fluid ounces/day) may have a protective effect on cardiovascular ...

Childhood obesity is one of the top public health concerns in the United States, with 32 percent of youths aged 2-19 classified as obese as of 2012. As health problems such as childhood obesity grow, individuals and organizations have taken to Twitter to discuss the problem. A new study, led by Jenine K. Harris, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, examined the use of the hashtag #childhoodobesity in tweets to track Twitter conversations about the issue of overweight kids. The study published this month in the American ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Nuclear engineers at Oregon State University have developed a small, portable and inexpensive radiation detection device that should help people all over the world better understand the radiation around them, its type and intensity, and whether or not it poses a health risk. The device was developed in part due to public demand following the nuclear incident in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, when many regional residents were unsure what level of radiation they were being exposed to and whether their homes, food, environment and drinking water were safe. Devices ...

The child known as the "Mississippi baby"—an infant seemingly cured of HIV that was reported as a case study of a prolonged remission of HIV infection in The New England Journal of Medicine last fall—now has detectable levels of HIV after more than two years of not taking antiretroviral therapy without evidence of virus, according to the pediatric HIV specialist and researchers involved in the case. "Certainly, this is a disappointing turn of events for this young child, the medical staff involved in the child's care, and the HIV/AIDS research community," said NIAID ...

With the help of a smart tablet and Angry Birds, children can now do something typically reserved for engineers and computer scientists: program a robot to learn new skills. The Georgia Institute of Technology project is designed to serve as a rehabilitation tool and to help kids with disabilities. The researchers have paired a small humanoid robot with an Android tablet. Kids teach it how to play Angry Birds, dragging their finger on the tablet to whiz the bird across the screen. In the meantime, the robot watches what happens and records "snapshots" in its memory. ...

HOUSTON – (July 10, 2014) – New research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) shows that It's Your Game…Keep it Real (IYG), a health education program designed to delay sexual behavior and promote healthy dating relationships, can significantly reduce dating violence behaviors among minority youth. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 percent of high school youth are victims of physical dating violence and other studies suggest that more than 20 percent are victims of emotional dating violence. Previous studies ...

NOAA and its research partners predict that western Lake Erie will have a significant bloom of cyanobacteria, a toxic blue-green algae, during the 2014 bloom season in late summer. However, the predicted bloom is expected to be smaller than last year's intense bloom, and considerably less than the record-setting 2011 bloom. Bloom impacts will vary across the lake's western basin and are classified by an estimate of both its concentration and how far it spreads. Harmful algal blooms (HABs) were common in western Lake Erie between the 1960s and 1980s. After a lapse of ...

The Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) Macromolecular Crystallography Group has managed to reprogramme the binding of a protein called BuD to DNA in order to redirect it towards specific DNA regions. Guillermo Montoya, the researcher who led the study, says the discovery: "will allow us to modify and edit the instructions contained in the genome to treat genetic diseases or to develop genetically-modified organisms." The study is published in the journal Acta Crystallographica, Section D: Biological Crystallography. The possibility of making à la carte modifications ...

Amsterdam, NL, 10 July 2014 – Amyloid diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, type 2 diabetes, cataracts, and the spongiform encephalopathies, all share the common trait that proteins aggregate into long fibers which then form plaques. Yet in vitro studies have found that neither the amylin monomer precursors nor the plaques themselves are very toxic. New evidence using two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectroscopy has revealed an intermediate structure during the amylin aggregation pathway that may explain toxicity, opening a window for possible interventions, according ...

Food not only nourishes the body but also affects its internal biological clock, which regulates the daily rhythm of many aspects of human behavior and biology. Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports provide new insights into how adjusting the clock through dietary manipulation may help patients with various conditions and show that insulin may be involved in resetting the clock. An internal biological or 'circadian' clock plays an important role in preferred sleep times, times of peak alertness, and the timing of certain physiological processes. ...

While careful management has helped stabilize or even improve the state of fisheries resources in some parts of Europe, the situation in the Mediterranean has deteriorated over the past 20 years. In a new report evaluating nine fish species reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 10, scientists call for stringent monitoring of Mediterranean fishing activities, better enforcement of fisheries regulations, and advanced management plans in Mediterranean waters. Their data show that the fishing pressure in the Mediterranean intensified continuously from ...

Some chimpanzees are smarter than others, and about half of that variation in intelligence depends on the genes that individuals carry and pass on from one generation to the next. The findings reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 10 show that those genetic differences will be key to understanding the cognitive abilities of primates and their evolution over time. "As is the case in humans, genes matter when it comes to cognitive abilities in chimpanzees," says William Hopkins of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. "It doesn't mean that they ...

The vegetable oil found in your popcorn or soap might not be ape friendly, and the situation appears likely to get even worse, according to an analysis in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on July 10. The growing demand for vegetable oil has already led to the conversion of Southeast Asian forest into oil palm plantations, bringing trouble for orangutans in particular. If guidelines are not put in place very soon, researchers say the spread of those large-scale industrial plantations from Asia into Africa will be bad news for great apes there as well. "The first ...

In a new study led by UC San Francisco (UCSF) scientists, a chemical compound designed to precisely target part of a crucial cellular quality-control network provided significant protection, in rats and mice, against degenerative forms of blindness and diabetes. In addition to opening a promising drug-development path for the wide range of diseases caused by cell loss, the new research offers a new view of the workings of the unfolded protein response (UPR), a cellular "life-or-death" signaling network: When cells are under stress, the UPR works to ensure that they produce ...

ATLANTA–A chimpanzee's intelligence is largely determined by its genes, while environmental factors may be less important than scientists previously thought, according to a Georgia State University research study. The study found that some, but not all, cognitive, or mental, abilities, in chimpanzees depend significantly on the genes they inherit. The findings are reported in the latest issue of Current Biology. "Intelligence runs in families," said Dr. William Hopkins, professor in the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia State and research scientist in the ...

As daily temperatures increase, so does the number of patients seeking treatment for kidney stones. In a study that may both reflect and foretell a warming planet's impact on human health, a research team found a link between hot days and kidney stones in 60,000 patients in several U.S. cities with varying climates. "We found that as daily temperatures rise, there is a rapid increase in the probability of patients presenting over the next 20 days with kidney stones," said study leader Gregory E. Tasian, M.D., M.Sc., M.S.C.E., a pediatric urologist and epidemiologist at ...

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that many diseases are triggered or maintained by changes in bacterial communities in the gut. However, the general view up into now has been rather simple: bacteria stimulate the immune system, leading to inflammation or autoimmune disorders in a single direction. Now, in work published in Immunity, scientists led by Sidonia Fagarasan from the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Science in Japan have painted a more complex picture: the gut immune system does not simply prevent the influx of pathogens, but is actively ...

Amsterdam, NL, 10 July 2014 – Up to 70% of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients experience sleep problems that negatively impact their quality of life. Some patients have disturbed sleep/wake patterns such as difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep, while other patients may be subject to sudden and involuntary daytime sleep "attacks." In the extreme, PD patients may exhibit REM-sleep behavior disorder (RBD), characterized by vivid, violent dreams or dream re-enactment, even before motor symptoms appear. A review in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease discusses the underlying ...

Rice University's breakthrough silicon oxide technology for high-density, next-generation computer memory is one step closer to mass production, thanks to a refinement that will allow manufacturers to fabricate devices at room temperature with conventional production methods. First discovered five years ago, Rice's silicon oxide memories are a type of two-terminal, "resistive random-access memory" (RRAM) technology. In a new paper available online in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, a Rice team led by chemist James Tour compared its RRAM technology ...