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 ...

A new study involving Simon Fraser University researchers has found that prenatal exposure to flame retardants can be significantly linked to lower IQs and greater hyperactivity in five-year old children. The findings are published online today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The researchers found that a 10-fold increase in PBDE concentrations in early pregnancy, when the fetal brain is developing, was associated with a 4.5 IQ decrement, which is comparable with the impact of environmental lead exposure. SFU health sciences professor Bruce Lanphear ...

With a growing number of consumers demanding more earth-friendly practices from the fashion world, scientists are developing new ways to produce textiles that could help meet rising expectations. They report in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research one such method that can dramatically reduce the amount of energy it takes to bleach cotton while improving the quality of the popular material. Quan Zu and colleagues point out that the cotton industry's current whitening techniques require bleaching the natural fiber at very high temperatures with hydrogen ...

Zeolites are among the substances which can accelerate chemical reactions – they are known as catalysts. Usually applied in pellet form, the industrial production of gasoline from crude oil without zeolites is today inconceivable. The chemical reactions occur on their surface. Fortunately, these are very large for zeolites: the catalysts are interspersed with nano-sized pores and microscopic channels through which gaseous or liquid reactants penetrate and the products later can leave. One of the main industrial problems with the use of zeolites is that the reaction side ...

(TORONTO, Canada – May 28, 2014) – The largest clinical study to evaluate breast cancer screening of female survivors of childhood Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), who are at increased risk because they received chest radiation, shows that magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) detected invasive breast tumours at very early stages, when cure rates are expected to be excellent. The finding, published online today in the American Cancer Society Journal Cancer (doi: doi/10.1002/cncr.28747), underscores the need for at-risk childhood HL survivors and primary care physicians to be aware ...

Swimming fish do not appear to use their collision warning system in the same way as flying insects, according to new research from Lund University in Sweden that has compared how zebra fish and bumblebees avoid collisions. The fish surprised the researchers. All animals need some form of warning system that prevents them colliding with objects in their surroundings. The warning system helps them to continually regulate their speed and judge their distance from objects. For flying and swimming creatures this is an extra challenge because they also have to deal with winds ...

Researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Science have discovered that a Southeast Asian species of treefrog practices parental care to increase the likelihood of survival of its offspring. Chiromantis hansenae (C. hansenae), is currently the only species in the treefrog family in Southeast Asia that is known to exhibit such behaviour. This discovery was recently published as the cover story in a popular magazine of nature and science, Natural History, in May 2014. The study investigates parental care ...

Biomedical engineering researchers have developed daisy-shaped, nanoscale structures that are made predominantly of anti-cancer drugs and are capable of introducing a "cocktail" of multiple drugs into cancer cells. The researchers are all part the joint biomedical engineering program at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "We found that this technique was much better than conventional drug-delivery techniques at inhibiting the growth of lung cancer tumors in mice," says Dr. Zhen Gu, senior author of the paper and an assistant ...

Spanish researchers have demonstrated that the relationship between marathon running times and the age of the athlete is U-shaped. The work shows the unusual fact that it takes an 18-year-old athlete the same amount of time to finish a marathon as a 55- or 60-year-old runner. The 42,195 metres that are nowadays known as the marathon were run for the first time at the London Olympic Games of 1908. Since then, many athletes have completed this race and there has also been numerous scientific studies conducted on endurance runners. Up to now, the majority of these works ...

The Eastern Himalayas are home to more than 360 different songbird species, most of which are to be found nowhere else on the planet. This makes the region extending from eastern Nepal to the borderlands of China, India, and Myanmar unique and one of the most important hot spots for biological diversity in the western hemisphere. A recent research paper describes how this impressive bird community came about millions of years ago, emphasizing both the uniqueness and biological significance of this remote area. "As the Himalayan mountain range was formed, a profusion of ...

Every once in a while in the U.S., bacterial meningitis seems to crop up out of nowhere, claiming a young life. Part of the disease's danger is the ability of the bacteria to evade the body's immune system, but scientists are now figuring out how the pathogen hides in plain sight. Their findings, which could help defeat these bacteria and others like it, appear in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Linda Columbus and colleagues explain that the bacteria Neisseria meningitidis, one cause of meningitis, and its cousin Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which is responsible ...