Paleontologists studying fossilized feathers have proposed that the shapes of certain microscopic structures inside the feathers can tell us the color of ancient birds. But new research from North Carolina State University demonstrates that it is not yet possible to tell if these structures – thought to be melanosomes – are what they seem, or if they are merely the remnants of ancient bacteria. Melanosomes are small, pigment-filled sacs located inside the cells of feathers and other pigmented tissues of vertebrates. They contain melanin, which can give feathers colors ...

When a piece of gift-wrapping tape sticks to itself, it's frustrating, but when small parts in a microgear or micromotor stick together, an electronic device may not work well, if at all. Scientists now report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that rough zinc oxide coatings can prevent tiny silicon parts from adhering to each other. The study could accelerate the development of even more advanced, high-performance electronics and small sensors. Xinchun Lu and colleagues explain that adhesion is a big concern when designing very small silicon-based machines ...

Spider silk of fantastical, superhero strength is finally speeding toward commercial reality — at least a synthetic version of it is. The material, which is five times stronger than steel, could be used in products from bulletproof vests to medical implants, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society. Alex Scott, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that spider silk's impressive strength has been studied for years, and scientists have been trying to make a synthetic version of the super-strong ...

In the past five years, the number of lung transplantations carried out has increased by about 20%. In the end stage of various lung diseases, transplantation is the last remaining option for treatment, and it can both prolong life and improve its quality. Marc Hartert and colleagues have studied how patients do after a lung transplant, and their review appears in the current edition of the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2014; 111(7): 107–16). What they found is that deaths in the 90 days after an operation for lung transplantation have gone down ...

Child abuse is a reliable predictor of post-traumatic stress disorder, but not all maltreated children suffer from it, according to Chad Shenk, assistant professor of human development and family studies, Penn State, who examined why some maltreated children develop PTSD and some do not. Shenk and his research team found that adolescent girls who experienced maltreatment in the past year and were willing to talk about their painful experiences and their thoughts and emotions, were less likely to have PTSD symptoms one year later. Those who tried to avoid painful thoughts ...

New Rochelle, NY, March 5, 2014—Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection can lead to serious diseases such as cirrhosis and cancer of the liver, so viral clearance and prevention of relapse are important treatment goals. Low-dose oral interferon may reduce the risk of HCV relapse in patients with mild liver fibrosis according to a study published in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research website. In "A Double-Blind Randomized ...

Fairfax, Va., March 5, 2014— The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has issued a new white paper, "A review of safety, quality management, and practice guidelines for high-dose-rate brachytherapy," that recommends specific guidance to follow in the delivery of high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy to improve quality and patient safety, according to the manuscript published in the March-April 2014 print issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the official clinical practice journal of ASTRO. The executive summary and supplemental material are also available ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Like mobsters following strict orders, newly engineered molecules called "ubiquibodies" can mark specific proteins inside a cell for destruction – a molecular kiss of death that is paving the way for new drug therapies and powerful research tools. Led by professor Matthew DeLisa, chemical engineers at Cornell University have developed a new type of antibody, called a "ubiquibody," which is an antibody fragment they have inserted into the natural process known as the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (UPP). Their work appears in the March 16 issue of the Journal ...

This news release is available in French. We know that babies and young children often put non-food items in their mouths, a behaviour that occasionally leads to swallowing of foreign objects. Metallic toys and low-cost jewelry often contain toxic substances such as lead and cadmium. Do these objects present a health risk for young children? To answer this question, Gérald J. Zagury, a professor in the Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, and Mert Guney, a former doctoral student under Professor Zagury's supervision, ...

As shown in a study carried out by researchers at 13 research centres in Asturias, Gipuzkoa, Sabadell and Valencia, over half of non-smoking pregnant women, 55%, are passive smokers. These women are under the effect of tobacco smoke to a considerable extent because a member of the household, their partner in particular, smokes at home. The result of the study has been published in the journal Science of the Total Environment. Within the INMA project that studies childhood and the environment, research has been carried out into the extent to which non-smoking pregnant ...

Scientists from the same team have previously reported large amounts of sulphur and iron accumulation in the warship Vasa. In that study, the scientists found an outbreak of acidity and sulphate salts on the surface of the hull and other wooden objects. 'This is the result of biological and chemical processes that occur naturally in low-oxygen waters and in sediments,' says Yvonne Fors from the Department of Conservation at the University of Gothenburg and one of the scientists behind the article. However, even if sulphur and iron accumulation is commonly occurring ...

This news release is available in German. When we drift into deep slow-wave sleep (SWS), waves of neuronal activity wash across our neocortex. Birds also engage in SWS, but they lack this particular brain structure. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany together with colleagues from the Netherlands and Australia have gained deeper insight into the sleeping avian brain. They found complex 3D plumes of brain activity propagating through the brain that clearly differed from the two-dimensional activity found in mammals. These ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique that uses existing technology to allow researchers and natural resource managers to collect significantly more information on water quality to better inform policy decisions. "Right now, incomplete or infrequent water quality data can give people an inaccurate picture of what's happening – and making decisions based on inaccurate data can be risky," says Dr. François Birgand, an assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the ...

This news release is available in German. According to a current study from the University of Cambridge, software developers are spending about the half of their time on detecting errors and resolving them. Projected onto the global software industry, according to the study, this would amount to a bill of about 312 billion US dollars every year. "Of course, automated testing is cheaper", explains Andreas Zeller, professor of Software Engineering at Saarland University, as you could run a program a thousand times without incurring any charges. "But where do these ...

Research from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden suggests that the expression of the so called MYC gene is important and necessary for neurogenesis in the spinal cord. The findings are being published in the journal EMBO Reports. The MYC gene encodes the protein with the same name, and has an important role in many cellular processes such as proliferation, metabolism, cell death and the potential of differentiation from immature stem cell s to different types of specialized cells . Importantly it is also one of the most frequently activated genes in human cancer. Previously ...

Although the marketing slogan suggests that Barbie can "Be Anything," girls who play with this extremely popular doll see fewer career options available to themselves compared to boys. So say Aurora Sherman of Oregon State University and Eileen Zurbriggen of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who conducted one of the first experiments on how playing with fashion dolls influences girls' perceptions about their future occupational options. The findings, which the psychologists describe as "sobering," are published in Springer's journal Sex Roles. Sherman and Zurbriggen ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) have opened the door to the development of new drugs against osteoporosis, one of the most common chronic illnesses in the world, especially among women 65 or over. The researchers, from the University of Granada's Department of Physio-Chemistry, have patented a new methodology that allows specialists to measure – none-invasively and in real time – the concentration of phosphate ions inside living cells. The scientific importance of measuring phosphate ions is based precisely ...

The banana variety Yangambi km5 produces toxic substances that kill the nematode Radopholus similis, a roundworm that infects the root tissue of banana plants – to the frustration of farmers worldwide. The finding bodes well for the Grande Naine, the export banana par excellence, which is very susceptible to the roundworms. The parasitic nematode Radopholus similis is the invisible nemesis of the banana plant, says Professor Dirk De Waele (Laboratory for Tropical Crop Improvement, KU Leuven), a co-author of the study: "This roundworm infects banana crops worldwide. The ...

A research project led by Oxford University is showing how patient experiences can be used to improve healthcare – not through targets and surveys, but by getting doctors, nurses and patients talking together about care on the ward. The new approach has been used in pilot projects at two UK hospital trusts – Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust in London and the Royal Berkshire in Reading. Videos of patients talking about care they received at various hospitals are used to trigger a discussion between NHS staff, managers, patients and family members about the ...

A program designed to move families out of high-poverty neighborhoods resulted in reduced rates of depression and conduct disorder among girls, but increased rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and conduct disorder among boys, according to a study published in the March 5 issue of JAMA. Prof. Jens Ludwig, one of the study's authors, said this was a follow-up long-term analysis of families participating in the Moving to Opportunity residential-mobility demonstration sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Ludwig is the ...

The spiral galaxy ESO 137-001 looks like a dandelion caught in a breeze in this new Hubble Space Telescope image. The galaxy is zooming toward the upper right of this image, in between other galaxies in the Norma cluster located over 200 million light-years away. The road is harsh: intergalactic gas in the Norma cluster is sparse, but so hot at 180 million degrees Fahrenheit that it glows in X-rays. The spiral plows through the seething intra-cluster gas so rapidly – at nearly 4.5 million miles per hour — that much of its own gas is caught and torn away. Astronomers ...

San Francisco, Calif. – March 5, 2014 – A new study from the University of Washington has found that performance on Lumosity games can distinguish between patients with cirrhosis of the liver, pre-cirrhotic patients, and healthy controls. The study used Lumosity games as psychometric tests to detect subtle cognitive impairments in patients with cirrhosis. The study is published in the March issue of the American Journal of Gastroenterology. Studies have found that an estimated 60-80 percent of cirrhosis patients experience cognitive dysfunction, which can range from ...

LOS ANGELES – (March 5, 2014) – Changing the hospital orders for women who have just delivered a child led to a 69% increase in the new mothers' pertussis vaccination rate, providing protection for themselves and their newborns against the disease, commonly known as whooping cough, according to a study in the March issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Sylvia Yeh, MD, a Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) lead researcher and corresponding author of the study, said it is the first to compare immunization rates among two hospitals: ...

The new research, which was published in the journal Demographic Research, shows that increasing labor force participation by as little as 1 or 2 percentage points could allow pension ages to be reduced by one year without increasing the burden on the working population. "Coping with aging populations is a challenge for most developed countries," says IIASA population expert Sergei Scherbov, who co-led the study with Warren Sanderson, a researcher at IIASA and Stony Brook University. In Europe and many other areas of the developed world, birth rates have dropped while ...

You can hear the metallic buzz as the milling machine bores into the workpiece. Just a few last drill holes, and the camshaft is complete. The computer-guided machine performed the entire job – thanks to the digital manufacturing data that were uploaded onto its embedded computer beforehand. Everything runs without a hitch, only – the data are stolen. Manufacturing data determine the production process for a product, and are just as valuable today as the design plans. They contain distinctive, inimitable information about the product and its manufacture. Whoever possesses ...