New research reveals how our brains are able to pick out important sounds from the noisy world around us. The findings, published online today in the journal eLife, could lead to new diagnostic tests for hearing disorders. Our ears can effortlessly pick out the sounds we need to hear from a noisy environment, for example hearing our mobile phone ring tone in the middle of the Notting Hill Carnival, but how our brains process this information -- the so-called 'cocktail party problem' -- has been a longstanding research question in hearing science. Researchers have previously ...

Mature cells develop through a number of immature stages. During this process, they must remember the specialization they are committed to. For immune system B cells, Rudolf Grosschedl of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and his team have discovered that the transcription factor EBF1 is crucial for B cells to remember who they are. When the researchers switched off the transcription factor, the cells lost their previous identity and developed into T cells. Unlike most other cell types, B cells have a characteristic footprint in their genetic makeup ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Human glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most common, aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer, is notoriously difficult to study. Scientists have traditionally studied cancer cells in petri dishes, which have none of the properties of the brain tissues in which these cancers grow, or in expensive animal models. Now a team of engineers has developed a three-dimensional hydrogel that more closely mimics conditions in the brain. In a paper in the journal Biomaterials, the researchers describe the new material and their approach, which allows them to ...

The potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain – specifically by women consuming fish during pregnancy – has long been the source of concern and some have argued that the chemical may be responsible for behavioral disorders such as autism. However, a new study that draws upon more than 30 years of research in the Republic of Seychelles reports that there is no association between pre-natal mercury exposure and autism-like behaviors. "This study shows no evidence of a correlation between low level mercury exposure and autism spectrum-like ...

This news release is available in German. Copenhagen -- Grassland butterflies have declined dramatically between 1990 and 2011. This has been caused by intensifying agriculture and a failure to properly manage grassland ecosystems, according to a report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). In the report the data of the Butterfly monitoring scheme in Germany have been incorporated, which is scientifically supported by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). UFZ scientists have also contributed to the analysis of population trends. The fall in ...

This news release is available in German. The duplication of cellular contents and their distribution to two daughter cells during cell division are amongst the most fundamental features of all life on earth. How cell division occurs and is coordinated with organismal development is a subject of intense research interest, as is how this process malfunctions in the development of tumors. Alex Dammermann and his team from the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, together with his collaborators from the Institute ...

ANN ARBOR—The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of what is now the United States have been discovered by a team of archaeologists, providing new insight into the start of the U.S. colonial era and the all-too-human reasons spoiling Spanish dreams of gold and glory. Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and his men built Fort San Juan in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1567, nearly 20 years before Sir Walter Raleigh's "lost colony" at Roanoke and 40 years before the Jamestown settlement established England's presence in the region. "Fort San ...

A gene mutation disrupts the activity of certain immune cells and causes the immune system to erroneously attack the liver, according to a new animal study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will provide a new model for studying drug targets and therapies for Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH), a condition for which the only treatment options are short-acting steroids or liver transplant. T-cells, immune cells created in an organ called the thymus, grow into healthy T-cells with the help of medullary ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have developed a reliable way to use a finger-stick blood sample to detect fibromyalgia syndrome, a complicated pain disorder that often is difficult to diagnose. If it were someday made available to primary care physicians, the test could knock up to five years off of the wait for a diagnosis, researchers predict. In a pilot study, the scientists used a high-powered and specialized microscope to detect the presence of small molecules in blood-spot samples from patients known to have fibromyalgia. By "training" the equipment to recognize ...

Disabling a protein in Ebola virus cells can stop the virus from replicating and infecting the host, according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The data are published in July in the journal Cell Host and Microbe. Ebola viruses cause severe disease in humans because they can deactivate the innate immune system. Christopher Basler, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at Mount Sinai and his team have studied how Ebola viruses evade the immune system, and discovered that a viral protein called VP35 is critical to deactivating the immune ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The contrasting incentives of employers and employees under the Affordable Care Act ultimately may result in increased employee harassment and retaliation claims, two University of Illinois law professors say in a paper they co-wrote. As firms grapple with the significant cost increases associated with the new health care legislation, the possibility emerges that employers would harass or retaliate against employees in order to avoid the law's financial penalties, according to Peter Molk and Suja A. Thomas. "The Affordable Care Act incentivizes employers ...

A benign crystal protein, produced naturally by bacteria and used as an organic pesticide, could be a safe, inexpensive treatment for parasitic worms in humans and provide effective relief to over a billion people around the world. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, report on this potentially promising solution in a study published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Hookworms, and other intestinal parasites known as helminths infect more than 1 billion people in poverty-stricken, tropical nations, ...

Protons, as positively charged hydrogen ions, move very rapidly in water from one water molecule to the next, which is why the conductivity of water is relatively high. The principle of proton conduction in water has been known for 200 years and is named the Grotthuss mechanism after its discoverer, Theodor Grotthuss. It is based on the assumption that it is not that a single specific proton moving from one molecule to another; instead, there is cleavage of bonds. One proton docks onto a molecule and this causes another proton to leave that molecule and bind to another ...

Cambridge, Mass. -- Computer graphics and digital video lag behind reality; despite advances, the best software and video cameras still cannot seem to get computer-generated images and digital film to look exactly the way our eyes expect them to. But Hanspeter Pfister and Todd Zickler, computer science faculty at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), are working to narrow the gap between 'virtual' and 'real' by asking a common question: how do we see what we see? Between them, Pfister and Zickler are presenting three papers this week at SIGGRAPH ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, July 23, 2013 – It's no surprise that those who tend to see a rose's blooms before its thorns are also better at handling stress. But science has failed to reliably associate optimism with individuals' biological stress response – until now. New research from Concordia University's Department of Psychology is deepening the understanding of how optimists and pessimists each handle stress by comparing them not to each other but to themselves. Results show that indeed the "stress hormone" cortisol tends to be more ...

CORAL GABLES, FL (JULY 23, 2013) — Purple bacteria contain pigments that allow them to use sunlight as their source of energy, hence their color. Small as they are, these microbes can teach us a lot about life on Earth, because they have been around longer than most other organisms on the planet. University of Miami (UM) physicist Neil Johnson, who studies purple bacteria, recently found that these organisms can also survive in the presence of extreme alien light. The findings show that the way in which light is received by the bacteria can dictate the difference between ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A research team from the University of Missouri and Kansas State University has been working to find a cure for a specific virus that affects pigs and costs the hog industry $800 million annually. In their latest study, the team disproved one way the virus spreads, which will help scientists narrow the search for an ultimate cure. Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) can inhibit pigs from reproducing and slow the growth of young pigs. Once pigs are infected, the only remedy is for hog farmers to cull their herds, which has cost ...

DEERFIELD, IL. (JULY 22, 2013)— Scientists have for the first time traced a novel virus that infected two men from northwestern Missouri in 2009 to populations of ticks in the region, providing confirmation that lone star ticks are carrying the recently discovered virus and humans in the area are likely at risk of infection. The findings were published online today in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dubbed Heartland virus or HRTV, the infection causes fever, headaches, and low white blood cell and platelet counts. The two men infected in 2009, who ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A 2,000-square-kilometer zone in the Yukon Flats of interior Alaska – one of the most flammable high-latitude regions of the world, according to scientists – has seen a dramatic increase in both the frequency and severity of fires in recent decades. Wildfire activity in this area is higher than at any other time in the past 10,000 years, the researchers report. The new findings add to the evidence that relatively frequent and powerful fires are converting the conifer-rich boreal forests of Alaska into deciduous woodlands. Deciduous trees, which shed ...

Remove even one bumblebee species from an ecosystem and the impact is swift and clear: Their floral "sweethearts" produce significantly fewer seeds, a new study finds. The study, to be published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on the interactions between bumblebees and larkspur wildflowers in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. The results show how reduced competition among pollinators disrupts floral fidelity, or specialization, among the remaining bees in the system, leading to less successful plant reproduction. "We found that these wildflowers ...

Plain packaging for cigarettes seems to make tobacco less appealing and increase the urgency to quit smoking, suggest early findings from Australia, published in the online journal BMJ Open. Australia formally introduced plain brown packaging, accompanied by graphic health warnings taking up three quarters of the front of the pack, for all tobacco products on December 1 2012. So far, it is the only country in the world to have done so. The researchers wanted to find out what effects the policy was having in the early stages, and whether it helped curb the appeal of ...

Here's more evidence why breakfast may be the most important meal of the day: Men who reported that they regularly skipped breakfast had a higher risk of a heart attack or fatal coronary heart disease in a study reported in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. Researchers analyzed food frequency questionnaire data and tracked health outcomes for 16 years (1992-2008) on 26,902 male health professionals ages 45-82. They found: Men who reported they skipped breakfast had a 27 percent higher risk of heart attack or death from coronary heart disease than those ...

A study in Norway suggests echocardiographic screening in the general public for structural and valvular heart disease was not associated with benefit for reducing the risk of death, myocardial infarction (heart attack) or stroke, according to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Because of the low prevalence of structural heart disease in the general population, echocardiography has traditionally not been considered justified in low-risk individuals, although echocardiography is recommended for screening asymptomatic individuals with ...

A study of the use of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) at an academic medical center suggests that although 9 in 10 of the procedures were appropriate under 2011 appropriate use criteria, less than 1 in 3 of the TTEs resulted in an active change in care, according to a report of the research by Susan Matulevicius, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. The researchers, who studied 535 patients undergoing TTE, found that, overall, 31.8 percent of TTEs resulted in an active change in care; 46.9 percent resulted in a continuation ...

Parents who had established relationships with pediatricians still accessed care for their children at retail clinics (RCs), typically located in large chain drugstores, mostly because the clinics were convenient, according to a study published by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication. Most RCs are staffed by nonpediatric nurse practitioners and physician assistants who care for patients 18 months and older with minor illnesses such as ear and throat infections. However, the literature regarding RCs is limited and little is known about the use of RCs for pediatric ...