If you tickle a robot, it may not laugh, but you may still consider it humanlike -- depending on its role in your life, reports an international group of researchers. Designers and engineers assign robots specific roles, such as servant, caregiver, assistant or playmate. Researchers found that people expressed more positive feelings toward a robot that would take care of them than toward a robot that needed care. "For robot designers, this means greater emphasis on role assignments to robots," said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications at Penn ...

A female's exposure to distress even before she conceives causes changes in the expression of a gene linked to the stress mechanism in the body — in the ovum and later in the brains of the offspring from when they are born, according to a new study on rats conducted by the University of Haifa. "The systemic similarity in many instances between us and mice raises questions about the transgenerational influences in humans as well, for example, the effects of the Second Lebanon War or the security situation in the South on the children of those who went through those difficult ...

A team of UK researchers believe earthworms could provide a window into past climates, allowing scientists to piece together the prevailing weather conditions thousands of years ago. A laboratory study by researchers from the Universities of Reading and York has demonstrated that balls of calcium carbonate (small lumps of chalk-like material) excreted by the earthworm Lumbricus terrestris – commonly known as lobworms or nightcrawlers - maintain a memory of the temperature at which they were formed. This, say the researchers, in an article in the journal Geochimica et ...

A device that trains the brain to turn sounds into images could be used as an alternative to invasive treatment for blind and partially-sighted people, researchers at the University of Bath have found. The vOICe sensory substitution device is a revolutionary tool that helps blind people to use sounds to build an image in their minds of the things around them. A research team, led by Dr Michael Proulx, from the University's Department of Psychology, looked at how blindfolded sighted participants responded to an eye test using the device. They were asked to perform ...

TORONTO -- People over the age of 50 who have suffered a fracture because of a slip or trip play a central role in making sure they get proper care to prevent a future fracture, a new study has found. The findings are important because previous efforts to improve care for bone health after one of these fractures have had limited success. Dr. Dorcas Beaton, lead author of the study and director of the Mobility Program Clinical Research Unit at St. Michael's Hospital, found that people with what are known as fragility fractures who understood their potential risk for ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- In the global war against disease-carrying mosquitoes, scientists have long believed that a single molecular door was the key target for insecticide. This door, however, is closing, giving mosquitoes the upper hand. In this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers led by Michigan State University has discovered a second gateway that could turn the tide against the mosquitoes' growing advantage. For many years, pyrethroid insecticides have been deployed in developing countries to fend off diseases such as malaria, ...

HOUSTON – (July 8, 2013) – Large flakes of graphene oxide are the essential ingredient in a new recipe for robust carbon fiber created at Rice University. The fiber spun at Rice is unique for the strength of its knots. Most fibers are most likely to snap under tension at the knot, but Rice's fiber demonstrates what the researchers refer to as "100 percent knot efficiency," where the fiber is as likely to break anywhere along its length as at the knot. The new work from the Rice lab of chemist James Tour appears online today in the journal Advanced Materials. The ...

Green spaces, trees and bodies of water are must-have design features for future development in Sydney's suburbs after researchers found that by 2050 global warming combined with Sydney's urban heat island effect could increase temperatures by up to 3.7°C. The researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science found new urban developments, such as the multitude of new estates on Sydney edges expected to house more than 100,000 residents, were prone to the greatest temperature increases. "Interestingly, we found that overnight temperatures increased ...

Lithium ion batteries are at the energetic heart of almost all things tech, from cell phones to tablets to electric vehicles. That's because they are a proven technology, light, long-lasting and powerful. But they aren't perfect. "You might get seven or eight hours out of your iPhone on one charge, maybe a day," says Reza Shahbazian-Yassar, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University. "This is not enough for many of us. A fully electric car, like the Nissan Leaf, can go up to 100 miles on a single charge. To appeal to a mass market, ...

Working to identify key genes in the root development of poplar trees, three Michigan Technological University scientists have come up with a new model for how genes interact and affect each other's function. They also identified a network of genes that cause poplar roots to grow well in low-nitrogen soil, making them ideal candidates for biofuel tree plantations on marginal lands. The research by Hairong Wei, Yordan Yordanov and Victor Busov was published by the international journal New Phytologist. The article is titled "Nitrogen deprivation promotes Populus root ...

Cambridge, Mass. -- Environmental researchers at Harvard University have published evidence that significant reductions in mercury emissions will be necessary just to stabilize current levels of the toxic element in the environment. So much mercury persists in surface reservoirs (soil, air, and water) from past pollution, going back thousands of years, that it will continue to persist in the ocean and accumulate in fish for decades to centuries, they report. "It's easier said than done, but we're advocating for aggressive reductions, and sooner rather than later," says ...

Bacteria swim by rotating the helical, hairlike flagella that extend from their unicellular bodies. Some bacteria, including the Escherichia coli (E. coli) living in the human gut, have multiple flagella that rotate as a bundle to move the cell forward. These cells turn somewhat acrobatically by unbundling their flagella, causing the cell to tumble, reorient and strike out in another direction. But many microbes, including 90 percent of motile marine bacteria, have only a single rigid flagellum; they are able to swim both forward and backward by rotating this flagellum ...

A 10-year study of Chesapeake Bay fishes by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science provides the first quantitative evidence on a bay-wide scale that low-oxygen "dead zones" are impacting the distribution and abundance of "demersal" fishes—those that live and feed near the Bay bottom. The affected species—which include Atlantic croaker, white perch, spot, striped bass, and summer flounder—are a key part of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and support important commercial and recreational fisheries. The study, published in the May issue of Marine Ecology ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Rhode Island Hospital successfully treated a 21-year-old patient with severe neuroinvasive Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE), minimizing neurological deficits and resulting in a very positive outcome. The findings from this treatment are published online in advance of print in the journal Neurocritical Care. EEE is a rare mosquito-borne virus that can be deadly to humans. While it is mostly asymptomatic in humans, it can cause a neuroinvasive infection with a high rate of mortality. These cases typically present as a generalized illness with fever, ...

A normally staid University of Chicago scientist has stunned many of his colleagues with his radical solution to a 135-year-old mystery in cosmochemistry. "I'm a fairly sober guy. People didn't know what to think all of a sudden," said Lawrence Grossman, professor in geophysical sciences. At issue is how numerous small, glassy spherules had become embedded within specimens of the largest class of meteorites—the chondrites. British mineralogist Henry Sorby first described these spherules, called chondrules, in 1877. Sorby suggested that they might be "droplets of fiery ...

London, 8 July 2013: The first birth has been achieved following the analysis of embryos using a new genome sequencing technique which promises to revolutionise embryo selection for IVF. The technique, which has never before been applied in the screening of embryos, is reported today at the annual meeting of ESHRE by Dr Dagan Wells of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at the University of Oxford, UK. The analysis technique is known as "next generation sequencing", a powerful method capable of decoding entire genomes. Vast quantities of DNA data are produced from ...

Ocean currents have a big impact on weather and climate. Without the Gulf Stream, the climate of Northern and Western Europe would be cooler. Scientists at ETH Zurich now uncovered that also relatively small swirling motions in the ocean, so called eddies, impact weather. A large number of such eddies exists in all oceans at any time, featuring diameters of about one hundred kilometers. Eddies arise because ocean currents are generally turbulent, affected for instance by the topography of the ocean bottom, explains Ivy Frenger, a postdoc in the group of ETH-professor ...

A new technique for detecting cancer by imaging the consumption of sugar with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been unveiled by UCL scientists. The breakthrough could provide a safer and simpler alternative to standard radioactive techniques and enable radiologists to image tumours in greater detail. The new technique, called 'glucose chemical exchange saturation transfer' (glucoCEST), is based on the fact that tumours consume much more glucose (a type of sugar) than normal, healthy tissues in order to sustain their growth. The researchers found that sensitising ...

In the quest for the production of renewable and clean energy, photoelectrochemical cells (PECs) constitute a sort of a Holy Grail. PECs are devices able of splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen in a single operation, thanks to solar radiation. "As a matter of fact, we've already discovered this precious chalice, says Michael Grätzel, Director of the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces (LPI) at EPFL and inventor of dye-sensitized photoelectrochemical cells. Today we have just reached an important milestone on the path that will lead us forward to profitable ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy often die as young adults from heart and breathing complications. However, scientists have been puzzled for decades by the fact that laboratory mice bearing the same genetic mutation responsible for the disease in humans display only mild symptoms and no cardiac involvement. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a mouse model that accurately mimics the course of the disease in humans. The study is the first to demonstrate a molecular basis for the cardiac defect that is ...

Storrs, Conn. — Using highly sensitive fluorescent probes, a team of scientists from the University of Connecticut has captured the never-before-seen structural dynamics of an important protein channel inside the cell's primary power plant – the mitochondrion. The UConn team's study found that the channel complex - known as the translocase of the inner mitochondrial membrane 23 or TIM23 – is not only directly coupled to the energized state of the mitochondrial inner membrane as scientists have long suspected, it also changes its fundamental structure - altering the helical ...

University of Toronto researchers are helping demystify an important class of proteins associated with disease, a discovery that could lead to better treatments for cancer, cystic fibrosis and many other conditions. Igor Stagljar, Professor in the Faculty of Medicine's Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, and his team developed the first roadmap for ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter proteins. These proteins are crucial components of every cell, and are also involved in tumor resistance. Scientists have struggled with understanding how ABC transporter ...

A new analysis has found that among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, African Americans more commonly present with advanced disease, and they tend to have shorter survival times than Caucasians despite receiving the same care. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the results suggest that biological factors may account for some racial disparities in cancer survival. Among cancer patients, minorities tend to have a worse prognosis than Caucasians for reasons that are unclear. In African American patients, lower ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — They're young. They've been injured in an assault – so badly they went to the emergency room. And nearly one in four of them has a gun, probably an illegal one. What happens next? A new study by the University of Michigan Injury Center provides data that could be important to breaking the cycle of gun violence that kills more teens and young adults than anything except auto accidents. In the new issue of the journal Pediatrics, the team from the U-M Injury Center reports data from interviews with 689 teens and young adults who came to an emergency ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (July 8, 2013) An unlikely material, cubic boron arsenide, could deliver an extraordinarily high thermal conductivity – on par with the industry standard set by costly diamond – researchers report in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Letters. The discovery that the chemical compound of boron and arsenic could rival diamond, the best-known thermal conductor, surprised the team of theoretical physicists from Boston College and the Naval Research Laboratory. But a new theoretical approach allowed the team to unlock the secret to boron arsenide's ...