When termites munch on wood, the small bits are delivered to feed a community of unique microbes living in their guts, and in a complex process involving multiple steps, these microbes turn the hard, fibrous material into a nutritious meal for the termite host. One key step uses hydrogen to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon—a process called acetogenesis—but little is known about which gut bacteria play specific roles in the process. Utilizing a variety of experimental techniques, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now discovered ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A recent study from Rhode Island Hospital has found that a change in the way police respond to drug-related overdose emergencies could contribute to improved outcomes of the victims and to the communities where overdoses occur. The study found that while law enforcement officers often serve as medical first responders, there is a lack of clarity as to what police can do, or should do, at the scene of an overdose. The study is published online in advance of print in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The study included interviews to better understand ...

JUPITER, FL, September 26, 2013 – It's difficult and time-consuming to produce accurate computer models of molecules, primarily because traditional modeling methods are limited in their ability to handle alternative molecular shapes and, consequently, are subject to multiple errors. Moreover, the traditional approach uses mathematical formulas or algorithms that are run sequentially, refining the structural details of the model with each separate algorithm—a method that has been revolutionized by personal computing, but still requires labor-intensive human intervention ...

WASHINGTON, DC—The quest for evidence of life on Mars could be more difficult than scientists previously thought. A scientific paper published today details the investigation of a chemical in the Martian soil that interferes with the techniques used by the Curiosity rover to test for traces of life. The chemical causes the evidence to burn away during the tests. In search of clues to life's presence on Mars – now or in the past – Curiosity checks Martian soil and rocks for molecules known as organic carbon compounds that are the hallmark of living organisms on Earth. While ...

RENO, Nev. – New regulatory approaches may be needed to assess environmental risks of agricultural growth promoters, and similar human pharmaceuticals, following research that shows a newly found reversion mechanism allows unexpected persistence of the steroidal substances in aquatic environments. Results of the research will be published in an article in the renowned journal Science – the weekly journal of AAAS, the science society – next month and are available immediately online in Science Express. "We investigated trenbolone, an anabolic steroid, and found that ...

A group of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created the optical equivalent of a tuning fork—a device that can help steady the electrical currents needed to power high-end electronics and stabilize the signals of high-quality lasers. The work marks the first time that such a device has been miniaturized to fit on a chip and may pave the way to improvements in high-speed communications, navigation, and remote sensing. "When you're tuning a piano, a tuning fork gives a standardized pitch, or reference sound frequency; in optical resonators ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Activating a mother's immune system during her pregnancy disrupts the development of neural cells in the brain of her offspring and damages the cells' ability to transmit signals and communicate with one another, researchers with the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and Department of Neurology have found. They said the finding suggests how maternal viral infection might increase the risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia. The research, "MHCI Requires MEF2 Transcription Factors to Negatively Regulate Synapse Density ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26, 2013—Tracking blood flow in the laboratory is an important tool for studying ailments like migraines or strokes and designing new ways to address them. Blood flow is also routinely measured in the clinic, and laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is one way of measuring these changes; however, this technique requires professional-grade imaging equipment, which limits its use. Now, using $90 worth of off-the-shelf commercial parts including a webcam and a laser pointer, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) have duplicated the ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Sept. 26, 2013 — Within its first three months on Mars, NASA's Curiosity Rover saw a surprising diversity of soils and sediments along a half-kilometer route that tell a complex story about the gradual desiccation of the Red Planet. Perhaps most notable among findings from the ChemCam team is that all of the dust and fine soil contains small amounts of water. "We made this discovery literally with the very first laser shot on the Red Planet," said Roger Wiens, leader of the ChemCam instrument team. "Every single time we shot at dust we saw a significant ...

Female promiscuity—something that occurs in a majority of species, including humans—results in the ejaculates from two or more males overlapping within her reproductive tract. When this happens, sperm compete for fertilization of the female's eggs. In addition, the female has the opportunity to bias fertilization of her eggs in favor of one male's sperm over others. These processes, collectively known as postcopulatory sexual selection, drive a myriad of rapid, coordinated evolutionary changes in ejaculate and female reproductive tract traits. These changes have been ...

SANTA MONICA, CA -- A new urine test for prostate cancer that measures minute fragments of RNA is now commercially available to men nationwide through the University of Michigan MLabs. The new test—Mi-Prostate Score (MiPS)—improves the utility of the PSA blood test, increases physicians' ability to pick out high-risk prostate tumors from low-risk tumors in patients, and may help tens of thousands of men avoid unnecessary biopsies. The MiPS test incorporates blood PSA levels and two molecular RNA markers specific for prostate cancer in one final score that provides men ...

Certain diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy are linked to genetic mutations that damage the important biological process of rearranging gene sequences in pre-messenger RNA, a procedure called RNA splicing. These conditions are difficult to prevent because scientists are still grasping to understand how the splicing process works. Now, researchers from Brandeis University and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have teamed up to unravel a major component in understanding the process of RNA splicing. In a recent paper published in Cell ...

Like the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces, telomeres protect — in their case — the interior-gene containing parts of chromosomes that carry a cell's instructional material. Cancer cells are known to have short telomeres, but just how short they are from cancer cell to cancer cell may be a determining factor in a prostate cancer patient's prognosis, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins scientists. "Doctors are looking for new ways to accurately predict prostate cancer patients' prognoses, because the current methods that use disease stage, Gleason score, and PSA ...

The effects of childhood abuse and lack of parental affection can last a lifetime, taking a toll both emotionally and physically. There are many reports assessing the psychological damage resulting from childhood abuse, and the effects on physical health have also been well documented. For instance, this "toxic" stress has been linked to elevated cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and other physical conditions posing a significant health risk. The research into the physical effects of abuse, however, has focused on separate, individual systems. A ...

A University of Virginia engineering professor has proposed a novel approach for keeping waste carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Andres Clarens, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at U.Va.'s School of Engineering and Applied Science, and graduate student Zhiyuan Tao have published a paper in which they estimate the amount of carbon dioxide that could be stored in hydraulically fractured shale deposits after the methane gas has been extracted. Their peer-reviewed finding was published in Environmental Science and Technology, a publication ...

The first scoop of soil analyzed by the analytical suite in the belly of NASA's Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain several percent water by weight. The results were published today in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the Curiosity mission. "One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Laurie Leshin, lead author of one paper and dean of the School Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. "About 2 percent ...

Scientists have provided the most comprehensive details yet of the journey energy from the sun takes as it hurtles around Earth's magnetosphere. Understanding the changes energy from the sun undergoes as it travels away and out into space is crucial for scientists to achieve their goal of some day predicting the onset of space weather that creates effects such as the shimmering lights of the aurora or interruptions in radio communications at Earth. Taking advantage of an unprecedented alignment of eight satellites through the vast magnetic environment that surrounds Earth ...

One of the instruments that flew aboard one of two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft during NASA's HS3 mission was the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer known as HIRAD. HIRAD identified an area of heavy rains and and likely strong winds in Hurricane Ingrid by measuring surface wind speeds and rain rates using its rectangular antenna to track activity on the ocean's surface. NASA's Global Hawk 871 is the over-storm Global Hawk that carried HIRAD on a flight over Hurricane Ingrid on Sept. 15 as the storm moved through the extreme southwestern Gulf of Mexico and traveled west-northwestward ...

Scientists have discovered differences in the brain structure of ballet dancers that may help them avoid feeling dizzy when they perform pirouettes. The research suggests that years of training can enable dancers to suppress signals from the balance organs in the inner ear. The findings, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, could help to improve treatment for patients with chronic dizziness. Around one in four people experience this condition at some time in their lives. Normally, the feeling of dizziness stems from the vestibular organs in the inner ear. These ...

PHILADELPHIA — A bioinformatics approach to repurposing drugs resulted in identification of a class of antidepressants as a potential new treatment for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), according to a study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Based on data generated using bioinformatics, two drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat symptoms of depression were tested on SCLC cells and animal models. Both antidepressants were found to induce SCLC cell death. They were also effective in mice ...

STANFORD, Calif. — A little-used class of antidepressants appears potentially effective in combating a particularly deadly form of lung cancer, according to a new study from researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. And because the drugs have already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in humans, the researchers have been able to quickly launch a clinical trial to test their theory in patients. The phase-2 trial is now recruiting participants with small-cell lung cancer and other, similar conditions like aggressive gastrointestinal ...

The report by scientists of a new hepatitis virus earlier this year was a false alarm, according to UC San Francisco researchers who correctly identified the virus as a contaminant present in a type of glassware used in many research labs. Their finding, they said, highlights both the promise and peril of today’s powerful “next-generation” lab techniques that are used to track down new agents of disease. In research published online September 11, 2013, in the Journal of Virology, researchers led by Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, director of the UCSF Viral Diagnostics ...

A star is "blooming" in the southern sky — and astronomers using a CSIRO telescope are a step closer to knowing why. An old star, IRAS 15445-5449, has begun to push out a jet of charged particles that glow with radio waves. A few old stars are known to have jets, "but this is the first one where the radio waves tell us the jet is held together by a strong magnetic field", said Dr Jessica Chapman of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, a member of the research team. "That's a clue to what makes these jets switch on." The finding has been published online in the journal ...

VIDEO: The aging pulsar rotates slower and slower, then matter from its companion spins it up again. As the pulsar is spun up, it alternates between emitting X-rays (white) and radio... Click here for more information. An international team of astronomers has used X-ray telescopes in space and ground-based telescopes, including two of CSIRO's, to identify a pulsar that switches between emitting X-rays and emitting radio waves. This is the first direct evidence of one kind ...

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) taken from a patient hold great therapeutic potential for many diseases. However, studies in rodents have suggested that the body may mount an immune response and destroy cells derived from iPSCs. New research in monkeys refutes these findings, suggesting that in primates like us, such cells will not be rejected by the immune system. In the paper, publishing September 26 in the ISSCR's journal Stem Cell Reports, published by Cell Press, iPSCs from nonhuman primates successfully developed into the neurons depleted by Parkinson's disease ...