Ever worry about losing your mobile-phone reception? The problem is a weak microwave signal. The same problem hampers cosmologists looking at the early universe, a glimpse embodied in the cosmic microwave background. Or take a pressing earthly example: oncologists often locate and identify tumors using MRI scans. All three of these efforts---communications, cosmology, medicine---depend on discriminating weak microwave or radio signals from a noisy environment. A new approach to this important problem provides a clean, all-optical detection of microwaves and radiowaves ...

An international group led by Vanderbilt University researchers has found cannabinoid receptors, through which marijuana exerts its effects, in a key emotional hub in the brain involved in regulating anxiety and the flight-or-fight response. This is the first time cannabinoid receptors have been identified in the central nucleus of the amygdala in a mouse model, they report in the current issue of the journal Neuron. The discovery may help explain why marijuana users say they take the drug mainly to reduce anxiety, said Sachin Patel, M.D., Ph.D., the paper's senior ...

It is often said that music is a universal language. However, a new report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 6 finds that music doesn't speak to everyone. There are people who are perfectly able to experience pleasure in other ways who simply don't get music in the way the rest of us do. The researchers refer to this newly described condition as specific musical anhedonia—in other words, the specific inability to experience pleasure from music. "The identification of these individuals could be very important to understanding the neural basis of music—that ...

People born unable to see are readily capable of learning to perceive the shape of the human body through soundscapes that translate images into sound, according to researchers who report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 6. With a little training, soundscapes representing the outlines and silhouettes of bodies cause the brain's visual cortex—and specifically an area dedicated in normally sighted people to processing body shapes—to light up with activity. With no more than 70 hours of training on average, study participants could recognize ...

Harvard stem cell scientists have identified a mutation in human cases of acute lymphoblastic leukemia that likely drives relapse. The research, published in Cancer Cell, could translate into improved patient care strategies for this particular blood cancer, which typically affects children but is more deadly in adults. In recent years, a trend toward single-cell analysis has shown that individual cells within a tumor are capable of amassing mutations to make them more aggressive and treatment resistant. So while 99% of a tumor may be destroyed by the initial treatment, ...

The zone of overlap between two popular, closely related backyard birds is moving northward at a rate that matches warming winter temperatures, according to a study by researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Villanova University, and Cornell University. The research will be published online in Current Biology on Thursday, March 6, 2014. In a narrow strip that runs across the eastern U.S., Carolina Chickadees from the south meet and interbreed with Black-capped Chickadees from the north. The new study finds that this hybrid zone has moved northward at a rate ...

Cincinnati, OH, March 6, 2014 -- Lack of sleep and obesity have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adults and young children. However, the association is not as clear in adolescents, an age group that is known to lack adequate sleep and have an overweight and obesity prevalence rate of 30% in the US. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers found that cardiometabolic risk in obese adolescents may be predicted by typical sleep patterns. Heidi B. IglayReger, PhD, and colleagues from ...

After more than a decade of incremental – and paradigm shifting, advances in stem cell biology, almost anyone with a basic understanding of life sciences knows that stem cells are the basic form of cell from which all specialized cells, and eventually organs and body parts, derive. But what makes a "good" stem cell, one that can reliably be used in drug development, and for disease study? Researchers have made enormous strides in understanding the process of cellular reprogramming, and how and why stem cells commit to becoming various types of adult cells. But until now, ...

Ignaz Semmelweiss made one of the most important contributions to modern medicine when he instituted hand washing in an obstetric clinic in Austria in 1847, decreasing mortality there from more than ten percent to two percent. Unfortunately, infections can still occur in pregnancy and during delivery and can have associated mortality rates of up to 30 to 50 percent if not treated quickly and properly. Brenna Anderson, MD, director of the Women's Infectious Diseases Consultative Service at Women & Infants of Rhode Island and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology ...

Significance: Understanding more about how the different types of cells in breast tissue develop improves our knowledge of breast cancer. TAZ represents a potential new target for drug therapies to treat aggressive types of breast cancer. Background: In cancer, normal cells can become unpredictable or aggressive and thus difficult to treat with anti-cancer drugs. This is especially true in breast cancer. By identifying the genes responsible for this change in cells from breast tissue, researchers hope to identify a way to stop or reverse it. In breast tissue, there ...

Millions of high school and college algebra students are united in a shared agony over solving for x and y, and for those to whom the answers don't come easily, it gets worse: Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do some algebra before even entering a math class. In a recently published study in the journal Developmental Science, lead author and post-doctoral fellow Melissa Kibbe and Lisa Feigenson, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, find that most preschoolers and kindergarteners, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Approximately one in six veterans struggles with substance abuse, and 20 percent show signs of mental health issues or cognitive impairments, previous research has shown. These risk factors, combined with a lack of resources, could be contributing to an increase of veterans entering the criminal justice system, according to a report by the Center for Mental Health Services. Now, University of Missouri researchers have investigated ways social workers can address veterans' needs and keep them out of jail. "Social workers are equipped to provide support to ...

Making your own stuff with a 3D printer is vastly cheaper than what you'd pay for manufactured goods, even factoring in the cost of buying the plastic filament. Yet, you can drive the cost down even more by making your own filament from old milk jugs. And, while you are patting yourself on the back for saving 99 cents on the dollar, there's a bonus: you can feel warm and fuzzy about preserving the environment. A study led by Joshua Pearce of Michigan Technological University has shown that making your own plastic 3D printer filament from milk jugs uses less energy—often ...

The Galápagos Islands are home to some of the most active volcanoes in the world, with more than 50 eruptions in the last 200 years. Yet until recently, scientists knew far more about the history of finches, tortoises, and iguanas than of the volcanoes on which these unusual fauna had evolved. Now research out of the University of Rochester is providing a better picture of the subterranean plumbing system that feeds the Galápagos volcanoes, as well as a major difference with another Pacific Island chain—the Hawaiian Islands. The findings have been published in the Journal ...

(Boston)--While acknowledging the potential of genomics to prevent and treat disease, researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) believe it is long past due to use current scientific data and technical advances to reduce the burden of sickle cell disease (SCD), one of the most common serious single gene disorders. The work, reported as a Viewpoint in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), highlights the gaps in knowledge and care in terms of SCD and the need to address this issue expeditiously. ...

Doctors' unconscious biases favor whites but do not affect high blood pressure treatment for their minority patients, according to a University of Colorado Boulder study, even though a previous study by the same research group found that doctors' biases are reflected in lower ratings by African-American patients. The new research, led by Irene Blair, an associate professor in CU-Boulder's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, is published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. "We know that minorities have to face bias and discrimination in many different ...

Astronomers have witnessed for the first time the breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. The discovery is published online March 6 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Though fragile comet nuclei have been seen falling apart as they near the sun, nothing resembling this type of breakup has been observed before in the asteroid belt. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed the demolition. "Seeing this rock fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt, a professor in the UCLA Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences ...

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid, which has fragmented into as many as ten smaller pieces. Although fragile comet nuclei have been seen to fall apart as they approach the Sun, nothing like the breakup of this asteroid, P/2013 R3, has ever been observed before in the asteroid belt. "This is a rock. Seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt of UCLA, USA, who led the astronomical forensics investigation. The crumbling asteroid, designated P/2013 R3, was first noticed as an ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Mar. 6, 2014) – When human umbilical cord blood cells were transplanted into rats that had undergone a simulated myocardial infarction (MI), researchers investigating the long term effects of the transplantation found that left ventricular (LV) heart function in the treated rats was improved over those that did not get the stem cells. The animals were maintained without immunosuppressive therapy. The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-ct0860Chen. "Myocardial ...

Colchicine, a drug that's used to treat gout, has the beneficial side effect of lowering the risk of heart attack in patients taking it. Conversely, taxol, a drug for treating cancer, has the opposite effect; raising the risk of heart failure. What both these drugs have in common is that they act on microtubules – a network of fibers inside heart cells that provide internal structural support. Previous studies, including evidence from human patients and experimental models of heart failure, have suggested a link between heart failure and increased density of microtubules, ...

INDIANAPOLIS— A study conducted by local high school students and faculty from the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis reveals new information about the motor circuits of the brain that may one day help those developing therapies to treat conditions such as stroke, schizophrenia, spinal cord injury or Alzheimer's disease. "MRI and CAT scans of the human brain can tell us many things about the structure of this most complicated of organs, formed of trillions of neurons and the synapses ...

The presence – or absence – of complications following surgery is a strong indicator of which patients are likely to be readmitted to the hospital in the 30 days following their procedure, according to a study published today in JAMA Surgery. Predicting which patients are most likely to experience complications using a simple online tool may allow healthcare professionals to flag patients at high risk of readmission in real time and alter care to reduce expensive trips back to the hospital. The study examined more than 142,000 patients who had non-cardiac surgery using ...

Just as she was about to retire, Lily Ledbetter, a production supervisor at an Alabama tire plant, learned that her employers had financially discriminated against her throughout her career. She filed suit for pay discrimination, losing due to a statute of limitations on equal-pay suits. As a result, President Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law in 2009, drawing attention to the effects of pay secrecy on the workplace. Now Prof. Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University's Recanati School of Business and Dr. Elena Belogolovsky of Cornell University's ...

The strength of the team — not the promise of a close contest — is the biggest draw to crowds in international cricket, new research has found. The findings from the study, published in the journal Applied Economics, appear to contradict previous research which suggested that attendance is largely determined by how closely matched the two teams are during a game. Economists Dr Abhinav Sacheti and Professor David Paton from Nottingham University Business School, in collaboration with Dr Ian Gregory-Smith from the University of Sheffield, analysed the number of spectators ...

Future lunar missions may be fueled by gas stations in space, according to MIT engineers: A spacecraft might dock at a propellant depot, somewhere between the Earth and the moon, and pick up extra rocket fuel before making its way to the lunar surface. Orbiting way stations could reduce the fuel a spacecraft needs to carry from Earth — and with less fuel onboard, a rocket could launch heavier payloads, such as large scientific experiments. Over the last few decades, scientists have proposed various designs, such as building a fuel-manufacturing station on the moon ...