BATON ROUGE – What happens when you tell a lie? Set aside your ethical concerns for a moment—after all, lying is a habit we practice with astonishing dexterity and frequency, whether we realize it or not. What goes on in your brain when you willfully deceive someone? And what happens later, when you attempt to access the memory of your deceit? How you remember a lie may be impacted profoundly by how you lie, according to a new study by LSU Associate Professor Sean Lane and former graduate student Kathleen Vieria. The study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Applied ...

A University of Iowa physiologist has a new technique to measure the stiffness of the aorta, a common risk factor for heart disease. And it can be as simple as measuring the pulse in your finger. The new procedure developed by Gary Pierce, assistant professor in the Department of Health and Human Physiology, works by placing an instrument called a transducer on the finger or over the brachial artery, located inside the arm just beneath the elbow. The readout, combined with a person's age and body mass index, lets physicians know whether the aorta has stiffened. Currently, ...

A team of University of Texas at Arlington biologists working with the U.S. Geological Survey has found that watershed wetlands can serve as a natural source for the improvement of streams polluted by acid rain. The group, led by associate professor of biology Sophia Passy, also contends that recent increases in the level of organic matter in surface waters in regions of North America and Europe – also known as "brownification" – holds benefits for aquatic ecosystems. The research team's work appeared in the September issue of the journal Global Change Biology. The ...

Amid growing competition for freshwater from industry and cities, coupled with a rising world shortage of potash, nitrogen and phosphorus, an international study predicts a rapid increase in the use of treated wastewater for farming and other purposes worldwide. However, research shows that treated wastewater -- comparable in North America alone to the volume of water flowing over Niagara Falls -- is mostly unused and, in many nations, not even quantified. Of 181 countries studied, only 55 have information on three key aspects of wastewater: generation, treatment, ...

WASHINGTON – People who get away with cheating when they believe no one is hurt by their dishonesty are more likely to feel upbeat than remorseful afterward, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. Although people predict they will feel bad after cheating or being dishonest, many of them don't, reports a study published online in APA's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. "When people do something wrong specifically to harm someone else, such as apply an electrical shock, the consistent reaction in previous research has ...

Tampa, FL (Sept. 3, 2013) -- A stress-related protein genetically linked to depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders contributes to the acceleration of Alzheimer's disease, a new study led by researchers at the University of South Florida has found. The study is published online today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. When the stress-related protein FKBP51 partners with another protein known as Hsp90, this formidable chaperone protein complex prevents the clearance from the brain of the toxic tau protein associated with Alzheimer's disease. Under ...

USC scientists have discovered a population of neurons in the brains of juvenile songbirds that are necessary for allowing the birds to recognize the vocal sounds they are learning to imitate. These neurons encode a memory of learned vocal sounds and form a crucial (and hitherto only theorized) part of the neural system that allows songbirds to hear, imitate, and learn its species' songs – just as human infants acquire speech sounds. This discovery will allow scientists to uncover the exact neural mechanisms that allow songbirds to hear their own self-produced ...

BETHESDA, MD—SEPTEMBER 4, 2013—A matched-peer controlled study of science faculty at minority-serving institutions (MSI) shows that an outside mentoring support program increased the number of peer-reviewed research publications, the number of federal grants, and the variety of professional and curricular activities of those who participated versus academic peers who did not. The study, published today in the journal, CBE-Life Sciences Education, looked at outcomes from the Visiting Professorship (VP) Program, organized by the Minorities Affairs Committee (MAC) of the ...

Yale School of Medicine researchers have discovered a protein that is the missing link in the complicated chain of events that lead to Alzheimer's disease, they report in the Sept. 4 issue of the journal Neuron. Researchers also found that blocking the protein with an existing drug can restore memory in mice with brain damage that mimics the disease. "What is very exciting is that of all the links in this molecular chain, this is the protein that may be most easily targeted by drugs," said Stephen Strittmatter, the Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology and senior author ...

Seattle, Wash. – September 4, 2013 – A study published today in Aging Cell identifies a new tool to accurately analyze extremely rare mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions associated with a range of diseases and disorders as well as aging. This approach, which relies on Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR™) technology, will help researchers explore mtDNA deletions as potential disease biomarkers. The accumulation of mtDNA mutations is associated with aging, neuromuscular disorders, and cancer. However, methods to probe the underlying mechanisms behind this mutagenesis have been ...

STANFORD, Calif. — A defective trash-disposal system in the brain's resident immune cells may be a major contributor to neurodegenerative disease, a scientific team from the Stanford University School of Medicine has found. Preliminary observations show that this defect appears in the brains of patients who died of Alzheimer's disease, so correcting it may someday prove to be an effective way of preventing or slowing the course of the disease. "We were fortunate in being able to compare microglia — the brain's own immune cells — from five patients who died of Alzheimer's ...

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's New Technology Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy. They have found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a surprising result given their different histories and varied properties. The final stages of life for a star like our Sun result in the star puffing its outer layers out into the surrounding space, forming objects known as planetary nebulae in a wide range of beautiful and striking shapes. One type ...

University of Calgary scientists have overcome an 'Achilles' heel' of quantum-based secure communication systems, using a new approach that works in the real world to safeguard secrets. The team's research – published in the journal Physical Review Letters back-to-back with similar work by a group from Hefei, China – also removes a big obstacle to realizing future applications of quantum communication, including a fully functional quantum network. "I hope that our new quantum key distribution (QKD) system shows to people who take security seriously that QKD has many ...

Throughout Asia, humans and monkeys live side-by side in many urban areas. An international research team from the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Jahangirnagar University has been examining transmission of a virus from monkeys to humans in Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated countries. The scientists have found that some people in these urban areas are concurrently infected with multiple strains of simian foamy virus (SFV), including strains from more than one source (recombinant) that researchers originally detected ...

SAN FRANCISCO – Sept. 4, 2013 – People with cataract-related vision loss who have had cataract surgery to improve their sight are living longer than those with visual impairment who chose not to have the procedure, according to an Australian cohort study published this month in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. After comparing the two groups, the researchers found a 40 percent lower long-term mortality risk in those who had the surgery. The research is drawn from data gathered in the Blue Mountains Eye Study, a population-based cohort ...

Resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound, is synthesized in several plants and possesses beneficial biological effects, which include anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-carcinogenic properties. Resveratrol exhibits neuroprotective effects in models of many diseases, such as cerebral ischemia, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. However, there is a lack of data evaluating the effect of resveratrol in vascular dementia. Dr Boai Zhang and team from the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhengzhou University found that resveratrol improved learning ...

Expression of soluble CD40L has been shown to increase sig-nificantly in conditions such as stroke, myocardial infarction, unstable angina, high cholesterol, or other cardiovascular events. 95% of the circulating CD40L exists in activated platelets. However, the specific pathway of the transition of CD40L is not elucidated, and whether Golgi apparatus is involved in the expression of platelet CD40L still needs to be proven. Dr. Wei Lu and colleagues from Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, found that platelet Golgi apparatus displayed significant morphological ...

TEMPE. Ariz. -- New types of nanostructures have shown promise for applications in electrochemically powered energy devices and systems, including advanced battery technologies. One process for making these nanostructures is dealloying, in which one or more elemental components of an alloy are selectively leached out of materials. Arizona State University researchers Karl Sieradzki and Qing Chen have been experimenting with dealloying lithium-tin alloys, and seeing the potential for the nanostructures they are producing to spark advances in lithium-ion batteries, as ...

Autografts or allografts are commonly used in the repair of damaged peripheral nerves. However, similar problems have been encountered in allografting or xenografting. Previous studies concerning artificial neural tubes to repair nerve defects mainly focus on peripheral nerve defects less than 30 mm. Dr. Esmaeil Biazar and colleagues from Islamic Azad University, Iran investigate the feasibility of poly(3-hydroxy- butyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) conduits in the repair of 30-mm sciatic nerve gap in a rat model. The researchers found that at 4 months after nerve conduit implantation, ...

Amsterdam, 4 September 2013: Close to thirty thousand delegates converged from all over the world, to the ESC Congress 2013 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, this week. Cardiologists came to hear first-hand about the latest research. "A record number of Hot Lines and scientific sessions with new formats allowed for more exchanges between peers presenting results of clinical trials, new Clinical Practice Guidelines and new devices and treatments," said Professor Keith Fox, Chair of the ESC Scientific Programme Committee. We have much to learn from each other! Some of the most ...

"New physics is about searching for unknown physical phenomena not known from the current perception of the universe. Such phenomena are inherently very difficult to detect," explains PhD student Matin Mojaza from CP3-Origins. Together with colleagues Stanley J. Brodsky from Stanford University in the U.S. and Xing-Gang Wu from Chongqing University in China, Mojaza has now succeeding in creating a new method that can make it easier to search for new physics in the universe. The method is a so called scalesetting procedure, and it fills out some empty, but very ...

According to the theory, small clusters of molecules in the atmosphere have difficulty growing large enough to act as "cloud condensation nuclei" on which water droplets can gather to make our familiar low-altitude clouds. The SKY2 experiment shows that the growth of clusters is much more vigorous, provided ionizing rays -- gamma rays in the experiment or cosmic rays in the atmosphere -- are present to work their chemical magic. Details of the experiment appear in the latest issue of Physics Letters A. Back in 1996 Danish physicists suggested that cosmic rays, energetic ...

New research has found a "very significant" relationship between a nation's wealth and hygiene and the Alzheimer's "burden" on its population. High-income, highly industrialised countries with large urban areas and better hygiene exhibit much higher rates of Alzheimer's. Using 'age-standardised'* data - which predict Alzheimer's rates if all countries had the same population birth rate, life expectancy and age structure -- the study found strong correlations between national sanitation levels and Alzheimer's. This latest study adds further weight to the "hygiene hypothesis" ...

A joint Australian-German research team led by Curtin University's Dr Christian Hirt has created the highest-resolution maps of Earth's gravity field to date -- showing gravitational variations up to 40 percent larger than previously assumed. Using detailed topographic information obtained from the US Space Shuttle, a specialist team including Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, Dr Sten Claessens and Moritz Rexer from Curtin's Western Australian Centre for Geodesy and Professor Roland Pail and Thomas Fecher from Technical University Munich improved the resolution of previous ...

A team of researchers in Ireland have found evidence that altering the chemistry of an electrode surface (surface engineering) can help microbial communities to connect to the electrode to produce more electricity (electron-exchange) more rapidly compared to unmodified electrodes. Electron exchange is at the heart of all redox reactions occurring in the natural world, as well as in bioengineered systems: so called 'biolectrochemical systems'. Practical applications of these systems include current generation, wastewater treatment, and biochemical and biofuel production. ...