When injected into mice immediately following a traumatic event, a new drug prevents the animals from developing memory problems and increased anxiety that are indicative of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists utilized mouse studies to suggest that a receptor called Oprl1 is altered in mice with PTSD-like symptoms. They then worked with a group at the Scripps Research Institute who had previously developed the Oprl1-targeted drug to examine its effects on fear memory modulation. The group has also shown that in humans, ...

Baltimore, Md. — June 5, 2013. The bacteria that live in the human gut may play an important role in immune response to vaccines and infection by wild-type enteric organisms, according to two recent studies resulting from a collaborative effort between the University of Maryland School of Medicine Institute for Genome Sciences and the Center for Vaccine Development. The first study, published online in PLOS ONE, http://umm.gd/13E3OHl, examines the impact of an oral typhoid vaccination on the microbiota, or populations of bacteria, in the human gut. The second study, also ...

Ulsan, South Korea– The research team of Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Case Western Reserve University and University of North Texas have paved a new way for affordable commercialization of fuel cells with efficient metal-free electrocatalysts using edge-halogenated graphene nanoplatelets. Fuel cell technology has come a long way since the early days in the Apollo space program. Certainly the idea of running a car on pure hydrogen is an exciting prospect as the only emissions will be pure water. But how much will you be willing to pay ...

Tiny bubbles of water found in quartz grains in Australia may hold the key to understanding what caused the Earth's first ice age, say scientists. The Anglo-French study, published in the journal Nature, analysed the amount of ancient atmospheric argon gas (Ar) isotopes dissolved in the bubbles and found levels were very different to those in the air we breathe today. The researchers say their findings help explain why Earth didn't suffer its first ice age until 2.5 billion years ago, despite the Sun's rays being weaker during the early years of our planet's formation. "The ...

The first study drew the conclusion that people cooperate more if they are forced to make decisions when pressed for time. The research group (Rand et al.) let the test subjects make decisions under pressure on social dilemmas. They found that the decisions made at the time were more oriented towards cooperation. The conclusion was that decisions under pressure that build on intuition promote cooperation. It has gotten a lot of attention and aroused a great deal of discussion. But it is not true, argues a group of researchers at several universities, including Linköping ...

Engineers in the Coordinated Robotics Lab at the University of California, San Diego, have developed new image processing techniques for rapid exploration and characterization of structural fires by small Segway-like robotic vehicles. A sophisticated on-board software system takes the thermal data recorded by the robot's small infrared camera and maps it onto a 3D scene constructed from the images taken by a pair of stereo RGB cameras. This allows small mobile robotic vehicles to create a virtual reality picture that includes a 3D map and temperature data that can ...

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), led by Dr. Lee Bulla, have characterized a protein produced by the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis subsp. israelensis (Bti), which is highly toxic against Anopheles gambiae, the principal mosquito vector of malaria. The protein toxin, which has been known for a number of years, is produced in a complex of other protein toxins, called Cry toxins, which also have mosquitocidal activity against other species of mosquito. The novelty of the research done by the UTD scientists is that they differentially fractionated ...

DETROIT — The local food movement is gaining traction in cities across America, with urban gardens contributing a healthy source of fresh produce for local citizens as well as providing a social outlet for gardeners and creating open spaces for residents to enjoy. Urban gardening is not without risks, however. Many garden plots within cities were previously inhabited by residences or industrial buildings that disposed of toxic chemicals on site, creating potential health hazards from the use of lead in paint, gasoline and industrial activities. To properly assess the ...

NJIT Assistant Professor Mei Liu, PhD, a computer scientist, has recently shown in a new study that electronic medical records can validate previously reported adverse drug reactions and report new ones. "Comparative Analysis of Pharmacovigilance Methods in Detection of Adverse Drug Reactions from Electronic Medical Records" (Journal of American Medical Informatics Association, May 2013) examined the use of retrospective medication orders and inpatient laboratory results documented in the medical records to identify adverse reactions. Twelve years of data from Vanderbilt ...

How much will BP pay to compensate for damage from the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster? One article in a three-part cover package on the disaster in this week's edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) focuses on what promises to be a long, complicated federal trial — now getting underway in New Orleans — that will provide an answer. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Jeff Johnson, C&EN senior correspondent, details how Gulf Coast states plan to divvy up the restoration penalties from the devastating ...

If you suspect that opening windows to let in fresh air might be good for you, a new study by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has confirmed your hunch. Analyzing extensive data on ventilation rates collected from more than 150 classrooms in California over two years, the researchers found that bringing classroom ventilation rates up to the state-mandated standard may reduce student absences due to illness by approximately 3.4 percent. With this reduction in student absence, California's school districts would gain $33 million annually ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 5, 2013) -- A gene linked to autism spectrum disorders that was manipulated in two lines of transgenic mice produced mature adults with irreversible deficits affecting either learning or social interaction. The findings, published in the May 29 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, have implications for potential gene therapies but they also suggest that there may be narrow windows of opportunity to be effective, says principal investigator Philip Washbourne, a professor of biology and member of the University of Oregon's Institute of Neuroscience. The ...

A faith in the explanatory and revealing power of science increases in the face of stress or anxiety, a study by Oxford University psychologists suggests. The researchers argue that a 'belief in science' may help non-religious people deal with adversity by offering comfort and reassurance, as has been reported previously for religious belief. 'We found that being in a more stressful or anxiety-inducing situation increased participants' "belief in science",' says Dr Miguel Farias, who led the study in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University. 'This ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new flow-based method for manipulating and confining single particles in free solution, a process that will help address current challenges faced by nanoscientists and engineers. "This method is a first-of-its-kind tool for manipulation and trapping of small nanoparticles in solution," explained Charles M. Schroeder, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Illinois. "Using fluid flow in a microfluidic device means that electrical, magnetic, optical, ...

Early Earth was not very hospitable when it came to jump starting life. In fact, new research shows that life on Earth may have come from out of this world. Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a former LLNL postdoc) found that icy comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds, including the building blocks of proteins and nucleobases pairs of DNA and RNA. Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol ...

A recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine describes genetic testing of a rare blood cancer called atypical chronic neutrophilic leukemia (CNL) that revealed a new mutation present in most patients with the disease. The mutation also serves as an Achilles heel, allowing doctors at the University of Colorado Cancer Center to prescribe a never-before-used, targeted treatment. The first patient treated describes his best snowboarding season ever. "I'm a crazy sports fan," says the patient. "I go 30 days a season. I may be the oldest guy snowboarding on the mountain, ...

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered surprising changes in electrical resistivity in iron-based superconductors. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, offer further evidence that magnetism and superconductivity are closely related in this class of novel superconductors. "We found that the directions of smallest and largest resistivity within the conducting layers are significantly dependent on the composition of the compounds, and in some compositions, they change sign, or, in other words, electric current flows easier ...

WHAT: Untreated HIV infection destroys a person's immune system by killing infection-fighting cells, but precisely when and how HIV wreaks this destruction has been a mystery until now. New research by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, reveals how HIV triggers a signal telling an infected immune cell to die. This finding has implications for preserving the immune systems of HIV-infected individuals. HIV replicates inside infection-fighting human immune cells called CD4+ T cells through ...

MOSS LANDING, CA — Surprisingly large amounts of discarded trash end up in the ocean. Plastic bags, aluminum cans, and fishing debris not only clutter our beaches, but accumulate in open-ocean areas such as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Now, a paper by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) shows that trash is also accumulating in the deep sea, particularly in Monterey Canyon. Kyra Schlining, lead author on this study, said, "We were inspired by a fisheries study off Southern California that looked at seafloor trash down to 365 meters. ...

WASHINGTON -- A new report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council proposes priorities for a research agenda to improve understanding of the public health aspects of gun-related violence, including its causes, health burden, and possible interventions. The committee that wrote the report said significant progress can be achieved in three to five years through a research program that addresses five high-priority areas: the characteristics of gun violence, risk and protective factors, prevention and other interventions, gun safety technology, and the ...

The researchers have been tracking the evolution of Drosophila subobscura, a small fly that is very common all over Europe, since 1976. They are focusing on a specific type of genomic variability known as chromosomal inversion polymorphism. The study has compared how the flies' genomes change from spring to summer, summer to autumn and autumn to spring, over the years. In pre-2011 studies of one of D. subobscura's five chromosome pairs, performed in a population near the town of Santiago de Compostela, the researchers observed that this type of adaptation is related to ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Offering flu vaccines at elementary schools could expand vaccination rates and reduce costs, according to a new study reported in the scientific journal Vaccine by researchers from UC Davis Health System; the Monroe County, New York, Department of Public Health; University of Rochester Medical Center; and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The best protection against flu for children at least 6 months of age is the seasonal vaccine, yet inoculation rates among children are low, according to the CDC. Only about 40 percent of ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —To attract and maintain a diverse, qualified academic workforce, institutions of higher education should have — and promote — policies to help balance career and family life, according to an article published by UC Davis researchers in the June 2013 issue of Academic Medicine. Policies allowing medical school faculty to care for family while advancing their careers are more available today than ever before, the authors said in the article. Yet these policies are also underused, primarily because faculty members do not know they exist. Based on ...

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have designed and tested an all-solid lithium-sulfur battery with approximately four times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion technologies that power today's electronics. The ORNL battery design, which uses abundant low-cost elemental sulfur, also addresses flammability concerns experienced by other chemistries. "Our approach is a complete change from the current battery concept of two electrodes joined by a liquid electrolyte, which has been used over the last 150 to 200 years," said ...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) current practice of removing free-ranging horses from public lands promotes a high population growth rate, and maintaining them in long-term holding facilities is both economically unsustainable and incongruent with public expectations, says a new report by the National Research Council. The report says that tools already exist for BLM to better manage horses and burros on healthy ecosystems, enhance public engagement and confidence, and make the program more financially sustainable. It also provides evidence-based ...