DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have devised a way to quickly and easily target and tinker with any gene in the human genome. The new tool, which builds on an RNA-guided enzyme they borrowed from bacteria, is being made freely available to researchers who may now apply it to the next round of genome discovery. The new method also has obvious utility for gene therapy and for efforts to reprogram stem or adult cells into other cell types – for example, to make new neurons from skin cells. "We have the genome sequence and we know what all the parts are, but we are ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction. In a step toward understanding how these faulty memories arise, MIT neuroscientists have shown that they can plant false memories in the brains of mice. They also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identical in nature to those of authentic memories. "Whether it's a false or genuine ...

Two of literature's most famous detectives had a major influence on the development of the modern crime scene investigation, according to a historian from The University of Manchester. Dr Ian Burney's research into the history of "CSI" has revealed that two of its founding fathers – Frenchman Edmond Locard and Austrian Hans Gross – were influenced by British writers Arthur Conan Doyle and R Austen Freeman. Conan Doyle, a doctor and creator of Sherlock Holmes and Freeman, another doctor whose creation Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke is the prototype for the modern forensic ...

Scientists have discovered a new molecule that prevents cancer cells from responding and surviving when starved of oxygen and which could be developed into new treatments for the disease, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society* today (Friday). Cancer Research UK scientists at the University of Southampton found that this molecule targets the master switch -- HIF-1 -- that cancer cells use to adapt to low oxygen levels, a common feature in the disease. The researchers uncovered a way to stop cancer cells using this switch ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Scientists can learn a tremendous amount about neutron stars and quark stars without understanding their internal structure in detail, according to two Montana State University scientists who published their findings in the July 26 issue of "Science." "The stars could be the softest or the hardest in their kind, and it wouldn't matter," said Nicolas Yunes, assistant professor in MSU's Department of Physics. The reason – discovered by Yunes and postdoctoral scholar Kent Yagi -- is almost universal relations among three intrinsic properties of these ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 25, 2013 — Researchers believe they have solved a lingering mystery about how electrons within Earth's radiation belt can suddenly become energetic enough to kill orbiting satellites. Thanks to data gathered from an intrepid pair of NASA probes roaming the harsh space environment within the Van Allen radiation belts, scientists have identified an internal electron accelerator operating within the belts. "For years we thought the Van Allen belts were pretty well behaved and changed slowly," said Geoffrey Reeves of Los Alamos National Laboratory's ...

This news release is available in German. The findings are reported in the current issue of the "Journal of Clinical Investigation" (published online on July 25, 2013). The body's repair mechanisms begin to fail with increasing age. As a result, signs of wear and tear appear and the risk for many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders and cancer, increases. "Current efforts to develop therapies against age-related diseases target these disorders one by one," says Dr. Dan Ehninger, research group leader at the DZNE site in Bonn. ...

LA JOLLA, CA----More than 11,000 Americans suffer spinal cord injuries each year, and since over a quarter of those injuries are due to falls, the number is likely to rise as the population ages. The reason so many of those injuries are permanently disabling is that the human body lacks the capacity to regenerate nerve fibers. The best our bodies can do is route the surviving tissue around the injury site. "It's like a detour after an earthquake," says Kuo-Fen Lee, the Salk Institute's Helen McLoraine Chair in Molecular Neurobiology. "If the freeway is down, but you can ...

WASHINGTON, July 25, 2013 —Developing ways to treat cancer patients with drugs that kill only cancer cells and that have fewer side effects is one of the topics in the premiere segment of the 2013 season of a popular video series from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The videos are available at http://www.acs.org/PrizedScience and on DVD. Titled Prized Science: Peter Stang on Building Molecules, the first episode of the 2013 series features the research of Peter J. Stang, Ph.D., winner of the 2013 ACS Priestley Medal. He is ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Color in living organisms can be formed two ways: pigmentation or anatomical structure. Structural colors arise from the physical interaction of light with biological nanostructures. A wide range of organisms possess this ability, but the biological mechanisms underlying the process have been poorly understood. Two years ago, an interdisciplinary team from UC Santa Barbara discovered the mechanism by which a neurotransmitter dramatically changes color in the common market squid, Doryteuthis opalescens. That neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, sets ...

Northern Australia's bushfire season was well underway by the beginning of July, 2013. On July 23 the Aqua satellite flew over the region, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument flying aboard to capture this true-color image of the winter's fires. Most of the hotspots, especially the large ones, are found in the Northern Territory, where long plumes of gray smoke are blown strongly to the northwest by heavy winds. The northern tip of Western Australia is also speckled with red hotspots and some thinner plumes of smoke. The red spots ...

The newest tropical storm to form in the Atlantic was put in NASA's "infrared spotlight." NASA's AIRS instrument uses infrared imaging to analyze tropical cyclones and captured an image of newborn Tropical Storm Dorian. NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument also known as AIRS, flies aboard the Aqua satellite. AIRS uses infrared light and shined that light on Tropical Storm Dorian on July 25 at 03:29 UTC (11:29 p.m. EDT, July 24). Infrared data helps determine temperature, such as the cloud top and sea surface temperatures. AIRS data revealed that Dorian's strongest ...

Tropical Storm Flossie formed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and strengthened quickly on July 25. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Flossie and captured an infrared look at the storm and saw a large area of powerful thunderstorms around its center and south of the center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. AIRS captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Flossie on July 25 at 10:05 UTC (6:05 a.m. EDT). Infrared data helps determine temperature, such as the cloud top and sea surface temperatures. AIRS data revealed that ...

University of Notre Dame researchers have developed a computer-aided method that uses electronic medical records to offer the promise of rapid advances toward personalized health care, disease management and wellness. Notre Dame computer science professor Nitesh V. Chawla and his doctoral student, Darcy A. Davis, developed the system called Collaborative Assessment and Recommendation Engine (CARE) for personalized disease risk predictions and wellbeing. "The potential for 'personalizing' health care from a disease prevention, disease management and therapeutics perspective ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- A superfluid moves like a completely frictionless liquid, seemingly able to propel itself without any hindrance from gravity or surface tension. The physics underlying these materials — which appear to defy the conventional laws of physics — has fascinated scientists for decades. Think of the assassin T-1000 in the movie "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" — a robotic shape-shifter made of liquid metal. Or better yet, consider a real-world example: liquid helium. When cooled to extremely low temperatures, helium exhibits behavior that is otherwise impossible ...

DURHAM, N.H. –– Space scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe called the Van Allen radiation belts. Derived by measurements taken by a University of New Hampshire-led instrument on board NASA's Van Allen Probes mission, the findings answer a longstanding question in radiation belt science by showing that the acceleration energy is inside the belts themselves rather than from a source farther away: particles are sped up ...

(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) – A Miriam Hospital researcher has joined forces with international colleagues to call for new strategies to better manage and improve assessment and treatment for hepatitis C (HCV) infection in individuals who inject drugs. Lynn E. Taylor, M.D., an HIV specialist focusing on HIV and viral hepatitis coinfection at The Miriam Hospital, was the only American physician invited to join the expert international panel that issued these first-of-its-kind recommendations. They were published online yesterday by the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, just ...

Two University of Iowa researchers and their colleagues have advanced scientists' knowledge of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts by answering a long-standing question about the belts. Craig Kletzing and William Kurth of the UI Department of Physics and Astronomy note that since 1958 when UI space physicist James Van Allen discovered the doughnut-shaped bands of intense radiation encircling the Earth, scientists have wondered just how and where electrons trapped within the belts get their ultra-high energies. In a paper published in the July 25 issue of the online ...

The path of the peanut from a snack staple to the object of bans at schools, day care centers and beyond offers important insights into how and why a rare, life-threatening food allergy can prompt far-reaching societal change, according to a Princeton University researcher. Before 1980, peanut allergies were rarely mentioned in medical literature or the media, said Miranda Waggoner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Office of Population Research in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Her article on the subject, "Parsing the peanut panic: The ...

For decades, doctors have understood that microbes in the human gut can influence how certain drugs work in the body – by either activating or inactivating specific compounds, but questions have long remained about exactly how the process works. Harvard scientists are now beginning to provide those answers. In a July 19th paper published in Science, Peter Turnbaugh, a Bauer Fellow at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Center for Systems Biology, and Henry Haiser, a postdoctoral fellow, identify a pair of genes which appear to be responsible for allowing ...

Approaching the sun, Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars. The icy visitor, with its long gossamer tail, appears to be swimming like a tadpole through a deep pond of celestial wonders. In reality, the comet is much, much closer. The nearest star to the sun is over 60,000 times farther away, and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way is over thirty billion times more distant. These vast dimensions are lost in this deep space Hubble exposure that visually combines our view of the universe from ...

Scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe called the Van Allen radiation belts. Scientists knew that something in space accelerated particles in the radiation belts to more than 99 percent the speed of light but they didn't know what that something was. New results from NASA's Van Allen Probes now show that the acceleration energy comes from within the belts themselves. Particles inside the belts are sped up by local kicks ...

The moment when a telescope first opens its doors represents the culmination of years of work and planning -- while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a wealth of research and answers yet to come. It is a moment of excitement and perhaps even a little uncertainty. On July 17, 2013, the international team of scientists and engineers who supported and built NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, all lived through that moment. As the spacecraft orbited around Earth, the door of the telescope opened to view the mysterious lowest layers of the sun's atmosphere ...

Princeton University researchers have created "souped up" versions of the calcium-sensitive proteins that for the past decade or so have given scientists an unparalleled view and understanding of brain-cell communication. Reported July 18 in the journal Nature Communications, the enhanced proteins developed at Princeton respond more quickly to changes in neuron activity, and can be customized to react to different, faster rates of neuron activity. Together, these characteristics would give scientists a more precise and comprehensive view of neuron activity. The researchers ...

MADISON, Wis., July 25, 2013 – U.S. Forest Service researchers have identified what may be a key to unraveling some of the mysteries of White Nose Syndrome: the closest known non-disease causing relatives of the fungus that causes WNS. These fungi, many of them still without formal Latin names, live in bat hibernation sites and even directly on bats, but they do not cause the devastating disease that has killed millions of bats in the eastern United States. Researchers hope to use these fungi to understand why one fungus can be deadly to bats while its close relatives are ...