High pressures and temperatures cause materials to exhibit unusual properties, some of which can be special. Understanding such new properties is important for developing new materials for desired industrial uses and also for understanding the interior of Earth, where everything is hot and squeezed. A paper in Nature Geoscience highlights a new technique in which small amounts of a sample can be studied while being hot and squeezed within an electron microscope. Use of such a microscopy method permits determination of details down to the scale of a few atoms, including ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 7, 2013—Europa, the ice-covered moon of the planet Jupiter, may be able to support life. NASA has commissioned a team of expert scientists to consider the science goals for a landed spacecraft mission to the surface of Europa, and to investigate the composition and geology of its icy shell and the potential for life within its interior ocean. The NASA-appointed Science Definition Team outlines the main priorities of a future lander mission to Europa to study its potential habitability in an article in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary ...

The invasion of brain-tumor cells into surrounding tissue requires the same protein molecule that neurons need to migrate into position as they differentiate and mature, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and published August 7 in the online journal PLOS ONE. The researchers investigated similarities between the transition of neural stem cells into neurons and the process whereby cancer cells invade surrounding tissues. "Both processes involve the mobilization of cells," says Anjen Chenn, director of clinical pathology ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – The media have widely reported that retired NFL players are at risk for a neurodegenerative disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which causes symptoms such as aggression, depression, suicidality and progressive dementia. But a study of retired NFL players, led by Christopher Randolph, PhD, of Loyola University Medical Center, has found no evidence to support this theory. Randolph and colleagues report their findings in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. While there are no clearly defined diagnostic criteria ...

MADISON — In a world full of hungry predators, prey animals must be constantly vigilant to avoid getting eaten. But plants face a particular challenge when it comes to defending themselves. "One of the things that makes plants so ecologically interesting is that they can't run away," says John Orrock, a zoology professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "You can't run, you can't necessarily hide, so what can you do? Some plants make themselves less tasty." Some do this either by boosting their production of toxic or unpleasant-tasting chemicals (think cyanide, ...

VIDEO: Botswana's Okavango Delta and the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans are two ends of a 360-mile round trip zebra migration, the second longest on Earth. In this animation, shades of red show... Click here for more information. One of the world's longest migrations of zebras occurs in the African nation of Botswana, but predicting when and where zebras will move has not been possible until now. Using NASA rain and vegetation data, researchers can track when and where arid lands ...

SALT LAKE CITY—When a child is diagnosed with cancer, one of the first questions the parents ask is "Will my other children get cancer?" A new study from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah suggests the answer to that question depends on whether a family history of cancer exists. The research results were published online in the International Journal of Cancer and will appear in the November 15 print issue. The study, led by Joshua Schiffman, M.D., medical director of HCI's High Risk Pediatric Cancer Clinic and a pediatric hematologist/oncologist ...

HOUSTON -- A program that pushes immature cells to grow up and fulfill their destiny as useful, dedicated cells is short-circuited in the most common and deadly form of brain tumor, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Stuck in what amounts to cellular adolescence, these precursor cells accumulate, contributing to the variability among glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cells that make it so difficult to treat, said first author Jian Hu, Ph.D., instructor ...

Every hourly increase in daily television watching at 29 months of age is associated with diminished vocabulary and math skills, classroom engagement (which is largely determined by attention skills), victimization by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten, according to Professor Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital. "This is the first time ever that a stringently controlled associational birth cohort study has looked at and found a relationship between too much toddler screen time and kindergarten risks for ...

Cincinnati, OH, August 8, 2013 -- Concussions have become a major public health issue, with both short- and long-term side effects. In sports, cheerleading has the highest rate of catastrophic injury, with some studies reporting approximately 6% of total injuries as concussions. Return-to-play guidelines have relied on athletes' self-reports; however, this has led to concerns about the ability of athletes to truly recognize their own symptoms and recovery. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers evaluate the accuracy of neurocognitive ...

Results from a clinical trial of eteplirsen, a drug designed to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, suggest that the therapy allows participants to walk farther than people treated with placebo and dramatically increases production of a protein vital to muscle growth and health. The study, led by a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, is the first of its kind to show these results from an exon-skipping drug—a class of therapeutics that allows cells to skip over missing parts of the gene and produce protein naturally. "I've been doing this ...

A Penn State-led research team has found that changes to proteins called histones, which are associated with DNA, can control whether or not a gene is allowed to function. The changes may be important in maintaining the genes' "expression potential" so that future cells behave as their parent cells did. The discovery, which may have implications for the study of diseases such as cancer, will be published in a print edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was led by Lu Bai, an assistant professor of biochemistry, molecular biology, ...

Women living in large urban areas are at a significantly higher risk of postpartum depression after five to 14 months of giving birth compared to those living in rural areas, according to a new Canadian study led by Women's College Hospital's Dr. Simone Vigod. The study, published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, strongly links geographic location and postpartum depression. The researchers suggest differences in risk factors, including place of birth, social support and history of depression, in combination with geography, may contribute to postpartum ...

Forests have a limited capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study from Northern Arizona University. The study, available online in the journal New Phytologist, aimed to explore how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide could alter the carbon and nitrogen content of ecosystems. By performing tests on subtropical woodland plots over an 11-year period, the researchers found that ecosystem carbon uptake was not significantly increased by the high CO2 treatment—in contrast to expectations. While plants did contain more carbon when CO2 levels were ...

The global study was led by University of Melbourne and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology today. The study involved about 2,500 women from Europe, North America and Australia who have inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2, the breast cancer susceptibility genes, and who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. About one-third of these women were placed on tamoxifen. Tamoxifen has been used for decades to treat breast cancer and has recently been shown to prevent breast cancers in many women. Until now, there has been ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Pregnant women regularly consume food and beverages containing toxins believed to pose potential risks to developing fetuses, according to researchers at the University of California in Riverside and San Diego, suggesting that health care providers must do more to counsel their patients about the dangers of hidden toxins in the food supply. In a peer-reviewed study published in the July issue of Nutrition Journal — "Consumption habits of pregnant women and implications for developmental biology: a survey of predominantly Hispanic women in California" ...

Preliminary studies by Dr. Zhihong Chen and colleagues from Chengde Medical College have shown that sericin might improve aberrant Akt signaling, decrease heme oxygenase-1 expression in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex, and reduce the apoptosis of hippocampal neurons in diabetic rats, thus protecting the nervous system. Recently, it is reported that the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor 1 axis undergoes abnormal changes in diabetes mellitus, which aggravate the disease progression and trigger complications. To improve diabetes mellitus and its chronic complications, ...

Breast cancer survivors who have extensive surgery are four times more likely to develop the debilitating disorder arm lymphoedema, a QUT study has found. The findings in a new paper Incidence of unilateral arm lymphoedema after breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the prestigious journal The Lancet Oncology, reveal the invasiveness of surgery to treat breast cancer increases the risk of developing arm lymphoedema. Lead author of the study Tracey DiSipio, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said women who had undergone ...

Griffith University researchers have taken part in an international study which has discovered a fast but accurate means of identifying changes to the biodiversity of a region. And the secret lies in crushed up insect "soup". Traditionally, many thousands of hours have been spent by researchers gathering, classifying and recording insects and animals in order to understand the natural ecology of a region. Any changes to the biodiversity of that area could then be determined only by more labour-intensive collecting and recording. Research published today in the journal ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Trying to explain riding a bike is difficult because it is an implicit memory. The body knows what to do, but thinking about the process can often interfere. So why is it that under certain circumstances paying full attention and trying hard can actually impede performance? A new UC Santa Barbara study, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveals part of the answer. There are two kinds of memory: implicit, a form of long-term memory not requiring conscious thought and expressed by means other than words; and explicit, another kind ...

Though one might think the brains of people who develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) possess building blocks of the disease absent in healthy brains, for most sufferers, this is not true. Every human brain contains the ingredients necessary to spark AD, but while an estimated 5 million Americans have AD – a number projected to triple by 2050 – the vast majority of people do not and will not develop the devastating neurological condition. For researchers like Subhojit Roy, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Departments of Pathology and Neurosciences at the University of ...

This image was taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile — the best place in the southern hemisphere for astronomical observing. But even without the help of telescopes like the VLT, a glance towards the southern constellation of Dorado (The Swordfish or Dolphinfish [1]) on a clear, dark night reveals a blurry patch which, at first sight, appears to be just like a cloud in the Earth's atmosphere. At least, this may have been explorer Ferdinand Magellan's first impression during his famous voyage to the southern hemisphere in 1519. Although ...

Johns Hopkins biophysicists have discovered that full activation of a protein ensemble essential for communication between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord requires a lot of organized back-and-forth motion of some of the ensemble's segments. Their research, they say, may reveal multiple sites within the protein ensemble that could be used as drug targets to normalize its activity in such neurological disorders as epilepsy, schizophrenia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. A summary of the results, published online in the journal Neuron on Aug. 7, shows that ...

LA JOLLA, CA – August 7, 2013 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have decoded an important molecular signal that guides the development of a key region of the brain known as the neocortex. The largest and most recently evolved region of the brain, the neocortex is particularly well developed in humans and is responsible for sensory processing, long-term memory, reasoning, complex muscle actions, consciousness and other functions. "The mammalian neocortex has a distinctive structure featuring six layers of neurons, and our finding helps explain how this ...

New research shows that as culture has evolved over the last two centuries – with increasing urbanization, greater reliance on technology, and widespread availability of formal education – so has human psychology. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "This research shows that there has been a two-century long historical shift towards individualistic psychological functioning adapted to an urban environment and away from psychological functioning adapted to a rural environment," says psychological ...