A University of British Columbia engineer and a team of U.S. researchers have made a breakthrough utilizing spray-on technology that could revolutionize the way optical lenses are made and used. Kenneth Chau, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering at UBC's Okanagan campus, is a key investigator among colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland. Their work – the development of a flat lens – is published in the May 23 issue of the journal Nature. Nearly all lenses – whether in an eye, a camera, or a microscope – are presently ...

A discovery made in fish could aid research into motor neuron disease. Scientists have found that a key hormone allows young zebrafish to develop and replace their motor neurons – a kind of nerve cell found in the spinal cord. The discovery may aid efforts to create neurons from stem cells in the lab, and support further research into a disorder for which there is still no cure. In humans, motor neurons control important muscle activities such as speaking, walking and breathing. When these cells stop working, it causes difficulties in motor functions and leads ...

22 May 2013, Paris, France: The Lotus Valve, a second-generation transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) device, was successfully implanted in all of the first 60 patients in results from REPRISE II reported at EuroPCR 2013, which showed good device performance and low mortality at 30 days. "First generation TAVI devices provide significant clinical benefit, but there are opportunities for improvement," explained lead author Ian Meredith, Director of MonashHeart, Southern Health and Professor of Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He suggested that ...

Research teams from UW-Milwaukee and the University of York investigating the properties of ultra-thin films of new materials are helping bring quantum computing one step closer to reality. An on-going collaboration between physicists from York and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA, is focusing on understanding, tailoring and tuning the electronic properties of topological insulators (TI) - new materials with surfaces that host a quantum state of matter – at the nanoscale. Understanding the properties of thin films of the new materials and integrating them with ...

Researchers at Lund University have succeeded in preventing very early symptoms of Huntington's disease, depression and anxiety, by deactivating the mutated huntingtin protein in the brains of mice. "We are the first to show that it is possible to prevent the depression symptoms of Huntington's disease by deactivating the diseased protein in nerve cell populations in the hypothalamus in the brain. This is hugely exciting and bears out our previous hypotheses", explains Åsa Petersén, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Lund University. Huntington's is a debilitating ...

Jerusalem, May 13, 2013 – A known difficulty in fighting influenza (flu) is the ability of the flu viruses to mutate and thus evade various medications that were previously found to be effective. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have shown recently that another, more promising, approach is to focus on improving drugs that boost the body's natural flu killer system. Emergence of new influenza strains, such as the recent avian influenza (H5N1) and swine influenza (H1N1 2009), can lead to the emergence of severe pandemics that pose a major threat to the ...

The tight wrapping of genomic DNA around nucleosomes in the cell nucleus makes it unavailable for gene expression. A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich now describes a mechanism that allows chromosomal DNA to be locally displaced from nucleosomes for transcription. In higher organisms the genomic DNA is stored in the cell nucleus, wrapped around disk-shaped particles called nucleosomes, each consisting of two pairs of four different histone proteins and accommodating two loops of DNA. Packed in this way to form chromatin, the DNA is protected, but ...

Nervous about that upcoming job interview? You might want to take steps to reduce your jitters, especially if you are a man. People who are anxious perform more poorly in job interviews, and the effect is worse for men than women, according to new research from the University of Guelph. "Most job applicants experience interview anxiety prior to and during interviews," said psychology professor Deborah Powell, who conducted the study with PhD student Amanda Feiler. Anxiety often shows up as nervous tics, difficulty speaking and trouble coming up with answers, all of ...

DETROIT – A study by researchers at Henry Ford Hospital found "substantial evidence" that a regenerative process involving damaged nerve fibers in the spinal cord could hold the key to better functional recovery by most stroke victims. The findings may offer new hope to those who suffer stroke, the leading cause of long-term disability in adults. Although most stroke victims recover some ability to voluntarily use their hands and other body parts, about half are left with weakness on one side of their bodies, while a substantial number are permanently disabled. The study ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – As the human body fine-tunes its neurological wiring, nerve cells often must fix a faulty connection by amputating an axon — the "business end" of the neuron that sends electrical impulses to tissues or other neurons. It is a dance with death, however, because the molecular poison the neuron deploys to sever an axon could, if uncontained, kill the entire cell. Researchers from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have uncovered some surprising insights about the process of axon amputation, or "pruning," in a study published May 21 in ...

Bochum's medics have succeeded in treating cerebral palsy with autologous cord blood. Following a cardiac arrest with severe brain damage, a 2.5 year old boy had been in a persistent vegetative state – with minimal chances of survival. Just two months after treatment with the cord blood containing stem cells, the symptoms improved significantly; over the following months, the child learned to speak simple sentences and to move. "Our findings, along with those from a Korean study, dispel the long-held doubts about the effectiveness of the new therapy", says Dr. Arne Jensen ...

The temperature in the permafrost on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian high Arctic is nearly as cold as that of the surface of Mars. So the recent discovery by a McGill University led team of scientists of a bacterium that is able to thrive at –15ºC, the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth, is exciting. The bacterium offers clues about some of the necessary preconditions for microbial life on both the Saturn moon Enceladus and Mars, where similar briny subzero conditions are thought to exist. The team of researchers, led by Prof. Lyle Whyte and postdoctoral ...

Magnetars – the dense remains of dead stars that erupt sporadically with bursts of high-energy radiation – are some of the most extreme objects known in the Universe. A major campaign using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other satellites shows magnetars may be more diverse – and common – than previously thought. When a massive star runs out of fuel, its core collapses to form a neutron star, an ultradense object about 10 to 15 miles wide. The gravitational energy released in this process blows the outer layers away in a supernova explosion and leaves the ...

WASHINGTON – Given the implications for the overall health, development, and academic success of children, schools should play a primary role in ensuring that all students have opportunities to engage in at least 60 minutes per day of vigorous or moderate-intensity physical activity, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Recent estimates suggest that only about half of school-age children meet this evidence-based guideline for promoting better health and development. The report recommends that most daily physical activity occur during regular school hours ...

(WASHINGTON, May 23, 2013) – Treating pediatric leukemia patients with a liposomal formulation of anthracycline-based chemotherapy at a more intense-than-standard dose during initial treatment may result in high survival rates without causing any added heart toxicity, according to the results of a study published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the second most common form of leukemia in children, is a blood cancer in which the bone marrow makes a large number of abnormal white blood cells that ...

Family caregivers of older adults with dementia are less stressed and their moods are improved on days when dementia patients receive adult day services (ADS), according to Penn State researchers. "Caregivers who live with and care for someone with dementia can experience extraordinary amounts of stress," said Steven Zarit, professor and head, human development and family studies. "The use of adult day services appears to provide caregivers with a much-needed break that can possibly protect them from the negative health effects caused by chronic stress." The researchers ...

Public level of support for war influences soldier PTSD Soldiers returning home from combat may be at a heightened risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder if public support for a war effort is low, according to recent research. Social validation or invalidation shapes the level of distress soldiers feel from the act of killing, the researchers say. The study involved two experiments that asked participants to exterminate woodlice in a modified coffee grinder – in one, having an actor show either interest or disgust for the act and in another, asking participants ...

HOUSTON – (May 23, 2013) – A new report from the Institute of Medicine says schools should be responsible for helping pupils engage in at least 60 minutes of vigorous or moderate intensity activity during each school day. No more than half of American youth meet current evidence-based guidelines of at least an hour of vigorous or moderate intensity physical activity daily, according to the report, which was released today. "Because children are in school for nearly half of their waking hours, the committee recommends a Whole-of-School approach to strengthening physical ...

NEW YORK (May 23, 2013) -- Little is known about why asthma develops, how it constricts the airway or why response to treatments varies between patients. Now, a team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College, Columbia University Medical Center and SUNY Downstate Medical Center has revealed the roots of a common type of childhood asthma, showing that it is very different from other asthma cases. Their report, in Science Translational Medicine, reveals that an over-active gene linked in 20 to 30 percent of patients with childhood asthma interrupts the synthesis of ...

A new study determined that children and adolescents with seizures involving the temporal lobe are likely to have clinically significant behavioral problems and psychiatric illness, especially depression. Findings published in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), highlight the importance of routine psychiatric evaluation for pediatric epilepsy patients—particularly for those who do not respond to anti-seizure medications and require epilepsy surgery. Current medical evidence indicates that mental illness ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ A new study from researchers in Japan indicates that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is independently associated with visceral (abdominal) fat accumulation only in men, perhaps explaining gender differences in the impact of OSA on cardiovascular disease and mortality. "Visceral fat accumulation, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, is also associated with OSA, and gender differences in mortality related to sleep apnea have been reported in some studies. Accordingly, we examined if the relationship between OSA and visceral fat ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Older people with a history of migraines and depression may have smaller brain tissue volumes than people with only one or neither of the conditions, according to a new study in the May 22, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Studies show that people with migraine have double the risk of depression compared to people without migraine," said study author Larus S. Gudmundsson, PhD, with the National Institute on Aging and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Md. Gudmundsson ...

An insect-eating pitcher plant teams up with ants to prevent mosquito larvae from stealing its nutrients, according to research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mathias Scharmann and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University Brunei Darussalam. The unusual relationship between insect-eating pitcher plants and ants that live exclusively on them has long puzzled scientists. The Camponotus schmitzi ants live only on one species of Bornean pitcher plants (Nepenthes bicalcarata), where they walk across slippery pitcher traps, swim ...

Endangered brush-tail rock wallabies raised in captive breeding programs carry antibiotic resistance genes in their gut bacteria and may be able to transmit these genes into wild populations, according to research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Michelle Power and colleagues from Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia. Brush-tail rock wallabies are currently being raised in species recovery programs and restored to the wild to bolster populations of this endangered species. Here, researchers found that nearly half of fecal samples ...

Two new species of cave-dwelling short-tailed whipscorpions have been discovered in northeastern Brazil, and are described in research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Adalberto Santos, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and colleagues. The reddish-brown short-tailed whipscorpions inhabit cool, humid limestone caves in an otherwise arid region. Both new species, Rowlandius ubajara and Rowlandius potiguara, were found deep within the limestone caves, which are also home to bats. Bat guano and seed deposits harbor springtails and ...