Pure cardiac muscle cells, ready to transplant into a patient affected by heart disease. That's a goal for many cardiology researchers working with stem cells. Having a pure population of cardiac muscle cells is essential for avoiding tumor formation after transplantation, but has been technically challenging. Researchers at Emory and Georgia Tech have developed a method for purifying cardiac muscle cells from stem cell cultures using molecular beacons. Molecular beacons are tiny "instruments" that become fluorescent only when they find cells that have turned on ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A new UCSB study that analyzed U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture data spanning two decades (1987-2007) shows that the statistical magnitude, existence, and direction of the relationship between landscape simplification –– a term used for the conversion of natural habitat to cropland –– and insecticide use varies enormously year to year. While there was a positive relationship in 2007 –– more simplified landscapes received more insecticides –– it is absent or reversed in all previous years. The findings were published ...

HOUSTON, Sept. 5, 2013 – A University of Houston (UH) professor led a team of scientists to uncover the largest single volcano yet documented on Earth. Covering an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the state of New Mexico, this volcano, dubbed the Tamu Massif, is nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars, placing it among the largest in the Solar System. William Sager, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UH, first began studying the volcano about 20 years ago at Texas A&M's College of Geosciences. Sager and his team's findings ...

Tropical Storm Gabrielle has weakened to a depression by 11 a.m. EDT on Sept. 5, while three other low pressure areas struggle to develop in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a panoramic view of all four systems while NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared data on Gabrielle and an adjacent low. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a view of Gabrielle, an unnamed system east of it, and Systems 99L and 98L on Sept. 5 at 10:45 a.m. EDT. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured all four systems in a view across the entire Atlantic Ocean. The image ...

UCLA researchers have described a new form of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) that occurs after an acute bout of diverticulitis, a finding that may help lead to better management of symptoms and relief for patients. The discovery of this new condition, called Post-Diverticulitis Irritable Bowel Syndrome (PDV-IBS), validates the irritable bowel symptoms that many patients report long after suffering a bout of diverticulitis, but that many physicians wave off as being part of the original condition, said study senior author Dr. Brennan Spiegel, an associate professor of ...

Astronomers are constantly on the hunt for ever-colder star-like bodies, and two years ago a new class of such objects was discovered by researchers using NASA's WISE space telescope. However, until now no one has known exactly how cool their surfaces really are - some evidence suggested they could be room temperature. A new study shows that while these brown dwarfs, sometimes called failed stars, are indeed the coldest known free-floating celestial bodies, they are warmer than previously thought with temperatures about 250-350 degrees Fahrenheit. To reach such low ...

Data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft reveal that neutral interstellar atoms are flowing into the solar system from a different direction than previously observed. Interstellar atoms flow past the Earth as the solar system passes through the surrounding interstellar cloud at 23 kilometers per second (50,000 miles per hour). The latest IBEX measurements of the interstellar wind direction were discovered to differ from those made by the Ulysses spacecraft in the 1990s. That difference led the IBEX team to compare the IBEX measurements to data ...

In the baseball world, a superstar can do five things exceptionally well: hit, hit for power, run, throw and field. Fuzhong Zhang In the parallel universe of the microbiological world, there is a current superstar species of blue-green algae that, through its powers of photosynthesis and carbon dioxide fixation, or uptake, can produce (count 'em) ethanol, hydrogen, butanol, isobutanol and potentially biodiesel. Now that's some five-tool player. In baseball, you call that player Willie Mays or Mike Trout. In microbiology, it goes by Synechocystis 6803, a versatile, ...

This news release is available in French. In comparing amounts of things -- be it the grains of sand on a beach, or the size of a sea gull flock inhabiting it -- humans use a part of the brain that is organized topographically, researchers have finally shown. In other words, the neurons that work to make this "numerosity" assessment are laid out in a shape that allows those most closely related to communicate and interact over the shortest possible distance. This layout, referred to as a topographical map, is characteristic of all primary senses -- sight, hearing, ...

Computer-designed proteins that can recognize and interact with small biological molecules are now a reality. Scientists have succeeded in creating a protein molecule that can be programmed to unite with three different steroids. The achievement could have far wider ranging applications in medicine and other fields, according to the Protein Design Institute at the University of Washington. "This is major step toward building proteins for use as biosensors or molecular sponges, or in synthetic biology — giving organisms new tools to perform a task," said one of the ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The migration of mature female tiger sharks during late summer and fall to the main Hawaiian Islands, presumably to give birth, could provide insight into attacks in that area, according to a University of Florida scientist. In a new seven-year study, researchers from UF and the University of Hawaii used new techniques to analyze the predators' movements in the Hawaiian archipelago, where recent shark incidents have gained international attention, including a fatal attack in August. The study revealed different patterns between males and females ...

In 2010, a Cathay Pacific Airways plane was arriving in Hong Kong when the engine control thrusts seized up and it was forced to make a hard landing—injuring dozens. The potential culprit? Contaminated fuel. The probability of contamination of diesel fuel is increasing as biodiesel becomes more popular and as distribution and supply systems use the same facilities to store and transport the two types of fuels. A professor and student team at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has developed a quick and easy-to-use sensor that can detect trace amounts of biodiesel ...

The lightweight skeletons of organisms such as sea sponges display a strength that far exceeds that of manmade products constructed from similar materials. Scientists have long suspected that the difference has to do with the hierarchical architecture of the biological materials—the way the silica-based skeletons are built up from different structural elements, some of which are measured on the scale of billionths of meters, or nanometers. Now engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have mimicked such a structure by creating nanostructured, hollow ...

The report [1] by researchers at Queen Mary University of London collates data from six regional registers [2], a national coverage of 36 per cent of the births in England and Wales. Examples of congenital anomalies include heart and lung defects, Down syndrome, neural tube defects such as spina bifida, and limb malformations such as club foot. Funded by Public Health England (PHE), the study is the most up-to-date and comprehensive of its kind, bringing together existing data in England and Wales from 2007 to 2011. However, the editor of the report, Professor Joan Morris, ...

Good asthma management during pregnancy is vital during pregnancy as poor asthma control can have adverse effects on maternal and fetal outcomes, says a new review published today (06 September) in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG). Asthma is a common condition that affects around 10% of pregnant women, making it the most common chronic condition in pregnancy. The review notes that the severity of asthma during pregnancy remains unchanged, worsens or improves in equal proportions. For women with severe asthma, control is more likely to deteriorate (around 60% ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Being in the minority in an ethnically diverse crowd is distressing, regardless of your ethnicity, unless you have a sense of purpose in life, reports a Cornell University developmental psychologist. Anthony Burrow, assistant professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, led the study, which was conducted on Chicago trains. The findings shed light on how people encounter diversity in everyday settings at a time when the United States is more racially mixed than ever, with demographic trends pointing to a more multicultural melting pot ...

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been hard on military marriages, with the risk of divorce rising directly in relation to the length of time enlisted service members have been deployed to combat zones, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The negative effects of deployment were largest among female military members, with women facing a greater chance of divorce than men under all the scenarios examined by researchers, according to the findings published online by the Journal of Population Economics. While researchers found that any deployment increases the ...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – New studies exploring breast cancer risk perceptions and use of radiotherapy and MRI for women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS, a preinvasive form of breast cancer) were highlighted today in a virtual presscast in advance of the 2013 Breast Cancer Symposium. The Symposium will take place September 7-9, 2013, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in San Francisco. Three major studies were highlighted in today's presscast: Radiation therapy for DCIS is safe, and does not appear to increase the risk of developing or dying from cardiovascular disease: ...

Researchers at the University of Alberta announced today that they have determined the chemical composition of human urine. The study, which took more than seven years and involved a team of nearly 20 researchers, has revealed that more than 3,000 chemicals or "metabolites" can be detected in urine. The results are expected to have significant implications for medical, nutritional, drug and environmental testing. "Urine is an incredibly complex biofluid. We had no idea there could be so many different compounds going into our toilets," noted David Wishart, the senior ...

Children with behavioral problems may be at risk of many chronic diseases in adulthood including heart disease, obesity, diabetes, as well as inflammatory illnesses (conditions which are caused by cell damage). Analyzing data on more than 4,000 participants in the Children of the 90s study at the University of Bristol, researchers from Harvard and Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health found that children with behavioral problems at the age of 8, had higher levels of two proteins (C-reactive protein—CRP; and Interleukin 6—IL-6) in their blood when tested at the age ...

The brown, smog-filled skies that engulf Beijing have earned China a poor reputation for environmental stewardship. But despite China's dirty skies, a study led by Stanford environmental scientists has found that a government-run clean water program is providing substantial benefit to millions of people in the nation's capital. The Miyun reservoir, 100 miles north of Beijing, is the main water source for the city's more than 20 million inhabitants. Greater agricultural demands and a decline in precipitation, among other factors, have cut the reservoir's output by two-thirds ...

In recent years, Stanford biologists have found that coffee growers in Costa Rica bolster bird biodiversity by leaving patches of their plantations as untouched rainforest. The latest finding from these researchers suggests that the birds are returning the favor to farmers by eating an aggressive coffee bean pest, the borer beetle, thereby improving coffee bean yields by hundreds of dollars per hectare. The study is the first to put a monetary value on the pest-control benefits rainforest can provide to agriculture, which the researchers hope can inform both farmers ...

A key requirement when performing scientific experiments is the accessibility of material resources, including the reagents or model organisms, needed to address a specific hypothesis. The published scientific literature is a source of this valuable information, but frequently lacks sufficient detail to the extent that researchers are unable to identify material resources used to perform experiments. A study, published today in PeerJ, demonstrates the magnitude of the problem – a problem that negatively affects the ability of scientists to reproduce and extend reported ...

Stanford, CA— Coral reefs are tremendously important for ocean biodiversity, as well as for the economic and aesthetic value they provide to their surrounding communities. Unfortunately they have been in great decline in recent years, much of it due to the effects of global climate change. One such effect, called bleaching, occurs when the symbiotic algae that are essential for providing nutrients to the coral either lose their identifying photosynthetic pigmentation and their ability to perform photosynthesis or disappear entirely from the coral's tissue. Without a healthy ...

Monash University researchers have found an important safety mechanism in the immune system that may malfunction in people with autoimmune diseases, such as Multiple Sclerosis, potentially paving the way for innovative treatments. Published today in Immunity, the research, led by Head of the Monash Department of Immunology Professor Fabienne Mackay, described for the first time how the body manages marginal zone (MZ) B cells, which form a general first line of attack against germs, but are potentially harmful. MZ B cells are integral to our defenses as they rapidly ...