PITTSBURGH—Molecules could soon be "scanned" in a fashion similar to imaging screenings at airports, thanks to a detector developed by University of Pittsburgh physicists. The detector, featured in a recent issue of Nano Letters, may have the ability to chemically identify single molecules using terahertz radiation—a range of light far below what the eye can detect. "Our invention allows lines to be 'written' and 'erased' much in the manner that an Etch A Sketch® toy operates," said study coauthor Jeremy Levy, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within ...

Using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers has imaged a giant planet around the bright star GJ 504. Several times the mass of Jupiter and similar in size, the new world, dubbed GJ 504b, is the lowest-mass planet ever detected around a star like the sun using direct imaging techniques. "If we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta," said Michael McElwain, a member of the discovery team at NASA's ...

LA JOLLA, CA ---- Proteins are the workhorses of cells, adopting conformations that allow them to set off chemical reactions, send signals and transport materials. But when a scientist is designing a new drug, trying to visualize the processes inside cells, or probe how molecules interact with each other, they can't always find a protein that will do the job they want. Instead, they often engineer their own novel proteins to use in experiments, either from scratch or by altering existing molecules. Engineered proteins can be drugs that turn on or off signaling pathways ...

Tropical Depression Gil has been weakening for a couple of days, while Tropical Storm Henrietta appears to be strengthening in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured both storms in one image that clearly showed Henrietta was the larger storm, and NASA's Aqua satellite peered under Henrietta's clouds to reveal a developing eye. Tropical Depression Gil is more than halfway to Hawaii from Mexico and continues to hold onto depression strength. Meanwhile, NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured both storms in one image on Aug. 5 at 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT). The ...

A new analysis has found that mothers who are more extroverted and less anxious are more likely to breastfeed and to continue to breastfeed than mothers who are introverted or anxious. Published early online in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, the study indicates that new mothers with certain personalities may need additional support and education to help them feel confident, self assured, and knowledgeable about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is important for the health of both mother and baby: breastfed babies have lower levels of infections and allergies and are less ...

A recent study compared the differences between novice and experienced drivers using a driving simulator and modeled the difference using computational cognitive models. The method and results provide important cognitive-psychological bases for developing intelligent driver training and driving assistance systems. The study titled "Modeling the effect of driving experience on lane keeping performance using ACT-R cognitive architecture," authored by Shi Cao, Yulin Qin, and Mowei Shen, has been published on CHINESE SCIENCE BULLETIN, 2013. Driving experience is a critical ...

People who walk to work are around 40 per cent less likely to have diabetes as those who drive, according to a new study. Researchers at Imperial College London and University College London examined how various health indicators related to how people get to work, using data from a survey of 20,000 people across the UK. They found that cycling, walking, and using public transport were all associated with lower risk of being overweight than driving or taking a taxi. People who walk to work were also 17% less likely than people who drive to have high blood pressure. Cyclists ...

Scientists from the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Copenhagen have examined the bodies of three 500-year-old Inca children along with scientists from Bradford University in England. This has given new, detailed knowledge about the old Ince ritual 'capacocha' which also involved sacrificing humans. The results were published recently in the journal PNAS. One of the examined mummies is the 13-year-old girl, 'The Llullaillaco Maiden', named after the 6,379 meters tall volcanic mountain, Llullaillaco, where she was found frozen close to the mountain's ...

Working at a clean and prim desk may promote healthy eating, generosity, and conventionality, according to new research. But, the research also shows that a messy desk may confer its own benefits, promoting creative thinking and stimulating new ideas. The new studies, conducted by psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs and her fellow researchers at the University of Minnesota are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Prior work has found that a clean setting leads people to do good things: Not engage in crime, not ...

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - The scientific name of the timber rattlesnake, Crotalus horridus, is a sign of the fear and loathing this native North American viper has inspired. But research by a team of University of Maryland biologists shows the timber rattlesnake indirectly benefits humankind by keeping Lyme disease in check. The team's findings, to be presented today in a talk at the annual conference of the Ecological Society of America, highlight the potential benefits of conserving all species – even those some people dislike. Human cases of Lyme disease, a bacterial illness ...

Upper limb function impairment is one of the most common sequelae of central nervous system injury. Conventional assessment methods cannot provide objective evaluation of patient performance and the effectiveness of therapies. The most common assessment tools are based on rating scales, which are inefficient when measuring small changes and can yield subjective bias. An objective quantification of patient performance during rehabilitation can be achieved using instruments to capture motion trajectories and specific details of task execution. Various commercial systems use ...

Interleukin-18 promoter gene polymorphisms may be associated with ischemic stroke pathogenesis, and the –607C allele increases ischemic stroke risk in the Han Chinese population. The frequency distribution of genetic polymorphisms varies among different populations, races, and living environments. A recent study by Haiping Wang and colleagues from Qingdao University Medical College demonstrates that the –13T/C (rs11024595) polymorphism, in the 5′-flanking region of the serum amyloid A gene, shows no correlation with ischemic cerebrovascular disease. However, the C ...

Previous studies have demonstrated that ethanol influences the secretion of neurotrophins, promotes oxidative stress, reduces the absorption of nutritive substances, and thereby induces neuronal damage. Numerous recent in vitro and in vivo studies provide evidence showing that ethanol can directly induce apoptotic cell death of the neurons. Chronic alcohol use is accompanied by volume reductions of gray and white matter, microstructural disruption of various white matter tracts, and enlargement of cerebral ventricles and sulci, thereby causing brain dysfunctions, such as ...

The actual standing of speakers within a society's power structure determines how their statements are perceived. This is the conclusion reached in a joint study undertaken by neurolinguist Professor Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky of the University of Marburg and linguist Professor Matthias Schlesewsky of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) with the support of Sylvia Krauspsenhaar, who participated in the study as a member of the Neurotypology research group at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. The results were recently published ...

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow that most often affects older adults. CLL responds to bone marrow stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT); however, the rate of relapse for CLL remains relatively high. A benefit of allo-HSCT is that treatment can result in the development of an anti-tumor response produced by the grafted cells and is associated with a low risk of cancer relapse. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Catherine Wu and colleagues at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston report the results of ...

VIDEO: This is a demonstration of the system, setup, and first question. Top left: system as viewed from the outside, the user watches a computer screen, which is visible at the... Click here for more information. Patients who are otherwise completely unable to communicate can answer yes or no questions within seconds with the help of a simple system—consisting of just a laptop and camera—that measures nothing but the size of their pupils. The tool, described and demonstrated ...

Chronic harvesting of a tropical tree that many local communities in Western Africa depend on can alter the tree's reproduction and drastically curtail fruit and seed yields over the tree's lifetime, according to a new study. The study, which appears today in the Journal of Ecology, is the first of its kind to use what's called "age-from-stage" mathematical modeling, a way of estimating plant age from its size, to investigate how harvesting affects a plant's life expectancy and other life history traits, such as age at maturity. In this case, the tree Khaya senegalensis, ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida have revealed the process by which chronic inflammation of the pancreas, pancreatitis, morphs into pancreatic cancer. They say their findings point to ways to identify pancreatitis patients at risk of pancreatic cancer and to potential drug therapies that might reverse the process. The study, published online today in The Journal of Cell Biology, maps how inflammation pushes acinar cells in the pancreas -- those that produce digestive enzymes -- to transform into duct-like cells. As these cells change, they can ...

White Americans who are obese are twice as likely as black Americans to have surgery to tackle the problem, a study has found. Bariatric surgery is now recognised as a successful treatment for preventing serious complications of obesity such as diabetes and high blood pressure. The new study is one of the first to look at whether people who need surgery most are actually receiving it. Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina and Imperial College London studied rates of bariatric surgery in the US from 1999 to 2010. Twenty-two per cent of black women ...

FROSTBURG, MD (August 5, 2013)—Climate changes how species interact with one another—and not just today. Scientists are studying trends from fossil records to understand how climate change impacted the world in the ancient past and to identify ways to predict how things may change in the future, according to a new study published in the August 2 issue of Science. Climate change has occurred repeatedly throughout Earth's history, but the recent rate of global warming far exceeds that of any previous episode in the past 10,000 years or longer. Knowing how climate change ...

In a study carried out at the University of Eastern Finland, bone histomorphometry and infrared spectroscopy revealed abnormal bone properties in children with vertebral fractures and in children after solid organ transplantation. Bone compositional changes in children with vertebral fractures and after different types of organ transplantation have not been reported previously. Bone samples were investigated using bone histomorphometry, a microscopic method that provides information about bone metabolism and remodelling. In children with vertebral fractures, there were ...

The report, newly published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, suggests that the link may be to do with certain biological effects of breastfeeding. For example, breastfeeding restores insulin tolerance which is significantly reduced during pregnancy, and Alzheimer's is characterised by insulin resistance in the brain. Although they used data gathered from a very small group of just 81 British women, the researchers observed a highly significant and consistent correlation between breastfeeding and Alzheimer's risk. They argue that this was so strong that any potential ...

Building structures by mixing lego bricks of two different sizes is child's play. However, studying polymers endowed with an alternating nanostructure made of heterogeneous blocks is anything but straightforward. Theoretical physicist Mark Matsen, based at the University of Reading, UK, studies polymer mixes consisting of two-fold (AB) and three-fold (BAB) combinations of two types of nanoscale blocks. He has shown, in a study published in EPJ E, that the underlying heterogeneity of the blocks can cause polymers to switch to different nanoscale patterns and therefore display ...

Online game companies need to be more socially responsible for over-addictive use of their products to avoid government intervention, according to a new study by Cardiff, Derby and Nottingham Trent universities. The study, in the journal Addiction Research and Theory, was led by Dr Shumaila Yousafzai of Cardiff Business School with psychologists Dr Zaheer Hussain and Professor Mark Griffiths from the University of Derby and Nottingham Trent University respectively. While conventional videogames have an ending, or may become boring and repetitive, Massively Multiplayer ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Texas have revealed more about graphene's mechanical properties and demonstrated a technique to improve the stretchability of graphene – developments that should help engineers and designers come up with new technologies that make use of the material. Graphene is a promising material that is used in technologies such as transparent, flexible electrodes and nanocomposites. And while engineers think graphene holds promise for additional applications, they must first have a better understanding of its ...