PITTSBURGH—Objects made from graphite—such as lithium-ion batteries—are "hydrophobic," meaning that they "dislike" water. For decades this lack of likeability has presented significant challenges in terms of building more durable technological devices made with graphite—until now. It appears that past samples of graphite were likely contaminated by air, causing the samples to appear hydrophobic, according to a University of Pittsburgh study. The Pitt team has demonstrated—for the first time—these materials are actually intrinsically attracted to water or "hydrophilic." ...

PITTSBURGH -- The joints of children with the most common form of chronic inflammatory arthritis contain immune cells that resemble those of 90-year-olds, according to a new study led by researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published in the August issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism, suggest that innovative treatment approaches could aim to prevent premature aging of immune cells. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis, or JIA, is the most prevalent rheumatic condition in the world and affects ...

Researchers who collect genetic samples from children for medical research need to explain the process more clearly to parents, according to a new study that suggests many parents don't fully understand the finer details about how these samples will be used and stored. The study was published in June in Genetics in Medicine. Kim McBride, MD, MS, principal investigator in the Center for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, and colleagues followed up with families enrolled in a genetic biobank—a storage facility ...

Choking is a leading cause of injury among children, especially for children 4 years of age and younger. A new study by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined nonfatal food-related choking among children 14 years of age or younger from 2001through 2009. During the nine-year study period, more than 12,000 children were treated each year in U.S. emergency departments for injuries from choking on food, which equals 34 children ...

Viper tick removal service Human cases of Lyme disease continue to rise in the United States. The bacterial disease—which, if untreated can cause significant neurological problems—is transmitted to people by black-legged ticks, which pick up the pathogen by feeding on infected animals, primarily small mammals such as mice. Previous studies have shown that when fewer predators of small mammals are present, the abundance of ticks goes up, resulting in an increase of Lyme infections in people. Edward Kabay, at East Chapel Hill High School, together with Nicholas Caruso ...

Fluorescent tetrapod nanocrystals could light the way to the future design of stronger polymer nanocomposites. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed an advanced opto-mechanical sensing technique based on tetrapod quantum dots that allows precise measurement of the tensile strength of polymer fibers with minimal impact on the fiber's mechanical properties. In a study led by Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab director and the Larry and Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology at the ...

A compound found in soybeans may become an effective HIV treatment without the drug resistance issues faced by current therapies, according to new research by George Mason University researchers. It's in the early stages, but genistein, derived from soybeans and other plants, shows promise in inhibiting the HIV infection, says Yuntao Wu, a professor with the George Mason-based National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases and the Department of Molecular and Microbiology. Still, that doesn't mean people should begin eating large amounts of soy products. "Although ...

Nearly doubling the efficiency of a breakthrough photovoltaic cell they created last year, UCLA researchers have developed a two-layer, see-through solar film that could be placed on windows, sunroofs, smartphone displays and other surfaces to harvest energy from the sun. The new device is composed of two thin polymer solar cells that collect sunlight and convert it to power. It's more efficient than previous devices, the researchers say, because its two cells absorb more light than single-layer solar devices, because it uses light from a wider portion of the solar ...

Engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a method to convert a relatively inexpensive conventional microscope into a billion-pixel imaging system that significantly outperforms the best available standard microscope. Such a system could greatly improve the efficiency of digital pathology, in which specialists need to review large numbers of tissue samples. By making it possible to produce robust microscopes at low cost, the approach also has the potential to bring high-performance microscopy capabilities to medical clinics in developing ...

Despite coronary artery disease (CAD) killing at least as many women as men each year, women are still today less likely to receive preventive recommendations, such as lipid-lowering therapy, aspirin, and lifestyle advice, than are men at a similar risk level. The challenges for women with CAD are outlined in a paper in this month's edition of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation. The paper, titled 'Coronary Artery Disease in Women: A 2013 Update', is by Dr Kavita Sharma and Dr Martha Gulati, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. Worldwide, ...

New research findings from the Centre for Permafrost (CENPERM) at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, document that permafrost during thawing may result in a substantial release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that the future water content in the soil is crucial to predict the effect of permafrost thawing. The findings may lead to more accurate climate models in the future. The permafrost is thawing and thus contributes to the release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But the ...

The slightest variation in a sequence of DNA can have profound effects. Modern genomics has shown that just one mutation can be the difference between successfully treating a disease and having it spread rampantly throughout the body. Now, researchers have developed a new method that can look at a specific segment of DNA and pinpoint a single mutation, which could help diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis. These small changes can be the root of a disease or the reason some infectious diseases resist certain antibiotics. The findings were published ...

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have clocked the fastest-possible electrical switching in magnetite, a naturally magnetic mineral. Their results could drive innovations in the tiny transistors that control the flow of electricity across silicon chips, enabling faster, more powerful computing devices. Scientists using SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser found that it takes only 1 trillionth of a second to flip the on-off electrical switch in samples of magnetite, which is thousands of times faster ...

Many drugs such as agents for cancer or autoimmune diseases have nasty side effects because while they kill disease-causing cells, they also affect healthy cells. Now a new study has demonstrated a technique for developing more targeted drugs, by using molecular "robots" to hone in on more specific populations of cells. "This is a proof of concept study using human cells," said Sergei Rudchenko, Ph.D., director of flow cytometry at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City and a senior author of the study. "The next step is to conduct tests in a mouse model ...

Just 12 molecules of water cause the long post-activation recovery period required by potassium ion channels before they can function again. Using molecular simulations that modeled a potassium channel and its immediate cellular environment, atom for atom, University of Chicago scientists have revealed this new mechanism in the function of a nearly universal biological structure, with implications ranging from fundamental biology to the design of pharmaceuticals. Their findings were published online July 28 in Nature. "Our research clarifies the nature of this previously ...

The incidence of a particular type of blood cancer is significantly higher in regions near facilities that release the chemical benzene into the environment. That is the conclusion of a new study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. This and other studies like it will be critical to identifying and enacting public health policies to decrease or prevent cancer. Non-Hodgkin lymphoma has been on the rise over the past few decades as industrial production in the United States has expanded. Benzene is one chemical carcinogen ...

A new study, conducted by David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, shows that, even as life expectancy has increased over the past two decades, people have become increasingly healthier later in life. "With the exception of the year or two just before death, people are healthier than they used to be," Cutler said. "Effectively, the period of time in which we're in poor health is being compressed until just before the end of life. So where we used to see people who are very, very sick for the final six or seven years of their life, that's now far ...

It happens to all of us at least once each winter in Montreal. You're walking on the sidewalk and before you know it you are slipping on a patch of ice hidden under a dusting of snow. Sometimes you fall. Surprisingly often you manage to recover your balance and walk away unscathed. McGill researchers now understand what's going on in the brain when you manage to recover your balance in these situations. And it is not just a matter of good luck. Prof. Kathleen Cullen and her PhD student Jess Brooks of the Dept of Physiology have been able to identify a distinct and surprisingly ...

By observing the eye movements of schizophrenia patients while playing a simple video game, a University of British Columbia researcher has discovered a potential explanation for some of their symptoms, including difficulty with everyday tasks. The research, published in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, shows that, compared to healthy controls, schizophrenia patients had a harder time tracking a moving dot on the computer monitor with their eyes and predicting its trajectory. But the impairment of their eye movements was not severe enough to explain the ...

How harmful we perceive an act to be depends on whether we see the act as intentional, reveals new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The new research shows that people significantly overestimate the monetary cost of intentional harm, even when they are given a financial incentive to be accurate. "The law already recognizes intentional harm as more wrong than unintentional harm," explain researchers Daniel Ames and Susan Fiske of Princeton University. "But it assumes that people can assess compensatory ...

DALLAS – July 29, 2013 – A seafood contaminant that thrives in brackish water during the summer works like a spy to infiltrate cells and quickly open communication channels to sicken the host, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center report. Vibrio parahaemolyticus bacteria, which cause gastroenteritis, inject proteins called effectors into host cells. One of those effectors, VopQ, almost immediately starts to disrupt the important process of autophagy via a novel channel-forming mechanism, the scientists report in the investigation available online at the Proceedings ...

Stable survival rates were observed for HIV-associated lymphoma patients during the antiretroviral therapy (ART) era in the US, according to a new study published July 26 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Studies have shown that HIV infection increases the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) and Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and that incidence for many lymphoma types has not decreased in the ART era. Furthermore, lymphoma is the most frequent cancer-related cause of death among HIV-infected persons. However, trends in presentation and survival have not been investigated ...

Since the start of the recession, the rate of unemployment for people with mental health problems has risen more than twice as much than for people without mental health problems, according to new research from King's College London. The authors warn that, across Europe, people with mental health problems have been disproportionately affected by the economic crisis, further increasing social exclusion amongst this vulnerable group. Published in PLOS ONE, the study also found that this gap in employment rates was even greater for men and for those with low levels of ...

Irvine, Calif. — Aiming to quell heated national debate about gun control with factual answers, two UC Irvine mathematicians have designed parameters to measure how to best prevent both one-on-one killings and mass shootings in the United States. Their paper appears Friday in the journal PLOS ONE. "It's time to bring a scientific framework to this problem," said lead author Dominik Wodarz, a mathematical biologist who works on disease and evolutionary dynamics. His co-author and wife, Natalia Komarova, a mathematician who studies biomedical and social trends, added: "Can ...

PHILADELPHIA – The network of arteries supplying blood flow to the brain is more likely to be incomplete in people who suffer migraine, a new study by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania reports. Variations in arterial anatomy lead to asymmetries in cerebral blood flow that might contribute to the process triggering migraines. The arterial supply of blood to the brain is protected by a series of connections between the major arteries, termed the "circle of Willis" after the English physician who first described it in the 17th ...