CAMBRIDGE, Mass- Unlike barnacles, which cement themselves tightly to the surfaces of rocks, piers or ships, the clamlike bivalves called mussels dangle more loosely from these surfaces, attached by a collection of fine filaments known as byssus threads. This approach lets the creatures drift further out into the water, where they can absorb nutrients — although in the process, it exposes them to the risk of being torn away by the force of crashing waves. But that almost never happens. Despite the outwardly thin and fragile appearance of these threads, it turns out ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- One of regenerative medicine's greatest goals is to develop new treatments for stroke. So far, stem cell research for the disease has focused on developing therapeutic neurons — the primary movers of electrical impulses in the brain — to repair tissue damaged when oxygen to the brain is limited by a blood clot or break in a vessel. New UC Davis research, however, shows that other cells may be better suited for the task. Published July 23 in the journal Nature Communications, the large, collaborative study found that astrocytes — neural cells that ...

Diffusion tensor imaging fiber tracking with reliable tracking orientation and flexible step size can show white matter fiber bundles in the healthy corpus callosum. Researchers used two sets of human data to assess the performance of this method; one was from a healthy volunteer and the other from a patient with low-grade glioma. Results verified that this method was superior to the single-tensor Fiber Assignment by Continuous Tracking and the two-tensor eXtended Streamline Tractography for showing detailed images of fiber bundles. A recent study published in the Neural ...

Recurrent laryngeal nerve injury is the most common serious complication of thyroid surgery. Therefore, preventing recurrent laryngeal nerve injury is an important goal in thyroid surgery. A retrospective clinical controlled study from Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine demonstrates that dissecting the recurrent laryngeal nerve during thyroid surgery is clinically significant for preventing nerve injury. To determine the value of dissecting the recurrent laryngeal nerve during thyroid surgery with respect to preventing recurrent laryngeal ...

In 2006 the island of Java, Indonesia was struck by a devastating earthquake followed by the onset of a mud eruption to the east, flooding villages over several square kilometers and that continues to erupt today. Until now, researchers believed the earthquake was too far from the mud volcano to trigger the eruption. Geophysicists at the University of Bonn, Germany and ETH Zurich, Switzerland use computer-based simulations to show that such triggering is possible over long distances. The results have been published in "Nature Geoscience." On May 27, 2006 the ground of ...

Synthetic materials made from organic polymers usually burn very well due to their high carbon content; when turned into foams, they ignite even more easily -- and, depending on their chemical compositions, they produce toxic gases such as hydrogen cyanide or carbon monoxide. For this reason, polyurethane foams and other similar products have to be treated with flame retardants. These foam materials are widely used in upholstered furniture and mattresses, as insulation and packaging materials and as expanding spray foams. Conventional halogenated flame retardants such ...

Neural stem cells proliferate in the subventricular zone and hippocampal dentate gyrus of adult mammals. However, the number of endogenous neural stem cells is insufficient to prevent cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injuries such as vascular dementia, so it is important to stimulate endogenous neural stem cell proliferation and differentiation. The ginkgo biloba extract EGb761 effectively and safely treats memory loss and cognitive impairments in patients with senile dementia. Prof. Yuliang Wang and team from Weifang Medical University observed the effects of EGb761 on proliferation ...

The first large non-commercial clinical study to investigate whether the main active constituent of cannabis (tetrahydrocannabinol or THC) is effective in slowing the course of progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), shows that there is no evidence to suggest this; although benefits were noted for those at the lower end of the disability scale. The study is published in The Lancet Neurology. The CUPID (Cannabinoid Use in Progressive Inflammatory brain Disease) study was carried out by researchers from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry. The ...

In degenerative brain diseases and after stroke, nerve cells die while their support cells activate the brain's immune system to cause further damage. Now Jonathan Gilthorpe, Adrian Pini and Andrew Lumsden at the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London, have found that a single protein, histone H1, causes these distinct outcomes. The research passed peer review within a week of being published in F1000Research, where Jan-Marino Ramirez, of the University of Washington, called the work "a very important contribution to our understanding of neurodegenerative ...

PITTSBURGH—It would be impossible to compute all of the ways a piece of cloth might shift, fold and drape over a moving human figure. But after six months of computation, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, Berkeley, are pretty sure they've simulated almost every important configuration of that cloth. "I believe our approach generates the most beautiful and realistic cloth of any real-time technique," said Adrien Treuille, associate professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon. To create this cloth database, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Although human cells have an estimated 20,000 genes, only a fraction of those are turned on at any given time, depending on the cell's needs — which can change by the minute or hour. To find out what those genes are doing, researchers need tools that can manipulate their status on similarly short timescales. That is now possible, thanks to a new technology developed at MIT and the Broad Institute that can rapidly start or halt the expression of any gene of interest simply by shining light on the cells. The work is based on a technique known as optogenetics, ...

Scientists led by the University of Leicester have set a new record for cosmic X-ray sources ever sighted – creating an unprecedented cosmic X-ray catalogue that will provide a valuable resource allowing astronomers to explore the extreme Universe. The XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre, led by a team from the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, used the University's 'ALICE' supercomputer to help them produce a new X-ray catalogue, dubbed "3XMM". This new catalogue contains over half a million X-ray source detections, representing a 50% increase ...

New research reveals how our brains are able to pick out important sounds from the noisy world around us. The findings, published online today in the journal eLife, could lead to new diagnostic tests for hearing disorders. Our ears can effortlessly pick out the sounds we need to hear from a noisy environment, for example hearing our mobile phone ring tone in the middle of the Notting Hill Carnival, but how our brains process this information -- the so-called 'cocktail party problem' -- has been a longstanding research question in hearing science. Researchers have previously ...

Mature cells develop through a number of immature stages. During this process, they must remember the specialization they are committed to. For immune system B cells, Rudolf Grosschedl of the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics and his team have discovered that the transcription factor EBF1 is crucial for B cells to remember who they are. When the researchers switched off the transcription factor, the cells lost their previous identity and developed into T cells. Unlike most other cell types, B cells have a characteristic footprint in their genetic makeup ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Human glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most common, aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer, is notoriously difficult to study. Scientists have traditionally studied cancer cells in petri dishes, which have none of the properties of the brain tissues in which these cancers grow, or in expensive animal models. Now a team of engineers has developed a three-dimensional hydrogel that more closely mimics conditions in the brain. In a paper in the journal Biomaterials, the researchers describe the new material and their approach, which allows them to ...

The potential impact of exposure to low levels of mercury on the developing brain – specifically by women consuming fish during pregnancy – has long been the source of concern and some have argued that the chemical may be responsible for behavioral disorders such as autism. However, a new study that draws upon more than 30 years of research in the Republic of Seychelles reports that there is no association between pre-natal mercury exposure and autism-like behaviors. "This study shows no evidence of a correlation between low level mercury exposure and autism spectrum-like ...

This news release is available in German. Copenhagen -- Grassland butterflies have declined dramatically between 1990 and 2011. This has been caused by intensifying agriculture and a failure to properly manage grassland ecosystems, according to a report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). In the report the data of the Butterfly monitoring scheme in Germany have been incorporated, which is scientifically supported by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). UFZ scientists have also contributed to the analysis of population trends. The fall in ...

This news release is available in German. The duplication of cellular contents and their distribution to two daughter cells during cell division are amongst the most fundamental features of all life on earth. How cell division occurs and is coordinated with organismal development is a subject of intense research interest, as is how this process malfunctions in the development of tumors. Alex Dammermann and his team from the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, together with his collaborators from the Institute ...

ANN ARBOR—The remains of the earliest European fort in the interior of what is now the United States have been discovered by a team of archaeologists, providing new insight into the start of the U.S. colonial era and the all-too-human reasons spoiling Spanish dreams of gold and glory. Spanish Captain Juan Pardo and his men built Fort San Juan in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in 1567, nearly 20 years before Sir Walter Raleigh's "lost colony" at Roanoke and 40 years before the Jamestown settlement established England's presence in the region. "Fort San ...

A gene mutation disrupts the activity of certain immune cells and causes the immune system to erroneously attack the liver, according to a new animal study from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will provide a new model for studying drug targets and therapies for Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH), a condition for which the only treatment options are short-acting steroids or liver transplant. T-cells, immune cells created in an organ called the thymus, grow into healthy T-cells with the help of medullary ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have developed a reliable way to use a finger-stick blood sample to detect fibromyalgia syndrome, a complicated pain disorder that often is difficult to diagnose. If it were someday made available to primary care physicians, the test could knock up to five years off of the wait for a diagnosis, researchers predict. In a pilot study, the scientists used a high-powered and specialized microscope to detect the presence of small molecules in blood-spot samples from patients known to have fibromyalgia. By "training" the equipment to recognize ...

Disabling a protein in Ebola virus cells can stop the virus from replicating and infecting the host, according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The data are published in July in the journal Cell Host and Microbe. Ebola viruses cause severe disease in humans because they can deactivate the innate immune system. Christopher Basler, PhD, Associate Professor of Microbiology at Mount Sinai and his team have studied how Ebola viruses evade the immune system, and discovered that a viral protein called VP35 is critical to deactivating the immune ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The contrasting incentives of employers and employees under the Affordable Care Act ultimately may result in increased employee harassment and retaliation claims, two University of Illinois law professors say in a paper they co-wrote. As firms grapple with the significant cost increases associated with the new health care legislation, the possibility emerges that employers would harass or retaliate against employees in order to avoid the law's financial penalties, according to Peter Molk and Suja A. Thomas. "The Affordable Care Act incentivizes employers ...

A benign crystal protein, produced naturally by bacteria and used as an organic pesticide, could be a safe, inexpensive treatment for parasitic worms in humans and provide effective relief to over a billion people around the world. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, report on this potentially promising solution in a study published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Hookworms, and other intestinal parasites known as helminths infect more than 1 billion people in poverty-stricken, tropical nations, ...

Protons, as positively charged hydrogen ions, move very rapidly in water from one water molecule to the next, which is why the conductivity of water is relatively high. The principle of proton conduction in water has been known for 200 years and is named the Grotthuss mechanism after its discoverer, Theodor Grotthuss. It is based on the assumption that it is not that a single specific proton moving from one molecule to another; instead, there is cleavage of bonds. One proton docks onto a molecule and this causes another proton to leave that molecule and bind to another ...