This news release is available in German. To write this little piece of text, the brain sends commands to arms and fingers to tap on the keyboard. Neuronal cells with their cable-like extensions, such as axons, transfer this information as electrical pulses that trigger muscles to move. The axonal signal speed can be to up to 100m/s in myelinated axons along the spinal cord. For a long time, scientists assumed that axonal signal conduction is by and large digital: either there is a signal, "1", or there is no signal, "0". Strong propagation speed variations Now, ...

Depth cameras and other motion-tracking devices allow people to use natural gestures to play computer games, yet the experience remains unnatural because they can't feel what their eyes can see. Disney Research, Pittsburgh, has developed a solution, however, that could enhance not only games, but a variety of virtual experiences. Called AIREAL, the new technology uses controlled puffs of compressed air – something akin to smoke rings – to create the impression of a ball bouncing off a hand, of an arm tingling from the flutter of a butterfly's wings, or of the rippling ...

Investigators at Disney Research, Zürich have developed a method for using hundreds of photographic images to build 3D computer models of complex, real-life scenes that meet the increasing demands of today's movie, TV and game producers for high-resolution imagery. Building 3D models from multiple 2D images captured from a variety of viewing positions is nothing new, but doing so for highly detailed or cluttered environments at high resolution has proved difficult because of the large amounts of data involved. The Disney Research, Zürich team, however, developed an algorithm ...

This news release is available in German. For a car to accelerate there has to be friction between the tire and the surface of the road. The amount of friction generated depends on numerous factors, including the minute intermolecular forces acting between the two surfaces in contact – so-called van der Waals forces. The importance of these intermolecular interactions in generating friction has long been known, but has now been demonstrated experimentally for the first time by a research team led by Physics Professor Karin Jacobs from Saarland University and Professor ...

During heat waves -- when ozone production rises -- plants' ozone absorption is curtailed, leaving more pollution in the air, and costing an estimated 460 lives in the UK in the hot summer of 2006. Vegetation plays a crucial role in reducing air pollution, but new research by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York shows that they may not protect us when we need it most: during extreme heat, when ozone formation from traffic fumes, industrial processes and other sources is at its worst. The reason, explained lead author Dr Lisa Emberson, is ...

Researchers at the University of Warwick have recovered tuberculosis (TB) genomes from the lung tissue of a 215-year old mummy using a technique known as metagenomics. The team, led by Professor Mark Pallen, Professor of Microbial Genomics at Warwick Medical School, working with Helen Donoghue at University College London and collaborators in Birmingham and Budapest, sought to use the technique to identify TB DNA in a historical specimen. The term 'metagenomics' is used to describe the open-ended sequencing of DNA from samples without the need for culture or target-specific ...

HEIDELBERG, 19 July 2013 – Scientists have identified higher levels of a receptor protein found on the surface of human breast tumour cells that may serve as a new drug target for the treatment of breast cancer. The results, which are published today in EMBO Molecular Medicine, show that elevated levels of the protein Ret, which is short for "Rearranged during transfection", are associated with a lower likelihood of survival for breast cancer patients in the years following surgery to remove tumours and cancerous tissue. "Our findings suggest that Ret kinase might be an ...

Boston—If you were working on something at your computer and a gorilla floated across your computer screen, would you notice it? You would like to think yes, however, research shows that people often miss such events when engaged in a difficult task. This is a phenomenon known as inattentional blindness (IB). In a new study from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston, researchers have found that even expert searchers, operating in their domain of expertise, are vulnerable to inattentional blindness. This study published this week Psychological Science. "When engaged ...

TORONTO, ON, July 19, 2013 — Kidney patients who take calcium supplements to lower their phosphorous levels may be at a 22 per cent higher risk of death than those who take other non-calcium based treatments, according to a new study by Women's College Hospital's Dr. Sophie Jamal. The study, published today in the Lancet, calls into question the long-time practice of prescribing calcium to lower phosphate levels in patients with chronic kidney disease. The researchers suggest some of the calcium is absorbed into the blood stream and may expedite hardening of the arteries, ...

Achieving a desired motion in an animated physical character, whether it be a small toy or a full-sized figure, demands highly specialized engineering skills. But research teams at Disney Research have created a pair of software packages that can open the design process to people with a broader spectrum of skills and provide more creative choices. One set of software tools can take a drawing of an articulated character and produce a type of animation that pre-dates video and film – gear-driven mechanical characters, such as a dancing clock, a galloping horse or a Sisyphean ...

Providing a "second screen" experience for audiences at movie theaters, stadiums and other public venues need not require a special wireless infrastructure. Instead, a system developed by Disney Research, Zürich, uses the venue's regular sound system to transmit text, games or other information to smartphones using only an audio signal. The smartphones carried by many audience members provide not only a means for viewing content that supplements a movie or sporting event, but comprise an ad hoc microphone network that helps transmit the content among all of the participants ...

Face-to-face communication begins with the eyes, a crucial factor in the design of interactive physical characters. By employing 3D printing, Disney Research, Pittsburgh has developed a new technology that is uniquely expressive, robust and adaptable for creating interactive characters' eyes. The technology, PAPILLON, will be demonstrated at ACM SIGGRAPH 2013, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, July 21-25 in Anaheim, California. The classic approach in the entertainment industry is to build mechanically actuated eyes. Though ...

Under the microscope, they look like they could be from another planet, but these microscopic organisms inhabit the depths of our oceans in nearly infinite numbers. To begin to identify where, when, and how much oceanic plankton can be found around the globe, a group of international researchers have compiled the first ever global atlas cataloguing marine plankton ranging in size from bacteria to jellyfish. The atlas was published today in a special issue of the journal Earth System Science Data. The atlas, known as the Marine Ecosystem Biomass Data (MAREDAT), is the ...

New research conducted by Harvard scientists is laying out a roadmap to one of the holy grails of modern medicine – a cure for cancer. As described paper recently published in eLife, Nowak, a professor of Mathematics and of Biology and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and co-author Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics, show that, under certain conditions, using two drugs in a "targeted therapy" – a treatment approach designed to interrupt cancer's ability to grow and spread – nearly all cancers could be effectively cured. Though not ...

By monitoring artists as they sketch human faces, stroke by stroke, scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, have built computer models that learn each artist's drawing style, how they use strokes and how they select features to highlight as they interpret a face into a portrait. A better understanding of this abstraction process, the researchers stated, not only is interesting from an artistic point of view, but also can help in developing artificial drawing tools. "There's something about an artist's interpretation of a subject that people find compelling," said ...

Researchers have long understood that genetics can play a role in how susceptible people are to contracting cholera, but a team of Harvard scientists is now uncovering evidence of genetic changes that might also help protect some people from contracting the deadly disease. Based on genetic data gathered from hundreds of people in Bangladesh, a research team made up of Harvard faculty and scientists from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital were able to a number of areas in the genome – some of which are responsible for certain immune system functions, ...

For nearly a century, the only bears known to reside in Missouri were on the state flag or in captivity. Unregulated hunting and habitat loss had wiped out most black bears in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma by the 1920s. Now, thanks to a reintroduction program in Arkansas during the 50s and 60s, hundreds of bears amble through the forests of southern Missouri, according to a joint study by University of Missouri, Mississippi State University, and Missouri Department of Conservation biologists, who warn that although the bear population is still small, outdoor recreationists ...

Most big data centers, the global backbone of the Internet, could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent by switching to efficient, off-the-shelf equipment and improving energy management, according to new research. The carbon emissions generated by a search on Google or a post on Facebook are related mostly to three things: the computing efficiency of IT (information technology) data center equipment, like servers, storage and network switches; the amount of electricity a data center's building uses for things other than computing, primarily cooling; and ...

HOUSTON – (July 19, 2013) – A discovery facilitated by Rice University's contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will impact scientists' search for dark matter in the universe. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced in Switzerland this morning that researchers on two separate LHC experiments have succeeded in measuring "one of the rarest measurable processes in physics," the decay of B-subscript-s mesons into two muons. The evidence, which scientists have been seeking for 25 years, matches predictions made using the Standard Model of ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of California's Mountain Fire on July 18 as the satellite passed overhead in space. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured an image of the smoke and heat from California's Mountain Fire on July 18 at 21:00 UTC (5 p.m. EDT/2 p.m. PDT). MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots or fires and they appear red in the image. At the time of the image, the light brown smoke plume was blowing west-northwest. The Mountain Fire started on July 15 at 1:43 p.m. near the junction ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Research from the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research has found that many family caregivers of older adults with dementia are willing to consider stopping cancer screening of the elderly individual; they are also relieved when the older adult's physician brings it up. "This openness of dementia caregivers to considering cancer screening cessation for older adults provides potential to reduce both patient burden and health care costs as well as family caregiver distress, while improving the overall quality of care ...

ARGONNE, Ill. – A protein found in the membranes of ancient microorganisms that live in desert salt flats could offer a new way of using sunlight to generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne nanoscientist Elena Rozhkova and her colleagues combined a pigment called bacteriorhodopsin with semiconducting nanoparticles to create a system that uses light to spark a catalytic process that creates hydrogen fuel. Scientists have been aware of the potential ...

TORONTO -- Today TRIUMF, a Canadian laboratory for nuclear and particle physics that works in partnership with York University and University of Toronto, announced a new breakthrough in understanding neutrinos -- nature's most elusive particles. The international Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) collaboration designed an experiment to investigate how neutrinos change from one form to another as they travel. TRIUMF researcher Michael Wilking spoke at the prestigious European Physical Society meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, confirming definitive proof of a new type of neutrino oscillation ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For health professionals, the message from a new study in the American Journal of Public Health is clear: Asking patients about a history of childhood abuse can directly help assess their risk of attempting suicide. The evidence, authors say, shows that childhood abuse can have life-and-death consequences for the rest of a person's life. The longitudinal study of more than 1,600 drug users in Vancouver, Canada, found that "severe-to-extreme" abuse – particularly emotional or sexual – contributed significantly to the risk of future ...

Researchers found a strong, graded association between worse kidney function and the presence of hypertension that is resistant to medications. More than 50% of individuals with moderate CKD had resistant hypertension. Among people with CKD, blacks and those with a larger waist circumference, diabetes, and a history of heart attacks or strokes were more likely to have resistant hypertension. 60 million people globally have chronic kidney disease. Washington, DC (July 18, 2013) — More than 50% of individuals with moderate kidney disease have hypertension that is ...