A new study from researchers at Uppsala University and University of Havana uses mathematic modeling and experiments on ants to show that a group is capable of developing flexible resource management strategies and characteristic responses of its own. The results are now published in Physical Review Letters. Group-living animals are led to regulate their activity and to make decisions on how to manage resources, under the action of a variety of environmental stimuli and of their intrinsic interactions. The latter are typically cooperative, in the sense that the activity ...

Sophie Holles, a PhD researcher at the University of Bristol and one of the study's authors, said: "Natural underwater sound is used by many animals to find suitable habitat, and traffic noise is one of the most widespread pollutants. If settlement is disrupted by boat traffic, the resilience of habitats like reefs could be affected." Sound travels better underwater than in air and reefs are naturally noisy places: fish and invertebrates produce feeding and territorial sounds while wind, waves and currents create other background noise. Boats can be found around all ...

The double delta wing is a simplified configuration used for studying aircraft aerodynamics. It is composed of a highly-swept delta wing connected in front of the main delta wing with a smaller sweep, reflecting the combination of a leading edge extension and the swept main wing. The aerodynamic performance of such wings, which includes the behavior of the leeside vortical flows at moderate and high angles of attack (AoA) at low speed, is of research interest. The prominent aerodynamic feature of the delta wing is the dominant leading edge vortex pair on the lee side, ...

Scientists at an Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence have discovered a new mechanism regulating the immune response that can leave a person susceptible to autoimmune diseases. A fresh study by Turku Centre for Biotechnology and Aalto University in Finland is the first to report a new mechanism that regulates specification of lymphocytes, the white blood cells pivotal to immune response. By combining state-of-the art techniques, next-generation deep sequencing and computational data mining, the researchers discovered new epigenetic factors regulating lymphocyte function. ...

PITTSBURGH, June 28, 2013 -- A single systemic dose of special immune cells prevented rejection for almost four months in a preclinical animal model of kidney transplantation, according to experts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings, now available in the online version of the American Journal of Transplantation, could lay the foundation for eventual human trials of the technique. Organ transplantation has saved many lives, but at the cost of sometimes lifelong requirements for powerful immunosuppressive medication that can have serious side ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Jun. 28 2013) – A team of researchers from Rush University, Yale University, the University of Colorado and the St. Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation transplanted human embryonic stem cells into primate laboratory animals modeled with Parkinson's disease and found "robust survival" of the cells after six weeks and indications that the cells were "well integrated" into the host animals. The study appears as an early e-publication for the journal Cell Transplantation, and is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/ct1000wakeman. ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (June 28 2013) – A team of researchers in Poland who treated three of six paraplegics with spinal cord injury using transplanted olfactory ensheathing cells found that the three treated patients showed neurological improvement and no adverse effects while the three control patients who did not receive transplants saw no improvement. The study appears as an early e-publication for the journal Cell Transplantation, and is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/ct0799tabakow. "Most accepted treatments ...

WASHINGTON D.C., June 27, 2013 -- To the ancients, probing the philosophical question of how to distinguish the living from the dead centered on the "mystery of the vital heat." To modern microbiology, this question was always less mysterious than it was annoying -- researchers have known that biological processes should produce thermal signatures, even within single cells, but nobody ever knew how to measure them. Now, a group of mechanical engineers from Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea have discovered a way to measure the "thermal conductivity" ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (June 28 2013) –A study carried out in India examining the safety and efficacy of self-donated (autologous), transplanted bone marrow stem cells in patients with type 2 diabetes (TD2M), has found that patients receiving the transplants, when compared to a control group of TD2M patients who did not receive transplantation, required less insulin post-transplantation. The study appears as an early e-publication for the journal Cell Transplantation, and is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/ct0920bhansali. "There ...

COLLEGE STATION -- Scientists using sophisticated imaging techniques have observed a molecular protein folding process that may help medical researchers understand and treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's and cancer. The study, reported this month in the journal Cell, verifies a process that scientists knew existed but with a mechanism they had never been able to observe, according to Dr. Hays Rye, Texas A&M AgriLife Research biochemist. "This is a step in the direction of understanding how to modulate systems to prevent diseases ...

Americans are more respectful now than ever before when it comes to the religious traditions of their peers, according to findings from the longitudinal Rice University Portraits of American Life Study (PALS). Other findings: Americans are more divided on the legal definition of marriage, favor restrictions on abortion, support pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and are less politically engaged (with the exception of African-Americans). PALS is a six-year national study tracking religion, morality, politics and other social issues in the U.S. The study ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - Up to 15 percent of patients who take cholesterol-lowering statin medications experience muscle pain or other side effects, and many patients simply stop taking the drugs. But a Loyola University Medical Center study has found that "statin-intolerant" patients still can significantly reduce their cholesterol by going to a lipid clinic staffed with physicians specially trained in treating cholesterol problems. Among 22 statin-intolerant patients referred to Loyola's Lipid Clinic, total cholesterol dropped from 257 mg/dl to 198 mg/dl. LDL ("bad") cholesterol ...

Tampa, FL (June 28, 2013) -- A cardiac hormone signaling receptor abundantly expressed both in inflamed tissues and cancers appears to recruit stem cells that form the blood vessels needed to feed tumor growth, reports a new study by scientists at the University of South Florida Nanomedicine Research Center. The research may lead to the development of new drugs or delivery systems to treat cancer by blocking this receptor, known as natriuretic peptide receptor A (NPRA). The findings appeared online recently in the journal Stem Cells. "Our results show that NRPA signaling ...

Washington, D.C.—To prevent coral reefs around the world from dying off, deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are required, says a new study from Carnegie's Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira. They find that all existing coral reefs will be engulfed in inhospitable ocean chemistry conditions by the end of the century if civilization continues along its current emissions trajectory. Their work will be published July 3 by Environmental Research Letters. Coral reefs are havens for marine biodiversity and underpin the economies of many coastal communities. But they are very ...

West Nile virus, Lyme disease and hantavirus. All are infectious diseases spreading in animals and in people. Is human interaction with the environment somehow responsible for the increase in these diseases? The ecology and evolution of infectious diseases will be highlighted at two symposia at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting, held from Aug. 5-9 in Minneapolis, Minn. One symposium will address human influences on viral and bacterial diseases through alteration of landscapes and ecological processes. Another will focus on the emerging field of eco-epidemiology, ...

A technique developed several years ago at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for improving optical microscopes now has been applied to monitoring the next generation of computer chip circuit components, potentially providing the semiconductor industry with a crucial tool for improving chips for the next decade or more. The technique, called Through-Focus Scanning Optical Microscopy (TSOM), has now been shown able to detect tiny differences in the three-dimensional shapes of circuit components, which until very recently have been essentially two-dimensional ...

A team of scientists at USC has verified that quantum effects are indeed at play in the first commercial quantum optimization processor. The team demonstrated that the D-Wave processor housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center behaves in a manner that indicates that quantum mechanics plays a functional role in the way it works. The demonstration involved a small subset of the chip's 128 qubits. This means that the device appears to be operating as a quantum processor – something that scientists had hoped for but have needed extensive testing to verify. The ...

WASHINGTON — A young, healthy man injured himself so severely while weight lifting that he required surgery and nearly a full week in the hospital to recover. The unusual case report of compartment syndrome to the shoulder will be reported online today in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("An Unusual Complication of Weightlifting: A Case Report"). "Typically, compartment syndrome is associated with the lower extremities, not the shoulder, and with trauma, not exercise," said lead study author Leonard Bunting, MD, FACEP, of Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich. "Our patient ...

Washington, DC (June 27, 2013) — Elderly patients with kidney failure may not gain the same benefits from what's considered the gold standard for accessing the blood for dialysis compared with younger patients, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that vascular access procedures should be tailored to individual dialysis patients in the elderly population. The elderly represent the most rapidly growing group of patients on dialysis for kidney failure. Research clearly shows ...

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have trapped the ribosome, a protein-building molecular machine essential to all life, in a key transitional state that has long eluded researchers. Now, for the first time, scientists can see how the ribosome performs the precise mechanical movements needed to translate genetic code into proteins without making mistakes. "This is something that the whole field has been pursuing for the past decade," said Harry Noller, Sinsheimer Professor of Molecular Biology at UC Santa Cruz. "We've trapped the ribosome in the ...

In a perspective piece appearing today in the journal Science, researchers at University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) point to a newly discovered system by which the brain removes waste as a potentially powerful new tool to treat neurological disorders like Alzheimer's disease. In fact, scientists believe that some of these conditions may arise when the system is not doing its job properly. "Essentially all neurodegenerative diseases are associated with the accumulation of cellular waste products," said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the URMC ...

The discovery confirms the model proposed by the team in 2008 to account for observations that could not be explained by the established model of mitochondrial function. Mitochondria are the organelles in the interior of cells that, among other functions, extract energy from nutrients and convert it into a form that can be used by the cell for its vital processes. The consumption, digestion and assimilation of nutrients serves the ultimate purpose of fueling each and every cell in the body. The breakdown of nutrients in the digestive tract requires energy to release simple ...

Non-invasive brain stimulation may help stroke survivors recover speech and language function, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Between 20 percent to 30 percent of stroke survivors have aphasia, a disorder that affects the ability to grasp language, read, write or speak. It's most often caused by strokes that occur in areas of the brain that control speech and language. "For decades, skilled speech and language therapy has been the only therapeutic option for stroke survivors with aphasia," said Alexander Thiel, M.D., study ...

South Asians (from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) may have to exercise more than white Europeans to achieve the same levels of fitness and reduce their risk of diabetes. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have found that lower fitness levels in middle-aged men of South Asian origin are contributing to higher blood sugar levels and increased diabetes risk compared with white men. The research, published in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), suggests that physical activity guidelines may need to be changed to take ...

VIDEO: Researchers were able increase data flow through fiber optic cables by moving light through them in a spiral motion, rather than a straight line. Click here for more information. As rapidly increasing demand for bandwidth strains the Internet's capacity, a team of engineers has devised a new fiber optic technology that promises to increase bandwidth dramatically. The new technology could enable Internet providers to offer much greater connectivity – from decreased network ...