Gastrointestinal bacteria are important for digestion, immune functions and general health. Wouter van Dongen and colleagues from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology of the Vetmeduni Vienna have collaborated with scientists from the Laboratoire Évolution & Diversité Biologique (EDB), Toulouse and from the US Geological Survey, Anchorage to study the cloacal bacterial assemblies of black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla). The bacteria in the cloaca are known to be similar to assemblages deeper within the gastrointestinal tract, so the researchers examined samples ...

This news release is available in German. A protein called c-FLIP-R is critical to immune cell survival: If this molecule is missing, the cells kill themselves – and are thus no longer able to perform their job fighting off invaders. Now, scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) Braunschweig and at the Otto von Guericke University (OvGU) Magdeburg have published their findings in the renowned European Journal of Immunology. Apoptosis, programmed cell death, is a kind of cellular suicide program. If something triggers it, the cells perish ...

This news release is available in German. A physical particle postulated 80 years ago could provide a decisive step toward the realization of novel, highly efficient data storage devices. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), the Technische Universitaet Dresden and the University of Cologne found that with magnetic monopoles in magnetic vortices, called skyrmions, information can be written and erased. Iron filings strewn on a sheet of paper trace the field lines of a bar magnet below the paper, thereby showing the magnet's north and south poles. ...

Jena (Germany) Entrepreneurship plays an important role for the prosperity of today's modern societies. Those who want to found a company under their own steam and who want to make it an economic success, need more than a good idea and the necessary expertise. Business founders usually are characterized by a quite specific entrepreneurial personality structure. Great companies with long traditions are proof of this, as well as numerous scientific studies. "People with an entrepreneurial personality structure are more open to new experience, more extravert and conscientious. ...

The European Perinatal Health Report released by the Euro-Peristat project is the most comprehensive report on the health and care of pregnant women and babies in Europe and brings together data from 2010 from 26 European Union member states, plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Euro-Peristat takes a new approach to health reporting. Rather than simply comparing countries on single indicators such as infant mortality, our report paints a fuller picture by presenting data about mortality, low birthweight and preterm birth alongside data about health care and maternal characteristics ...

Rapid expansion of programs to prevent HIV transmission to babies and vaccinate children show how results can be achieved in relatively little time Some of the world's poorest countries have managed to cut maternal and young child mortality rates by half or more, according to a new report from Countdown to 2015. The report, Accountability for Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival, highlights successes in improving maternal health and reducing child mortality in some countries, while pointing out where progress has been lagging in others. There has been remarkable ...

MADISON – A Facebook profile is an ideal version of self, full of photos and posts curated for the eyes of family, friends and acquaintances. A new study shows that this version of self can provide beneficial psychological effects and influence behavior. Catalina Toma, a UW-Madison assistant professor of communication arts, used the Implicit Association Test to measure Facebook users' self-esteem after they spent time looking at their profiles, the first time the social psychology research tool has been used to examine the effects of Facebook. The test showed that after ...

HEIDELBERG, 31 May 2013 – Researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the United Kingdom have determined the crystal structure of Parkin, a protein found in cells that when mutated can lead to a hereditary form of Parkinson's disease. The results, which are published in The EMBO Journal, define the position of many of the mutations linked to hereditary Parkinson's disease and explain how these alterations may affect the stability and function of the protein. The findings may in time reveal how the activity of Parkin is affected in patients with this rare but ...

Researchers have determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects the virus's genetic material and is a key to its ability to infect and debilitate the human body's defense mechanism. Detailed simulations were achieved with the use of a supercomputer on a 64 million atom sample. The capsid has become an attractive target for the development of new antiretroviral drugs that suppress the HIV virus and stop the progression of AIDS. The research paper describing these results is the cover story of this week's journal Nature (May 30, ...

New York, NY—May 31, 2013—In a new study, published in Science May 31, 2013, Columbia Engineering researchers demonstrate that graphene, even if stitched together from many small crystalline grains, is almost as strong as graphene in its perfect crystalline form. This work resolves a contradiction between theoretical simulations, which predicted that grain boundaries can be strong, and earlier experiments, which indicated that they were much weaker than the perfect lattice. Graphene consists of a single atomic layer of carbon, arranged in a honeycomb lattice. "Our first ...

Mice engineered with a human gene for schizophrenia and exposed to lead during early life exhibited behaviors and structural changes in their brains consistent with schizophrenia. Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say their findings suggest a synergistic effect between lead exposure and a genetic risk factor, and open an avenue to better understanding the complex gene-environment interactions that put people at risk for schizophrenia and other mental disorders. Results appear online ...

PHILADELPHIA—HIV-positive transgender people are just as likely to stay in care, take their medication and have similar outcomes as other men and women living with the disease, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and published online May 30 in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The study—which looked at almost 37,000 patients at 13 HIV clinics from 2001 to 2011 in the US—suggests an encouraging shift from earlier work documenting poor retention in care and drug adherence in transgender people, a high risk group for ...

Irvine, Calif., May 31, 2013 — Circadian rhythms can boost the body's ability to fight intestinal bacterial infections, UC Irvine researchers have found. This suggests that targeted treatments may be particularly effective for pathogens such as salmonella that prompt a strong immune system response governed by circadian genes. It also helps explain why disruptions in the regular day-night pattern – as experienced by, say, night-shift workers or frequent fliers – may raise susceptibility to infectious diseases. UC Irvine's Paolo Sassone-Corsi, one of the world's leading ...

Doctors at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that testing cervical tumors before treatment for vulnerability to chemotherapy predicts whether patients will do well or poorly with standard treatment. The study supports the future possibility of personalized medicine for cervical cancer, a tumor normally addressed with a one-size-fits-all approach. "Even though this is a small study, its strength is that it links a lab test of the tumor's chemotherapy response to survival outcomes for the patients," said Julie K. Schwarz, MD, PhD, assistant ...

Human-produced noises from sources such as traffic and trains can substantially impact animals, affecting their ability to communicate, hunt, or even survive. But can the noise made by another animal have the same detrimental effects? A new study presented at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013) examines the calls made by an invasive species of tree frog and suggests the answer is yes. Ecologist Jennifer Tennessen, a graduate student at The Pennsylvania State University, and her colleagues recorded the calls of the Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) ...

During command and control operations, military personnel are frequently exposed to extreme auditory overload – essentially bombarded by multiple messages coming from radio networks, loudspeakers, and live voices in an environment also filled with high-level noise from weapons and vehicles. Adding a visual cue, such as texting, was explored by a team of researchers in Canada as a way to overcome this problem. Sharon Abel, defense scientist at Defence Research and Development Canada, will present her team's findings at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA ...

When Neil Armstrong took his first step on the Moon, he claimed he said, "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" – but many listeners think he left out the "a." A team of speech scientists and psychologists from Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing and The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus is taking a novel approach to deciphering Armstrong's quote by studying how speakers from his native central Ohio pronounce "for" and "for a." Their results suggest that it is entirely possible that Armstrong said what he claimed, though evidence indicates ...

Ever wish that your car's interior cabin could have separate audio zones for the front and rear seats? It soon may. A new approach achieves independent listening zones within a car by using small, modified speakers to produce directional sound fields and a signal processing strategy that optimizes the audio signals used to drive each of the speakers. The new design will be presented at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal. Today, car cabins often reverberate with the sounds of music, video soundtracks, navigation system ...

All chefs know that "you have to break some eggs to make an omelet," and that includes engineers at Iowa State University who are using high-frequency sound waves to break down plant materials in order to cook up a better batch of biofuel. Research by David Grewell, associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, and his colleagues Melissa Montalbo-Lomboy and Priyanka Chand, has shown that "pretreating" a wide variety of feedstocks (including switch grass, corn stover, and soft wood) with ultrasound consistently enhances the chemical reactions necessary ...

A survey of GPs (general practitioners) in the UK and Sweden revealed that some hold the view that one of the greatest health risks from smoking is nicotine. This belief likely influences health advice to smokers when considering whether to recommend the use of alternative nicotine products. Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco smoke, but unlike some other constituents of tobacco smoke, it is not carcinogenic and according to the UK Royal College of Physicians, 'medicinal nicotine is a very safe drug.' Switching to alternative nicotine products such as ...

Of all the bugs that achieve the mantle of summer pest, cicadas are perhaps the most curious. They don't sting, they don't bite, they don't buzz around your head, they taste good in chocolate, but as the drowning din of the 17-year brood this summer will remind: we would love them less if they emerged more often. Cicadas are unique among insects in their ability to emit loud and annoying sounds. So why would anyone actually want to replicate theses sounds? A team of U.S. Naval researchers have been working on that very problem for several years now, because it turns ...

The PASS, short for "Personal Alert Safety System," has been used by firefighters for thirty years to help track members of their team who might be injured and need assistance to escape a fire. Though the alarm has saved many lives, there are cases in which the device is working correctly but is not heard or not recognized. In one recent incident report from 2010, firefighters inside a burning building either did not hear or heard and then stopped hearing an alarm that was easily audible from outside the building. Working with the National Fire Protection Association ...

Using the sensitive ears of a parasitic fly for inspiration, a group of researchers has created a new type of microphone that achieves better acoustical performance than what is currently available in hearing aids. The scientists will present their results at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics, held June 2-7 in Montreal. Ronald Miles, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University, studies the hearing of Ormia ochracea, a house fly-sized insect that is native to the southeast United States and Central America. Unlike most other ...

The ocean is naturally filled with the sounds of breaking waves, cracking ice, driving rain, and marine animal calls, but more and more, human activity is adding to the noise. Ships' propellers create low-frequency hums that can travel hundreds of kilometers or more in the deep ocean. Scientists have now modeled this shipping noise on a global scale. The world-wide maps will be presented for the first time at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal. "The most important thing about these maps is that seeing the sound can get ...

A new technology that relies on a system of inflatable sound absorbers may help make any performance hall instantly convertible into a venue for music ranging from classical to hard rock. The technology will be described at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2013), held June 2-7 in Montreal. Getting the right vibe for listeners from a particular kind of music is an acoustic challenge. Music genres differ radically both in the sound energy they generate and in how that sound interacts with the ceiling and walls of a performance space. A hall for classical ...