New research has shown that a protein, known as IL-13, could be the key to the development of fibrosis in Crohn's disease. This breakthrough could help to advance new medicines to treat people suffering with the disease. Crohn's disease is a chronic, debilitating condition characterised by inflammation and ulceration occurring at any point in the gastrointestinal tract. Currently there is no cure. One of the major complications of Crohn's disease is the development of fibrosis – hardening and thickening – in the bowel wall. This causes the intestine to lose its mobility ...

BEND, Ore. – A new study by Oregon State University researchers finds that Head Start can make a positive impact in the lives of some of its highest risk children, both academically and behaviorally. Published in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, the study sheds light on how Head Start has helped children living in non-parental care, or living with someone who is not a parent or step-parent by biology or adoption. "These children tend to have unstable home lives, sometimes transitioning between different relatives, living with their ...

An international team of researchers has shown that old wives' tales that snails can tell us about the weather should not be dismissed too hastily. While the story goes that if a snail climbs a plant or post, rain is coming, research led by the University of York goes one better: it shows snails can provide a wealth of information about the prevailing weather conditions thousands of years ago. The researchers, including scientists from the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC), analysed the chemistry of snail shells dating back 9,000 to 2,500 years ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scientists have found an early step in how the brain's inhibitory cells get excited. A natural balance of excitement and inhibition keeps the brain from firing electrical impulses randomly and excessively, resulting in problems such as schizophrenia and seizures. However excitement is required to put on the brakes. "When the inhibitory neuron is excited, its job is to suppress whatever activity it touches," said Dr. Lin Mei, Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University ...

Enzymes, workhorse molecules of life that underpin almost every biological process, may have a new role as "intelligent" micro- and nanomotors with applications in medicine, engineering and other fields. That's the topic of a report in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, showing that single molecules of common enzymes can generate enough force to cause movement in specific directions. Peter J. Butler, Ayusman Sen and colleagues point out that enzymes — proteins that jump-start chemical reactions — are the basis of natural biological motors essential to life. ...

PHILADELPHIA — Wear is a fact of life. As surfaces rub against one another, they break down and lose their original shape. With less material to start with and functionality that often depends critically on shape and surface structure, wear affects nanoscale objects more strongly than it does their macroscale counterparts. Worse, the mechanisms behind wear processes are better understood for things like car engines than nanotech devices. But now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science have experimentally demonstrated ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – In hospitals, poor floor design, storage closet clutter and crowded corridors can contribute to nurse and medical staff fatigue. These distractions can hurt patient care quality and result in higher medical costs. Now, a new Cornell University study offers a spatial solution. Rana Zadeh, Cornell assistant professor of design and environmental analysis in the College of Human Ecology, analyzed the floor plans and work patterns within five medical-surgical units at U.S. hospitals and found numerous opportunities to boost nurses' efficiency through better ...

New research suggests that dual-identity immigrants — first-generation immigrants and their descendants who identify with both their cultural minority group and the society they now live in — may be more prone to political radicalism if they perceive their two cultural identities to be incompatible. The new research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychological scientist Bernd Simon from Kiel University in Germany and colleagues hypothesized that perceived incompatibility between the two cultural identities ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Even in our DNA there is no refuge from rogues that prey on the elderly. Parasitic strands of genetic material called transposable elements — transposons — lurk in our chromosomes, poised to wreak genomic havoc. Cells have evolved ways to defend themselves, but in a new study, Brown University researchers describe how cells lose this ability as they age, possibly resulting in a decline in their function and health. Barbara McClintock, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983, made the original discovery of transposons in maize. Since then ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - Geology content posted online 4 through 25 January 2013 cover topics from greenhouse gas emissions to video observations of erupting geysers in Russia and from the age of Earth to the age of Grand Canyon. Highlights and detailed information about each article are listed below. 1. Earth is mostly flat 2. Age maps of early Earth 3. Sagaing fault, Indo-Burmese wedge 4. Anthropogenic lead 5. The growth of a newly born submarine volcano 6. The Hemlo gold deposit, Ontario, Canada 7. Reptile and mammal fossils in the Karoo Basin, South Africa 8. ...

There's a wobbly new biochemical structure in Burckhard Seelig's lab at the University of Minnesota that may resemble what enzymes looked like billions of years ago, when life on earth began to evolve – long before they became ingredients for new and improved products, from detergents to foods and fuels. Seelig created the fledgling enzyme by using directed evolution in the laboratory. Working with colleague Gianluigi Veglia, graduate student Fa-An Chao, and other team members, he subsequently determined its structure, which made its debut December 9 as an advance online ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Researchers searching the galaxy for planets that could pass the litmus test of sustaining water-based life must find whether those planets fall in a habitable zone, where they could be capable of having liquid water and sustaining life. New work, led by a team of Penn State researchers, will help scientists in that search. Using the latest data, the Penn State Department of Geosciences team has developed an updated model for determining whether discovered planets fall within a habitable zone. The work builds on a prior model by James Kasting, ...

Searching for common elements in seemingly incompatible scientific theories may lead to the discovery of new ones that revolutionize our understanding of the world. Such is the idea behind a mathematical framework Princeton University researchers developed that strips away the differences between scientific laws and theories to reveal how the ideas are compatible. In a recent report in the journal Physical Review Letters, the authors explain how the mathematical model finds common ground between the famously at-odds physics equations that govern classical and quantum ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Jan. 30, 2013) -- When De'Anthony Thomas returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown in the 2013 Fiesta Bowl, says University of Oregon researcher Frank Diaz, Thomas put Ducks fans into a heightened zone of engagement for watching the game, not unlike what was experienced by music students who were first exposed to a brief session of mindfulness meditation before hearing an opera passage. As a high school orchestra and band educator in Florida, Diaz had flirted with yoga and light meditation in a quest to heighten music engagement. He noticed, anecdotally, ...

A new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Chronic Kidney Disease Prognosis Consortium (CKD-PC) found that in general chronic kidney disease is similarly associated with a higher risk of death and end stage renal disease for both women and men. The findings were released online in advance of publication in BMJ. Chronic kidney disease affects 10 to 16 percent of adults worldwide. Current thresholds for chronic kidney disease are based on two kidney measures, estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and albuminuria, a measure of protein ...

CINCINNATI—A multi-center study supports the effectiveness of the newest technology available for the treatment of difficult, life-threatening brain aneurysms. The technology, the Pipeline embolization device, is a flow diverter that redirects blood flow away from wide-necked or giant aneurysms that cannot be treated in more conventional ways. Andrew Ringer, MD, director of the division of cerebrovascular surgery and professor of neurosurgery and radiology at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine, led the Cincinnati portion of the study, which was published ...

JUPITER, FL, January 30, 2013 – It takes a lot to make a memory. New proteins have to be synthesized, neuron structures altered. While some of these memory-building mechanisms are known, many are not. Some recent studies have indicated that a unique group of molecules called microRNAs, known to control production of proteins in cells, may play a far more important role in memory formation than previously thought. Now, a new study by scientists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute has for the first time confirmed a critical role for microRNAs in the ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Forget "slow and steady wins the race." A new study shows that, at least sometimes, the best way to conserve energy and reach your destination on time is to alternate between walking and running—whether your goal is the bus stop or a marathon finish line. In the January 30, 2013 issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers examined how people budget their time as they travel on foot to reach a destination at a particular appointed time. The study found that when people have neither too much time nor too little time to reach their destination, ...

Working with patients with electrodes implanted in their brains, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have shown for the first time that areas of the brain work together at the same time to recall memories. The unique approach promises new insights into how we remember details of time and place. "Previous work has focused on one region of the brain at a time," said Arne Ekstrom, assistant professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience. "Our results show that memory recall involves ...

How much chocolate would you need to eat to be satisfied? Less than half as much as you think, according to this recently published Cornell University snacking study. Using chocolate chips, apple pie, and potato chips, researchers Ellen van Kleef, Mitsuru Shimizu, and Brian Wansink designed a study to determine if people who were given smaller portions of snack foods would feel hungrier or satisfied fifteen minutes after eating. Two groups with different portion sizes were tested. The larger portion size group was given 100g of chocolate, 200g of apple pie, and 80g ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – By simulating 25,000 generations of evolution within computers, Cornell University engineering and robotics researchers have discovered why biological networks tend to be organized as modules – a finding that will lead to a deeper understanding of the evolution of complexity. (Proceedings of the Royal Society, Jan. 30, 2013.) The new insight also will help evolve artificial intelligence, so robot brains can acquire the grace and cunning of animals. From brains to gene regulatory networks, many biological entities are organized into modules – dense clusters ...

If you need any evidence of the impact of student research on life at American University's campus, look no further than something that's missing. Trays. Following a 2009 study at American University's main dining hall that showed a significant reduction in food waste and dishes used when trays were removed, trays have mostly gone the way of beanies and sock hops. Now, for the first time, a new paper coauthored by AU professor Kiho Kim and AU environmental studies graduate Stevia Morawski, provides hard evidence of big energy savings as well as a 32 percent reduction ...

JUPITER, FL, January 29, 2013 – While the wooly musk ox may like it cold, fruit flies definitely do not. They like it hot, or at least warm. In fact, their preferred optimum temperature is very similar to that of humans—76 degrees F. Scientists have known that a type of brain cell circuit helps regulate a variety of innate and learned behavior in animals, including their temperature preferences. What has been a mystery is whether or not this behavior stems from a specific set of neurons (brain cells) or overlapping sets. Now, a new study from The Scripps Research Institute ...

One out of every four people living with HIV/AIDS is 50 or older, yet these older individuals are far more likely to be diagnosed when they are already in the later stages of infection. Such late diagnoses put their health, and the health of others, at greater risk than would have been the case with earlier detection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 43 percent of HIV-positive people between the ages of 50 and 55, and 51 percent of those 65 or older, develop full-blown AIDS within a year of their diagnosis, and these older adults account ...

Just like a comic book super hero, you could say that the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD1) has a secret identity. Since its discovery in 1969, scientists believed SOD1's only role was to protect living cells against damage from free radicals. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have discovered that SOD1 protects cells by regulating cell energy and metabolism. The results of their research were published January 17, 2013, in the journal Cell. Transforming oxygen to energy for growth is key to life for all living cells, which happens ...