Our immune system must be tremendously complex to respond to the unending assault of viruses, bacteria and cancerous cells. One of the mechanisms used by the immune system to cope with the huge variety of possible threats is to randomly combine DNA segments for the production of receptors on lymphocytes – a type of white blood cell. The number of possible receptors that can be produced in this way is about 1000 times the number of stars in our galaxy – one followed by 15 zeroes. And yet, the actual array of receptors produced does not conform to this picture of random chance: ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Many child care providers have rules that exclude sick children from care, spurring anxious moments for millions of working parents. In a new University of Michigan poll, one-third of parents of young children report they are concerned about losing jobs or pay when they stay home to care for sick children who can't attend child care. The University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health recently asked parents who have children younger than six years old in child care about the impact of child care illness on their ...

URBANA – For animals as well as people, diet affects what grows in the gut. The gut microbial colonies, also known as the gut microbiome, begin to form at birth. Their composition affects how the immune system develops and is linked to the later onset of metabolic diseases such as obesity. Common wisdom is that cats, by nature carnivorous, are healthiest when fed high-protein diets. Researchers at the University of Illinois wanted to find out if this is true. "There are a lot of diets now, all natural, that have high protein and fat and not much dietary fiber or carbohydrates," ...

The number of leisure boats along the Swedish West Coast has risen dramatically over the last 20 years, resulting in a risk that the inner archipelago might be destroyed. These are the findings of new research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In Sannäs Fjord, a silled fjord to the north of Grebbestad in Bohuslän, researchers from the University of Gothenburg have studied the marine environment in the inner archipelago and built a treatment plant for flushing water from the washing of boats with painted hulls in connection with the autumn haul-out. Researchers ...

(Boston) - In a commentary to appear in the Oct. 22 issue of the journal Pediatrics, Barry Zuckerman, MD, the Joel and Barbara Alpert Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, discusses how by working together, lawyers and physicians potentially can close the gap in health disparities that persist even in universal health care coverage. While the relationship between poverty and poor health is complex, access to basic needs like adequate housing and nutrition, appropriate education and personal safety is well documented to improve health trajectories. ...

For Immediate Release – October 22, 2012 (Toronto) – Scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have identified a potential new approach to preventing smoking relapse, which occurs frequently in smokers who attempt to quit, despite current treatments. "We have developed a protein peptide that may be a new type of highly targeted treatment to prevent smoking relapse," says Dr. Fang Liu, Senior Scientist in CAMH's Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Dr. Liu and ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The glowing green molecule known as green fluorescent protein (GFP) has revolutionized molecular biology. When GFP is attached to a particular protein inside a cell, scientists can easily identify and locate it using fluorescence microscopy. However, GFP can't be used with electron microscopy, which offers much higher resolution than fluorescence microscopy. Chemists from MIT have now designed a GFP equivalent for electron microscopy — a tag that allows scientists to label and visualize proteins with unprecedented clarity. "With things that may appear ...

A fish's personality can influence how it responds to, and learns from threats, according to a new study by Professor Grant Brown from Concordia University in Canada and his colleagues. Their work, looking at how personality influences a fish's memory of a predator threat, shows that bold trout forget predator odor, and hence potentially predator threat, quicker than shy trout. The research is published online in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. A prey's ability to balance the conflicting demands of avoiding predators and foraging, defending territories ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Condensers are a crucial part of today's power generation systems: About 80 percent of all the world's powerplants use them to turn steam back to water after it comes out of the turbines that turn generators. They are also a key element in desalination plants, a fast-growing contributor to the world's supply of fresh water. Now, a new surface architecture designed by researchers at MIT holds the promise of significantly boosting the performance of such condensers. The research is described in a paper just published online in the journal ACS Nano by MIT ...

It's much easier for consumers to justify continued support of a celebrity or politician disgraced by scandal when they separate moral judgments about a public figure from assessments of their professional performance, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Distinguishing between morality and performance allows consumers to avoid condoning immoral behavior. This may be one reason that the public discourse around scandals often focuses on the relationship between performance and morality rather than how wrong an action is," write authors Amit Bhattacharjee ...

Some consumers will pay more for a product if they are given detailed information on how it works while others are inclined to pay less when given too much detail, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Certain consumers like to understand how a product works and are willing to pay more when given this information. But others do not want deep explanations and are satisfied by sketchy, abstract knowledge. Asking them to explain how a product works undermines their sense of understanding and makes them less willing to pay for it," write authors Philip ...

Consumers are more likely to remember an ad they've seen repeatedly if one element in the ad changes location from one exposure to the next, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Consumers are bombarded with thousands of advertisements daily, are increasingly multitasking, and are preoccupied with everyday activities. The likelihood that they will devote their full attention to any one specific message is getting smaller every day. What impact can an ad have if consumers pay virtually no attention to it?" write authors Stewart Shapiro (University ...

Most big galaxies fit into one of two camps: pinwheel-shaped spiral galaxies and blobby elliptical galaxies. Spirals like the Milky Way are hip and happening places, with plenty of gas and dust to birth new stars. Ellipticals are like cosmic retirement villages, full of aging residents in the form of red giant stars. Now, astronomers have discovered that one well-known elliptical has a split personality. Centaurus A is hiding a gassy spiral in its center. "No other elliptical galaxy is known to have spiral arms," said lead author Daniel Espada (National Astronomical Observatory ...

Depending on which naive theory consumers use, a low price can indicate either good value or low quality, whereas a high price may imply either poor value or high quality, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Consumers rarely have complete information and use various strategies to fill the gaps in their knowledge as they consider and choose products. One of these strategies involves using naive theories: informal, common sense, explanations that consumers use to make sense of their environment. For example, consumers may believe that popular ...

Consumers are often less satisfied when they buy or receive products that are easily counted because this makes them focus on value instead of experience, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Numbers make us feel more certain of what is in front of us. When we count, we understand exactly how big, expensive, heavy, or old something is. But when we buy or receive products that are easily counted, we may be less satisfied," write authors Jingjing Ma and Neal J. Roese (both Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University). What happens when ...

Parents with a higher number of stressors in their lives are more likely to have obese children, according to a new study by pediatric researchers. Furthermore, when parents perceive themselves to be stressed, their children eat fast food more often, compared to children whose parents feel less stressed. "Stress in parents may be an important risk factor for child obesity and related behaviors," said Elizabeth Prout-Parks, M.D., a physician nutrition specialist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who led a study published online today in the November issue of ...

With adolescents seemingly glued to cell phones and social networking websites, experts are investigating whether the near-constant digital activity changes youths' development. A new study from the University of Washington shows that digital media helps teens reach developmental milestones, such as fostering a sense of belonging and sharing personal problems. But the study also raised questions about whether digital connectedness might hinder the development of an autonomous sense of self. Katie Davis, an assistant professor in the Information School and an expert ...

A new study from Johns Hopkins researchers suggests that the lethal spread of breast cancer is as dependent on a tumor's protein-rich environment as on genetic changes inside tumor cells. In a report in the Sept. 25 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists conclude that a molecular signal in the protein meshwork surrounding the breast cancer cells may provide the critical trigger to initiate the life-threatening process of metastasis to distant sites in the body. Moreover, their experiments suggest that the environment surrounding ...

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a key difference in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease and those who are cognitively normal but still have brain plaques that characterize this type of dementia. "There is a very interesting group of people whose thinking and memory are normal, even late in life, yet their brains are full of amyloid beta plaques that appear to be identical to what's seen in Alzheimer's disease," says David L. Brody, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology. "How this can occur is a tantalizing ...

Focusing in on beam focus The rapidly evolving technology of laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) – called "table-top accelerators" because their length can be measured in centimeters instead of kilometers – promises a new breed of machines, far less expensive and with far less impact on the land and the environment than today's conventional accelerators. Future LPAs offer not only compact high-energy colliders for fundamental physics but diminutive light sources as well. These will probe chemical reactions, from artificial photosynthesis to "green catalysis"; unique biological ...

This press release is available in German. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is considered the fourth most common cause of death in the United States. Usually the precursor to this life-threatening lung disease is a chronic bronchitis. Partially destroyed alveoli and an over-inflation of the lungs, known as emphysema, are serious side effects. However, the subtle differences in the tissue are barely discernable in standard X-ray images. In addition to the conventional X-ray images, the Munich scientists analyzed the radiation scattered by the tissue. ...

Patients treated in magnet hospitals (specially designated for their nursing excellence) had 14 percent lower odds of death than those in non-magnet hospitals in a four-state study of 564 hospitals led by the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. The magnet designation, determined by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, recognizes high-quality patient care, high levels of nurse education, and nursing innovation. "Even controlling for differences in nursing, hospital, and patient characteristics, surgical patients fared better in magnet hospitals," said lead ...

LA JOLLA, CA – October 21, 2012 – Biochemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered a genetic sequence that can alter its host gene's activity in response to cellular energy levels. The scientists have found this particular energy-sensing switch in bacterial genes, which could make it a target for a powerful new class of antibiotics. If similar energy-sensing switches are also identified for human genes, they may be useful for treating metabolism-related disorders such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease. "This discovery adds a new dimension to our ...

Reflective surfaces polarize light, a phenomenon that fishermen or photographers overcome by using polarizing sunglasses or polarizing filters to cut our reflective glare. However, PhD student Tom Jordan from the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences and his supervisors Professor Julian Partridge and Dr Nicholas Roberts in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences found that these silvery fish have overcome this basic law of reflection – an adaptation that may help them evade predators. Previously, it was thought that the fish's skin – which contains "multilayer" arrangements ...

PHILADELPHIA — The extensive system of levees along the Mississippi River has done much to prevent devastating floods in riverside communities. But the levees have also contributed to the loss of Louisiana's wetlands. By holding in floodwaters, they prevent sediment from flowing into the watershed and rebuilding marshes, which are compacting under their own weight and losing ground to sea-level rise. Reporting in Nature Geoscience, a team of University of Pennsylvania geologists and others used the Mississippi River flood of the spring of 2011 to observe how floodwaters ...