An Australian research team has discovered how specialised immune cells recognise products of vitamin B synthesis that are unique to bacteria and yeast, triggering the body to fight infection. The finding opens up potential targets to improve treatments or to develop a vaccine for tuberculosis. The study, jointly led by the University of Melbourne and Monash University and published today in the journal Nature, has revealed for the first time that the highly abundant mucosal associated invariant T cells (MAIT cells), recognise products of vitamin B synthesis from ...

Researchers from the University of Southampton are designing incentives for collection and verification of information to make crowdsourcing more reliable. Crowdsourcing is a process of outsourcing tasks to the public, rather than to employees or contractors. In recent years, crowdsourcing has provided an unprecedented ability to accomplish tasks that require the involvement of a large number of people, often across wide-spread geographies, expertise, or interests. The world's largest encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, is an example of a task that can only be achieved through ...

Testosterone is considered THE male hormone, standing for aggression and posturing. Researchers around Prof. Dr. Armin Falk, an economist from the University of Bonn, have now been able to demonstrate that this sex hormone surprisingly also fosters social behavior. In play situations, subjects who had received testosterone clearly lied less frequently than individuals who had only received a placebo. The results have just been published in the Public Library of Science's international online journal "PLoS ONE." The hormone testosterone stands for typically male attributes ...

Melanoma is so dangerous because it tends to metastasize early on. New treatment approaches utilize, among other things, the ability of the immune defense to search out and destroy malignant cells. Yet this strategy is often only temporarily effective. A research team under the direction of Bonn University has discovered why this is the case: In the inflammatory reaction caused by the treatment, the tumor cells temporarily alter their external characteristics and thus become invisible to defense cells. This knowledge forms an important foundation for the improvement of ...

NEW YORK, October 11, 2012 – Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have discovered the protein product of a little-known gene may one day prove useful in identifying and monitoring the development of mesothelioma in early stages, when aggressive treatment can have an impact on the progression of disease and patient prognosis. "This gene produces a protein, fibulin-3, that is present in levels four to five times higher in the plasma of patients with mesothelioma compared to levels in asbestos-exposed patients or patients with several other conditions that cause tumors ...

Catalysts are substances that speed up the rates of chemical reactions without themselves being chemically changed. Industrial catalysts come in two main types - heterogeneous, in which the catalyst is in a different phase from the reactants; and homogeneous, in which catalyst and the reactants are in the same phase. Heterogeneous catalysts are valued for their sustainability because they can be recycled. Homogeneous catalysts are valued for their product selectivity as their properties can be easily tuned through relatively simple chemistry. Researchers with the U.S. ...

NEW YORK - October 10, 2012 - Thanks to blogs, online forums, and product review sites, companies and marketers now have access to a seemingly endless array of data on consumers' opinions and experiences. In principle, businesses should be able to use this information to gain a better understanding of the general market and of their own and their competitors' customers. Yet this wealth of consumer-generated content can be both a blessing and a curse. A new approach, described in a study by Oded Netzer, the Philip H. Geier Jr. Associate Professor at Columbia Business School, ...

HOUSTON – (Oct. 10, 2012) – Rice University researchers are doping graphene with light in a way that could lead to the more efficient design and manufacture of electronics, as well as novel security and cryptography devices. Manufacturers chemically dope silicon to adjust its semiconducting properties. But the breakthrough reported in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano details a novel concept: plasmon-induced doping of graphene, the ultrastrong, highly conductive, single-atom-thick form of carbon. That could facilitate the instant creation of circuitry – ...

A shipboard-capable system designed to support both the launch and recovery of the Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully completed final demonstration flight testing Sept. 27 at a testing range in eastern Oregon. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Compact Launch and Recovery System (CLRE) will provide a small-scale solution for the unmanned surveillance craft's operations. "This system's shipboard capability is unique," said John Kinzer, who manages ONR's Air Vehicle Technology Program. "It's more compact than other systems, so you ...

One of the key achievements of the nanotechnology era is the development of manufacturing technologies that can fabricate nanostructures formed from multiple materials. Such nanometer-scale integration of composite materials has enabled innovations in electronic devices, solar cells, and medical diagnostics. While there have been significant breakthroughs in nano-manufacturing, there has been much less progress on measurement technologies that can provide information about nanostructures made from multiple integrated materials. Researchers at the University of Illinois ...

From politics to finance, government to education, ethics-related scandals seem to crop up with considerable regularity. As whistleblowers and investigative journalists bring these scandals to light, one can't help but wonder: Are there specific character traits that predispose people to unethical behavior? Converging evidence suggests that the answer could be guilt proneness. In a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Taya Cohen and Nazli Turan of Carnegie Mellon University and ...

This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat's Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826. In each case, X-ray emission from Chandra is colored purple and optical emission from the Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue. In the first part of this survey, published in a new paper, twenty one planetary nebulas within about 5000 light years of the Earth have been observed. The paper ...

Sacramento, CA (October 9, 2012) – In a new observational study presented today at the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Food and Nutrition Conference and Exposition (FNCE) in Philadelphia, PA, researchers looked at the association of grape consumption, in the non-alcoholic forms most commonly consumed – fresh grapes, raisins and 100% grape juice – with the diet quality of a recent, nationally representative sample of U.S. children and adults. Their findings suggest that, among adults and children, consumption of grapes and grape products is associated with healthier dietary ...

Boston, MA – A new analysis of 37 national opinion polls conducted by 17 survey organizations finds that health care is the second most important issue for likely voters in deciding their 2012 presidential vote. This is the highest that health care has been ranked as a presidential election issue since 1992. When likely voters were asked to choose from a list of issues, similar to the approach used in election-day exit polls, one in five (20%) named "health care and Medicare" as the most important issue in their 2012 voting choice, far behind "the economy and jobs" (cited ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- In an effort to identify the thousands of John/Jane Doe cold cases in the United States, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher and a team of international collaborators have found a multidisciplinary approach to identifying the remains of missing persons. Using "bomb pulse" radiocarbon analysis developed at Lawrence Livermore, combined with recently developed anthropological analysis and forensic DNA techniques, the researchers were able to identify the remains of a missing child 41 years after the discovery of the body. In 1968, ...

The death throes of dying stars are the focus of a sweeping new survey using NASA's Chandra X-ray satellite observatory. More than two dozen astronomers have aligned their research goals to use Chandra to image a set of dying stars in the neighborhood of the Sun. The resulting X-ray images of these dying stars—called planetary nebulae—are shedding light on the violent "end game" of a Sun-like star's life. The research team, led by Joel Kastner from Rochester Institute of Technology, won seven days of observing time with Chandra in 2011 to survey and image nearly two ...

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a six-gene signature that can be used in a test to predict survival in men with aggressive prostate cancer, according to new research published in the October issue of The Lancet Oncology. This is the first study to demonstrate how prognostic markers may be useful in a clinical setting. Using blood from 202 men with treatment-resistant prostate cancer, researchers found six genes characteristic of treatment-resistant prostate cancer. Men with the six-gene signature were high-risk, with a survival time of ...

JUPITER, FL, October 10, 2012 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified small variations in a number of genes that are closely linked to an increased risk of bipolar disorder, a mental illness that affects nearly six million Americans, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. "Using samples from some 3,400 individuals, we identified several new variants in genes closely associated with bipolar disorder," said Scripps Florida Professor Ron Davis, who led the new study, which was published recently by the ...

A new study by the Simon Fraser University-based Human Security Report Project (HSRP), released today at the United Nations headquarters in New York, finds that there is no compelling evidence to support a host of widely held beliefs regarding wartime sexual violence. The study, presented by HSRP director Andrew Mack, disputes the common assumption that conflict-related sexual violence is on the rise, and argues that the experience of a small number of countries afflicted by extreme levels of sexual violence is not the norm for all war-affected countries. Key findings ...

New Haven, Conn. -- Expanding production of palm oil, a common ingredient in processed foods, soaps and personal care products, is driving rainforest destruction and massive carbon dioxide emissions, according to a new study by Yale and Stanford researchers. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that deforestation for the development of oil palm plantations in Indonesian Borneo is becoming a globally significant source of carbon dioxide emissions. Plantation expansion is projected to pump more than 558 million metric tons of carbon dioxide ...

Amsterdam, NL, October 10, 2012 – A new paper by Thomas J. Albin, PE, CPE, of High Plains Engineering Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, confirms that observational assessment tools, often called checklists, used to assess risk factors such as wrist extension and motion repetition, can be valid tools in identifying work-related risk factors for musculoskeletal injuries. Published in Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation, Albin presents a comprehensive, multi-step yet simple approach for improving the use and effectiveness of checklists. Previous ...

Typhoon Prapiroon is making a U-turn in the Philippine Sea, changing direction from northwest to northeast. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the typhoon as it began turning. Visible satellite imagery revealed its most powerful thunderstorms south and east of the center. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Prapiroon on Oct. 10 at 0435 UTC (12:35 a.m. EDT) and captured a visible image of the storm. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument was able to get a visible image of the typhoon, because it was 1:35 p.m. local Asia/Tokyo ...

Overnight on October 4-5, 2012, a mass of energetic particles from the atmosphere of the Sun were flung out into space, a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection. Three days later, the storm from the Sun stirred up the magnetic field around Earth and produced gorgeous displays of northern lights. NASA satellites track such storms from their origin to their crossing of interplanetary space to their arrival in the atmosphere of Earth. Using the "day-night band" (DNB) of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership ...

An international team of scientists led by Indiana University chemist Michael S. VanNieuwenhze and biologist Yves Brun has discovered a revolutionary new method for coloring the cell wall of bacterial cells to determine how they grow, in turn providing a new, much-needed tool for the development of new antibiotics. Discovery of the new method is expected to broadly impact both basic and applied research tied to understanding, controlling or preventing bacterial cell growth in specific environments, said the two scientists in IU Bloomington's College of Arts and Sciences. ...

Returning briefly to the surface for great lungfuls of air, the underwater lifestyles of whales had been a complete mystery until a small group of pioneers from various global institutions – including Malene Simon, Mark Johnson and Peter Madsen – began attaching data-logging tags to these enigmatic creatures. Knowing that Jeremy Goldbogen and colleagues had successful tagged blue, fin and humpback whales to reveal how they lunge through giant shoals of krill, Simon and her colleagues headed off to Greenland where they tagged five humpback whales to discover how the animals ...