Berkeley — When it comes to germ-busting power, the eyes have it, according to a discovery by University of California, Berkeley, researchers that could lead to new, inexpensive antimicrobial drugs. A team of UC Berkeley vision scientists has found that small fragments of keratin protein in the eye play a key role in warding off pathogens. The researchers also put synthetic versions of these keratin fragments to the test against an array of nasty pathogens. These synthetic molecules effectively zapped bacteria that can lead to flesh-eating disease and strep throat (Streptococcus ...

VIDEO: The researchers explored the likelihood that our solar system exchanged solid matter with its closest planetary-system neighbor during the first hundreds of millions of years it existed. At that time,... Click here for more information. Microorganisms that crashed to Earth embedded in the fragments of distant planets might have been the sprouts of life on this one, according to new research from Princeton University, the University of Arizona and the Centro de Astrobiología ...

A novel genetic study led by the University of Colorado Boulder has helped to clarify the native diversity and distribution of cutthroat trout in Colorado, including the past and present haunts of the federally endangered greenback cutthroat trout. The study, led by CU-Boulder postdoctoral researcher Jessica Metcalf, was based largely on DNA samples taken from cutthroat trout specimens preserved in ethanol in several U.S. museums around the country that were collected from around the state as far back as 150 years ago. The new study, in which Metcalf and her colleagues ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (September 21, 2012)—Women treated for breast cancer after menopause with aromatase inhibitors have very high levels of sexual difficulties, including low interest, insufficient lubrication, and pain with intercourse. It is an important and underestimated problem, say the authors of a study published online in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society. The researchers from Örebro University and Uppsala University in Sweden are the first to look at the impact of this type of breast cancer treatment on specific aspects of sexuality in ...

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to find evidence our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded in an enormous halo of hot gas that extends for hundreds of thousands of light years. The estimated mass of the halo is comparable to the mass of all the stars in the galaxy. If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it also could be an explanation for what is known as the "missing baryon" problem for the galaxy. Baryons are particles, such as protons and neutrons, that make up more than 99.9 percent of the mass of atoms found in the cosmos. Measurements ...

Think of the poor hamster on the treadmill. Steadily picking up speed and caught up by the momentum, unable to stop until it is overwhelmed and sent tumbling, crashing out of control inside the spinning wheel. That's the analogy John Yackel, head of the Department of Geography, makes when he considers the annual summer ice melt in the Arctic, which he's been closely monitoring for the past 15 years, documenting the ice cover as it has steadily shrunk in the wake of Arctic and global warming. Last week marked the unofficial peak, or the end of the summer ice melt, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT researchers have built a wearable sensor system that automatically creates a digital map of the environment through which the wearer is moving. The prototype system, described in a paper slated for the Intelligent Robots and Systems conference in Portugal next month, is envisioned as a tool to help emergency responders coordinate disaster response. In experiments conducted on the MIT campus, a graduate student wearing the sensor system wandered the halls, and the sensors wirelessly relayed data to a laptop in a distant conference room. Observers in ...

Imagine a clock that will keep perfect time forever, even after the heat-death of the universe. This is the "wow" factor behind a device known as a "space-time crystal," a four-dimensional crystal that has periodic structure in time as well as space. However, there are also practical and important scientific reasons for constructing a space-time crystal. With such a 4D crystal, scientists would have a new and more effective means by which to study how complex physical properties and behaviors emerge from the collective interactions of large numbers of individual particles, ...

Infectious bacteria received a taste of their own medicine from University of Missouri researchers who used viruses to infect and kill colonies of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, common disease-causing bacteria. The viruses, known as bacteriophages, could be used to efficiently sanitize water treatment facilities and may aid in the fight against deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria. "Our experiment was the first to use bacteriophages in conjunction with chlorine to destroy biofilms, which are layers of bacteria growing on a solid surface," said Zhiqiang Hu, associate professor ...

BOSTON, MA (September 24, 2012) – Results of the first-ever clinical drug trial for children with Progeria, a rare, fatal "rapid-aging" disease, demonstrate the efficacy of a farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), a drug originally developed to treat cancer. The clinical trial results, completed only six years after scientists identified the cause of Progeria, included significant improvements in weight gain, bone structure and, most importantly, the cardiovascular system, according to The Progeria Research Foundation (PRF) and Boston Children's Hospital. The study results ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida State University chemist's work could lead to big improvements in our ability to detect and eliminate specific toxins in our environment. Featured on the cover of the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), Sourav Saha's specialized work to strip electrons from the toxic chemical known as fluoride is producing a variety of unique results. "I started out with the very basic premise of trying to find new ways to detect toxic fluoride in solutions," said Saha, an assistant professor of chemistry at Florida State. "As ...

This press release is available in French.Montreal, September 24, 2012 – A new discovery that sheds light on the genetic make up of ovarian cancer cells could explain why some women survive longer than others with this deadly disease. A multi-disciplinary team led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC), in collaboration with the Lady Davis Institute of the Jewish General Hospital and the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre, has identified genetic patterns in ovarian cancer tumours that help to differentiate patients based ...

Malignant cells that leave a primary tumor, travel the bloodstream and grow out of control in new locations cause the vast majority of cancer deaths. New nanotechnology developed at Case Western Reserve University detects these metastases in mouse models of breast cancer far earlier than current methods, a step toward earlier, life-saving diagnosis and treatment. A team of scientists, engineers and students across five disciplines built nanochains that home in on metastases before they've grown into new tissues, and, through magnetic resonance imaging, detect their locations. ...

Most people equate "gray matter" with the brain and its higher functions, such as sensation and perception, but this is only one part of the anatomical puzzle inside our heads. Another cerebral component is the white matter, which makes up about half the brain by volume and serves as the communications network. The gray matter, with its densely packed nerve cell bodies, does the thinking, the computing, the decision-making. But projecting from these cell bodies are the axons—the network cables. They constitute the white matter. Its color derives from myelin--a fat that ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University researchers have unlocked secrets in bone marrow that could lead to improved treatments for colitis and Crohn's disease. The results, featured in the current issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, show that the havoc inflammatory bowel diseases wreaks on the digestive tract is mirrored in bone marrow. Early indications also show that the disorders of the gut could potentially be treated through the bone marrow, said Pam Fraker, MSU University Distinguished Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. "It's ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 24, 2012 – PSA screening has resulted in improved prostate cancer survival, but the high rate of diagnosis and treatment side effects raise concerns about overtreatment. In the quest to prevent overtreatment, "active surveillance" has emerged as a plausible option, encouraged for men whose tumors may not need immediate treatment and may never progress to more serious illness. Appropriate criteria for selecting patients for active surveillance are continuously debated. A group of investigators from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in ...

When you rear-end the car in front of you at a stoplight, you may feel a mix of different emotions such as anger, anxiety, and guilt. The person whose car you rear-ended may feel angered and frustrated by your carelessness, but it's unlikely that he'll feel much guilt. The ability to identify and distinguish between negative emotions helps us address the problem that led to those emotions in the first place. But while some people can tell the difference between feeling angry and guilty, others may not be able to separate the two. Distinguishing between anger and frustration ...

New Haven, Conn. -- An international policy is needed for recycling scarce specialty metals that are critical in the production of consumer goods, according to Yale researchers in Science. "A recycling rate of zero for specialty metals is alarming when we consider that their use is growing quickly," said co-author Barbara Reck, a research scientist at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. Specialty metals, which include rare earth elements such as indium, gallium and germanium, account for more than 30 of the 60 metals in the periodic table. Because ...

ASA's Aqua satellite revealed a large area of powerful thunderstorms around the center of Tropical Storm Miriam on Sept. 23 as it tracked through the Eastern Pacific Ocean. That power was the trigger that helped Miriam rapidly intensify into a major hurricane on Sept. 24. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sept. 23 and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Miriam's cloud top temperatures. Tropical Storm Miriam is born that day, about 640 miles (1,025 km) south-southeast of the southern ...

Tropical Storm Nadine is turning around in two ways. When NASA's Global Hawk flew over the storm it learned that the storm was not transitioning into an extra-tropical storm. Now, NASA satellites see that Nadine is physically turning its direction, and heading back to the west-northwest and away from land. The fifth science flight of NASA's Global Hawk concluded when the aircraft landed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. on Sunday, Sept. 23 after flying over Tropical Storm Nadine in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel ...

The first two of the 18 primary mirrors to fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope arrived at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The mirrors are going through receiving and inspection and will then be stored in the Goddard cleanroom until engineers are ready to assemble them onto the telescope's backplane structure that will support them. Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colo., under contract to Northrop Grumman, is responsible for the Webb's optical technology and lightweight mirror system. On September 17, 2012, Ball Aerospace shipped the first two ...

Tropical Storm Jelawat had been moving toward the Philippines since the week of Sept. 17 and on Sept. 24 it became a super typhoon east of the country. Meanwhile, the nineteenth tropical depression formed just east of Jelawat in the western North Pacific Ocean and quickly strengthened into a tropical storm. Both storms were captured on one infrared image from NASA's Aqua satellite. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite revealed a large area of powerful thunderstorms around the center of Typhoon Jelawat and a band of thunderstorms ...

Watch out, acne. Doctors soon may have a new weapon against zits: a harmless virus living on our skin that naturally seeks out and kills the bacteria that cause pimples. The Sept. 25 online edition of the American Society for Microbiology's mBio publishes the findings by scientists at UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh. "Acne affects millions of people, yet we have few treatments that are both safe and effective," said principal investigator Dr. Robert Modlin, chief of dermatology and professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at the David Geffen ...

Scientists have isolated and studied the genomes of 11 viruses, known as phage, that can infect and kill the acne-causing bacterium Propionibacterium acnes, potentially paving the way for topical therapies that use viruses or viral products to treat this vexing skin condition. Their results are reported in the September 25 issue of mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. "There are two fairly obvious potential directions that could exploit this kind of research," says Graham Hatfull of the University of Pittsburgh, an author of ...

Express-Blindz.com is now offering 60% off in all their bespoke blinds, vertical blinds and venetian blinds. Together with the 60% discount, they also offer free delivery within the U.K. mainland. As one of the efforts of the company to provide the best collection of roman blinds for the best possible prices, they are offering 60% discount on all of their blinds on Express-Blindz.com. The company decided to put up discounts to show their dedication to their clients and to also to show their gratitude on the continuous support to their online stores. Express-Blindz.com ...