Bewildered by the array of antioxidant fruit juices on display in the supermarket and the promises they make? To sort out the antioxidant properties of fruits and berries, scientists at Emory University School of Medicine turned to fruit flies for help. They found that a commercially available acai berry product can lengthen the lives of fruit flies, when the flies' lives are made short through additional oxidative stress. Under certain conditions (a simple sugar diet) acai supplementation could triple flies' lifespans, from eight to 24 days. Acai could also counteract ...

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – August 21, 2012 – The Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, an international leader in cardiovascular research, today announces the online publication of a study in EP Europace that raises serious concerns about St. Jude Medical defibrillator leads. The study found that a new copolymer of silicone and polyurethane (Optim™) might not prevent insulation abrasions that can result in electronic malfunction. The paper is authored by Foundation researchers Robert Hauser, Raed Abdelhadi, Deepa McGriff and Linda Retel, and it is another in a series of Foundation ...

It's not just in movies where nerds get their revenge. A study by a Johns Hopkins University business professor finds that social rejection can inspire imaginative thinking, particularly in individuals with a strong sense of their own independence. "For people who already feel separate from the crowd, social rejection can be a form of validation," says Johns Hopkins Carey Business School assistant professor Sharon Kim, the study's lead author. "Rejection confirms for independent people what they already feel about themselves, that they're not like others. For such people, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A Rhode Island Hospital radiation oncologist says in a new editorial that research exploring the impact of radiotherapy in older women with low risk of breast cancer recurrence has little effect on actual clinical decisions. The editorial written by David E. Wazer, M.D., chief of the department of radiation oncology, is published in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Breast-conserving therapy (BCT) has shown to have comparable outcomes to mastectomy, allowing women to preserve their breast without compromising their chance of being ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 21, 2012—For the millions of people worldwide with type 1 diabetes who cannot produce sufficient insulin, the potential to transplant insulin-producing cells could offer hope for a long-term cure. The discovery of a marker to help identify and isolate stem cells that can develop into insulin-producing cells in the pancreas would be a critical step forward and is described in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a new bimonthly peer-reviewed open access journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com) The article is available free ...

Researchers contend that manufactured nanomaterials--now popular in consumer products such as shampoos, gels, hair dyes and sunscreens--may be detrimental to the quality and yield of food crops, as reported in a paper in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Manufactured nanomaterials are man-made materials produced by manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Their effects on human health and the environment are the subject of much scientific study. "As MNMs are used more and more in consumer products, there is a higher ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon chemists have identified a catalyst that could dramatically reduce the amount of waste made in the production of methyl methacrylate, a monomer used in the large-scale manufacturing of lightweight, shatter-resistant alternatives to glass such as Plexiglas. David Tyler, Charles J. and M. Monteith Jacobs Professor of Chemistry, presented his findings Tuesday, Aug. 21, at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia. Global production of methyl methacrylate was 4 million metric tons in 2010. Each kilogram produced ...

Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease at 21, British physicist Stephen Hawking, now 70, relies on a computerized device to speak. Engineers are investigating the use of brainwaves to create a new form of communication for Hawking and other people suffering from paralysis. -Daily Mail Scientists at UCLA and the Technion, Israel's Institute of Technology, have unraveled how our brain cells encode the pronunciation of individual vowels in speech. Published in the Aug. 21 edition of Nature Communications, the discovery could lead to new technology that verbalizes the unspoken ...

With a plethora of games and activities, plus a Vert Demo with skateboarding and BMX icons, skateboard virtuoso and philanthropist Tony Hawk returns to Beverly Hills for the 9th-Annual Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD Presents Stand Up For Skateparks extravaganza. The benefit will take place Sunday, October 7, 2012 at Green Acres Estate, in Beverly Hills, California. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD presents Stand Up For Skateparks benefit is a family-friendly event that includes games, food, and live and silent auctions with one-of-a-kind items and experiences. The event will also ...

A new study suggests that a polyclonal antibody that blocks follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) in mice without ovaries might offer a more effective way to prevent or arrest osteoporosis than currently available treatments. The study used a mouse model of menopause to show that an injection of a polyclonal antipeptide antibody enhances bone regeneration by simultaneously slowing bone destruction and building bone, say researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. In addition, the monoclonal antibody is likely to be safer because it is cleared from the ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A humble soil bacterium called Ralstonia eutropha has a natural tendency, whenever it is stressed, to stop growing and put all its energy into making complex carbon compounds. Now scientists at MIT have taught this microbe a new trick: They've tinkered with its genes to persuade it to make fuel — specifically, a kind of alcohol called isobutanol that can be directly substituted for, or blended with, gasoline. Christopher Brigham, a research scientist in MIT's biology department who has been working to develop this bioengineered bacterium, is currently ...

A study conducted in Mongolian schoolchildren supports the possibility that daily vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk of respiratory infections in winter. In a report that will appear in the journal Pediatrics and has received early online release, an international research team found that vitamin D supplementation decreased the risk of respiratory infections among children who had low blood levels of vitamin D at the start of the study. "Our randomized controlled trial shows that vitamin D has important effects on infection risk," says Carlos Camargo, MD, ...

Films made of semiconductor nanocrystals — tiny crystals measuring just a few billionths of a meter across — are seen as a promising new material for a wide range of applications. Nanocrystals could be used in electronic or photonic circuits, detectors for biomolecules, or the glowing pixels on high-resolution display screens. They also hold promise for more efficient solar cells. The size of a semiconductor nanocrystal determines its electrical and optical properties. But it's very hard to control the placement of nanocrystals on a surface in order to make structurally ...

New research from Psychological Science explores factors operating in political attitudes that could explain why political ideology and prejudice are often linked. Liberals and Conservatives Both Prejudiced Against Groups with Opposing Values Research has associated political conservatism with prejudice toward various stereotyped groups. But research has also shown that people select and interpret evidence consistent with their own pre-existing attitudes and ideologies. In this article, Chambers and colleagues hypothesized that, contrary to what some research might ...

Researchers at a recent worldwide conference on fusion power have confirmed the surprising accuracy of a new model for predicting the size of a key barrier to fusion that a top scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has developed. The model could serve as a starting point for overcoming the barrier. "This allows you to depict the size of the challenge so you can think through what needs to be done to overcome it," said physicist Robert Goldston, the Princeton University professor of astrophysical sciences and former PPPL ...

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a common compound in the modern diet that could play a major role in the development of abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes. The findings are published in the August 20, 2012 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research team, led by Helen Vlassara, MD, Professor and Director of the Division of Experimental Diabetes and Aging, found that mice with sustained exposure to the compound, methyl-glyoxal (MG), developed significant abdominal weight gain, early insulin ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Sunscreens, lotions, and cosmetics contain tiny metal nanoparticles that wash down the drain at the end of the day, or are discharged after manufacturing. Those nanoparticles eventually end up in agricultural soil, which is a cause for concern, according to a group of environmental scientists that recently carried out the first major study of soybeans grown in soil contaminated by two manufactured nanomaterials (MNMs). The team was led by scientists at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. The team is also affiliated ...

Botany is plagued by the same problem as the rest of science and society: our ability to generate data quickly and cheaply is surpassing our ability to access and analyze it. In this age of big data, scientists facing too much information rely on computers to search large data sets for patterns that are beyond the capability of humans to recognize—but computers can only interpret data based on the strict set of rules in their programming. New tools called ontologies provide the rules computers need to transform information into knowledge, by attaching meaning to data, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The simple act of picking up a pencil requires the coordination of dozens of muscles: The eyes and head must turn toward the object as the hand reaches forward and the fingers grasp it. To make this job more manageable, the brain's motor cortex has implemented a system of shortcuts. Instead of controlling each muscle independently, the cortex is believed to activate muscles in groups, known as "muscle synergies." These synergies can be combined in different ways to achieve a wide range of movements. A new study from MIT, Harvard Medical School and the ...

Nanoparticles tailored to latch onto blood platelets rapidly create healthy clots and nearly double the survival rate in the vital first hour after injury, new research shows. "We knew an injection of these nanoparticles stopped bleeding faster, but now we know the bleeding is stopped in time to increase survival following trauma," said Erin Lavik, a professor of biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University and leader of the effort. The researchers are developing synthetic platelets that first responders and battlefield medics could carry with them to stabilize ...

The risk of dying from breast cancer was not related to high mammographic breast density in breast cancer patients, according to a study published August 20 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. One of the strongest risk factors for non-familial breast cancer is elevated mammographic breast density. While women with elevated mammographic breast density have a higher risk of developing breast cancer, it is not established whether a higher density indicates a lower chance of survival in breast cancer patients. In order to determine if higher mammographic breast ...

NASA's Terra and Aqua satellite have captured Hurricane Gordon over three days as it neared the Azores Islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Gordon weakened to a tropical storm on August 20. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, is an instrument that flies onboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites and provides high-resolution imagery to users. When NASA's Terra satellite flew over Gordon on August 17 at 9:30 a.m. EDT it was a tropical storm and did not have a visible eye. It was followed up by a fly over of NASA's Aqua satellite on August 18 at ...

The first evidence of a planet's destruction by its aging star has been discovered by an international team of astronomers. The evidence indicates that the missing planet was devoured as the star began expanding into a "red giant" -- the stellar equivalent of advanced age. "A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the Sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some five-billion years from now," said Alexander Wolszczan, Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State University, who is one of the members ...

Tropical Storm Bolaven was born over the weekend of August 18-19 in the western North Pacific, and NASA captured infrared satellite imagery of its birth and growth. NASA's Aqua satellite has been monitoring the birth and progress of Tropical Storm Bolaven in the western North Pacific from Aug 19-20, 2012. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument has provided infrared satellite imagery that shows the development of colder thunderstorm cloud-top temperatures, that were indicative of strengthening storms. Tropical Storm Bolaven also took more of a rounded shape ...

Researchers have long studied infants' perceptions of safe and risky ground by observing their willingness to cross a visual cliff, a large drop-off covered with a solid glass surface. In crawling, infants grow more likely to avoid the apparent drop-off, leading researchers to conclude that they have a fear of heights. Now a new study has found that although infants learn to avoid the drop-off while crawling, this knowledge doesn't transfer to walking. This suggests that what infants learn is to perceive the limits of their ability to crawl or walk, not a generalized fear ...