Royal Holloway is among a select group of top universities to receive £21.5 million in government funding to explore commercial uses for graphene. Announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne just after Christmas, the funding will focus attention on the so-called 'super-material' graphene, one of the thinnest, strongest and most conductive materials known to man. The project at Royal Holloway will focus on using graphene to develop new equipment that can operate at high frequencies. This could include devices useful for security purposes, which can ...

Southampton researchers have demonstrated that mothers who have higher levels of n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which are found in cooking oils and nuts, during pregnancy have fatter children. The study, carried out by the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, assessed the fat and muscle mass of 293 boys and girls at four and six years, who are part of the Southampton Women's Survey (SWS), a large prospective mother-offspring cohort. Their assessments were compared to the concentrations of PUFAs which were ...

The University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) is pioneering research into developing the strongest silica nanofibres in the world. Globally the quest has been on to find ultrahigh strength composites, leading ORC scientists to investigate light, ultrahigh strength nanowires that are not compromised by defects. Historically, carbon nanotubes were the strongest material available, but high strengths could only be measured in very short samples just a few microns long, providing little practical value. Now research by ORC Principal Research Fellow ...

One of the most difficult problems in the field of genomics is assembling relatively short "reads" of DNA into complete chromosomes. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences an interdisciplinary group of genome and computer scientists has solved this problem, creating an algorithm that can rapidly create "virtual chromosomes" with no prior information about how the genome is organized. The powerful DNA sequencing methods developed about 15 years ago, known as next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, create thousands of short fragments. ...

Could marriage, and associated companionship, be one key to a longer life? According to new research, not having a permanent partner, or spouse, during midlife is linked to a higher risk of premature death during those midlife years. The work, by Dr. Ilene Siegler and colleagues from Duke University Medical Center in the US, is published online in Springer's journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Survival through middle age to become elderly is expected; therefore understanding who does not survive to become elderly and why is important. Siegler and colleagues looked ...

This press release is available in German. Animals are more eloquent than previously assumed. Even the monosyllabic call of the banded mongoose is structured and thus comparable with the vowel and consonant system of human speech. Behavioral biologists from the University of Zurich have thus become the first to demonstrate that animals communicate with even smaller sound units than syllables. When humans speak, they structure individual syllables with the aid of vowels and consonants. Due to their anatomy, animals can only produce a limited number of distinguishable ...

The Mathematical Sciences in 2025, a new report from the National Research Council, finds that the mathematical sciences are an increasingly integral component of many disciplines -- including biology, medicine, the social sciences, business, advanced design, and climate studies. However, the expanding role of the mathematical sciences over the past 15 years has not been matched by a comparable increase in federal funding, and the number of federal agencies that provide significant support for this research is considerably smaller than the number that profit from it. The ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 10, 2013—Repeat traumatic brain injury affects a subgroup of the 3.5 million people who suffer head trauma each year. Even a mild repeat TBI that occurs when the brain is still recovering from an initial injury can result in poorer outcomes, especially in children and young adults. A metabolic marker that could serve as the basis for new mild TBI vulnerability guidelines is described in an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new tool that could allow for faster, more comprehensive testing of brain tissue during surgery successfully identified the cancer type, grade and tumor margins in five brain surgery patients, according to a Purdue University and Brigham and Women's Hospital study. The tool sprays a microscopic stream of charged solvent onto the tissue surface to gather information about its molecular makeup and produces a color-coded image that reveals the nature and concentration of tumor cells. Researchers analyzed specimens removed from the patients, but ...

ATHENS, Ohio (Jan. 10, 2013)—An international team of scientists has taken the next step in creating nanoscale machines by designing a multi-component molecular motor that can be moved clockwise and counterclockwise. Although researchers can rotate or switch individual molecules on and off, the new study is the first to create a stand-alone molecular motor that has multiple parts, said Saw-Wai Hla, an Ohio University professor of physics and astronomy who led the study with Christian Joachim of A*Star in Singapore and CEMES/CNRS in France and Gwenael Rapenne of CEMES/CNRS. ...

The life of tobacco plants is short. They grow for around three to four months, followed by flowering and then die. Their size is also limited, with plants only growing to about one-and-a-half to two meters tall. Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Münster have located the tobacco plant's very own fountain of youth, which means they can keep it forever young. The Münster-based researchers discovered a genetic switch which can prevent the plants from change blooming to flowering. This also averts the plants' early ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Doctors may soon be using a system in the operating room that recognizes hand gestures as commands to tell a computer to browse and display medical images of the patient during a surgery. Surgeons routinely need to review medical images and records during surgery, but stepping away from the operating table and touching a keyboard and mouse can delay the procedure and increase the risk of spreading infection-causing bacteria, said Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University. "One of the most ubiquitous ...

Students everywhere, put down those highlighters and pick up some flashcards! Some of the most popular study strategies — such as highlighting and even rereading — don't show much promise for improving student learning, according to a new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. In the report, John Dunlosky of Kent State University and a team of distinguished psychological scientists review the scientific evidence for ten learning techniques commonly used by students. "Schools and parents ...

January 10, 2013 (Toronto) - Cutting in and weaving, speeding, and hostile displays are among the top online complaints posted by drivers, according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) recently published in an online issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention. Driver aggression is a major safety concern and researchers estimate this behaviour is a factor in nearly half of all motor vehicle collisions. Identifying the underlying causes and strategies for preventing driver aggression continues to be a priority. CAMH researcher Dr. Christine ...

The increase in the speed of stock trading from microseconds to nanoseconds leads to an increase in order cancellation, but little else of value to investors and the general public, says research by a University of Illinois business professor. According to a forthcoming study by Mao Ye, a professor of finance at Illinois, the arms race in speed at the sub-millisecond level of stock trading is a "purely positional game" in which a trader's payoff depends on transaction speed relative to other traders. "There are lots of extreme views about high-frequency trading, but ...

A new study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Health Resources and Services Administration, and published in the January 2013 issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), found that the non-use of donor livers climbed through 2010 due to a worsening of donor liver quality, primarily from donation following cardiac death. Diabetes, donor age, and body mass index (BMI) were also linked to a decrease in use of organs. "For patients with end-stage liver disease, transplantation ...

URBANA – Perennial biofuel crops such as miscanthus, whose high yields have led them to be considered an eventual alternative to corn in producing ethanol, are now shown to have another beneficial characteristic–the ability to reduce the escape of nitrogen in the environment. In a 4-year University of Illinois study that compared miscanthus, switchgrass, and mixed prairie species to typical corn-corn-soybean rotations, each of the perennial crops were highly efficient at reducing nitrogen losses, with miscanthus having the greatest yield. "Our results clearly demonstrate ...

Welcome to "This Week in Blood," a weekly snapshot of the hottest studies from each week's issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), hand-picked by Blood Editor-in-Chief Bob Löwenberg, MD, and Deputy Editor Nancy Berliner, MD. Systemic delivery of a TLR7 agonist in combination with radiation primes durable anti-tumor immune responses in mouse models of lymphoma, Dovedi et al. This week's plenary paper offers a promising potential new immunotherapeutic modality for the treatment of lymphoma. The authors present convincing data ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — As cancer treatment in pill form transforms how care is delivered, a new Michigan State University study underscores the challenges patients face in administering their own chemotherapy outside the supervised environment of a cancer clinic. Chemotherapy pills can target specific cancers better than some traditional intravenous drugs, said Sandra Spoelstra, an MSU assistant professor of nursing who led the study. But they also can be difficult for patients to take. "Prescriptions for some oral pills have complex instructions," Spoelstra said. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers are looking to genomic technologies – not the isolation of bacteria or viruses – to quickly detect and diagnose infectious diseases such as the flu and staph. Two studies appearing online Jan. 9, 2013, both in the journal PLOS ONE, show how a pattern of genomic information among infected individuals can be used to accurately pinpoint the cause of infection. "Traditional diagnostic tests for infectious diseases rely on detecting the specific illness-causing pathogens. So you only find what you're looking for," said Geoffrey Ginsburg, ...

SAN DIEGO – Apparent stem cell transplant success in mice may hold promise for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease. The results of the study were released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013. "There have been remarkable strides in stem cell transplantation when it comes to other diseases, such as cancer and heart failure," said study author Stefania Corti, MD, PhD, with the University of Milan in Italy and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. ...

VIDEO: This is a video clip of a bamboo shark embryo responding to an electrical stimulus by ceasing gill movements. Click here for more information. Baby sharks still developing in their egg cases can sense when predators are near, and keep very still to avoid being detected, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Ryan Kempster from the University of Western Australia and colleagues. Adult sharks are known to use highly sensitive ...

You may have to be over a certain age to be a contestant on "Deal or No Deal", but children as young as five start to maximize their profits - in cookies - when making decisions similar to those on the show, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Valerie Dufour and colleagues from the National Center for Scientific Research in France. Children aged 3-9 were given a cookie and presented the option to either keep it or exchange it for one of 6 identical cups containing cookies. The cookies in the cups could be larger, smaller or ...

VIDEO: This is an intravital microscopy of the skin window of tumors in mice injected with SSRBCs or NLRBCs. Click here for more information. The genetic mutation that causes sickle cell anemia also turns red blood cells into potent tumor killers and may offer a new way to treat some cancers that are resistant to existing treatments, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David S. Terman of Jenomic Research Institute and colleagues ...

People view brown-eyed faces as more trustworthy than those with blue eyes, except if the blue eyes belong to a broad-faced man, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Karel Kleisner and colleagues from Charles University in the Czech Republic. The study's results attempt to answer a larger question: What makes us think a person's face looks trustworthy? The authors asked study participants to rate male and female faces for trustworthiness based on two features: eye color and face shape. A significant number of participants found ...