HOUSTON -- (Nov. 19, 2012) -- Serendipity proved to be a key ingredient for the latest nanoparticles discovered at Rice University. The new "lava dot" particles were discovered accidentally when researchers stumbled upon a way of using molten droplets of metal salt to make hollow, coated versions of a nanotech staple called quantum dots. The results appear online this week in the journal Nanotechnology. The researchers also found that lava dots arrange themselves in evenly spaced patterns on flat surfaces, thanks in part to a soft outer coating that can alter its shape ...

West Orange, NJ. November 19, 2012. The 'Global Perspectives' published in the Nov. 20, 2012 issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, features "Neurologic Disability: A Hidden Epidemic for India". The authors, a team of US and Indian scientists, detail three emerging trends contributing to this public heath problem and outline measures to stem its growth. Abhijit Das, MD, DM, Amanda Botticello, PhD, MPH, and Glenn Wylie, DPhil, are researchers at Kessler Foundation in West Orange, New Jersey. Kurupath Radhakrishnan, MD, DM, FAAN, is ...

PHILADELPHIA — Several fatal brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease, are connected by the misfolding of specific proteins into disordered clumps and stable, insoluble fibrils called amyloid. Amyloid fibrils are hard to break up due to their stable, ordered structure. For example, α-synuclein forms amyloid fibrils that accumulate in Lewy Bodies in Parkinson's disease. By contrast, protein clumps that accumulate in response to environmental stress, such as heat shock, possess a less stable, disordered architecture. Hsp104, an enzyme from yeast, breaks up both ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 19, 2012) — A new study review published by the University of Kentucky found that music therapy can be beneficial to patients before, during and after a surgical procedure and may reduce pain and recovery time. Published in the Southern Medical Journal, the review examined the use of music in the preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative stages of the surgical process, and music was shown to have positive results in all three stages. Patients were less anxious before the procedure and recovered more quickly and satisfactorily after by being exposed ...

"Who in his wildest dreams could have imagined that, beneath the crust of our Earth, there could exist a real ocean...a sea that has given shelter to species unknown?" So wrote Jules Verne almost 150 years ago in A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Verne probably couldn't have imagined the diversity of life that researchers observe today under the ocean floor. Scientists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI) will discuss recent progress in understanding life beneath the seafloor at the American ...

Seattle Children's Research Institute, together with an international team of scientists and clinicians from 22 other institutions, have identified two genetic risk factors for the most common form of non-syndromic craniosynostosis, a birth defect in which the bony plates of an infant's skull prematurely fuse. The condition is known as sagittal craniosynostosis and often results in an abnormal head shape and facial features. The study identified two genes (BMP2 and BBS9) associated with sagittal craniosynostosis that are known to be involved in broader skeletal development. Results ...

Washington, DC — A team of scientists, including Carnegie's Conel Alexander and Jianhua Wang, studied the hydrogen in water from the Martian interior and found that Mars formed from similar building blocks to that of Earth, but that there were differences in the later evolution of the two planets. This implies that terrestrial planets, including Earth, have similar water sources--chondritic meteorites. However, unlike on Earth, Martian rocks that contain atmospheric volatiles such as water, do not get recycled into the planet's deep interior. Their work will be published ...

Researchers at the University of Iowa have discovered a new cause of hydrocephalus, a devastating neurological disorder that affects between one and three of every 1,000 babies born. Working in mice, the researchers identified a cell signaling defect, which disrupts immature brain cells involved in normal brain development. By bypassing the defect with a drug treatment, the team was able to correct one aspect of the cells' development and reduce the severity of the hydrocephalus. The findings were published online Nov. 18 in the journal Nature Medicine. "Our findings ...

The flooding in New York and New Jersey caused by Superstorm Sandy prompted calls from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other officials to consider building storm surge barriers to protect Lower Manhattan from future catastrophes. But, such a strategy could make things even worse for outlying areas that were hit hard by the hurricane, such as Staten Island, the New Jersey Shore and Long Island's South Shore, a City College of New York landscape architecture professor warns. "If you mitigate to protect Lower Manhattan, you increase the impact in other areas," says Catherine Seavitt ...

PHILADELPHIA— Medical physicists at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center are one step closer to bringing a new tumor-tracking technique into the clinic that delivers higher levels of radiation to moving tumors, while sparing healthy tissue in lung cancer patients. Evidence has shown a survival advantage for lung cancer patients treated with higher doses of radiation. Therefore, there is an increased interest to find novel ways to better track tumors—which are in constant motion because of breathing—in order to up the dosage during radiation ...

DNA sequences obtained from a handful of patients with multiple sclerosis at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center have revealed the existence of an "immune exchange" that allows the disease-causing cells to move in and out of the brain. The cells in question, obtained from spinal fluid and blood samples, are called B cells, which normally help to clear foreign infections from the body but sometimes react strongly with the body itself. One of the current theories of multiple sclerosis, which strikes hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Whether bloggers are writing to change the world, or just discussing a bad break-up, they may get an extra boost of motivation from traffic-measuring and interactive tools that help them feel more connected to and more influential in their communities, according to researchers. In a series of studies, female bloggers showed that they enjoyed blogging because it made them feel empowered and part of a community, said Carmen Stavrositu, who recently completed doctoral work in mass communications at Penn State. The studies also indicated that the sheer ...

Supercomputer simulations have revealed that a type of oddly dim, exploding star is probably a class of duds—one that could nonetheless throw new light on the mysterious nature of dark energy. Most of the thousands of exploding stars classified as type Ia supernovae look similar, which is why astrophysicists use them as accurate cosmic distance indicators. They have shown that the expansion of the universe is accelerating under the influence of an unknown force now called dark energy; yet approximately 20 type Ia supernovae look peculiar. "They're all a little bit ...

LA JOLLA, CA – November 19, 2012 – Deciphering what causes the brain cell degeneration of Parkinson's disease has remained a perplexing challenge for scientists. But a team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has pinpointed a key factor controlling damage to brain cells in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease. The discovery could lead to new targets for Parkinson's that may be useful in preventing the actual condition. The team, led by TSRI neuroscientist Bruno Conti, describes the work in a paper published online ahead of print on November 19, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A study using a unique new instrument on the world's largest optical telescope has revealed the likely origins of especially bright supernovae that astronomers use as easy-to-spot "mile markers" to measure the expansion and acceleration of the universe. In a paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers describe observations of recent supernova 2011fe that they captured with the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) using a tool created at Ohio State University: the Multi-Object Double Spectrograph (MODS). MODS measures the frequencies and intensities ...

Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that children born to mothers who smoked more than one pack per day during pregnancy struggled on tests designed to measure how accurately a child reads aloud and comprehends what they read. The findings are published in the current issue of The Journal of Pediatrics. Lead author Jeffrey Gruen, M.D., professor of pediatrics and genetics at Yale School of Medicine, and colleagues analyzed data from more than 5,000 children involved in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a large-scale study of ...

Astronomers using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii have discovered a "super-Jupiter" around the bright star Kappa Andromedae, which now holds the record for the most massive star known to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion. Designated Kappa Andromedae b (Kappa And b, for short), the new object has a mass about 12.8 times greater than Jupiter's. This places it teetering on the dividing line that separates the most massive planets from the lowest-mass brown dwarfs. That ambiguity is one of the object's charms, say researchers, ...

Outgassing — the physical process that creates that oh-so-alluring new car smell — isn't healthy for humans and, as it turns out, not particularly wholesome for sensitive satellite instruments, either. But a team of NASA engineers has created a new way to protect those instruments from its ill effects. For some people, the best part about buying a new car is its factory-fresh new car smell, a distinctive aroma created when the chemicals and residual solvents used to manufacture dashboards, car seats, carpeting and other vehicle appointments outgas and fill the cabin. ...

Certain mutated cells keep trying to replicate their DNA — with disastrous results — even after medications rob them of the raw materials to do so, according to new research from USC. New imaging techniques allowed scientists to see for the first time that while chemotherapy drugs shut down the DNA replication process of most cancer cells, so-called "checkpoint mutants" just keep chugging along, unwinding the DNA and creating damaged DNA strands that can result in the kind of abnormalities seen in cancer cells. "Older methods suggested that these checkpoint mutants ...

VIDEO: The Sun erupted with two prominence eruptions, one after the other over a four-hour period (Nov. 16, 2012). The action was captured in the 304 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet... Click here for more information. The Sun erupted with two prominence eruptions, one after the other over a four-hour period on Nov. 16, 2012, between the hours of 1 and 5 a.m. EST. The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. ...

Beargrass is an ecologically, culturally, and economically important plant in the Western United States and, for the first time, landowners, managers, and harvesters now have a comprehensive report about the species. The report, Natural and Cultural History of Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax), published by the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station, identifies critical knowledge gaps and areas for future research. It also documents how changes in disturbance, including fire, may affect the species across its range. "Beargrass is emblematic of a web of ...

Berkeley — Eating certain veggies not only supplies key nutrients, it may also influence hormone levels and behaviors such as aggression and sexual activity, says a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, that could shed light on the role of diet in human evolution. The research is the first to observe the connection between plant-based estrogenic compounds, or phytoestrogens, and behavior in wild primates — in this case, a group of red colobus monkeys in Uganda. The more the male monkeys dined on the leaves of Millettia dura, a tropical ...

A new study from Sweden reveals that having low peer status in adolescence is a strong risk factor for regular and heavy smoking in adulthood. Researchers from Stockholm University in Sweden used a large database that followed the lives of more than 15,000 Swedes, mainly from the Stockholm area, from birth to middle age. The researchers isolated 2,329 people who were interviewed once at age 13 about peer status at school and again at age 32 about their smoking habits. The results indicate that the lower a young person's status is among his or her school peers, the more ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – The addition of three-dimensional breast imaging—a technology called tomosynthesis—to standard digital mammography significantly increases radiologists' diagnostic accuracy while reducing false positive recall rates, according to the results of a multi-center study published in Radiology. "This is the first major advance in breast imaging and breast cancer screening since the development of breast MRI," said lead researcher Elizabeth A. Rafferty, M.D., director of Breast Imaging at the Avon Comprehensive Breast Center at Massachusetts General Hospital ...

The virus that is causing alarm among global public health authorities after it killed a man in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia earlier this year and is now linked to two other cases of disease is a novel type of coronavirus most closely related to viruses found in bats, according to a genetic analysis to be published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on November 20. Researchers studied the genome of the HCoV-EMC/2012 virus in detail to learn about its relatedness to other viruses and about possible sources. The results of the sequencing ...