A team of researchers from the University of Notre Dame have demonstrated a novel DNA detection method that could prove suitable for many real-world applications. Physicists Carol Tanner and Steven Ruggiero led the team in the application of a new technique called laser transmission spectroscopy (LTS). LTS is capable of rapidly determining the size, shape and number of nanoparticles in suspension. In a new paper appearing in the international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication PLoS ONE, the team describes how they applied LTS as a novel method for detecting ...

December 16, 2011, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Shenzhen, China - A group of scientists from United Kingdom (UK), China and United Arab Emirates (UAE) jointly announced the complete sequencing of peregrine and saker falcons genomes at the 2nd International Festival of Falconry held in Al Ain, UAE. The study is a part of Falcon Genome Project, launched and funded by the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD) in this January. The results will enable biologists to better study the basic biology and genetics of falcons and provide new insights into understanding the origin and populations ...

This press release is available in Spanish.In this meeting of the JWG - the work group made up of European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) - the last revision of the text was carried out that will make up norm EN 45545, which affects the entire railroad industry, the operators, fire-testing laboratories and standardization entities. This meeting took place on the Leganés campus of the UC3M, under the auspices of the Master's in Fire Safety Engineering Program, from the Pedro Juan de Lastanosa ...

Are wage differences between men and women decreasing as more women attain managerial positions? A new Swedish report from the Uppsala Center for Labor Studies (UCLS) at Uppsala University and the Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU) concludes that they are not. Manager gender is tied to neither wages nor, accordingly, wage differences on the labour market. Women held approximately 36 per cent of managerial positions within the Swedish employment market in 2008. That female managers are a minority is sometimes advanced as an explanation for the fact that ...

This press release is available in German.Chicago/Leipzig. Large forest regions in Canada are apparently about to experience rapid change. Based on models, scientists can now show that there are threshold values for wildfires just like there are for epidemics. Large areas of Canada are apparently approaching this threshold value and may in future exceed it due to climate change. As a result both the area burnt down annually and the average size of the fires would increase, write the researchers of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University ...

Although the temperate climates of central Europe provide plentiful food in summer, finding enough to eat is much more problematic in winter. Many small mammals avoid the problem by hibernating but this survival strategy is generally not practised by larger animals. With the exception of some bears, large mammals remain fully awake throughout the year, yet they too must reduce their metabolism to cope with the comparative scarcity of food. Red deer, for example, are known to lower their heart rate and to allow their extremities to cool substantially during winter. These ...

Shenzhen, China – BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, started the trail operation of "BGI-BOX", its first cloud computing terminal server, in China Agricultural University on December 8. BGI-BOX is designed for users without bioinformatics background and it allows users to access bioinformatics analysis and genomic data in their own laboratories with the advantages of easy to use, high flexibility and user-friendly interface. With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology over the past ten years, the cost of DNA sequencing is decreasing ...

MicroRNAs or miRNAs are tiny RNA molecules that have only about 20 nucleotides and do not code for proteins. They regulate many important processes in cells by binding to target messenger RNAs – the instructions for protein production –, thus blocking production of the respective protein. In cancer, the production of some miRNAs is often reduced or amplified. This particularly affects miRNAs that regulate the activity of cancer-promoting genes. A key molecule in the development of cancer is a transcription factor called NFkappaB, which is an important switch for many ...

One in 13 teenage girls, aged 14 to 20, reported having a group-sex experience, with those young women more likely to have been exposed to pornography and childhood sexual abuse than their peers, according to a new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researcher. In a study published in the Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Emily Rothman, associate professor of community health sciences at BUSPH, and colleagues surveyed 328 females who had utilized a Boston-area community or school-based health clinic, to ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have carried out the first comprehensive study of the changes seen in the DNA of a patient with mast cell leukemia (MCL), an extremely aggressive subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a very poor prognosis. Their genomic survey has helped identify two previously unknown mutations that could directly influence patient response to currently available therapeutic drugs. The details uncovered by the study not only suggest a diagnostic improvement and an alternative treatment strategy ...

The research is based on studies of sediment from 36 lakes in the USA, Canada, Greenland and Svalbard, Norway. The researchers have analysed how the chemical composition of the sediment has changed over the centuries. Twenty-five of the lakes all show the same sign – that biologically active nitrogen from human sources can be traced back to the end of the 19th century. The nitrogen analyses of the lake sediments show that the changes began around 1895. The results also show that the rate of change has accelerated over the past 60 years, which is in agreement with the ...

Researchers from Harvard University and the Broad Institute have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more. The researchers report their findings in a paper appearing in the December 16 issue of the journal Science. From Facebook to physics to the global economy, ...

Adenoviruses can cause respiratory, eye, and intestinal tract infections, and, like other viruses, must hijack the cellular machinery of infected organisms in order to produce proteins and their own viral spawn. Now an international research team made up of scientists from Chinese and Australian universities has found a way to disrupt the hijacking process by using plasma to damage the viruses in the laboratory environment, before they come into contact with host cells. The researchers prepared solutions containing adenoviruses and then treated the samples with a low-temperature ...

Opening up a new door in synthetic biology, a team of researchers has developed a microfluidic device that produces a continuous supply of tiny lipid spheres that are similar in many ways to a cell's outer membrane. "Cells are essentially small, complex bioreactors enclosed by phospholipid membranes," said Abraham Lee from the University of California, Irvine. "Effectively producing vesicles with lipid membranes that mimic those of natural cells is a valuable tool for fundamental biology research, and it's also an important first step in the hoped-for production of an artificial ...

Microscopic-scale medical robots represent a promising new type of therapeutic technology. As envisioned, the microbots, which are less than one millimeter in size, might someday be able to travel throughout the human bloodstream to deliver drugs to specific targets or seek out and destroy tumors, blood clots, and infections that can't be easily accessed in other ways. One challenge in the deployment of microbots, however, is developing a system to accurately "drive" them and maneuver them through the complex and convoluted circulatory system, to a chosen destination. ...

Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special challenge for evolution. Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing; only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation. How could the extreme degree of cooperation required by multicellular existence actually evolve? Why aren't all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes? Joan Strassmann and David Queller, evolutionary biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, provide an answer in this week's issue of the journal ...

This press release is available in German. From shoals of fish to human society: social organisms need to make collective decisions. And it is not always the majority that prevails. In some cases, a small, resolute group may succeed in bending the whole community to their will. Using computer models and behavioural studies of fish, a team of scientists, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, has discovered that uninformed individuals support the decision of the majority and may prevent a particularly determined ...

MIAMI -- For anglers and boaters who regularly travel the coasts of Florida the great barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) is a common sight. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the early life stage of this ecologically and socio-economically important coastal fish. In the journal Marine Biology, lead author Dr. Evan D'Alessandro and University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science colleagues Drs. Su Sponaugle, Joel Llopiz and Robert Cowen shed light on the larval stage of this ocean predator, as well as several other closely related species. ...

Statistical databases (SDBs) are collections of data that are used to gather and analyze information from a variety of sources. The data may be derived from sales transactions, customer files, voter registrations, medical records, employee rosters, product inventories, or other compilations of facts and figures. Because database security requires multiple processes and controls, it presents huge security challenges to organizations. With the computerization of databases in healthcare, forensics, telecommunications, and other fields, ensuring this kind of security has ...

Statins, traditionally known as cholesterol-lowering drugs, may reduce mortality among patients hospitalized with influenza, according to a new study released online by the Journal of Infectious Diseases. It is the first published observational study to evaluate the relationship between statin use and mortality in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection, according to Vanderbilt's William Schaffner, M.D., professor and chair of Preventive Medicine. "We may be able to combine statins with antiviral drugs to provide better treatment for ...

Your parents were right: Hard experiences may indeed make you tough. Psychological scientists have found that, while going through many experiences like assault, hurricanes, and bereavement can be psychologically damaging, small amounts of trauma may help people develop resilience. "Of course, everybody's heard the aphorism, 'Whatever does not kill you makes you stronger,'" says Mark D. Seery of the University at Buffalo. His paper on adversity and resilience appears in the December issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for ...

Are there parallel universes? And how will we know? This is one of many fascinations people hold about quantum physics. Researchers from the universities of Calgary and Waterloo in Canada and the University of Geneva in Switzerland have published a paper this week in Physical Review Letters explaining why we don't usually see the physical effects of quantum mechanics. "Quantum physics works fantastically well on small scales but when it comes to larger scales, it is nearly impossible to count photons very well. We have demonstrated that this makes it hard to see these ...

With support from the National Science Foundation, researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard University recently developed a tool that can uncover patterns in large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Called Maximal Information Coefficient or MIC, the tool can can tease out multiple, recurring events or sets of data hidden in health information from around the globe, or in the changing bacterial landscape of the gut or even in statistics amassed from a season of competitive sports--and much more. The researchers report their findings in the Dec. ...

The trial conducted by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) shows the feasibility to deliver bevacizumab to the current chemoradiation standard without any apparent increased adverse side effects. Combining the widely used anti-cancer drug bevacizumab with standard chemoradiation therapy is safe and could prolong survival in patients with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, according to a new phase 2 trial published Online First in today's The Lancet Oncology. The results indicate that bevacizumab might be more effective at preventing the spread of nasopharyngeal ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In reaction to what midwives view as the overly medicalized way hospitals deliver babies, they have created birthing rituals to send the message that women's bodies know best. The midwife experience uses these rituals to send the message that home birth is about female empowerment, strengthening relationships between family and friends, and facilitating participatory experiences that put mothers in control, with the ultimate goal of safe and healthy deliveries less focused on technological intervention. These are some of the findings from an Oregon ...