Rats use a sense that humans don't: whisking. They move their facial whiskers back and forth about eight times a second to locate objects in their environment. Could humans acquire this sense? And if they can, what could understanding the process of adapting to new sensory input tell us about how humans normally sense? At the Weizmann Institute, researchers explored these questions by attaching plastic "whiskers" to the fingers of blindfolded volunteers and asking them to carry out a location task. The findings, which recently appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, have ...

Autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is one of the most common genetic disorders, affecting one in every 1,000 people and responsible for up to ten percent of patients on dialysis worldwide. The disease is characterized by the development of cysts that lead to progressive kidney failure and necessitate dialysis or a kidney transplant in most patients aged around fifty. Moreover, the persistent cyst growth causes high blood pressure and painful complications. Although we have known about the disease for over a century and its genetic basis for almost 20 years, ...

Hispanics and Latinos living in the U.S. are highly likely to have several major cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and smoking, according to a new, large-scale study. Risks vary among the diverse Hispanic/Latino groups, but individuals who were born in the U.S. are more likely to have multiple risk factors. The findings are reported in the Nov. 7 issue of JAMA. Hispanic and Latino people now comprise the largest minority group in the U.S. Although this population is relatively young, cardiovascular ...

The patients have single short fingers (metacarpals) and toes (metatarsals) and can be restricted in growth due to a shortened skeleton. This hereditary disease is called brachydactyly type E (Greek for short fingers). Three years ago Dr. Philipp G. Maass from the research group of Professor Friedrich C. Luft at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), a joint cooperation between the Charité Medical Faculty and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin-Buch, has discovered an epigenetic mechanism, which, when dysregulated, causes this condition. ...

Europeans spend much time with their grandchildren. And past 70, the grandfather takes the lead. Norwegian sociologist Knud Knudsen sets great store by his grandchildren. In that respect, he is typical of the grandparents in Europe who are the subjects of his recent research. "Europeans with grandchildren generally opt to spend a good deal of time with them," says 67-year-old Knudsen, who is professor of sociology at the University of Stavanger (UiS). "And grandfathers appear to be more involved than before," he adds. In a new study, he found that grandmothers are ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 5, 2012 – New findings led by Dr. Michael Lombardo, Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues at the University of Cambridge indicate that testosterone levels early in fetal development influence later sensitivity of brain regions related to reward processing and affect an individual's susceptibility to engage in behavior, that in extremes, are related to several neuropsychiatric conditions that asymmetrically affect one sex more than the other. Although present at low levels in females, testosterone is one of the primary sex hormones that exerts ...

Researchers at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) have led a study published in PLoS One showing that the inhibition of a family member of NADPH oxidase enzyme, NOX4, plays an important role in liver fibrosis. The researchers studied the function of a cytokine called transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) in the pathophysiology of the liver, which is one of the main research lines of the Biological Clues of the Invasive and Metastatic Phenotype research group at the IDIBELL, leaded by Isabel Fabregat. This paper is related with the processes of ...

The largest volcanic eruption on Earth in the past millions of years took place in Indonesia 74,000 years ago and researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute can now link the colossal eruption with the global climate and the effects on early humans. The results are published in the scientific journal Climate of the Past. The volcano Toba is located in Indonesia on the island Sumatra, which lies close to the equator. The colossal eruption, which occurred 74,000 years ago, left a crater that is about 50 km wide. Expelled with the eruption was 2,500 cubic kilometers of lava ...

Washington, D.C.--Researchers at the Carnegie Institution have discovered a new efficient way to pump heat using crystals. The crystals can pump or extract heat, even on the nanoscale, so they could be used on computer chips to prevent overheating or even meltdown, which is currently a major limit to higher computer speeds. The research is published in the Physical Review Letters. Ronald Cohen, staff scientist at Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory and Maimon Rose, originally a high school intern now at the University of Chicago carried out the research. They performed ...

In the 'Journal of Neuroscience' (DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5912-11.2012) the researchers present the results of their study, showing how a local anesthetic can distinctly improve the motor skills of patients after a stroke. "Many stroke patients suffer from chronic impairment of the hand or of the complete arm," Professor Dr. Thomas Weiss explains. Together with expert colleagues the psychologist of the department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Jena University has been working for a number of years on a specialized medical training therapy which clearly enhances ...

Oxide catalysts, typically formulated as powders, play an integral role in many chemical transformations, including cleaning wastewater, curbing tailpipe emissions, and synthesizing most consumer products. Greener, more efficient chemical processes would benefit greatly from solid oxide catalysts that are choosier about their reactants, but achieving this has proven a challenge. Now researchers from Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory have developed a straightforward and generalizable process for making reactant-selective oxide catalysts by encapsulating ...

Several substances inhibiting so-called HDAC enzymes have been studied in trials searching for new anti-cancer drugs in recent years. "Trials have shown that HDAC inhibitors are very effective in arresting growth of cultured cancer cells. But apart from a very rare type of lymphoma, these drugs unfortunately do not clinically affect malignant tumors," says Prof. Dr. Olaf Witt, who heads a research department at DKFZ and is pediatrician at the Center for Child and Adolescent Medicine of Heidelberg University Hospital. In the cell, histone deacetylases (HDAC) are responsible ...

The majority of patients on the liver transplant waitlist who died received offers of high-quality donated livers that were declined prior to their death, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Therefore, efforts other than simply increasing the availability of donated livers or the number of offers are needed to substantially reduce the deaths among those waiting for a transplant. "Our findings suggest that waitlist deaths are not simply due to lack of donor organs, as many of us assume. Rather, ...

How women think their friends feel about their bodies influences their own body concerns, according to a new study by Dr. Louise Wasylkiw and Molly Williamson from Mount Alison University in Canada. Their work, which examines the role of friends in young women's body concerns, is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles. Research shows that friends influence how girls and women view and judge their own body weight, shape and size. What Wasylkiw and Williamson's work sheds light on, is how much of a young woman's body concerns are shaped by her perceptions of ...

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, November 5th, 2012—Watching a 3 dimensional (3D) film at home can be just as real and fun as going to a movie theater. Professor Yang-Hann Kim and Research Professor Jung-Woo Choi from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST, have succeeded in building an audio rendering system that will considerably improve the current 3D audio effects technology. 3D audio effects can be produced by stereo speakers, surround-sound speakers, speaker-arrays, or headphones, which essentially give an illusion to listeners that sounds are being produced ...

Over the last decade there has been an increased interest in developing resonators for gravitmetric sensing; however, the sensors' response to variations in temperature has prevented them from being used outside the laboratory. New sensors developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge negate the effects of temperature so that they may be used in industries including health care, telecommunications and environmental monitoring. Sensors built from high frequency bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonators consist of a piezoelectric layer sandwiched between two electrodes, ...

This press release is available in German. Nowadays, electron microscopes are an essential tool, especially in the field of materials science. At TU Vienna, electron beams are being created that possess an inner rotation, similarly to a tornado. These "vortex beams" cannot only be used to display objects, but to investigate material-specific properties - with precision on a nanometer scale. A new breakthrough in research now allows scientists to produce much more intense vortex beams than ever before. Quantum Tornado: the Electron as a Wave In a tornado, the individual ...

DETROIT— There has been great advancements in the development of the high-strength steel and the need for additional enhancements continue to grow. Various industries have a need for structural components that are lighter and stronger, improve energy efficiencies, reduce emissions and pollution increase safety and cost less to produce, particularly in the automotive industry. A group of researchers in Wayne State University's College of Engineering have been working to create advanced materials with high-yield strength, fracture toughness and ductility. Their efforts ...

DURHAM, N.C. – The cause of heart attacks or strokes among some patients treated with anti-platelet drugs may be different than for patients who have undergone surgical procedures to restore blood flow, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The finding -- reported Nov. 4, 2012, at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions annual meeting and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association – provides new insights into a subset of heart patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) whose risk for cardiovascular events remained unchanged despite ...

A cockatoo from a species not known to use tools in the wild has been observed spontaneously making and using tools for reaching food and other objects. A Goffin's cockatoo called 'Figaro', that has been reared in captivity and lives near Vienna, used his powerful beak to cut long splinters out of wooden beams in its aviary, or twigs out of a branch, to reach and rake in objects out of its reach. Researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Vienna filmed Figaro making and using these tools. How the bird discovered how to make and use tools is unclear but shows how ...

Clinicians should take caution when diagnosing a child who has a high fever and whose tests show evidence of adenovirus, and not assume the virus is responsible for Kawasaki-like symptoms. According to a new study from Nationwide Children's Hospital appearing in Clinical Infectious Diseases, adenovirus detection is not uncommon among children with Kawasaki disease. Kawasaki disease is a rare but serious condition in children that involves inflammation of the blood vessels, specifically the heart vessels that supply the heart tissue or coronary arteries. It is the most ...

This press release is available in Spanish. A tip about a folk remedy plant used in India and Africa to ward off bugs has led to the discovery of insect-repelling compounds. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have identified components of Jatropha curcas seed oil that are responsible for mosquito repellency. Researchers at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Natural Products Utilization Research Unit (NPURU) in Oxford, Miss., often find effective plant-derived compounds to deter insects by gathering plants in the wild and investigating those used ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Adopting a loser-pays-all rule for criminal litigation would likely be feasible only if the rule applied to defendants who are wealthy, says a study from a University of Illinois law professor. Nuno Garoupa, the H. Ross and Helen Workman Research Scholar in the College of Law, says a loser-pays-all rule could deter some crime when it's applied to either a corporation or an individual with deep pockets. But when defendants are not wealthy, such cost-shifting would be "wholly inappropriate," he says. "On the defendant's side, the problem is that a significant ...

The use of the World Health Organization's Surgical Safety Checklist in the operating room considerably lowers the risks of surgery. This is the conclusion of Axel Fudickar and co-authors in their article in Issue 42 of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109(42): 695). The most common errors in safety-related behavior in the operating room are attributable to inadequate communication and teamwork. The Surgical Safety Checklist, which was introduced by the World Health Organization in 2007, has the main effect of improving commmunication of the ...

A new University of Colorado Boulder study shows for the first time that episodes of reduced precipitation in the southern Rocky Mountains, especially during the 2001-02 drought, greatly accelerated development of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. The study, the first ever to chart the evolution of the current pine beetle epidemic in the southern Rocky Mountains, compared patterns of beetle outbreak in the two primary host species, the ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Teresa Chapman. The current mountain pine beetle outbreak in the ...