Montreal, June 28, 2012 – Poetry has been following the rules for centuries. From the strict structure of the haiku to the rhythmic rhyme of the ballad, verse can be daunting to both professional poets and amateur auteurs. But poems are also media for the masses and one Concordia researcher is using mass media to put them back in the hands of the people. Jason Lewis's work is an integral part of Concordia's Department of Design and Computation Arts, with projects ranging from computer game development to typographic design. A poet as well as a techie, the associate professor ...

In an important step towards more practical quantum information processing, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of California, San Diego; and the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy, have demonstrated the first heralded single photon source made from silicon. This source complements two other recently developed silicon-based technologies—interferometers for manipulating the entanglement of photons and single photon detectors—needed to build a quantum optical circuit or a secure quantum communication system. The ...

New Rochelle, NY, June 28, 2012—Games that promote health can improve the well-being of employees, saving employers direct and indirect health care costs. Employers can more readily reap these benefits by offering game-based services that educate their employees about health and wellness and improve physical and psychological fitness, according to an Editorial in Games for Health Journal a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The Editorial is available free on the Games for Health Journal website. "Wellness programs using health games have the potential ...

(Boston) -- In a genome-wide association (GWA) study, researchers from Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH) have identified several genes which influence degeneration of the hippocampus, the part of the brain most associated with Alzheimer disease (AD). The study, which currently appears online as a Rapid Communication in the Annals of Neurology, demonstrates the efficacy of endophenotypes for broadening the understanding of the genetic basis of and pathways leading to AD. AD is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder for which there ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (June 28, 2012) – Harnessing the power of the sun has inspired scientists and engineers to look for ways to turn sunlight into clean energy to heat houses, fuel factories and power devices. While a majority of this research focuses on energy production, some researchers are looking at the potential uses of these novel solar technologies in other areas. Boston College Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang's work with silicon nanowires and his related construct, Nanonets, has shown these stable, tiny wire-like structures can be used in processes ...

Archaeologists working at the site of La Corona in Guatemala have discovered a 1,300-year-old-year Maya text that provides only the second known reference to the so-called "end date" of the Maya calendar, December 21, 2012. The discovery, one of the most significant hieroglyphic finds in decades, was announced today at the National Palace in Guatemala. "This text talks about ancient political history rather than prophecy," says Marcello A. Canuto, director of Tulane's Middle American Research Institute and co-director of the excavations at La Corona. Since 2008, Canuto ...

Training sessions for Team GB's swimmers have been getting a helping hand from a new system incorporating cutting-edge movement tracking and sensor technologies. From starting dives to tumble turns the state-of-the-art coaching aid is the first of its kind to be able to track movement wirelessly through water. The system has been developed at Loughborough University's Sports Technology Institute in conjunction with British Swimming, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). Other partners are UK Sport, Imperial College London ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Clergy's practice of putting others first can be detrimental to their own health, say researchers at Duke University. Pastors have been found to have higher-than-average rates of chronic disease and depression. But it may be difficult to get pastors to seek care because they typically default to caring for others first. Duke researchers have been trying to design health programs that will be more effective for clergy, given these tendencies. "Clergy recognize the importance of caring for themselves, but doing so takes a back seat to fulfilling their ...

Transplanting previously frozen ovarian tissue back into female cancer survivors can lead to long-term hormonal function and preservation of fertility, according to a new study by Samuel Kim from the University of Kansas Medical Center in the US. His work¹, which shows that hormonal function was restored in five women 12-20 weeks after transplantation, and in one case lasted for more than seven years, appears online in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics², published by Springer. Many female cancer patients want to remain fertile, and choose to freeze some ...

URBANA -- Steve Moose, an associate professor of maize functional genomics at the University of Illinois and his graduate student Wes Barber think they may have discovered a new source of heterosis, or hybrid vigor, in maize. They have been looking at small RNAs (sRNAs), a class of double-stranded RNA molecules that are 20 to 25 nucleotides in length. "Hybrid vigor" refers to the increased vigor or general health, resistance to disease, and other superior qualities arising from the crossbreeding of genetically different plants. "We've always known that there's a genetic ...

Athens, Ga. – Weedy plants, many introduced to the U.S. for sale through plant nurseries, are responsible for extensive environmental damage and economic costs. Although legislation restricts the introduction of certain species, the procedures used to select species for inclusion on the restricted list are haphazard and out of date. To meet the need for more systematic weed risk analysis, researchers at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology and the University of California, Davis have developed a "cost-sensitive" model to determine when importing a given plant ...

CHICAGO --- Today's senior citizens are reporting fewer visual impairment problems than their counterparts from a generation ago, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Improved techniques for cataract surgery and a reduction in the prevalence of macular degeneration may be the driving forces behind this change, the researchers said. "From 1984 until 2010, the decrease in visual impairment in those 65 and older was highly statistically significant," said Angelo P. Tanna, M.D., first author of the study. "There was little change in visual impairments in adults ...

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they've found. "We do not yet know what will be shown on July 4th," says Ian Hinchliffe, a theoretical physicist in the Physics Division at the U.S. ...

For the first time comparable migration data is available for almost every country of the world. To date, records were incompatible between nations and especially by gender and age, nonexistent. Emilio Zagheni from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, for the first time provides a rich migration database by compiling the global flow of millions of e-mails. "Where estimates of demographic flows exist, they are often outdated and largely inconsistent," says MPIDR researcher Emilio Zagheni. Official records are difficult to use for ...

Researchers at the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) and four partner organizations have measured for the first time concentrations of 13 perfluoroalkyl compounds (PFCs) in five different endangered species of sea turtles. While PFC toxicology studies have not yet been conducted on turtles, the levels of the compounds seen in all five species approach the amounts known to cause adverse health effects in other animals. PFCs are man-made compounds that have many uses including stain-resistant coatings, fire-fighting foams and emulsifiers in plastics manufacturing. They have ...

In yet another Olympian feat of measurement, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently calibrated a tape that will be used to measure out the distance of this summer's Olympic marathon—a distance of 26 miles 385 yards—to 1 part in 1,000. Measurement is a vital aspect of the Olympic Games. Officials measure the height of jumps, the speed of races, and the mass of weights to determine who wins a medal and who goes home. The marathon is no different. Because of the difficulties in measuring out the distance, the International Association ...

Gold is not necessarily precious—at least not as a coating on atomic force microscope (AFM) probes. JILA researchers found that removing an AFM probe's gold coating—until now considered helpful—greatly improved force measurements performed in a liquid, the medium favored for biophysical studies such as stretching DNA or unfolding proteins. As described in Nano Letters,* stripping the gold from the diving-board-shaped probe, or cantilever, with a brief chemical bath improved the precision and stability of force measurements about 10-fold. The advance is expected to quickly ...

Civic leaders, arts organizations, donors and government officials can better plan new or expanded arts facilities by first focusing on the arts organizations' missions and assessing demand for the projects, according to a new study from the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. The study, "Set in Stone," looks at a major building boom of museums, performing arts centers and theaters in the United States from 1994 to 2008. It is the first scientifically prepared study of its kind and was requested both by cultural leaders and major foundations that had, ...

(Garrison, NY) A potentially powerful strategy for studying the significance of human genetic variants is to recruit people identified by previous genetic research as having particular variants. But that strategy poses ethical challenges to informed consent, as well as potential risks to the people recruited, and it is unlikely that there is a "one-size-fits-all" solution, concludes an article in IRB: Ethics & Human Research. The advantage of "recruitment by genotype" is that it eliminates the time-consuming, expensive process of screening new populations to find subjects ...

A 100 kilometre-wide crater has been found in Greenland, the result of a massive asteroid or comet impact a billion years before any other known collision on Earth. The spectacular craters on the Moon formed from impacts with asteroids and comets between 3 and 4 billion years ago. The early Earth, with its far greater gravitational mass, must have experienced even more collisions at this time – but the evidence has been eroded away or covered by younger rocks. The previously oldest known crater on Earth formed 2 billion years ago and the chances of finding an even older ...

Irvine, Calif., June 28, 2012 — An international consortium of Huntington's disease experts, including several from the Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center at UC Irvine, has generated a human model of the deadly inherited disorder directly from the skin cells of affected patients. The re-created neurons, which live in a petri dish, will help researchers better understand what disables and kills brain cells in people with HD and let them gauge the effects of potential drug therapies on cells that are otherwise locked deep in the brain. UCI scientists were part ...

Athens, Ga. – Invasive species such as kudzu, privet and garlic mustard can devastate ecosystems, and, until now, scientists had little reason to believe that native plants could mount a successful defense. A new University of Georgia study shows that some native clearweed plants have evolved resistance to invasive garlic mustard plants—and that the invasive plants appear to be waging a counterattack. The study, published in the early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to provide the first evidence of coevolution between ...

An international team of astronomers have discovered evidence that our Milky Way had an encounter with a small galaxy or massive dark matter structure perhaps as recently as 100 million years ago, and as a result of that encounter it is still ringing like a bell. The discovery is based on observations of 300,000 nearby Milky Way stars by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Stars in the disk of the Milky Way move up and down at a speed of about 20-30 kilometers per second while orbiting the center of the galaxy at a brisk 220 kilometers per second. The positions and motions ...

We've all heard that eating fish is good for our brains and memory. But what is it about DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish, that makes our memory sharper? Medical researchers at the University of Alberta discovered a possible explanation and just published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. Principal investigator Yves Sauve and his team discovered lab models fed a high-DHA diet had 30 per cent higher levels of DHA in the memory section of the brain, known as the hippocampus, when compared to animal models ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—Molecular geneticists call big boss proteins that switch on broad developmental or metabolic programs "master regulators," as in master regulators of muscle development or fat metabolism. One such factor, the Activating Transcription Factor 6α (ATF6α) protein, takes charge following a cellular crisis known as endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, which is triggered by the accumulation of misfolded and aggregated proteins. Molecularly, the ER stress pathway is always poised for action. Inactive ATF6α is normally embedded in cellular membranes, ...