Academics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow are set to investigate the removal of space debris and deflection of asteroids – leading the first research-based training network of its kind in the world. The 'Stardust' project will train the next generation of scientists, engineers and policy-makers with Strathclyde leading 14 partners across Europe in a new €4 million programme. The European Commission-funded network will launch early next year and its pioneering research will have a significant impact on the future decisions of Europe on some of the most pressing ...

A study at the University of Valencia ensures that science fiction, especially the cinema, is very popular amongst secondary school students and teachers see it as a good way of motivating interest in the sciences. However, out of the 31 textbooks analysed, only nine make some form of reference to science fiction cinema as a teaching resource. "A current concern is that students are no longer studying science and engineering and this trend is more common amongst females. Science fiction can be useful in awaking the scientific vocation of younger students," as explained ...

Many quantum technologies—such as cryptography, quantum computing and quantum networks—hinge on the use of single photons. While she was at the Kastler Brossel Laboratory (affiliated with the Pierre and Marie Curie University, École Normale Supérieure and CNRS) in Paris, France, Virginia d'Auria and her colleagues identified the extent to which photon detector characteristics shape the preparation of a photon source designed to reliably generate single photons. In a paper about to be published in EPJ D, the French team determined the value of key source parameters that ...

The study in question has been carried out by a group of researchers at the Department of Biology at Lund University. The research team is specifically focusing on predictions regarding how our water resources will be like in the future, in terms of drinking water, recreation, fishing and biodiversity. They have now published findings on the impact of a warmer climate on lakes in the journal Nature Climate Change. "The most interesting and unexpected result from the study is that the reaction to climate change will vary between lakes; this has been observed previously ...

Our eyes are our window to the world. Thousands of people have lost their eyesight due to damages to the cornea, such as trauma, absent limbal stem cells or diseases. Transplantation of a donor cornea is the therapy of choice for a great number of those patients. Let alone the issue of scarce donor material, a sub-group of patients do not tolerate transplanted corneas, necessitating the employment of an alternative means of restoring eye sight. In Germany alone, around 7,000 patients are waiting to be treated. In close cooperation with the Aachen Centre of Technology ...

A University of Adelaide researcher has published results that suggest a possible new mechanism to control multiple sclerosis (MS). Dr Iain Comerford from the University's School of Molecular and Biomedical Science earned a three-year fellowship from MS Research Australia to work on this project. It is directed towards understanding how specific enzymes in cells of the immune system regulate immune cell activation and migration. Along with his colleagues, Professor Shaun McColl and PhD students Wendel Litchfield and Ervin Kara, he focused on a molecule known as PI3Kgamma, ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4—Scientists who study the ultra-small world of atoms know it is impossible to make certain simultaneous measurements, for example finding out both the location and momentum of an electron, with an arbitrarily high level of precision. Because measurements disturb the system, increased certainty in the first measurement leads to increased uncertainty in the second. The mathematics of this unintuitive concept – a hallmark of quantum mechanics – were first formulated by the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg at the beginning of the 20th century and became ...

Professor Jeff Shields and colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science have succeeded in their 15-year effort to unravel the life history of Hematodinium, a single-celled parasite that afflicts blue crabs and is of growing concern to aquaculture operations and wild fisheries around the world. Knowledge of the parasite's complex life cycle—gained by rearing of successive generations across a full year in a VIMS laboratory—will help guide efforts to understand the transmission of Hematodinium within crab populations and shrimp farms, and to develop best practices ...

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are gathering evidence this fall that the feisty fox squirrels scampering around campus are not just mindlessly foraging for food, but engaging in a long-term savings strategy. Humans could learn something about padding their nest eggs from squirrels' diversification efforts. Of course, with squirrels, it's not about money, but about nuts. "Think of them as little bankers depositing money and spreading it out in different funds, and doing some management of those funds," said Mikel Delgado, a doctoral student ...

Nonprescription medications are just as likely a cause of poisoning as prescription drugs, according to a new study by Timothy Wiegand, M.D. from the University of Rochester Medical Center in the US and colleagues. Their work, which analyzes the data from the second annual report of the Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC), is published online in Springer's Journal of Medical Toxicology. In 2010, the American College of Medical Toxicology established its case registry, ToxIC, which acts as a real-time surveillance system to identify current poisoning trends, and ...

NEW YORK - October 4, 2012 - Consider a Japanese-American woman strolling through a mall. If she passes by a UNIQLO store, is she more likely to opt for sushi than a hamburger when she reaches the food court? Would this cue of Japanese culture draw out her Japanese side? The answer, according to new research from Columbia Business School's Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership, and Aurelia Mok, Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong (she received her Ph.D. from Columbia Business School in 2010), depends on the degree to which she has integrated ...

This press release is available in Spanish.An international research team led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and researchers from Kiel University revealed the atomic‐level structure of the human peptidase enzyme meprin β (beta). The study was published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Now that we know how meprin β looks, how it works and how it relates to diseases, we can search for substances that stop its enzyme activities when they become harmful", explains Xavier Gomis‐Rüth, researcher at ...

Biologists from New York University have uncovered new ways our biological clock's neurons use electrical activity to help keep behavioral rhythms in order. The findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, also point to fresh directions for exploring sleep disorders and related afflictions. "This process helps explain how our biological clocks keep such amazingly good time," said Justin Blau, an associate professor of biology at NYU and one of the study's authors. Blau added that the findings may offer new pathways for exploring treatments to sleep disorders ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Although shoulder dislocation can occur at about the same rates in both younger and older patients, injuries in older patients are more likely to be overlooked or misdiagnosed, resulting in years of persistent pain and disability. A new study published in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons examines the differences in dislocation injuries between older and younger patients and suggests an approach to evaluate older patients that could help improve diagnosis and management of interrelated injuries. Study ...

Communication between K-12 teachers and parents has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Parent-teacher communication represents a primary form of parental support or involvement, elements which have recently received much attention given the connections between parental support and academic achievement. In fact, parental involvement at the K-12 level represents a major component in recent education policies at the national level. Joseph Mazer, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University and and Blair Thompson, assistant ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 4, 2012—Essential medications can be delivered as inhaled drugs to critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) who require mechanical ventilation to breathe. Aerosol drug delivery is highly complex, however, and if not done properly the medication will not reach the lungs and therapy will be ineffective. The efficacy and safety of aerosol delivery of drugs commonly used in the ICU such as antibiotics, diuretics, and anticoagulants is explored in depth in a review article published in Journal of Aerosol Medicine and Pulmonary Drug Delivery, ...

In recent years, educators have come to focus more and more on the importance of lab-based experimentation, hands-on participation, student-led inquiry, and the use of "manipulables" in the classroom. The underlying rationale seems to be that students are better able to learn when they can control the flow of their experience, or when their learning is "self-directed." While the benefits of self-directed learning are widely acknowledged, the reasons why a sense of control leads to better acquisition of material are poorly understood. Some researchers have highlighted ...

Philadelphia, PA – October 4, 2012—Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease in which individuals exhibit high levels of sugar in the blood, either due to insufficient production of insulin—the hormone that allows glucose to be absorbed by body cells—or the body's lack of response to insulin. Type 1 diabetes occurs due to loss or dysfunction of β-cells of the pancreas, the organ that produces insulin. Type 2 diabetes is caused by a defective glucose-insulin regulatory system. The most common control for diabetes is by subcutaneous injection of insulin analogues through ...

CHICAGO—Advanced surgical techniques such as robotic-assisted operations and minimally invasive surgical procedures may extend survival and improve recovery in octogenarians with bladder and colorectal cancers when compared with patients who undergo conventional open operations according to two new studies presented at the 2012 Annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Boston University investigators found robotic-assisted bladder procedures may be a viable option in selected patients aged 80 years and older who would not otherwise have an operation ...

PHILADELPHIA – LAM, short for pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis, affects about 1 in 10,000 women of childbearing age and is characterized by proliferation of smooth muscle-like cells in the lung, destruction of lung tissue, and growth of lymphatic vessels. The disease manifests itself in a wide variety of ways, so it is sometimes difficult to diagnose and there is no cure. The disease is caused by inactivation of either of two genes, TSC1 or TSC2, but to date no animal model has been able to replicate the pathologic features those mutations produce in humans. Now, ...

New research from the University of Helsinki, Finland, suggests that a mother's high blood pressure during pregnancy may have an effect on her child's thinking skills all the way into old age. The study is published in the October 3, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "High blood pressure and related conditions such as preeclampsia complicate about 10 percent of all pregnancies and can affect a baby's environment in the womb," said study author Katri Räikkönen, PhD. "Our study suggests that even declines in thinking ...

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere can be traced back thousands of years in the Greenland ice sheet. Using special analytical methods, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have determined how much methane originates from natural sources and how much is due to human activity. The results go all the way back to Roman times and up to the present, where more than half of the emissions are now man-made. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature. Methane is an important greenhouse gas, which today is partly emitted ...

An unexpected discovery by astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is forcing scientists to rethink their understanding of the environment in globular star clusters, tight-knit collections containing hundreds of thousands of stars. The astronomers used the VLA to study a globular cluster called Messier 22 (M22), a group of stars more than 10,000 light-years from Earth. They hoped to find evidence for a rare type of black hole in the cluster's center. They wanted to find what scientists call an intermediate-mass black hole, ...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – OCTOBER 3, 2012 – Today investigators at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City reported the first use of whole genome information for diagnosing critically ill infants. As reported in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes STAT-Seq, a whole genome sequencing approach - from blood sample to returning results to a physician - in about 50 hours. Currently, testing even a single gene takes six weeks or more. Speed of diagnosis is most critical in acute care situations, as in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where medical ...

Manta rays are more likely to gather together under either a new or a full moon, according to new research published Oct 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Fabrice Jaine and colleagues at the University of Queensland. The research identifies environmental factors that predict the abundance and behavior of manta rays at Lady Elliott Island in the Great Barrier Reef. The authors comment that knowing these factors is important for conservation efforts, "especially in the context of a changing climate and with targeted fisheries increasingly threatening manta ray populations ...