ITHACA, N.Y. – In things thick and thin: Cornell physicists explain how fluids – such as paint or paste - behave by observing how micron-sized suspended particles dance in real time. Using high-speed microscopy, the scientists unveil how these particles are responding to fluid flows from shear – a specific way of stirring. (Science, Sept. 2). Observations by Xiang Cheng, Cornell post-doctoral researcher in physics and Itai Cohen, Cornell associate professor of physics, are the first to link direct imaging of the particle motions with changes in liquid viscosity. Combining ...

HOUSTON -- Chromatin - the intertwined histone proteins and DNA that make up chromosomes – constantly receives messages that pour in from a cell’s intricate signaling networks: Turn that gene on. Stifle that one. But chromatin also talks back, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report today in the journal Cell, issuing orders affecting a protein that has nothing to do with chromatin's central role in gene transcription - the first step in protein formation. "Our findings indicate chromatin might have another life as a direct signaling molecule, ...

The American Thoracic Society has issued the first-ever guidelines on the use of fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) that address when to use FENO and how to interpret FENO levels in different clinical settings. The guidelines, which appear in the September 1 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, are graded based on the available evidence in the literature. "There are existing guidelines to measure FENO but none to interpret the results," noted Raed A. Dweik, MD, chair of the guideline writing committee and professor of medicine and director ...

Each taste, from sweet to salty, is sensed by a unique set of neurons in the brains of mice, new research reveals. The findings demonstrate that neurons that respond to specific tastes are arranged discretely in what the scientists call a "gustotopic map." This is the first map that shows how taste is represented in the mammalian brain. There's no mistaking the sweetness of a ripe peach for the saltiness of a potato chip – in part due to highly specialized, selectively-tuned cells in the tongue that detect each unique taste. Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NIH ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, September 1, 2011— A Ben-Gurion University of the Negev research group led by Prof. Ohad Birk has identified a gene whose defect specifically causes myopia or nearsightedness. In an article appearing online in the American Journal of Human Genetics today, Birk and his team reveal that a mutation in LEPREL1 has been shown to cause myopia. "We are finally beginning to understand at a molecular level why nearsightedness occurs," Prof. Birk says. The discovery was a group effort at BGU's Morris Kahn Laboratory of Human Genetics at the National Institute ...

Our brain is divided into two hemispheres, which are linked through only a few connections. However, we do not seem to have a problem to create a coherent image of our environment – our perception is not "split" in two halves. For the seamless unity of our subjective experience, information from both hemispheres needs to be efficiently integrated. The corpus callosum, the largest fibre bundle connecting the left and right side of our brain, plays a major role in this process. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt investigated whether ...

Children who go through puberty at a faster rate are more likely to act out and to suffer from anxiety and depression, according to a study by researchers at Penn State, Duke University and the University of California, Davis. The results suggest that primary care providers, teachers and parents should look not only at the timing of puberty in relation to kids' behavior problems, but also at the tempo of puberty -- how fast or slow kids go through puberty. "Past work has examined the timing of puberty and shown the negative consequences of entering puberty at an early ...

Teacher, pilot, nurse or engineer? Sex hormones strongly influence people's interests, which affect the kinds of occupations they choose, according to psychologists. "Our results provide strong support for hormonal influences on interest in occupations characterized by working with things versus people," said Adriene M. Beltz, graduate student in psychology, working with Sheri A. Berenbaum, professor of psychology and pediatrics, Penn State. Berenbaum and her team looked at people's interest in occupations that exhibit sex differences in the general population and ...

In the first long-term study of the health impacts of the World Trade Center (WTC) collapse on September 11, 2001, researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York have found substantial and persistent mental and physical health problems among 9/11 first responders and recovery workers. The data are published this week in a special 9/11 issue of the medical journal Lancet. The Mount Sinai World Trade Center Clinical Center of Excellence and Data Center evaluated more than 27,000 police officers, construction workers, firefighters, and municipal workers over the ...

VIDEO: This video uses animation to piece together cryotomograms of Acetonema longum cells at different stages of the sporulation process. Cryotomograms appear in black and white. Inner membranes are shown in... Click here for more information. PASADENA, Calif.—Bacteria can generally be divided into two classes: those with just one membrane and those with two. Now researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have used a powerful imaging technique to find ...

Almost two years ago Rainer Blatt's and Christan Roos' research groups from the University of Innsbruck recreated the properties of a particle moving close to speed of light in a quantum system. They encoded the state of the particle into a highly cooled calcium atom and used lasers to manipulate it according to equations proposed by the famous quantum physicist Paul Dirac. Thereby, the scientists were able to simulate so called Zitterbewegung (quivering motion) of relativistic particles, which had never been observed directly in nature before. In the current work, the ...

Casino-Mate has stepped up to the demand for a highly popular game to stand as the Welcoming Free Spins game for new players. This Australian Casino has nominated ThunderStruck 2 as the first stop for new players at the casino. The induction of ThunderStruck 2 Video Slot game as the introductory game for new players at the casino is set to show players the quality of games that they will be experiencing at the casino. All the games are powered by Microgaming , an online gaming creator and provider. There are, in total, over 550 games available at the online casino, ...

The activity of online communities does not grow in line with the number of users, according to a model recently published in the European Physical Journal B. The Internet has given rise to its own sorting devices. Among these, tagging consists of assigning user-chosen keywords to a piece of information (such as a digital image) to facilitate searches. Lingfei Wu, a researcher at the City University of Hong Kong's Department of Media and Communication, used the tagging behaviour of social media application users to study the growth of online communities' activity. Wu ...

The nature of the connective tissue surrounding lung cancer nests can help predict the aggressiveness of squamous cell carcinoma, according to research published in the September issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the major cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide; its two major subtypes are adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma (SqCC). Although many reports have described the prognostic markers for adenocarcinoma, less research ...

Operating on the wrong side of a patient's body is a horrible mistake that should never happen. Unfortunately, it occurs more often than you think. Based on data submitted to the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare, wrong site surgeries and procedures occur nearly 40 times per week across the U.S. The aftermath of wrong site and wrong side surgeries are devastating. In addition to the pain of additional surgery and a lifetime of disfigurement, these mistakes can leave lasting emotional scars. Victims of this type of error may have grounds for a surgery ...

Microbes are omnipresent on earth. They are found as free-living microorganisms as well as in communities with other higher organisms. Thanks to modern biological techniques we are now able to address the complex communities and study the role of individual microorganisms and enzymes in more detail. Microbacterium arborescens is a bacterium, which can be found in the guts of herbivorous caterpillars. The Department of Bioorganic Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology studies interactions between insects and microorganisms which live in their digestive ...

Under Virginia law prosecutors bear the burden to prove each and every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. In short, that means they bear the burden of excluding every reasonable hypothesis of innocence. In drug cases there are generally three prevailing defenses. Each defense is fact driven so although a defense may work in one case it may not actually work on all. The three prevailing defenses in drug cases are (1) search and seizure issues (2) possession issues and (3) whether the commonwealth can prove that the substance found is illegal. All searches ...

WASHINGTON — Facial expressions have been called the "universal language of emotion," but people from different cultures perceive happy, sad or angry facial expressions in unique ways, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "By conducting this study, we hoped to show that people from different cultures think about facial expressions in different ways," said lead researcher Rachael E. Jack, PhD, of the University of Glasgow. "East Asians and Western Caucasians differ in terms of the features they think constitute an angry face ...

Distracted driving takes a horrible toll on innocent Missouri drivers every year. It does not matter whether the distraction comes from applying makeup, checking a map, talking to a passenger or changing a radio station; a moment's negligence, even at moderate speeds, is enough for a car or truck to miss a stop sign or veer into an opposing lane and cause a serious or fatal auto accident. Missouri personal injury attorneys are all too familiar with the horrific harm that such accidents can cause to injury victims and surviving family members. Personal electronic devices ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1—Blood tests are important diagnostic tools. They accurately tease-out vanishingly small concentrations of proteins and other molecules that help give a picture of overall health or signal the presence of specific diseases. Current testing procedures, however, are expensive and time-consuming, while sophisticated test equipment is bulky and difficult to transport. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Toledo in Ohio has addressed all these drawbacks by developing a low-cost, portable technique that is able to quickly and reliably detect ...

It might seem like an accident that could only happen in a horror movie, but the reality of unsecured cargo is much more serious and more prevalent than most people assume. AAA reported that around 25,000 vehicle accidents and 80-90 deaths occur as a direct result of unsecured cargo per year. Unsecured cargo is essentially insufficient stability of the materials a trucker is transporting. Typically, materials transported by 18-wheelers include steel coils, lumber, auto parts and various construction supplies, but the list can also extends to liquid or hazardous materials ...

How do you protect your child's safety when there are 30,000 tons of potentially dangerous toys pouring into the United States from foreign countries every year? These boatloads of foreign toys account for 95 percent of the toys sold in the U.S. every year -- and many of them cause serious injuries to children. Of course, American-made toys can cause children's injuries too. Regardless of their origin, toys should not put children at undue risk of injury. Trouble in Toyland Report That's why a leading consumer advocacy group, U.S. PIRG, tries to educate the public ...

Patients with ALK-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) responded significantly better to pemetrexed (brand name: Alimta) than patients whose cancer did not show ALK translocation, according to research published in the September issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). Lung adenocarcinoma can display genetic mutations, including anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangement and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations. Knowing whether the tumor displays ...

Porphyrins are organic molecules that appear in the central region of macromolecules such as chlorophyll and hemoglobin, and have a metal atom at their center that determines their specific function. The importance of these molecules in the field of molecular electronics lies in their "ease of transfer electrons from one region to another" explains the responsible of the work at the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center (a joint research center of the CSIC, the University of Oviedo and the Government of the Principality of Asturias) Víctor Manuel García. ...

Commercial tractor-trailers are involved in an increasing number of serious, and often fatal, accidents. To learn why, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducted the Large Truck Crash Causation Study (LTCCS). This study provided vital information, including the reasons behind serious crashes involving large trucks. Researchers reviewed 120,000 crashes that occurred between April 2001 and December 2003 and selected a nationally representative sample of 963 accidents. These accidents, ...