Every second, around 25 million cell divisions take place in our bodies. This process is driven by microtubule filaments which continually grow and shrink. A new study shows how so-called motor proteins in the cytosol can control their dynamics. The cytoskeleton plays a central role in the process of cell division. It is composed in large part of protein filaments known as microtubules, which also help determine the size, shape and mobility of a cell. In a new study, LMU biophysicist Erwin Frey and his colleagues Anna Melbinger and Louis Reese have used a theoretical ...

Heart attacks during pregnancy are uncommon, but the prevalence of heart disease in pregnant mothers has increased over the past decade as more women delay pregnancy until they are older. These women, who are generally less physically active than their younger peers, tend to have higher cholesterol levels and are at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes. While research has shown that the heart typically functions better during pregnancy due to a rise in cardiac pumping capacity to meet increased demands, a new UCLA study in rats and mice demonstrates that heart ...

WASHINGTON – Researchers have identified genetic markers that may influence whether a person finishes high school and goes on to college, according to a national longitudinal study of thousands of young Americans. The study is in the July issue of Developmental Psychology, a publication of the American Psychological Association. "Being able to show that specific genes are related in any way to academic achievement is a big step forward in understanding the developmental pathways among young people," said the study's lead author, Kevin Beaver, PhD, a professor at the ...

Women in countries with great gender inequality are more likely than men to support authoritarian values, according to a new study of 54 countries. The shift away from beliefs in independence and freedom is the result, social psychologists say, of authoritarianism helping such women cope with a threatening environment. "If a person is authoritarian, they are more likely to follow what group leaders ask them to do, and to follow the crowd more generally," says Mark Brandt of DePaul University in Chicago, a co-author of the paper just published online in Personality and ...

Shoes, cars, airplanes, rotor blades for wind turbines, self-adhesive notes, plasters – this is just a sample of the many products featuring adhesives. More than 820,000 tons of adhesive were produced in Germany in 2010, according to the German Adhesives Association – Industrieverband Klebstoffe. To this day the majority of adhesives are manufactured from petroleum-based materials. Only gradually is the industry also offering adhesives made from renewable raw materials such as starch, cellulose, dextrins, and proteins. Pioneering products featuring these new adhesives include ...

CINCINNATI—Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) Hoxworth Blood Center have discovered a new gene target for leukemia therapy. These findings, slated for the July 26, 2012 print issue of Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, could lead to cellular targets for a patient population that otherwise may not have desirable outcomes and could potentially stop the onset of leukemia before it begins. A team led by Jose Cancelas, MD, PhD, an associate professor of pediatrics at the UC College of Medicine and director of the research division at ...

The use of compact laser accelerators for cancer therapy with charged particles such as protons could become possible in the future if scientists succeed in generating protons with very high energies. Physicists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) directed the light of the high power laser DRACO perpendicularly and obliquely onto a thin metal foil; thus, permitting them to demonstrate for the first time that accelerated protons follow the direction of the laser light. By incorporating this new data into a conventional model describing the laser particle acceleration, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The news a cancer patient most fears is that the disease has spread and become much more difficult to treat. A new method to isolate and grow the most dangerous cancer cells could enable new research into how cancer spreads and, ultimately, how to fight it. University of Illinois researchers, in collaboration with scientists at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China, published their results in the journal Nature Materials. "This may open the door for understanding and blocking metastatic colonization, the most devastating step in ...

MADISON –- Though worries about "nuclear winter" have faded since the end of the Cold War, existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still hold the potential for devastating global impacts. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Rutgers University have found that the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan would greatly reduce yields of staple crops, even in distant countries. The work, by Mutlu Ozdogan and Chris Kucharik of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental ...

As each day passes, the pace of life seems to accelerate – demands on productivity continue ever upward and there is hardly ever a moment when we aren't, in some way, in touch with our family, friends, or coworkers. While moments for reflection may be hard to come by, a new article suggests that the long-lost art of introspection —even daydreaming — may be an increasingly valuable part of life. In the article, published in the July issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychological scientist Mary Helen ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center working with colleagues at three other institutions have validated a link between a rare genetic variant and the risk of glioma, the most common and lethal type of brain tumor. The validation study also uncovered an association between the same rare genetic variant and improved rates of survival for patients with glioma. The study, the first to confirm a rare susceptibility variant in glioma, appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Medical Genetics, a journal published by the British Medical Association. "Glioma is a poorly ...

Troy, N.Y. – New research led by chemists in the Baruch '60 Center for Biochemical Solar Energy Research at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is seeking to detail the individual steps of highly efficient reactions that convert sunlight into chemical energy within plants and bacteria. In a paper published in the recent edition [DOI:10.1039/C2EE21210B] of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Energy & Environmental Science, the scientists – led by K. V. Lakshmi, Rensselaer assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology and scientific lead at the Baruch '60 Center ...

CINCINNATI—Using a mouse model of autism, researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have successfully treated an autism spectrum disorder characterized by severe cognitive impairment. The research team, led by Joe Clark, PhD, a professor of neurology at UC, reports its findings online July 2, 2012, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a publication of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. The disorder, creatine transporter deficiency (CTD) is caused by a mutation in the creatine transporter protein ...

The identification of key proteins in a group of heat-loving bacteria by researchers at the Department of Energy's BioEnergy Science Center could help light a fire under next-generation biofuel production. Scientists have long been on the hunt for cost-effective ways to break down complex plant material such as switchgrass in order to access sugars that are fermented to make biofuels. Conventional processes involve the addition of commercially produced enzymes to break down the cellulose. BESC scientists are exploring alternative options, including the use of certain ...

A team of researchers have found that schizophrenia or bipolar disorder seen in parents or siblings was associated with increased risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study was published online by Archives of General Psychiatry on Monday, July 2. Avi Reichenberg, PhD, previously a Visiting Professor and now a new faculty member at the Seaver Autism Center and the Department of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and colleagues, used population registers from Sweden and Israel to examine whether a family history of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or both, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. --Black men, especially those living in low-income, urban areas, face many societal stressors, including racial discrimination, incarceration and poverty. In addition, these men have poorer health outcomes. Now, a University of Missouri faculty member has studied these men's efforts to negotiate social environments that are not designed to help them attain good health and success. "Too often, researchers focus on Black men's weaknesses rather than their strengths," said Michelle Teti, assistant professor of health sciences in the MU School of Health Professions. ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The world has gotten smaller and more accessible since applications like Google Earth became mainstream, says UC Santa Barbara Professor of Geography Michael Goodchild. However, there is still a long way to go, and there are important steps to take to get there. His perspective, shared with many co-authors around the world, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in a paper titled, "Next-generation Digital Earth." Based on former vice-president Al Gore's 1992 vision of a digital replica of Earth, the paper examines ...

A new species of feathered dinosaur discovered in southern Germany is further changing the perception of how predatory dinosaurs looked. The fossil of Sciurumimus albersdoerferi, which lived about 150 million years ago, provides the first evidence of feathered theropod dinosaurs that are not closely related to birds. The fossil is described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today. "This is a surprising find from the cradle of feathered dinosaur work, the very formation where the first feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx was collected ...

Students receiving special-education services for behavioral disorders and those with more obvious disabilities are more likely to be bullied than their general-education counterparts – and are also more likely to bully other students, a new study shows. The findings, published in the Journal of School Psychology, highlight the complexity of bullying's nature and the challenges in addressing the problem, said lead author Susan Swearer, professor of school psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "These results paint a fairly bleak picture for students with ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Scientists say they have assembled more completely the string of genetic letters that could control how well parrots learn to imitate their owners and other sounds. The research team unraveled the specific regions of the parrots' genome using a new technology, single molecule sequencing, and fixing its flaws with data from older DNA-decoding devices. The team also decoded hard-to-sequence genetic material from corn and bacteria as proof of their new sequencing approach. The results of the study appeared online July 1 in the journal Nature Biotechnology. Single ...

On July 5, NASA will launch a mission called the Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation or SUMI, to study the intricate, constantly changing magnetic fields on the sun in a hard-to-observe area of the sun's low atmosphere called the chromosphere. Magnetic fields, and the intense magnetic energy they help marshal, lie at the heart of how the sun can create huge explosions of light such as solar flares and eruptions of particles such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). While there are already instruments – both on the ground and flying in space – that can measure these ...

For people with heart conditions and other ailments that require monitoring, life can be complicated by constant hospital visits and time-consuming tests. But what if much of the testing done at hospitals could be conducted in the patient's home, office, or car? Scientists foresee a time when medical monitoring devices are integrated seamlessly into the human body, able to track a patient's vital signs and transmit them to his doctors. But one major obstacle continues to hinder technologies like these: electronics are too rigid. Researchers at the McCormick School of ...

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS – How people make choices depends on many factors, but a new study finds people consistently prefer the options that come first: first in line, first college to offer acceptance, first salad on the menu – first is considered best. The paper, "First is Best," recently published in PLoS ONE by Dana R. Carney, assistant professor of management, University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and co-author Mahzarin R. Banaji, professor of psychology, Harvard University. In three experiments, when ...

Deleting a single gene in the cerebellum of mice can cause key autistic-like symptoms, researchers have found. They also discovered that rapamycin, a commonly used immunosuppressant drug, prevented these symptoms. The deleted gene is associated with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC), a rare genetic condition. Since nearly 50 percent of all people with TSC develop autism, the researchers believe their findings will help us better understand the condition's development. "We are trying to find out if there are specific circuits in the brain that lead to autism-spectrum ...

The South Pacific hurricane Tropical Depression season normally ends in April but Tropical Depression 21P has developed in the South Pacific Ocean between Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands from "System 91P," a low pressure area. NASA's TRMM Satellite passed over Tropical Depression 21P and captured rainfall dates and cloud heights. TRMM is the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite that is managed by NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA. The center of Tropical Depression 21P was directly beneath the TRMM satellite when it passed over on June 28, 2012 ...