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, ...

Expectant mothers who dealt with the strain of a hurricane or major tropical storm passing nearby during their pregnancy had children who were at elevated risk for abnormal health conditions at birth, according to a study led by a Princeton University researcher that offers new insights into the effects of stress on pregnancy. The study used birth records from Texas and meteorological information to identify children born in the state between 1996 and 2008 whose mothers were in the path of a major tropical storm or hurricane during pregnancy. The children's health at ...

VIDEO: Uri Shumlak, UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics, describes the equipment that can produce extreme ultraviolet light to make smaller microchips. Click here for more information. A University of Washington lab has been working for more than a decade on fusion energy, harnessing the energy-generating mechanism of the sun. But in one of the twists of scientific discovery, on the way the researchers found a potential solution to a looming problem in the electronics ...

Genetic engineers and genomics researchers should welcome the news from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) where an international team of scientists has discovered a new and possibly more effective means of editing genomes. This discovery holds potentially big implications for advanced biofuels and therapeutic drugs, as genetically modified microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, are expected to play a key role in the green chemistry production of these and other valuable chemical products. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist with Berkeley Lab's Physical ...

Whether it is a phobia like a fear of flying, public speaking or spiders, or a diagnosis such as obsessive compulsive disorder, new research finds patients suffering from anxiety disorders showed the most improvement when treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in conjunction with a "transdiagnostic" approach – a model that allows therapists to apply one set of principles across anxiety disorders. The combination was more effective than CBT combined with other types of anxiety disorder treatments, like relaxation training according to Peter Norton, associate ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (06/28/2012) — University of Minnesota engineering researchers are leading an international team that has made a major breakthrough in developing a catalyst used during chemical reactions in the production of gasoline, plastics, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, and other chemicals. The discovery could lead to major efficiencies and cost-savings in these multibillion-dollar industries. The research is to be published in the June 29, 2012 issue of the leading scientific journal Science. "The impact of this new discovery is enormous," said the team's lead ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Scientists could take greater strides toward crop improvement if there were wider adoption of advanced techniques used to understand the mechanisms that allow plants to adapt to their environments, current and former Purdue University researchers say. In a perspective for the journal Science, Brian Dilkes, a Purdue assistant professor of genetics, and Ivan Baxter, a research computational biologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, argue that today's technology could allow scientists to match physiological and ...

Researchers using three different telescopes -- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton in space, and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia -- may have found the fastest moving pulsar ever seen. The evidence for this potentially record-breaking speed comes, in part, from the features highlighted in this composite image. X-ray observations from Chandra (green) and XMM-Newton (purple) have been combined with infrared data from the 2MASS project and optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey (colored red, green and blue, but appearing in the image as white). The ...

An international team of astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made an unparalleled observation, detecting significant changes in the atmosphere of a planet located beyond our solar system. The scientists conclude the atmospheric variations occurred in response to a powerful eruption on the planet's host star, an event observed by NASA's Swift satellite. "The multiwavelength coverage by Hubble and Swift has given us an unprecedented view of the interaction between a flare on an active star and the atmosphere of a giant planet," said lead researcher ...

Scientists convening at the largest-ever meeting of tropical biologists congratulated Brazil for its global leadership on environment and science, but warned that recent developments could jeopardize that position, undermining progress on reducing deforestation, protecting indigenous lands, and safeguarding ecosystems outside the Amazon rainforest. Forgoing the Rio+20 Earth Summit, some 1200 tropical biologists and conservationists met in Bonito, Brazil at the 49th annual meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) to present and discuss topics ...

NASA's TRMM satellite provided data that allowed scientists to calculate Tropical Storm Debby's rainfall totals across Florida. The highest rainfall totals from June 20-27 topped 380 mm (~15 inches) in a wide patch of central Florida from around Titusville on the east coast. Even though it never became more than a tropical storm, the residents of northern and central Florida will remember Debby. Debby, which formed as a tropical storm on the 23rd of June 2012 in the central Gulf of Mexico, took three full days to reach the Big Bend of Florida just 350 miles away. Although ...

Tropical Storm Dokuri weakened into a tropical depression today, but NASA infrared satellite imagery is still showing some areas of strong convection and thunderstorms in the storm and they're being pushed away from the center. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Dokuri on June 27 on 0435 UTC (12:35 a.m. EDT). Infrared data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard indicated there were still some strong showers and thunderstorms within the system. Those cloud top temperatures were colder than -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius), indicating ...

Authentik Artists is proud to announce the signing of alternative/pop band Shining Through from San Diego, CA. The group is lead by guitarist/vocalist James Clelland, bassist Hutton Baird and drummer Jeremy Sampier. Shining Through recently finished their latest EP Stripes with producer/engineer Brian Grider in Corona, CA at his SCM Recordings studio. The album will see the release of their hard-hitting focus track and music video for Stripes on July 12th through Blank TV. The band also released their first track "Balance Beam" online this week. Scheduled ...

The Coalition of Theatres of Color saluted its members, the historic Negro Ensemble Company's 45th anniversary and the acclaimed Audelco Awards for Excellence in Black Theatre's 40th anniversary, with "Award-Winning Journeys in Black Theatre," a special press event hosted by award-winning actors Lillias White and Ralph Carter on June 25 at the Dwyer Cultural Center in Harlem. The world famous Negro Ensemble Company (NEC) has alumni encompassing today's superstars in television and film. There are Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Lou Gossett, Jr and Oscar ...

As one of the country's leading developers of Magento, the number one shopping cart technology for internet merchandising, Orange Collar Media has widened its expertise to the most flexible and functional eCommerce solution available. Orange Collar Media has held the prestigious Gold Partner status in Magento's Solutions Partners Program since the summer of 2011. Achieving Magento Gold Partner indicates Magento's recognition of Orange Collar Media as one of the country's leading developers of their eCommerce platform. On Friday, June 1st, Orange Collar Media successfully ...

Muli Management Pty Ltd, an Australian software developer of construction and project accounting solutions, today announced that their software can now support the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) requirement for Contractor Reporting coming into effect on July 1 2012. The ATO had announced that as part of the 2011-12 Federal Budget, the Government had announced the introduction of taxable payments reporting for businesses in the building and construction industry. From July 1st this year, all businesses in this industry are required to report the total payments they ...

June, 2012 Publisher Humberto Fortuna announces the new Celebrity Cover of the July 2012 issue of 55+ Magazine, the preferred, free, Bi lingual (English / Spanish) Senior Magazine Publication for South Florida. Suze Orman, through a great deal of hard work and dedication, she became America's Personal Finance Expert. You know her best from her weekly television show, "The Suze Orman Show" as well as from her seven PBS specials. 55+ had the pleasure of speaking with Suze about her life, her success and her advice and recommendations for our readers. 55+ Magazine ...