CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Photographs of moving objects are almost always a little blurry. To make their work look as much like conventional film as possible, game and movie animators try to reproduce this blur. But producing blurry images is actually more computationally complex than producing perfectly sharp ones. In August, at this year's Siggraph conference — the premier computer-graphics conference — researchers from the Computer Graphics Group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present a pair of papers that describe new techniques for ...

Hippocampus adapts to environmental stresses Stockpiles neuronal stem cells under deprived conditions, produces more neurons under favorable conditions Knowledge of how neural stem cells produce neurons could lead to potential treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (NEW YORK, NY, June 13, 2011) – Scientists have known for years that neurogenesis takes place throughout adulthood in the hippocampus of the mammalian brain. Now Columbia researchers have found that under stressful conditions, neural stem cells in the adult hippocampus ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The United States federal government supports many welfare and entitlement programs that attempt to eliminate poverty by providing financial assistance to families in need. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has found that requirements for some of these welfare programs can create stress on families, which can have a negative effect on young children. Colleen Heflin, an associate professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, studied the cognitive scores of young children whose families receive assistance from ...

DARIEN, Ill. – The quality of interactions among married couples is affected by wives' inability to fall asleep at night, but not by husbands' sleep problems, suggests new research that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). Results show that, among wives, taking longer to fall asleep at night predicted their reports of more negative and less positive marital interactions the next day, and it also predicted their husband's reports of less positive ...

There is an intimate and complex relationship between inflammation and cancer; and it is well established that tumors secrete many different chemicals that attract host cells which drive inflammation and help to support tumor growth. Now, a new study published by Cell Press in the June issue of the journal Cancer Cell identifies a single protein that is required for trafficking of immune cells involved in inflammation. The research opens up new avenues for therapeutics that can indirectly suppress malignancy by disrupting the inflammatory response. "Tumors induce inflammatory ...

BYU family life professor Larry Nelson's oldest daughter Jessica graduated from high school this spring, so his career researching the transition to adulthood is starting to get personal. Fortunately his latest study shows that certain types of dads remain a force for good with children who have moved out of the house. Dads who blend love, high expectations and respect for the child's autonomy stood out in Nelson's analysis of fathers of young adults. These dads enjoy a closer relationship with their children, and the children demonstrate higher levels of kindness and ...

Bethesda, Md. (June 13, 2011) — A new study published by the American Physiological Society offers the strongest evidence yet that vulnerability to type 2 diabetes can begin in the womb, giving new insight into the mechanisms that underlie a potentially devastating disease at the center of a worldwide epidemic. The study, conducted in baboon primates, finds that when mothers are even moderately undernourished while pregnant and breastfeeding, their offspring are consistently found to be prediabetic before adolescence. It is the first time that diabetes has been shown to ...

As America struggles down the road toward a coherent energy policy that focuses on a higher degree of self-reliance, policymakers face numerous issues and realities. These include: the finite supply and environmental impact of fossil fuels, the feasibility and costs to implement a widespread switch to renewable energy sources, and the variables that lead to consumers' preferences for particular types of power generation. They also need to find and employ tools to effectively communicate such a policy to a range of constituencies. When it comes to traditional energy ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists using new mathematical and computational techniques have identified six influenza A viruses that have particularly close genetic relationships to the H1N1 "swine" flu virus that swept through the United States beginning in the spring of 2009. That virus eventually killed almost 18,000 people worldwide. Biological studies focused on these strains of influenza virus could shed light on how the 2009 pandemic strain of influenza emerged, aiding in efforts to forestall another pandemic, the researchers say. Five of these viruses were isolated ...

Alexandria, VA – In almost every way, the "Garden of the Gods at Colorado Springs" excursion at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) last year was a normal — even enjoyable — field trip. Standard geologic terminology was used in the accompanying field trip guide and the guides relied on orthodox geologic thinking to explain geologic features. But in reality, the trip was anything but a normal geology field trip. Instead, as EARTH explores in its July feature "Creationism Creeps into Mainstream Geology," the field trip was an example of a new ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A protein previously thought not to exist in adult human lungs not only is present in normal and cancerous lung tissue, scientists have found, but it also has a major role in the development of a lethal complication of some lung cancers. The protein, called the calcium-sensing receptor, sits on the surface of lung cancer cells that make up tumors known as squamous-cell carcinomas, according to new research. As these tumors grow, the receptor releases a hormone that sets off a biological cycle that leads to the erosion of bone throughout the body. When ...

GALVESTON, Texas — More than a thousand years ago, somewhere in Southeast Asia, a fateful meeting occurred between a mosquito-borne virus that infected mainly monkeys and a large, susceptible group of humans. The result: the world's first outbreak of dengue fever. Today, dengue virus — which can produce high fever, excruciating joint pain and even death — has spread throughout tropical Asia, Africa and South America, and in 2008 it re-appeared in the Florida Keys. It could be even more widespread along the U.S. Gulf Coast but there is no surveillance in place to detect ...

Since the World Wide Web emerged in the mid 1990s scientists have dreamed of having the whole body of scientific peer reviewed literature freely available on the web, openly available without any hindrance. In the "Open Access" scenario each published article is just one mouse-click away from any reader worldwide, a model which is in sharp contrast to the established subscription system (whereby access is only provided to those people who are able to pay for an annual subscription), 'Open Access' removes any barriers to what many believe should be publicly available material ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago. This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by the Mississippians of the Cahokia Mounds, who lived in southeastern Illinois from 700 until 1400 A.D. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in May. The researchers were able ...

What has made the Internet such a success could help change the way high-dollar and hazardous packages are tracked, according to Randy Walker of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Tracking 2.0, an ORNL system being developed by a team led by Walker, provides a clear start to finish view as an item moves to its destination, thereby eliminating the problem of proprietary and often incompatible databases used by various shippers. The system is the culmination of many years of research. "Tracking 2.0 leverages eight years of ORNL research into supply ...

Many economists and sociologists have warned of the social dangers of a wide gap between the richest and everyone else. Now, a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, adds a psychological reason to narrow the disparity – it makes people unhappy. Over the last 40 years, "we've seen that people seem to be happier when there is more equality," says University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, who conducted the study with Virginia colleague Selin Kesebir and Ed Diener ...

While several states have recently limited the ability for teacher unions to collectively bargain for their members, teachers will continue to flex their political muscle in a way scholars of policymaking have overlooked: through their pocketbooks, says a Baylor University political scientist. Traditionally, the influence of teacher unions has been measured by the size of their membership or how active unions are in collective bargaining, said Patrick Flavin, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science at Baylor. But in a recent study, he found that teachers' unions ...

Lost your keys? Your brain might be in a better state to recall where you put them at some times than at others, according to new research from UC Davis. A paper describing the work is published June 13 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's been assumed that the process of retrieving a memory is cued by an external stimulus," said Charan Ranganath, professor at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology. "But we found that the levels of brain activity before items came up were correlated with memory." Graduate students ...

Scripps Research Institute scientists have discovered new elements of the blood clot-formation process. The findings could lead to better drugs for preventing heart attacks and other clot-related conditions. The work, which was published by the Journal of Clinical Investigation in an advance, online edition June 13, 2011, helps to establish a new model of clot formation. According to the old model, an injury to the wall of blood vessels causes smooth muscle cells to expose a clot-organizing protein called tissue factor. "In the emerging new model, tissue factor exists ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – June 13, 2011 – A new study reports that colonoscopies done with suboptimal bowel preparation are associated with relatively high adenoma (precancerous polyp) miss rates, suggesting that suboptimal bowel preparation substantially decreases colonoscopy effectiveness and may mandate an early follow-up examination. In this study, in the context of suboptimal bowel preparation, of all adenomas identified, 42 percent were discovered only during a repeat colonoscopy, which was necessitated by an inadequate preparation during the first colonoscopy. The study ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - One of the world's most destructive wheat pathogens is genetically built to evade detection before infecting its host, according to a study that mapped the genome of the fungus. Stephen Goodwin, a Purdue and U.S. Department of Agriculture research plant pathologist, was the principal author on the effort to sequence the genome of the fungus Mycosphaerella graminicola, which causes septoria tritici blotch, a disease that greatly reduces yield and quality in wheat. Surprisingly, Goodwin said, the fungus had fewer genes related to production of enzymes ...

Montréal, June 13, 2011 – A scientific breakthrough by researchers at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) will be published tomorrow in Developmental Cell, a scientific journal of the Cell Press group. Led by Dr. Frédéric Charron, the team of scientists discovered a new requirement for the proper functioning of the Sonic Hedgehog protein. Sonic Hedgehog belongs to a family of proteins that gives cells the information needed for the embryo to develop properly. It plays a critical role in the development of many of the body's organs, such as the central ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In the search for superconductors, finding ways to compress hydrogen into a metal has been a point of focus ever since scientists predicted many years ago that electricity would flow, uninhibited, through such a material. Liquid metallic hydrogen is thought to exist in the high-gravity interiors of Jupiter and Saturn. But so far, on Earth, researchers have been unable to use static compression techniques to squeeze hydrogen under high enough pressures to convert it into a metal. Shock-wave methods have been successful, but as experiments with diamond ...

Smithsonian scientists have confirmed that chytridiomycosis, a rapidly spreading amphibian disease, has reached a site near Panama's Darien region. This was the last area in the entire mountainous neotropics to be free of the disease. This is troubling news for the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project, a consortium of nine U.S. and Panamanian institutions that aims to rescue 20 species of frogs in imminent danger of extinction. Chytridiomycosis has been linked to dramatic population declines or even extinctions of amphibian species worldwide. Within five ...

A new study provides support for Darwin's hypothesis that the struggle for existence is stronger between more closely related species than those distantly related. While ecologists generally accept the premise, this new study contains the strongest direct experimental evidence yet to support its validity. "We found that species extinction occurred more frequently and more rapidly between species of microorganisms that were more closely related, providing strong support for Darwin's theory, which we call the phylogenetic limiting similarity hypothesis," said Lin Jiang, ...