Researchers from the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology at the University of Vienna and the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a quantum mechanical system in the laboratory to simulate complex many-body systems. This experiment, which is published in Nature Physics, promises future quantum simulators enormous potential insights into unknown quantum phenomena. Already the behavior of relatively small quantum systems cannot be calculated because quantum states contain much more information than their ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, after isolating normal stem cells that form the developing placenta, have given them the same properties of stem cells associated with an aggressive type of breast cancer. The scientific first opens the door for developing novel targeted therapies aimed at triple negative breast cancer. Known also as TNBC, this is a highly recurrent tumor that spreads aggressively beyond its original site in the breast and carries a poor prognosis for patients who have it. The study ...

An international team of researchers co-led by a University of Minnesota scientist has sequenced the genomes of two fungal pathogens -- one that threatens global wheat supplies and another that limits production of a tree crop valued as a future source for biofuel. The sequencing of the genetic codes of wheat stem rust pathogen (Puccinia graminis) and poplar leaf rust pathogen (Melampsora larici-populina) is expected to help researchers develop control strategies to address worldwide threats to wheat fields and tree plantations. The study, which was published this week ...

Know thyself. That was Socrates' advice, and it squares with conventional wisdom. "It's a natural tendency to think we know ourselves better than others do," says Washington University in St. Louis assistant professor Simine Vazire. But a new article by Vazire and her colleague Erika N. Carlson reviews the research and suggests an addendum to the philosopher's edict: Ask a friend. "There are aspects of personality that others know about us that we don't know ourselves, and vice-versa," says Vazire. "To get a complete picture of a personality, you need both perspectives." ...

As the use of biotechnology increases and more companies move forward with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval to begin full-scale commercialization of seed mixtures in transgenic insecticidal corn, many researchers believe pest monitoring will become even more difficult. "Seed mixtures may make insect resistance management (IRM) risky because of larval behavior and greater adoption of insecticidal corn," said David Onstad, professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois and lead author in a recent article published in the Journal ...

AUSTIN, Texas—Computer networks that can't forget fast enough can show symptoms of a kind of virtual schizophrenia, giving researchers further clues to the inner workings of schizophrenic brains, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Yale University have found. The researchers used a virtual computer model, or "neural network," to simulate the excessive release of dopamine in the brain. They found that the network recalled memories in a distinctly schizophrenic-like fashion. Their results were published in April in Biological Psychiatry. "The hypothesis ...

More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea – one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery – for "spiritual atheist" scientists. The research will be published in the June issue of Sociology of Religion. Through in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at elite universities, the Rice researchers found that 72 of the scientists said they have a spirituality that is ...

May 5, 2011 – (BRONX, NY) – There are no effective treatments for rhabdoid tumors – aggressive childhood cancers that usually strike children under three years old and affect the brain or kidneys. The disease is extremely rare – fewer than 10 cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S. – but is particularly difficult to treat and almost always fatal. Now scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have identified a target for potential therapies for these tumors: a gene called Aurora A that is vital for tumor growth. The research team was led ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton have designed a new pricing mechanism that could change the way in which electric vehicles are charged. It is based on an online auction protocol that makes it possible to charge electric vehicles without overloading the local electricity network. The paper entitled Online Mechanism Design for Electric Vehicle Charging was presented this week at AAMAS 2011 – the Tenth Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, and outlines a system where electric vehicle owners use computerised agents to bid for the power to ...

Boulder, CO, USA – New research posted online in pre-issue publication on 4 May (corresponding to the June 2011 print issue) includes the first record of shelled amoeba living in association with seafloor seeps of methane; trilobites in North China and Spain; logjams and mountain streams in the Colorado Front Range; the discovery of micrometeorites in 240 million-year-old sediments; a revelation by Integrated Ocean Drilling Program of an extensive microbial community in the deep biosphere; and further study in relation to the L'Aquila (2009), Wenchuan (2008), Sumatra-Andaman ...

Reston, Va. (May 5, 2011) – Two articles in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine make a case for maintaining current U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations on the release of patients who undergo radioactive iodine treatments for thyroid cancer, known as I-131. Currently, the NRC recommends outpatient treatment for patients receiving radioactive iodine after total or near-total thyroidectomy; however, several groups have been urging NRC to mandate overnight hospital stays to protect others from a perceived risk of radiation exposure. The article, ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found a specific gene in corn that appears to be associated with resistance to three important plant leaf diseases. In a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, NC State plant pathologists and crop scientists pinpoint the gene – glutathione S-transferase – that seems to confer resistance to Southern leaf blight, gray leaf spot and Northern leaf blight, a trio of diseases that cripple corn plants worldwide. Finding out more about the mechanisms behind complex traits like ...

WASHINGTON — A draft plan to conserve habitat for endangered and threatened fishes in the California Bay-Delta while continuing to divert water for agricultural and personal use in central and southern California has critical missing components, including clearly defined goals and a scientific analysis of the proposed project's potential impacts on delta species, says a new report from the National Research Council. In addition, the scientific information in the plan is fragmented and presented in an unconnected manner, making its meaning difficult to understand. The ...

COLLEGE STATION, May 4, 2011 – The so-called "bad cholesterol" – low-density lipoprotein commonly called LDL – may not be so bad after all, shows a Texas A&M University study that casts new light on the cholesterol debate, particularly among adults who exercise. Steve Riechman, a researcher in the Department of Health and Kinesiology, says the study reveals that LDL is not the evil Darth Vader of health it has been made out to be in recent years and that new attitudes need to be adopted in regards to the substance. His work, with help from colleagues from the University ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 5, 2011—When children or adolescents with asthma and their parents become overly anxious about the disorder, it may impair their ability to manage the asthma effectively. A new, effective tool to assess asthma-related anxiety is described in an article in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online. A high level of disease-related anxiety among adults with asthma has been associated with an overreaction to asthma symptoms and overuse of medication. ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study shows cats are the dominant predator to mockingbird eggs and nestlings in urban areas, prompting conservationists to urge pet owners to keep felines indoors at night. The findings challenge assumptions that urban areas are places of refuge for nesting mockingbirds, a species researchers say plays an important role in controlling insect pests and serving as environmental indicators for metropolitan areas. "I thought the cats probably really hammered them [birds] when they were fledglings, but when they were in the ...

Urban search and rescue (USAR) task forces are essential for locating, stabilizing, and extricating people who become trapped in confined spaces following a catastrophic event. Sometimes the search area is too unstable for a live rescue team, so rescuers have turned to robots wielding video cameras. Most recently, the USAR robots have been employed by rescuers following the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The rescuers control, or teleoperate, from a safe location. Teleoperation can be problematic, as robots frequently become stuck, which can destabilize the ...

PITTSBURGH—Learning how to program a computer to display the words "Hello World" once may have excited students, but that hoary chestnut of a lesson doesn't cut it in a world of videogames, smartphones and Twitter. One option to take its place and engage a new generation of students in computer programming is a Carnegie Mellon University-developed robot called Finch. A product of CMU's famed Robotics Institute, Finch was designed specifically to make introductory computer science classes an engaging experience once again. A white plastic, two-wheeled robot with bird-like ...

Short courses of antibiotics appear just as effective as longer ones - and a great deal safer - in treating respiratory infections that might cause pneumonia in children on temporary breathing devices, according to a Johns Hopkins Children's Center study published online May 3 in Clinical Infectious Diseases. In the study's analysis of 150 children treated with antibiotics for respiratory infections while on a ventilator, longer antibiotic courses did not only fail to confer extra protection against full-blown pneumonia when compared with shorter therapy, but also considerably ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University-led sequencing of the Selaginella moellendorffii (spikemoss) genome - the first for a non-seed vascular plant - is expected to give scientists a better understanding of how plants of all kinds evolved over the past 500 million years and could open new doors for the identification of new pharmaceuticals. Jody Banks, a professor of botany and plant pathology, led a team of about 100 scientists from 11 countries to sequence the genome of Selaginella, a lycophyte. Lycophytes, which are the oldest living vascular plants, shed spores ...

For much of the time our T cells—the white blood cells that act as the police of the immune system—are in what immunologists call a "quiescent state," a sort of standby mode. For years, scientists have wondered if quiescence occurred by default or whether T cells need to work at remaining silent. Now, researchers at The Wistar Institute provide the first direct proof that a protein, called Foxp1, actively maintains this state of quiescence in T cells until the cells are called upon by other parts of the immune system. Their findings, which appear online through Nature ...

Those vegetables you had for dinner may have once been protected by an immune system akin to the one that helps you fight disease. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Netherland's Wageningen University found that plants rely on a complex community of soil microbes to defend themselves against pathogens, much the way mammals harbor a raft of microbes to avoid infections. The scientists deciphered, for the first time, the group of microbes that enables a patch of soil to suppress a plant-killing pathogen. ...

WHAT: Using a monkey model of AIDS, scientists have identified a vaccine-generated immune-system response that correlates with protection against infection by the monkey version of HIV, called simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV). The researchers found that neutralizing antibodies generated by immunization were associated with protection against SIV infection. This finding marks an important step toward understanding how an effective HIV vaccine could work, according to scientists who led the study at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part ...

GALVESTON, Texas — What causes a virus to suddenly begin infecting large numbers of people? Scientists have long known that the process they call "viral emergence" involves a wide variety of factors. Some are changes in the environment, either generated by natural causes or human activity. Others are internal, arising from accidental changes — mutations —in the virus' genetic code. Studying such mutations in different strains of the chikungunya virus has helped University of Texas Medical Branch researchers solve one of the most puzzling mysteries of chikungunya's ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again. These flowers are not roses, tulips or columbines. They will be nanoflowers seeded from nano-sized particles of metals that grow, or self assemble, in a natural process -- diffusion limited aggregation. They will be fractals that mimic and communicate efficiently with neurons. Fractals are "a trademark building block of nature," Taylor says. Fractals are objects with ...