Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for creating elastic conductors made of carbon nanotubes, which will contribute to large-scale production of the material for use in a new generation of elastic electronic devices. "We're optimistic that this new approach could lead to large-scale production of stretchable conductors, which would then expedite research and development of elastic electronic devices," says Dr. Yong Zhu, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State, and lead author of a paper describing ...

The skeletal structure of the foot and ankle differs significantly between human sprinters and non-sprinters, according to Penn State researchers. Their findings not only help explain why some people are faster runners than others, but also may be useful in helping people who have difficulty walking, such as older adults and children with cerebral palsy. According to Stephen Piazza, associate professor of kinesiology, the research is the first to use magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate that sprinters have significantly longer bones in their forefeet than non-sprinters ...

Amsterdam, NL, January 24 – Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) are a promising avenue for cell replacement therapy in neurologic diseases. For example, mouse and human iPSCs have been used to generate dopaminergic (DA) neurons that improve symptoms in rat Parkinson's disease models. Reporting in the current issue of the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, a group of scientists from Japan evaluated the growth, differentiation, and function of human-derived iPSC-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs) in a primate model, elucidating their therapeutic potential. "We developed ...

Studies currently available provide indications and a "hint" that precursors of cervical cancer can be detected and treated earlier, and consequently tumours occur less often, in women who underwent testing for human papillomavirus (HPV). In this context, an HPV test can be used alone or in addition to a Papanicolaou test (Pap smear). However, both screening procedures also carry a risk of harm in the form of unnecessary treatments after testing (over-treatment). This is the result of a final report published by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health ...

As 2011 drew to a close, Representative Al Ott led a coalition of his colleagues to introduce a new domestic violence bill in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Assembly Bill 449 is a bi-partisan measure which seeks to increase the penalties for those with multiple domestic abuse convictions, and make felonies out of some offenses that were formerly only misdemeanor charges. At the outset of 2012, Assembly Bill 449 has been referred to the Committee on Criminal Justice and Corrections and a companion bill is similarly situated in the Wisconsin Senate. If the measures pass ...

If your boss is giving you a hard time - lying, making fun of you in public and generally putting you down, he or she may benefit from some exercise, according to a new study by James Burton from Northern Illinois University in the US and his team. Their work shows that stressed supervisors, struggling with time pressures, vent their frustrations on their employees less when they get regular, moderate exercise. The research is published online in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology. In the current economic climate, it is not unusual to come across stressed supervisors. ...

EPFL scientist are among the leaders in the race to develop an industry-ready prototype of a 3D chip as well as a high-performance and reliable manufacturing method. The chip is composed of three or more processors that are stacked vertically and connected together—resulting in increased speed and multitasking, more memory and calculating power, better functionality and wireless connectivity. Developed at the Microelectronics Systems Laboratory (LSM), Director Yusuf Leblebici is unveiling these results to experts on Wednesday the 25th of January in Paris, in a keynote presentation ...

Thinking about religion gives people more self-control on later, unrelated tasks; according to results from a series of recent Queen's University study. "After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control," says psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding. Study participants were given a sentence containing five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not. After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT postdoc Emile Bruneau has long been drawn to conflict — not as a participant, but an observer. In 1994, while doing volunteer work in South Africa, he witnessed firsthand the turmoil surrounding the fall of apartheid; during a 2001 trip to visit friends in Sri Lanka, he found himself in the midst of the violent conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan military. Those chance experiences got Bruneau, who taught high school science for several years, interested in the psychology of human conflict. While teaching, he also volunteered as ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A newly published paper from Rhode Island Hospital reports on the impact to patients if five personality disorders are removed from the upcoming revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition (DSM-5). Based on their study, the researchers believe these changes could result in false-negative diagnoses for patients. The paper is published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and is now available online in advance of print. The DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders work group made several recommendations to change the approach toward ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – While it may appear that infants are helpless creatures that only blink, eat, cry and sleep, one University of Missouri researcher says that studies indicate infant brains come equipped with knowledge of "intuitive physics." "In the MU Developmental Cognition Lab, we study infant knowledge of the world by measuring a child's gaze when presented with different scenarios," said Kristy vanMarle, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science. "We believe that infants are born with expectations about the ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Prejudice is linked to aggression for men and fear for women, suggests new research led by Michigan State University scholars. The researchers report that, throughout history, men have been the primary aggressors against different groups as well as the primary victims of group-based aggression and discrimination. "There is evidence going back thousands of years of bands of men getting together and attacking other bands of men, eliminating them and keeping the women as the spoils of war," said Carlos David Navarrete, evolutionary psychologist at ...

A recently published academic study set out to examine differences in staffing levels and the quality of resident care between for-profit nursing home companies and government-owned facilities. The study, headed by a professor at the University of California-San Francisco's School of Nursing, sheds interesting light on nursing home neglect problems in the U.S. The study focused on the ten largest nursing home chains in the country, and found that they all had lower staffing hours for registered nurses and other nurses than public facilities. In addition, facilities owned ...

Division of labour is not only a defining feature of human societies but is also omnipresent among the building blocks of biological organisms and is considered a major theme of evolution. Theoretical Biologists Claus Rueffler and Joachim Hermisson from Vienna University in collaboration with Günter P. Wagner from Yale University identified necessary conditions under which division of labour is favoured by natural selection. The results of their study are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Most animals and plants consist of a set ...

Montreal January 24, 2012 – A saliva test used to diagnose the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is comparable in accuracy to the traditional blood test, according to a new study led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University. The meta-analysis, which compared studies worldwide, showed that the saliva HIV test, OraQuick HIV1/2, had the same accuracy as the blood test for high-risk populations. The test sensitivity was slightly reduced for low risk populations. The study, published in this week's issue of The Lancet ...

Organic chemists at the University of York have made a significant advance towards establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form the building blocks of life. A team led by Dr Paul Clarke in the Department of Chemistry at York have re-created a process which could have occurred in the prebiotic world. Working with colleagues at the University of Nottingham, they have made the first step towards showing how simple sugars –threose and erythrose—developed. The research is published in Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry. All biological molecules have an ...

Evidence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk is present in the blood of adolescents who consume a lot of fructose, a scenario that worsens in the face of excess belly fat, researchers report. An analysis of 559 adolescents age 14-18 correlated high-fructose diets with higher blood pressure, fasting glucose, insulin resistance and inflammatory factors that contribute to heart and vascular disease. Heavy consumers of the mega-sweetener also tend to have lower levels of cardiovascular protectors such as such as HDL cholesterol and adiponectin, according to researchers ...

For many people struggling with debt in Chicago, bankruptcy is a great way to get out of debt. After all, bankruptcy can be used to eliminate a number of troublesome debts, including high interest credit cards, medical bills, and loans while allowing most people to keep almost all of their assets. What people may not realize is that they can get protection from wage garnishment through bankruptcy as well. A Chicago wage garnishment attorney can help stop these garnishments by utilizing an important feature of bankruptcy, the automatic stay. This article will describe ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Research by a team of Sandia National Laboratories chemists could impact worldwide efforts to produce clean, safe nuclear energy and reduce radioactive waste. The Sandia researchers have used metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to capture and remove volatile radioactive gas from spent nuclear fuel. "This is one of the first attempts to use a MOF for iodine capture," said chemist Tina Nenoff of Sandia's Surface and Interface Sciences Department. The discovery could be applied to nuclear fuel reprocessing or to clean up nuclear reactor accidents. A characteristic ...

The findings appear in the current edition of the journal PLoS Biology. "Within our cells, we have communicating compartments called vesicles (a bubble-like membrane structure that stores and transports cellular products)," said Dr. Christopher Peters, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at BCM and lead author on the study. "These vesicles migrate through the cell, meet other vesicles and fuse. That fusion process is, in part, mediated through SNARE proteins that bring the vesicles together. How this happens has been in question for years." The ...

As scientific researchers become evermore competitive for scarce funding, scientific journals are increasing efforts to identify submissions that plagiarize the work of others. Still, it may take years to identify and retract the plagiarized papers and give credit to the actual researchers. "We need a better system," said Harold Garner, executive director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech. Garner discussed the problem and solution in a Comment in the January 4, 2012 issue of Nature and in a January 19, 2012 radio interview with NPR's Leonard Lopate. ...

Research involving scientists at The University of Nottingham has taken us a step closer to breeding hardier crops that can better adapt to different environmental conditions and fight off attack from parasites. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), the researchers have shown that they can alter root growth in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, by controlling an important regulatory protein. Dr Ive De Smet, a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) David ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 24, 2012—The time for commercial development of gene therapy has come. Patients with diseases treatable and curable with gene therapy deserve access to the technology, which has demonstrated both its effectiveness and feasibility, says James Wilson, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Human Gene Therapy in a provocative commentary and accompanying videocast. Human Gene Therapy and Human Gene Therapy (HGT) Methods are peer-reviewed journals published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. Until recently, gene therapy has been reserved for severe diseases with few ...

San Diego – Cytori Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CYTX) announced today the publication of previously reported six-month outcomes from APOLLO, the Company's European clinical trial evaluating adipose-derived stem and regenerative cells (ADRCs) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (heart attack or AMI), as Research Correspondence in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The APOLLO trial was a 14-patient, prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, feasibility trial (Phase I/IIA) evaluating autologous ADRCs extracted with the Company's proprietary ...

A molecule embedded in the membrane of human liver cells that aids in cholesterol absorption also allows the entry of hepatitis C virus, the first step in hepatitis C infection, according to research at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. The cholesterol receptor offers a promising new target for anti-viral therapy, for which an approved drug may already exist, say the researchers, whose findings were reported online in advance of publication in Nature Medicine. An estimated 4.1 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C virus, or HCV, which ...