(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – July 22, 2011) St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators have identified a signaling molecule that functions like a factory supervisor to ensure that the right mix of specialized T cells is available to fight infections and guard against autoimmune disease. The research also showed the molecule, phosphatase MKP-1, is an important regulator of immune balance. Working in laboratory cell lines and mice with specially engineered immune systems, scientists demonstrated that MKP-1 serves as a bridge between the innate immune response that is the ...

NEW YORK (July 22, 2011)—A genetic study of the world's largest sheep species has revealed that the big-horned animals travel extensively across the moutainous borders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and China according to Wildlife Conservation Society researchers with the support of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Using a non-invasive technique that extracts DNA from fecal samples, researchers in WCS's Afghanistan Program found that Marco Polo sheep in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan are genetically connected to sheep in neighboring Tajikistan and ...

Fool's gold is providing scientists with valuable insights into a turning point in the Earth's evolution, which took place billions of years ago. Scientists are recreating ancient forms of the mineral pyrite – dubbed fool's gold for its metallic lustre – that reveal details of past geological events. Detailed analysis of the mineral is giving fresh insight into the Earth before the Great Oxygenation Event, which took place 2.4 billion years ago. This was a time when oxygen released by early forms of bacteria gave rise to new forms of plant and animal life, transforming ...

ARLINGTON, Va. — Designed to cut the 50 pounds of battery devices hauled by the Navy's explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams, the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) TechSolutions Program has developed a lightweight power system, which was delivered July. 22. Responding to a request from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training and Evaluation Unit (EODTEU) 2 to create a lightweight power device to charge their specialized equipment, TechSolutions partnered with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, Ind., and Protonex Technology Corp. to develop the Power Management Kit (PMK) ...

After collecting weathered crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, researchers at The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) at Texas Tech University have reported that only 8 to 9 percent coverage on the shells of fertilized mallard duck eggs resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate. However, scientists also reported the amount of time the oil remained at sea and exposed to weather had a significant effect on its toxicity to the fertilized duck eggs, said Phil Smith, an associate professor at TIEHH. They published their ...

PASADENA, Calif.—Water really is everywhere. Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that's at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world's oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun. Because the quasar is ...

PHILADELPHIA — Renaissance architects demonstrated their understanding of geometry and physics when they built whispering galleries into their cathedrals. These circular chambers were designed to amplify and direct sound waves so that, when standing in the right spot, a whisper could be heard from across the room. Now, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have applied the same principle on the nanoscale to drastically reduce emission lifetime, a key property of semiconductors, which can lead to the development of new ultrafast photonic devices. The research ...

Pasadena, CA— Water really is everywhere. A team of astronomers have found the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe—discovered in the central regions of a distant quasar. Quasars contain massive black holes that are steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out huge amounts of energy. The energy from this particular quasar was released some 12 billion years ago, only 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang and long before most of the stars in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy began forming. The research ...

Positive emotions like joy and compassion are good for your mental and physical health, and help foster creativity and friendship. But people with bipolar disorder seem to have too much of a good thing. In a new article to be published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, psychologist June Gruber of Yale University considers how positive emotion may become negative in bipolar disorder. One of the characteristics of bipolar disorder is the extreme periods of positive mood, or mania. ...

An international team of astronomers led by the California Institute of Technology and involving the University of Colorado Boulder has discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The distant quasar is one of the most powerful known objects in the universe and has an energy output of 1,000 trillion suns -- about 65,000 times that of the Milky Way galaxy. The quasar's power comes from matter spiraling into the central supermassive black hole, estimated at some 20 billion times the mass of our sun, said study leader Matt Bradford ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (July 22, 2011) – A designer metamaterial has shown it can engineer emitted "blackbody" radiation with an efficiency beyond the natural limits imposed by the material's temperature, a team of researchers led by Boston College physicist Willie Padilla report in the current edition of Physical Review Letters. A "blackbody" object represents a theorized ideal of performance for a material that perfectly absorbs all radiation to strike it and also emits energy based on the material's temperature. According to this blackbody law, the energy absorbed is equal ...

UCLA life scientists and colleagues have produced one of the first high-resolution genetic maps for African American populations. A genetic map reveals the precise locations across the genome where DNA from a person's father and mother have been stitched together through a biological process called "recombination." This process results in new genetic combinations that are then passed on to the person's children. The new map will help disease geneticists working to map genetic diseases in African Americans because it provides a more accurate understanding of recombination ...

It's a chicken and egg question. Where do the infectious protein particles called prions come from? Essentially clumps of misfolded proteins, prions cause neurodegenerative disorders, such as mad cow/Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, in humans and animals. Prions trigger the misfolding and aggregation of their properly folded protein counterparts, but they usually need some kind of "seed" to get started. Biochemists at Emory University School of Medicine have identified a yeast protein called Lsb2 that can promote spontaneous prion formation. This unstable, short-lived protein ...

It's not often that a satellite can capture an image of more than one tropical cyclone, but the GOES-13 satellite managed to get 3 tropical cyclones in two ocean basins in one image today. Bret and his "sister" Cindy are racing through the North Atlantic, while another area tries to develop far to their south. "Cousin" Dora is still a hurricane in the eastern Pacific. In infrared image taken on July 22 at 0845 UTC (4:45 a.m. EDT), GOES-13 captured Tropical Depression Bret, Tropical Storm Cindy in the north Atlantic and low pressure area associated with a tropical wave ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Northwest Forest Plan enacted in 1993 was designed to conserve old-growth forests and protect species such as the northern spotted owl, but researchers conclude in a new study that it had another powerful and unintended consequence – increased carbon sequestration on public lands. When forest harvest levels fell 82 percent on public forest lands in the years after passage of this act, they became a significant carbon "sink" for the first time in decades, absorbing much more carbon from the atmosphere than they released. At the same time, private ...

A new target for nitric oxide has been revealed in studies of how it inhibits the growth of Salmonella. This bacterium is a common cause of food-poisoning. "Nitric oxide is naturally produced in the nose and the gut and other tissues in the body to ward off infection," explained the senior author of the paper, Dr. Ferric Fang. He is a University of Washington (UW) professor of laboratory medicine, microbiology and medicine. Nitric oxide – not to be confused with nitrous oxide, the laughing gas in dentists' offices – is similar to the preservatives in hotdogs, Fang ...

A genome-wide association study published in the August issue of Nature Medicine has found two tiny genetic variations that can predict which patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma are most likely to develop radiation-induced second cancers years after treatment. Knowing in advance who is at risk could help physicians tailor treatment to reduce the risks for patients who are most susceptible to long-term damage. Hodgkin's lymphoma is one of the most treatable cancers, with more than 90 percent of patients surviving after a combination of radiation and chemotherapy. But nearly ...

Writing in the journal Nature Physics, the academics, who discovered the world's thinnest material at The University of Manchester in 2004, have revealed more about its electronic properties. Research institutes and universities around the world are already looking at ways to build devices such as touch-screens, ultrafast transistors and photodetectors. Now the research from the creators of the material promises to accelerate that research, and potentially open up countless more electronic opportunities. The researchers, from the universities of Manchester, Madrid ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Glucose meters aren't just for diabetics anymore. Thanks to University of Illinois chemists, they can be used as simple, portable, inexpensive meters for a number of target molecules in blood, serum, water or food. Chemistry professor Yi Lu and postdoctoral researcher Yu Xiang published their findings in the journal Nature Chemistry. "The advantages of our method are high portability, low cost, wide availability and quantitative detection of a broad range of targets in medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring," Lu said. "Anyone could use it ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In an advance that could open new avenues for solar cells, lasers, metamaterials and more, researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated the first optoelectronically active 3-D photonic crystal. "We've discovered a way to change the three-dimensional structure of a well-established semiconductor material to enable new optical properties while maintaining its very attractive electrical properties," said Paul Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering and of chemistry who led the research effort. The team published its advance ...

Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the John Innes Centre have made a discovery, reported this evening (24 July) in Nature, that explains how an organism can create a biological memory of some variable condition, such as quality of nutrition or temperature. The discovery explains the mechanism of this memory – a sort of biological switch – and how it can also be inherited by offspring. The work was led by Professor Martin Howard and Professor Caroline Dean at the John Innes Centre, which receives strategic funding ...

Latex paints and drug suspensions such as insulin or amoxicillin that do not need to be shaken or stirred may be possible thanks to a new understanding of how particles separate in liquids, according to Penn State chemical engineers, who have developed a method for predicting the way colloidal components separate based on energy. "The ongoing assumption was that if you have a mixture of different sized particles in a liquid, the faster-settling particles will end up on the bottom," said Darrell Velegol, professor of chemical engineering. "We found that in many cases it ...

A new analysis has found that many doctors report that they do not appropriately offer breast and ovarian cancer counseling and testing services to their female patients. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that efforts are needed to encourage these services for high-risk women and discourage them for average-risk women. Women with mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have a substantially increased risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer, but there are medical treatments that can dramatically ...

Philadelphia, PA, July 25, 2011 – As childhood obesity rises and the American diet shifts towards increasing consumption of foods eaten or prepared outside of the home, concerns about the nutritional quality and the total consumption of such foods are also increasing. According to a study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and published in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, eating location and food source significantly impact daily energy intake for children. Foods prepared away from home, including fast ...

Tel Aviv — Since 1999, several outbreaks of West Nile Virus, which causes fever or severe neurological symptoms and is transmitted from birds to humans by blood-sucking mosquitoes, have been seen in the U.S., usually during the summer months. But researchers aren't certain how the virus migrated here — and they don't know how, or where, it will appear next. Now Prof. Ella Mendelson of Tel Aviv University's School of Public Health at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, working with the Israeli Ministries of Health and Environment, has instituted a study that tracks both clinical ...