CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that they can predict "with unprecedented accuracy" how well you will do on a complex task such as a strategic video game simply by analyzing activity in a specific region of your brain. The findings, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, offer detailed insights into the brain structures that facilitate learning, and may lead to the development of training strategies tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses. The new approach used established brain imaging techniques in a new way. Instead of measuring how brain activity ...

Airborne prions are also infectious and can induce mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disorder. This is the surprising conclusion of researchers at the University of Zurich, the University Hospital Zurich and the University of Tübingen. They recommend precautionary measures for scientific labs, slaughterhouses and animal feed plants. The prion is the infectious agent that caused the epidemic of mad cow disease, also termed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and claimed the life of over 280,000 cows in the past decades. Transmission of BSE to humans, e.g. by ...

A team of paleontologists and geologists from Argentina and the United States on Jan. 13 announced the discovery of a lanky dinosaur that roamed South America in search of prey as the age of dinosaurs began, approximately 230 million years ago. Sporting a long neck and tail and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds, the new dinosaur has been named Eodromaeus, the "dawn runner." "It really is the earliest look we have at the long line of meat eaters that would ultimately culminate in Tyrannosaurus rex near the end of the dinosaur era," said Paul Sereno, University of Chicago ...

Irvine, Calif. — The reward systems at universities heavily favor science, math and engineering research at the expense of teaching, which can and must change. That's the conclusion of UC Irvine biology professor Diane K. O'Dowd and research professors at Harvard University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and elsewhere. Writing in the Jan. 14 issue of Science magazine, the authors note that professors have two responsibilities: to generate new knowledge and to educate students. But, they maintain, "although education and lifelong learning ...

Researchers from Cardiff University are opening up a new way of using hydrocarbon feedstocks to make a range of valuable products. Hydrocarbons are an extremely important energy resource but, although widely available from fossil fuels, are extremely difficult to activate and require very high temperatures in current industrial processes. For the first time, the Cardiff study has shown that the primary carbon-hydrogen bonds in toluene, a hydrocarbon widely used as an industrial material, can be activated selectively at low temperatures. Professor Graham Hutchings ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Surviving cancer may also mean surviving pain, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System showing 20 percent of cancer survivors at least two years post diagnosis have current cancer-related chronic pain. The study, published online ahead of print in the American Cancer Society's journal Cancer, gives new insight on issues in cancer survivorship among the growing number of U.S. cancer survivors. More than 40 percent of patients surveyed had experienced pain since their diagnosis, and the pain experience was worse for blacks ...

Adults who take one of the world's most commonly prescribed sleep medications are significantly more at risk for nighttime falls and potential injury, according to a new study by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The study, which involved 25 healthy adults, showed 58 percent of the older adults and 27 percent of the young adults who took a hypnotic, sleep-inducing drug called zolpidem showed a significant loss of balance when awakened two hours after sleep. The findings are important because falls are the leading cause of injury in older adults, and 30 percent of ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Planck –– an international satellite that peers back into the beginning of the universe –– has produced what scientists are calling new and provocative data. The satellite is a European Space Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA. On Tuesday, the Planck mission released a new data catalog with initial maps of the entire sky. The catalog includes thousands of never-before-seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming, and some of the most massive clusters of galaxies ever observed. "Encoded in the Planck maps is an enormous ...

Doctors are calling for women to receive more information about the pitfalls of breast cancer screening, as well as the benefits, after some women who received false-positive results faced serious anxiety and reduced quality of life for at least a year. A study published online by BJS, the British Journal of Surgery, shows that patients with false-positive results - where the mammogram is abnormal but no cancer is present - had to undergo more diagnostic procedures than women with breast cancer before they were given the all clear. Researchers from The Netherlands ...

The first gravitational lens, a phenomenon in which light from a distant object is bent around a massive foreground object, was discovered in 1979 by a team led by Dr. Dennis Walsh from The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory. Since then, astronomers have used gravitational lenses in many ways, including studying dark matter and as "Nature's Telescope" to investigate galaxies in the distant universe. In a letter to the journal Nature, Professor Shude Mao of The University of Manchester, along with Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne), Haojing Yan ...

If you are looking to lose weight in the coming year, you may need help from an unexpected place: the bacteria in your gut. That's because scientists have discovered that the bacteria living in your intestines may play a far more significant role in weight loss and gastrointestinal problems than ever imagined. In a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), researchers show that a deficiency of Toll-like receptor 2 (Tlr2)—used by mammals (including humans) to recognize resident microbes in the intestines—leads to changes in gut bacteria ...

"Don't be a frog!" people say in jest when someone hesitates instead of acting straight away. However to be called a frog should actually be a reason to strengthen one's self-confidence. After all frogs are real winners – at least from the point of view of evolutionary biology: Nearly 6.000 species are known today. "In terms of numbers frogs are superior to all the other amphibians, and even mammals", says Professor Dr. Lennart Olsson from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany). Professor Olsson's research group for Systematic Zoology examines these animals's ...

Current guidance advising mothers in the UK to exclusively breast feed for the first six months of their baby's life is being questioned by child health experts on bmj.com today. The authors, led by Dr Mary Fewtrell, a consultant paediatrician at the UCL Institute of Child Health in London, have reviewed the evidence behind the current guidance and say the time is right to reappraise this recommendation. The researchers stress that while they fully back exclusive breast feeding early in life, they are concerned that exclusively doing so for six months and not introducing ...

Simply taking more steps every day not only helps ward off obesity but also reduces the risk of diabetes, finds a study published on bmj.com today. While several studies have shown that physical activity reduces body mass index and insulin resistance - an early stage in the development of diabetes - this is the first study to estimate the effects of long-term changes in daily step count on insulin sensitivity. A popular guideline is to do 10,000 steps every day, though a more recent recommendation is 3,000 steps, five days a week. The research, by the Murdoch Childrens ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that oncolytic viruses, which are engineered to destroy cancer cells, might be more effective in treating deadly brain tumors if equipped with an enzyme that helps them penetrate the tumor. The enzyme, called chondroitinase, helps the cancer-killing virus clear its way through the thickets of protein molecules that fill space between cells and impede the virus's movement through the tumor, say researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The inhibition or removal of an enzyme may prevent or treat ischemic retinopathy by stalling growth of unwanted vessels in the retina, Medical College of Georgia researchers say. Ischemic retinopathy is characterized by uncontrolled formation of new blood vessels in the retina, and is seen in diseases such as diabetic retinopathy and retinopathy of prematurity. While this blood vessel formation, called neovascularization, can benefit ischemic heart disease and wound healing, it is bad in the retina, where new vessels are dysfunctional and bleed, usually ...

PHILADELPHIA—Researchers from the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson and two other institutions have discovered new evidence that suggests the "longevity" protein SIRT1, known for its life-spanning effects in different species, can inhibit the development of a known precursor to prostate cancer, prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN). Results from the study could lead to new cancer prevention drugs that could not only block prostate cancer but promote longevity. The study, published in the February 1 issue of Cancer Research, found that deletion of the Sirt1 gene ...

A new study from North Carolina State University highlights a major flaw in attempting to use a single survey question to assess public opinion on science issues. Researchers found that people who say that risks posed by new science fields outweigh benefits often actually perceive more benefits than risks when asked more detailed questions. "We set out to determine whether we can accurately assess public opinion on complex science issues with one question, or if we need to break the issue down into questions on each of the issue's constituent parts," says Dr. Andrew Binder, ...

What is it that makes you want to return to a restaurant again and again? The food? The service? Atmosphere? Sure. But according to research spearheaded by John Antun, associate professor in the Department of Retail, Hospitality and Tourism and director of the Culinary Institute at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Robert E. Frash Jr., chair of the HRT department at the College of Charleston (S.C.), there are two more factors that must be added to mix: the social experience and the availability of healthy menu options. Antun and Frash Jr. collaborated ...

GALVESTON, Texas — A new study by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston reveals that the prevalence of hypertension in older Mexican-Americans living in the Southwest region of the United States has increased slightly in the last decade. Researchers suspect the rise is due, in part, to the increase in diabetes and obesity. Although hypertension, or high blood pressure, is one of the most common diseases in the United States, affecting more than 72 million Americans, it is one of the most manageable risk factors for cardiovascular disease. ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - A new fractional vortex state observed in an unconventional superconductor may offer the first glimpse of an exotic state of matter predicted theoretically for more than 30 years. In a paper published in the January 14 issue of Science, University of Illinois physicists, led by Raffi Budakian, describe their observations of a new fractional vortex state in strontium ruthenium oxide (SRO). Such states may provide the basis for a novel form of quantum computing in which quantum information is encoded in the topological properties of a physical system. "We've ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – U.S. agricultural practices create 58 percent of nitrous oxide in the world, which is the third most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Scientists believe nitrous oxide contributes to global warming about 300 times more than carbon dioxide. New practices and products have been introduced to address this issue, but farmers do not have the time or profit margins to experiment with ideas that may ultimately hurt the "bottom line." Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found methods to help farmers reduce those emissions while also increasing ...

AMES, Iowa – Advancements in understanding rotational motion in living cells may help researchers shed light on the causes of deadly diseases, such as Alzheimer's, according to Ning Fang, an associate scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and faculty member at Iowa State University. In an article entitled "Resolving Rotational Motions of Nano-objects in Engineered Environments and Live Cells with Gold Nanorods and Differential Interference Contrast Microscopy" published in the November 2 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, ...

Plant biologists are facing pressure to quantify the response of plants to changing environments and to breed plants that can respond to such changes. One method of monitoring the response of plants to different environments is by studying their vein network patterns. These networks impact whole plant photosynthesis and the mechanical properties of leaves, and vary between species that have evolved or have been bred under different environmental conditions. To help address the challenge of how to quickly examine a large quantity of leaves, researchers at the Georgia Institute ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 13, 2011–Biologists have been unable to agree on a definition of the complex phenomenon known as "life." In a special collection of essays in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., leaders in the fields of philosophy, science, and molecular evolution present a variety of perspectives on defining life. Tables of content and a free sample issue are available online. Why is a definition of life so important yet so elusive? As David Deamer, Guest Editor and Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of ...