Brussels - Adrenaline, the hormone that prepares our body to fight or flight, acts on a hyperdynamic receptor. This molecule switches so fast between several positions, that it was impossible to image it. Until now. Scientists, including Jan Steyaert of VIB and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, and colleagues from Stanford University in the US, have "frozen the molecule in action" using Xaperones™, tiny, stable antibodies developed by the Brussels scientists. The Xaperones™ bind like a key to a lock, holding the adrenaline receptor in one position -- the on position. ...

As H1N1 'Swine Flu' returns to the national headlines a new research paper reveals the key lessons about the origins of the 2009 pandemic. The paper, published today in BioEssays, reveals how the pandemic challenges the traditional understanding of 'antigenic shift' , given that the virus emerged from an existing influenza subtype. "H1N1 emerged in February 2009 in Mexico and swept around the globe within 6 months." said Professor Hans Dieter Klenk from Philipps-Universität Marburg. "The conventional ideal is that pandemics are fuelled by new strands which emerge in the ...

Major power outages are fairly infrequent, but when they happen they can result in billions of dollars in costs – and even contribute to fatalities. Now research from North Carolina State University has led to the development of an approach by which high-resolution power-system measurements, also referred to as Synchrophasors, can be efficiently used to develop reliable models of large power systems, which would help us keep an eye on their health. Synchrophasors are real-time measurements of voltages and currents that provide a very high-resolution view of various complex ...

Humans are notoriously bad at predicting their future happiness. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that part of the reason for these mispredictions lies in failing to recognize the key role played by one's own personality when determining future emotional reactions. The new evidence comes from Jordi Quoidbach, a psychological scientist at the University of Liege, Belgium. Quoidbach and Elizabeth Dunn, his collaborator at the University of British Columbia, found that our natural sunny or negative ...

When we catch a cold, the immune system steps in to defend us. This is a well-known biological fact, but is difficult to observe directly. Processes at a molecular level are not only miniscule, they are often extremely fast, and therefore difficult to capture in action. Scientists at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB) and the Technische Uni-versität Berlin (TUB) now present a method that takes us a good step towards producing a "molecular movie". They can record two pictures at such a short time interval that it will soon be possible to observe molecules ...

"Snoring, sleep apnoea, and obesity-related respiratory difficulties are fairly common disorders that affect a large proportion of the population," according to Poul Jennum, Professor of Clinical Neurophysiology at the Center for Healthy Ageing at the University of Copenhagen Faculty of Health Sciences. He is head of the Danish Centre for Sleep Medicine, Glostrup Hospital, which treats patients from all over the country. "Previous studies show that these disorders seriously affect quality of life, and our new studies show that people who snore violently, and particularly ...

If you want to lose the kilos you've put on over Christmas, you may be interested in knowing that the hormones related to appetite play an important role in your likelihood of regaining weight after dieting. A new study confirms that people with the highest levels of leptin and lowest levels of ghrelin are more likely to put the centimetres they lost back on again. Doctors often have to deal with patients who, after sticking to a slimming diet, have regained the kilos lost in just a short time – or weigh even more than they did before they started the diet. This is called ...

Mice previously exposed to traumatic situations demonstrate a more persistent memory of fear conditioning - acquired by associating an acoustic stimulus with an aversive stimulus - and lack the ability to inhibit this fear. This phenomenon is similar to that of people who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), an anxiety disorder which appears after being exposed to highly traumatic situations, such as a violent attack, a natural disaster or physical abuse. In the study researchers verified that the 7,8-Dihydroxyflavone injected into mice previously subjected ...

Looking deep into space, and literally peering back in time, is like experiencing the universe in a house of mirrors where everything is distorted through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when light from a distant object is distorted by a massive object that is in the foreground. Astronomers have started to apply this concept in a new way to determine the number of very distant galaxies and to measure dark matter in the universe. Though recent progress has been made in extending the use of gravitational lensing, a letter published ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that they are the first to show in molecular detail how one gene evolved two competing functions that eventually split up – via gene duplication – to pursue their separate destinies. The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, validates a decades-old hypothesis about a key mechanism of evolution. The study also confirms the ancestry of a family of "antifreeze proteins" that helps the Antarctic eelpout survive in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean. "I'm always asking the question of where these antifreeze ...

New research has found one of the smallest entities in the human genome, micro-RNA, could increase the risk of limb amputation in diabetic patients who have poor blood flow. The study by Dr Andrea Caporali and colleagues in Professor Costanza Emanueli's research group in the Regenerative Medicine Section of the School of Clinical Sciences at the University of Bristol was funded by the Medical Research Council and is published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. The research group have shown in an experimental cell study that conditions ...

ATHENS, Ohio (Jan. 12, 2011) – Some school social workers report that they don't feel equipped to handle incidents of cyberbullying among teens. A new Ohio University-led survey of 399 members of the 11-state Midwest School Social Work Council found that while nearly all agreed that cyberbullying can cause psychological harm— including suicide—and deserved more attention from schools, just more than half felt empowered to deal with the issue. In contrast, other research on traditional bullying suggests that 86 percent of school staff members are confident in their ability ...

Marketing efforts that encourage mixing caffeinated "energy" drinks with alcohol often try to sway young people to believe that caffeine will offset the sedating effects of alcohol and increase alertness and stamina. But a new study led by researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health [BUSPH] and the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University has found that the addition of caffeine to alcohol -- mixing Red Bull with vodka, for example -- has no effect on enhancing performance on a driving test or improving sustained attention or reaction ...

New results from a Baylor University study show that different behaviors and strategies lead some families to cope better and emerge stronger after a weather-related event. Dr. Sara Alexander, an applied social anthropologist at Baylor who conducts much of her research in Central America, studied different households in several coastal communities in Belize. While climate change has been an emerging topic of interest to the world community, little scientific data exists on exactly how people respond to different climate-related "shocks" and events such as more intense ...

University of Toronto astronomers are in Paris this week as part of an international conference announcing the first scientific results of the Plank space telescope mission. Launched in May 2009, the telescope has nearly completed three of its four planned surveys of the entire sky, providing astronomers a glimpse of conditions near the beginning of the Universe and providing data that will help answer the big questions: How was the Universe formed? How has it evolved to its present form? And what shape will it take in future? "Planck has worked flawlessly to give us ...

Some of the most intense emotions people feel occur during a conflict in a romantic relationship. Now, new research from Baylor University psychologists shows that how each person perceives the other partner's emotion during a conflict greatly influences different types of thoughts, feelings and reactions in themselves. Dr. Keith Sanford, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, College of Arts and Sciences, and his research team studied 105 college students in romantic relationships as they communicated through different ...

New software has been developed at Queen Mary, University of London's Centre for Digital Music, giving drummers the freedom to speed up or slow down the pace of any pre-programmed music, the material following their lead. It means that drummers will no longer have to keep time with a click track and the set beat of pre-recorded tracks that are used during many live performances and studio sessions. The software has been developed by Dr Andrew Robertson from Queen Mary, University of London's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. Dr Robertson's work ...

Scientists have found that the pleasurable experience of listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain important for more tangible pleasures associated with rewards such as food, drugs and sex. The new study from The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro at McGill University also reveals that even the anticipation of pleasurable music induces dopamine release [as is the case with food, drug, and sex cues]. Published in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience, the results suggest why music, which has no obvious survival value, ...

New York, NY, January 12, 2011 – Coronary syndromes vary in severity, ranging from unstable angina, non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI), to ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), the most severe diagnosis. Little data exist about changing trends in acute myocardial infarction and whether death rates are increasing or decreasing. In a study published in the January 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, investigators found that STEMI rates decreased and one-year post-discharge death rates decreased in NSTEMI and STEMI patients. "The ...

Scientists are reporting that so-called "thirdhand smoke" — the invisible remains of cigarette smoke that deposits on carpeting, clothing, furniture and other surfaces — may be even more of a health hazard than previously believed. The study, published in ACS' journal, Environmental Science & Technology, extends the known health risks of tobacco among people who do not smoke but encounter the smoke exhaled by smokers or released by smoldering cigarette butts. Yael Dubowski and colleagues note that thirdhand smoke is a newly recognized contributor to the health risks of ...

Scientists are reporting a scientific basis for the long-standing belief that a widely used non-prescription drug in China and certain other countries can prevent and treat cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye that is a leading cause of vision loss worldwide. Their study appears in Inorganic Chemistry, an ACS journal. In the study, Tzu-Hua Wu, Fu-Yung Huang, Shih-Hsiung Wu and colleagues note that eye drops containing pirenoxine, or PRX, have been reputed as a cataract remedy for almost 60 years. Currently, the only treatment for cataracts in Western medicine ...

New Orleans, LA – Research conducted by Iaroslav Savtchouk, a graduate student, and S. June Liu, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has shown that a single exposure to acute stress affected information processing in the cerebellum – the area of the brain responsible for motor control and movement coordination and also involved in learning and memory formation. The work is published in the January 12, 2011 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers found that a five-minute exposure to the odor of a ...

Adding customer service representatives to a computerized radiology workflow management system means improved patient and referring physician satisfaction and increased radiologist efficiency, an analysis of a program at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati finds. Seven customer service representatives now staff the radiology reading room from 7:00 am – 11:00 pm daily and are responsible for ensuring that referring physicians receive completed radiology reports quickly. This means that the referring physician can get the report while the patient is still ...

Scientists are reporting the development of a new, ultra-light form of "frozen smoke" — renowned as the world's lightest solid material — with amazing strength and an incredibly large surface area. The new so-called "multiwalled carbon nanotube (MCNT) aerogel" could be used in sensors to detect pollutants and toxic substances, chemical reactors, and electronics components. A report about the material appears in ACS Nano, a monthly journal. Lei Zhai and colleagues explain that aerogels made from silicon dioxide (the main ingredient in sand) and other material already are ...

A new assessment of global earthquake fatalities over the past three decades indicates that 83 percent of all deaths caused by the collapse of buildings during earthquakes occurred in countries considered to be unusually corrupt. Authored by Professor Nicholas Ambraseys of the Imperial College of London and Professor Roger Bilham of the University Colorado at Boulder, the study also found that in some relatively wealthy countries where knowledge and sound business practices would be expected to prevail, the collapse of many buildings is nevertheless attributable to corrupt ...