The quantum computers of tomorrow might use photons, or particles of light, to move around the data they need to make calculations, but photons are tricky to work with. Two new papers* by researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have brought science closer to creating reliable sources of photons for these long-heralded devices. In principle, quantum computers can perform calculations that are impossible or impractical using conventional computers by taking advantage of the peculiar rules of quantum mechanics. To do this, they need ...

Electronics researchers love graphene. A two-dimensional sheet of carbon one atom thick, graphene is like a superhighway for electrons, which rocket through the material with 100 times the mobility they have in silicon. But creating graphene-based devices will be challenging, say researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), because new measurements show that layering graphene on a substrate transforms its bustling speedway into steep hills and valleys that make it harder for electrons to get around. In a new article in Nature Physics,* NIST ...

Using a new experimental test structure, biophysicists at JILA have unraveled part of a 15-year mystery in the mechanics of DNA—just how the molecule manages to suddenly extend to almost twice its normal length. The new test structure should support research on DNA elasticity as a standard for tiny forces and help refine studies of how drugs and other substances bind to DNA. In a new paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society,* JILA scientists disprove a leading explanation for DNA overstretching, a curious behavior in which the molecule's double helix structure ...

MADISON, WI, JANUARY 19, 2011 – Invasive broadleaf weeds can destroy corn crops and fallow fields. Farmers use the chemical atrazine in herbicides to protect their plants. Despite atrazine's controversial environmental impacts, it can provide long term residual control of many weed species. However, the loss of atrazine's effectiveness has been a challenge for farmers in northeastern Colorado. In a collaborative study between scientists at the USDA-Agricultural Research Service Water Management Research Unit and Colorado State University, soil samples were collected from ...

Electron microscopes are among the most widely used scientific and medical tools for studying and understanding a wide range of materials, from biological tissue to miniature magnetic devices, at tiny levels of detail. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a novel and potentially widely applicable method to expand the capabilities of conventional transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). Passing electrons through a nanometer-scale grating, the scientists imparted the resulting electron waves with so much orbital momentum ...

Large wind farms are being built around the world as a cleaner way to generate electricity, but operators are still searching for the most efficient way to arrange the massive turbines that turn moving air into power. To help steer wind farm owners in the right direction, Charles Meneveau, a Johns Hopkins fluid mechanics and turbulence expert, working with a colleague in Belgium, has devised a new formula through which the optimal spacing for a large array of turbines can be obtained. "I believe our results are quite robust," said Meneveau, who is the Louis Sardella ...

The notion that feeling good may be good for your health is not new, but is it really true? A new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reviews the existing research on how positive emotions can influence health outcomes in later adulthood. "We all age. It is how we age, however, that determines the quality of our lives," said Anthony Ong of Cornell University, author of the review article. The data he reviews suggest that positive emotions may be a powerful antidote to stress, pain, ...

CINCINNATI—For years, RNA has seemed an elusive tool in nanotechnology research—easily manipulated into a variety of structures, yet susceptible to quick destruction when confronted with a commonly found enzyme. "The enzyme RNase cuts RNA randomly into small pieces, very efficiently and within minutes," explains Peixuan Guo, PhD, Dane and Mary Louise Miller Endowed Chair and professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Cincinnati (UC). "Moreover, RNase is present everywhere, making the preparation of RNA in a lab extremely difficult." But by replacing a ...

RUSTON, La. – While most people were busy shopping during the holiday season, Dr. Daniela Mainardi, associate professor of chemical engineering at Louisiana Tech University and member of the Institute for Micromanufacturing, was preparing for a trip that would take her half way around the world. As part of a joint effort, Mainardi, together with Virendra Mathur from the University of New Hampshire, and Suddhasatwa Basu and Shantanu Roy from The Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, was in charge of organizing a workshop titled, "Energy and Environment: Challenges and ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2011 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions," focuses on development of a new ultra-light biodegradable foam plastic material made from two unlikely ingredients: The protein in milk and ordinary clay. The material could be used in numerous products, researchers report in the ACS' Biomacromolecules, a monthly journal. The finding comes amid ongoing concern about plastic waste accumulating in municipal landfills, and reliance on imported oil to make plastics. David ...

LA JOLLA, CA – January 20, 2011 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found that a known enzyme in cells protects against measles virus, likely by altering the virus's genetic material, RNA. Cells lacking the enzyme become highly vulnerable to the virus's destructive effects. The enzyme also protects against several other respiratory viruses, including influenza A. "We believe that host cells use this RNA-editing enzyme to slow these viruses' ability to replicate," said Michael B. A. Oldstone, the study's senior author and a professor at Scripps Research's ...

Stanford, CA— Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today's annual demand for gasoline. The Black Death, on the other hand, came and went too quickly for it to cause much of a blip in the global carbon budget. Dwarfing both of these events, however, has been the historical trend towards increasing deforestation, which over centuries has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as crop and pasture lands expanded to feed growing human populations. Even Genghis Kahn couldn't stop it for long. "It's a common ...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 – The eyes of moths, which allow them to see well at night, are also covered with a water-repellent, antireflective coating that makes their eyes among the least reflective surfaces in nature and helps them hide from predators in the dark. Mimicking the moth eye's microstructure, a team of researchers in Japan has created a new film, suitable for mass-production, for covering solar cells that can cut down on the amount of reflected light and help capture more power from the sun. In a paper appearing in Energy Express (www.OpticsInfoBase.org/ee), a ...

VIDEO: A two-minute video, "Morphological Change in Machines Accelerates the Evolution of Robust Behavior, " was produced by the Morphology, Evolution and Cognition Laboratory, University of Vermont, 2011. Click here for more information. Want to build a really tough robot? Forget about Terminator. Instead, watch a tadpole turn into a frog. Or at least that's not too far off from what University of Vermont roboticist Josh Bongard has discovered, as he reports ...

AURORA, Colo. (Jan. 20, 2011)--Cancer scientists have designed the first molecular test to predict which bladder cancer patients may have cancer involvement in their lymph nodes at the time of surgery—which could help doctors determine which patients are good candidates for pre-surgical, or neo-adjuvant, chemotherapy. The test analyzes 20 genes on tumor biopsies, according to a paper published online Jan. 20, 2011, in Lancet Oncology. "Randomized clinical trials have shown that giving neo-adjuvant chemotherapy extends patient lives, but only 5 to 15 percent of patients ...

In a paper published today in the journal Science, a University of California, Davis, researcher and his co-authors challenge a widely held assumption that plants will move uphill in response to warmer temperatures. Between 1930 and 2000, instead of colonizing higher elevations to maintain a constant temperature, many California plant species instead moved downhill an average of 260 feet, said Jonathan Greenberg, an assistant project scientist at the UC Davis Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing. "While the climate warmed significantly in this period, ...

With little more than a conventional photocopier and transparency film, anyone can build a functional microfluidic chip. A local Cambridge high school physics teacher invented the process; now, thanks to a new undergraduate teaching lab at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), students will be able explore microfluidics and its applications. The Microfluidics Lab, developed by Dr. Anas Chalah, Director of Instructional Technology at SEAS, takes advantage of a simple but ingenious new method of creating lab-on-a-chip devices that are quick to produce, ...

DETROIT—Wayne State University researchers have found that when patients and providers speak the same language, patients report less confusion and better health care quality. The findings were based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Latino Health Survey. Understanding the relationship between language and health care quality has important public health implications for providing services in an increasingly diverse U.S. population, according to Hector M. González, Ph.D., assistant professor of family medicine and public health at WSU's ...

Breast cancer patients who have a strong social support system in the first year after diagnosis are less likely to die or have a recurrence of cancer, according to new research from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) and the Shanghai Institute of Preventive Medicine. The study, led by first author Meira Epplein, Ph.D., assistant professor of Medicine at VICC, was published in a recent edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Patients in the study were enrolled in the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survivor Study, a large, population-based review of female breast cancer ...

A team of biologists has discovered an entirely new group of algae living in a variety of marine and freshwater environments. This group of algae, which the researchers dubbed "rappemonads," have DNA that is distinctly different from that of other known algae. In fact, humans and mushrooms are more closely related to each other than rappemonads are to some other common algae (such as green algae). Based on their DNA analysis, the researchers believe that they have discovered not just a new species or genus, but a potentially large and novel group of microorganisms. The ...

New research reveals that a hormone best known for stimulating the production of red blood cells can modulate the immune response. The study, published by Cell Press in the January 27th issue of the journal Immunity, finds that erythropoietin (EPO) has contrasting influences on infectious and inflammatory diseases and may be useful in the design of new therapeutic strategies. EPO is a cytokine hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells by acting at EPO receptors (EPORs) on red blood cell precursors. Interestingly, other cell types also express EPORs. ...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Healthcare workers can most directly affect quality of life (QOL) of patients with advanced stage lung cancer by helping manage symptoms such as pain, lack of energy, shortness of breath, coughing, difficulty sleeping and dry mouth, according to a study recently published in the journal Oncology Nursing Forum. Understanding the symptoms, particularly symptom distress - or the degree to which a symptom bothers a person, is crucial to improved patient care. Intervention at the time of diagnosis is important because patients with stage IIIb or IV lung cancer ...

The difficult task of sorting and counting prized stem cells and their cancer-causing cousins has long frustrated scientists looking for new ways to help people who have progressive diseases. But in a development likely to delight math teachers, University of Florida researchers have devised a series of mathematical steps that accomplishes what the most powerful microscopes, high-throughput screening systems and protein assays have failed to do — assess how rapidly stem cells and their malignant, stemlike alter egos increase their numbers. The method, published in the ...

To understand the emerging science of epigenetics—a field that describes how genes may be regulated without altering the underlying DNA itself—scientists are deciphering the many ways in which enzymes act on the proteins surrounding DNA within cells. One type of these enzymes, proteins known as histone acetyltransferases (HATs), act on DNA by modifying DNA-bound proteins called histones. This act of modification, called acetlyation, can dictate how histones interact with DNA and other proteins affecting processes such as DNA replication, transcription (reading the gene), ...

Research!America's chair, former Congressman John E. Porter (R-IL), and Research!America's CEO, Mary Woolley, issued the following statement in anticipation of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address. Porter said, "I think the president understands that science, technology, innovation and research are where we lead the world and where we must make the ongoing investments to maintain that leadership. But he must, both in his State of the Union speech next Tuesday night and in the Budget he submits to Congress, make the case to both the American people and ...