HOUSTON -- (Oct. 19, 2010) -- Some bacteria react to the cold by subtly changing the chemistry of their outer wall so that it remains pliable as temperatures drop. Scientists identified a key protein in this response mechanism a few years ago, but the question of how bacteria sense cold in the first place remained a mystery. Based on a study by scientists at Rice University and Argentina's National University of Rosario, the answer is: They use a measuring stick. The study, published in the September issue of Current Biology, involved a series of intricate experiments ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A drug marketed to grow bone in osteoporosis patients also works to heal bone wounds in gum disease patients, a University of Michigan study suggests. "This new approach for the treatment of periodontal disease could allow us to rebuild some of the bone that is lost due to periodontal disease, which until this point has been very difficult to achieve," said Jill Bashutski, clinical assistant professor at the U-M School of Dentistry and first author on the study. "Current treatments to re-grow bone around teeth affected with gum disease have limited ...

Conventional wisdom holds that people try to mimic the behavior of the next social class above their own. Except when it comes to shopping at secondhand stores and yard sales, concludes a new study by Brigham Young University sociology students and faculty. The study found that high-income shoppers scour the secondhand market for antiques, but everyone else is trying to stretch the family dollar. "Middle-class shoppers were looking for furniture, some appliances, clothes, things that you could argue are necessities," said BYU sociology professor Ralph Brown. "There's ...

Seeing a child or a dog play is not a foreign sight. But what about a turtle or even a wasp? Apparently, they play, too. In fact, according to Gordon Burghardt, a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, many animals -- not just dogs, cats, and monkeys -- need a little play time. "I studied the behavior of baby and juvenile reptiles for many years and never saw anything that I thought was play. Then I had an epiphany when I saw Pigface, a Nile softshell turtle, batting around a basketball at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. I realized ...

CLEVELAND – In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, physicians at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center who are Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine researchers are exploring the role of Vitamin D in preventing esophageal cancer. Principal Investigator Linda Cummings, MD, along with Amitabh Chak, MD, and Gregory Cooper, MD, from the UH Digestive Health Institute, is recruiting patients with Barrett's esophagus to measure the effects of Vitamin D on protein levels that may influence the risk of developing esophageal cancer. "Vitamin D is being studied ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Twisting spires, concentric rings, and gracefully bending petals are a few of the new three-dimensional shapes that University of Michigan engineers can make from carbon nanotubes using a new manufacturing process. The process is called "capillary forming," and it takes advantage of capillary action, the phenomenon at work when liquids seem to defy gravity and travel up a drinking straw of their own accord. The new miniature shapes, which are difficult if not impossible to build using any material, have the potential to harness the exceptional mechanical, ...

SEATTLE, Wash.—October 18, 2010—Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have found that the same genes have different activity patterns in the brain in individuals with different genetic backgrounds. These findings may help to explain individual differences in the effectiveness and side-effect profiles of therapeutic drugs and thus have implications for personalized medicine. The study is available in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (www.pnas.org). In this study, the authors compared where in the brain ...

Scientists at The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro, McGill University have discovered that our brains have the ability to determine the shape of an object simply by processing specially-coded sounds, without any visual or tactile input. Not only does this new research tell us about the plasticity of the brain and how it perceives the world around us, it also provides important new possibilities for aiding those who are blind or with impaired vision. Shape is an inherent property of objects existing in both vision and touch but not sound. Researchers ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois chemists have developed a simple sensor to detect an explosive used in shoe bombs. It could lead to inexpensive, easy-to-use devices for luggage and passenger screening at airports and elsewhere. Triacetone triperoxide (TATP) is a high-powered explosive that in recent years has been used in several bombing attempts. TATP is easy to prepare from readily available components and has been difficult to detect. It defies most standard methods of chemical sensing: It doesn't fluoresce, absorb ultraviolet light or readily ionize. The ...

A study published Oct. 19 in the open access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE, shows that not just human memories fade. Scientists from Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences examined how aging impacts the ability of honey bees to find their way home. While bees are typically impressive navigators, able to wend their way home through complex landscapes after visits to flowers far removed from their nests, the study reveals that aging impairs the bees' ability to extinguish the memory of an unsuitable nest site even after the ...

The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades, according to results of a new study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo Dai. The detailed analysis concludes that warming temperatures associated with climate change will likely create increasingly dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years. The drought may reach a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times. Using an ensemble ...

Procedural sedation and analgesia is an essential element of care for children requiring painful procedures in the emergency department. The practice of combining ketamine and propofol, two common medications used in emergency departments, has become more popular. However, until recently, it was unclear whether this practice was superior to the use of either agent alone, especially in children. Research led by Drs. Amit Shah, Gregory Mosdossy and Michael Rieder of the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research ...

AMES, Iowa – The eyes of sheep infected with scrapie – a neurological disorder similar to mad cow disease – return an intense, almost-white glow when they're hit with blue excitation light, according to a research project led by Iowa State University's Jacob Petrich. The findings suggest technologies and techniques can be developed to quickly and noninvasively test for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, progressive and fatal neurological diseases such as mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Petrich, in fact, is working to develop ...

Clear-cut logging and related road-building in the 1950s and 1960s in southern Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains disrupted soil stability and led to unprecedented soil erosion made worse during heavy rainstorms, report University of Oregon researchers. While logging practices have improved dramatically since then, the damaged landscape -- the removal of low vegetation that helps to protect hillsides during fires and rain -- continues to pose a threat into the foreseeable future, said Daniel G. Gavin, professor of geography, and postdoctoral doctoral researcher Daniele Colombaroli. Their ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 – One of the main techniques for measuring and monitoring mental activity, called functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), can often be impaired because a person's hair gets in the way. But now, thanks to a team of researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Texas at Arlington, a novel device called a "brush optrode" is providing increased sensitivity with fiber tips designed to thread through hair to enhance scalp contact. Details of the device will be presented at the Optical Society's (OSA) 94th annual meeting, ...

PHILADELPHIA (October 19, 2010)—Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), an aggressive and rare malignancy, is often initially misdiagnosed as an infection or rash. However, getting the correct diagnosis quickly is critical for patients because the disease spreads beyond the breast in a matter of just days or weeks. With that in mind, leading specialists from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Fox Chase Cancer Center have written a review of the current scientific and medical understanding of IBC, which includes key information on diagnosis, imaging, treatment, ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 19, 2010 -- The Cold Triple Axis spectrometer, a new addition to Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor and a complementary tool to other neutron scattering instruments at ORNL, has entered its commissioning phase. The CTAX uses "cold" neutrons from the HFIR cold source to study low-energy magnetic excitations in materials. Cold neutrons are slower than their "thermal" neutron counterparts, and thus perfect for probing low-energy dynamics. The instrument, which moves by way of air pads on an epoxy surface known as the "dance ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - While America continues to become more religiously diverse, the belief that America is a Christian nation is growing more intense, according to research from Purdue University. "America is still predominantly Christian, but it is more diverse than ever," said Jeremy Brooke Straughn, an assistant professor of sociology who studies national identity. "At the same time, many people feel even more strongly that America is a Christian country than they did before the turn of the century. This is especially true for Americans who say they are Christians ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - For the chance to watch the sun rise over Olympus Mons, or maybe take a stroll across the vast plains of the Vastitas Borealis, would you sign on for a one-way flight to Mars? It's a question that gives pause to even Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a Washington State University associate professor, who, with colleague Paul Davies, a physicist and cosmologist from Arizona State University, argues for precisely such a one-way manned mission to Mars in an article published this month in the "Journal of Cosmology." In the article, "To Boldly Go: A One-Way Human Mission ...

Washington, D.C. (October 19, 2010) -- In its current early stage of development, digital memory circuits that use organic elements instead of silicon or other inorganic materials have a seemingly endless list of variables and options to consider, test, and optimize. While organic electronics are immediately attractive for their potential for extremely low cost and flexible substrates, many design aspects that are now taken for granted in the mature silicon-circuit world must be examined anew from the ground up. A group led by Takhee Lee from Korea's Gwangju Institute ...

Washington, D.C. (October 19, 2010) -- We talk about synchronization a lot. We synch up; synch our computers; and get in synch. And synchronous behavior underlies many natural systems, events and phenomena. Understanding conditions that cause oscillators -- which are common electronic components that produce a repetitive electronic signal -- to get in synch or fall out of synch, is necessary to achieve the optimal functioning of oscillator networks that underlie many technologies. The transition from synchronization to desynchronization is the subject of a new investigation ...

DALLAS – Oct. 20, 2010 – New findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggest a novel role for the brain in mediating beneficial actions of the hormone leptin in type 1 diabetes. "Our findings really pave the way for understanding the mechanism by which leptin therapy improves type 1 diabetes," said Dr. Roberto Coppari, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study involving laboratory mice. "Understanding the mechanism is important, because if we can determine how leptin drives these benefits, then we may be ...

DENVER (October 19, 2010) - Long derided as mere entertainment, new research now shows that organizations using video games to train employees end up with smarter, more motivated workers who learn more and forget less. A University of Colorado Denver Business School study found those trained on video games do their jobs better, have higher skills and retain information longer than workers learning in less interactive, more passive environments. "Companies have been designing video games for employees for years but so far it has all been done on a hunch. They suspected ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 – When the military needs to send the key to encrypted data across the world, it can't necessarily rely on today's communication lines, where the message could be covertly intercepted. But physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta are developing a new, more secure way to send such information across far distances, using existing cables and the laws of quantum mechanics. Alex Kuzmich and colleagues have built a critical component of a quantum repeater, a device that allows quantum communications -- such as the encryption keys used ...

Proton beam therapy is safe and effective and may be superior to other conventional treatments for Stage I inoperable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, according to a study in the October issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology•Biology•Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death for men and women, according to the American Cancer Society. The standard treatment for early-stage lung cancer is surgery to remove all or part of the lung, but for patients ...