Optical illusions have fascinated humans throughout history. Greek builders used an optical illusion to ensure that that their columns appeared straight (they built them with a bulge) and we are all intrigued by the mental flip involved in the case of the young girl/old woman faces. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Neuroscience demonstrates a more serious use of these illusions in understanding how the brain assesses relative size. Researchers from University College London looked at two well known illusions: the Ebbinghaus illusion, ...

It seems that women become addicted to cocaine more easily than men and find it harder to give up. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biology of Sex Differences reinforces this position by showing that the motivation of female rats to work for cocaine is much higher than males. Researchers from the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan, found that rats bred to have an elevated stress response and increased impulsiveness are more easily trained to reward themselves with cocaine. They are also more determined, ...

VIDEO: Video of spliceosomes -- the complex of specialized RNA and protein subunits that acts as molecular scissors and tape during gene transcription -- at work. Click here for more information. WORCESTER, Mass.—Making a movie at the molecular level? A new method of imaging molecule-sized machines as they do the complex work of cutting and pasting genetic information inside the nucleus is the subject of a just-published paper in the journal Science, and the movies have revealed ...

MILWAUKEE — Women who leave engineering jobs after obtaining the necessary degree are significantly more likely to leave the field because of an uncomfortable work climate than because of family reasons, according to a study being undertaken at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). Nearly half of women in the survey who left an engineering career indicated they did so because of negative working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary, the study shows. Despite successful interventions to increase the numbers of women earning degrees in ...

In mathematics, you need at most only four different colors to produce a map in which no two adjacent regions have the same color. Utah and Arizona are considered adjacent, but Utah and New Mexico, which only share a point, are not. The four-color theorem proves this conjecture for generic maps of countries, but actually of more use in solving scheduling problems, scheduling, register allocation in computing and frequency assignment in mobile communications and broadcasting. Researchers in Algeria are taking inspiration from nature to help them devise an automated way ...

By studying the tolerance of marine invertebrates to a wide range of temperature and pressure, scientists are beginning to understand how shallow-water species could have colonised the ocean depths. Scientists believe that climate changes at various at various times during Earth's history caused extinctions of creatures living at bathyal (1,000𔃂,000 metres) and abyssal (>4,000 m) depths. These extinctions were apparently followed by re-colonisation of the deep sea by shallow-water species, which subsequently evolved into the species well adapted for life in this ...

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are partly attributable to brain inflammation. Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now demonstrate in a paper published in Nature that a well-known family of enzymes can prevent the inflammation and thus constitute a potential target for drugs. Research suggests that microglial cells – the nerve system's primary immune cells – play a critical part in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The over-activation of these cells in the brain can cause ...

How fast an intense laser pulse can change the electrical properties of solids is revealed by researchers from Kiel University in the current edition of Nature (09.03.2011). Scientists in the team of Professor Michael Bauer, Dr. Kai Roßnagel and Professor Lutz Kipp from the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, together with colleagues from the University of Kaiserslautern and the University of Colorado in Boulder, U.S.A., are following the course of electronic switching processes which occur within fractions of a second (femtoseconds). The results of their research ...

Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) scientists under the Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore are part of an international team of researchers [1]who became the first in the world to discover the gene behind a rare skin cancer which grows rapidly for a few weeks before healing spontaneously, according to research published in Nature Genetics [2] today. The peculiar behaviour of this rare self-healing cancer, called multiple self-healing squamous epithelioma (MSSE), was discovered to be caused by a failure in the gene called TGFBR1, which is ...

A new study by scientists from Maryland and Colorado using American kestrels, a surrogate test species for raptorial birds, suggests that they are at greater risk from poisoning from the rodenticide diphacinone than previous believed. The research, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, considers the threat posed by diphacinone as its usage increases following restrictions on the use of similar pesticides. "Recent restrictions on the use of some rodenticides may result in increased use of diphacinone," said lead author Dr. Barnett Rattner from the US Geological ...

The GNSS Interference, Detection and Monitoring Conference 2011 follows Tuesday's Royal Academy of Engineering report that set out the risks of GPS disruption from solar storms or illegal jamming and assessed what can be done to reduce impacts on society. Solutions put forward included eLORAN (Enhanced Long Range Navigation), a revamped version of the 1950's LORAN terrestrial radio navigation systems used extensively by the US military which have been brought into the digital age and demonstrated as an ideal accompaniment to GPS. eLoran uses high-power, land-based transmitters, ...

A new study conducted by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and Yale School of Medicine shows that when hospitals acquire surgical robotic technology, men in that region are more likely to have prostate cancer surgery. The study, "The Association between Diffusion of the Surgical Robot and Radical Prostatectomy Rates", was published this week in the online edition of the journal Medical Care. "The use of the surgical robot to treat prostate cancer is an instructive example of an expensive medical technology becoming rapidly adopted without clear proof of its benefit," ...

WASHINGTON – Nanotech consumer products continue to grow at a consistent pace. According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) over 1,300 manufacturer-identified, nanotechnology-enabled products have entered the commercial marketplace around the world. The most recent update to the group's five-year-old inventory reflects the continuing use of the tiny particles in everything from conventional products like non-stick cookware to more unique items such as self-cleaning window treatments. "The use of nanotechnology in consumer products continues to grow ...

Researchers from across multiple disciplines at NYU Langone Medical Center created a new protein molecule derived from the growth factor progranulin may provide the basis for new therapies in inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, according to a study published in the March 10, 2011 issue of Science. "The development of this protein extends our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that drive the growth factors and cytokines control of cartilage development and arthritis," said Chuan-ju Liu, PhD, the lead researcher and associate professor, Departments ...

This release is available in Spanish and French. What are the characteristics that a video game must have to be entertaining? Why do players prefer some video games to others? What is the difference between a game and an educational multiplayer video game? All these questions were answered by a research carried out by José Luís González Sánchez and conducted by professor Francisco Luís Gutiérrez Vela, at the Department of Languages and Computering of the University of Granada. As González Sánchez explains, playability is an abstract concept difficult to define "as it ...

This release is available in Spanish. AgroAtlas is a new interactive website that shows the geographic distributions of 100 crops; 640 species of crop diseases, pests, and weeds; and 560 wild crop relatives growing in Russia and neighboring countries. Downloadable maps and geographic information system (GIS) software are also available, allowing layering of data, such as that relating major wheat production areas to concentrations of Russian wheat aphids. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant geneticist Stephanie Greene, the impetus behind developing ...

Tampa, Fla. (Mar. 10, 2011) – Two studies published by an interdisciplinary team of Hong Kong researchers in the current special issue of Cell Transplantation (20:1), now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/ , link the regrowth of key adult brain cells (neurogenesis) in two critical areas of the brain to both the benefits of exercise as a stress reducer and also to sexual behavior and reproductive issues. The two studies reviewing the causes and impacts of neurogenesis came out of a recent Pan Pacific Symposium on Stem Cell Research ...

Tampa, Fla. (March 10, 2011) – When prostate cancer stem cells (CSCs) were enclosed in self-assembling nanomaterials made of peptides (SAP), the SAP stopped cancer stem cell colony formation and also stopped the division of cancer cells in laboratory cultures (in vitro). According to the international team of researchers who built and tested the nano-sized traps and published their results in a recent issue of Cell Transplantation (20:1), which is freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/ , the cancer cells grew and multiplied after they ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 10, 2011—For physicians within several medical specialties, including dermatology, cardiology and orthopedics, personal usage of and patient recommendations for dietary supplements are quite common¹, according to a study published in Nutrition Journal, a peer-reviewed, on-line journal that focuses on the field of human nutrition. The 2008 "Life…supplemented" Healthcare Professionals (HCP) Impact Study found that 75 percent of dermatologists personally use dietary supplements and 66 percent recommend supplements to their patients; 57 percent of ...

Montreal, QC —March 10, 2011 —In childhood, boys and girls tend to form friendships almost exclusively with same-sex peers. Around early adolescence, they gradually begin to include other-sex friends in their network. A new study published in Journal of Research on Adolescence suggests that girls and boys experience this transition very differently. The findings show that girls tend to initiate the transition to a mixed-gender friendship network earlier than boys, and continue this transition at a faster pace during adolescence. As a result girls who experienced this transition ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Circulating through the bloodstream of every human being is a rare and powerful type of cell, one that can actually create new blood vessels to bypass blockages that cause heart attacks and peripheral artery disease. Though everyone has these cells – called endothelial progenitor cells – they are often dysfunctional in people prone to vascular disease. Now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered that a molecule – called Wnt1 – can improve the function of endothelial progenitor cells, increasing the blood flow ...

Referring patients to hospitals that have the largest volume of surgical procedures does not necessarily lead to improved outcomes for the overall population, according to the results of a new study in the February issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The findings of studies that suggest the higher the volume of specialty surgical procedures performed at any given hospital, the better that hospital's outcomes will be, has resulted in calls for volume-based referrals. Most notably leading that call has been the Leapfrog Group's Evidence-Based Hospital ...

A team led by James Henderson, assistant professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science (LCS) and researcher in the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute, has used shape memory polymers to provide greater insight into how cells sense and respond to their physical environment. Most cell biomechanics research has examined cell behavior on unchanging, flat surfaces. "Living cells are remarkably complex, dynamic and versatile systems, but the material substrates currently used to culture them are ...

Unconsciously, right-handers associate good with the right side of space and bad with the left. But this association can be rapidly changed, according to a study published online March 9, 2011 in Psychological Science, by Daniel Casasanto (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics) and Evangelia Chrysikou (University of Pennsylvania). Even a few minutes of using the left hand more fluently than the right can reverse right-handers' judgments of good and bad, making them think that the left is the 'right side' of space. Conceptions of good and bad are rooted in people's ...

NEW YORK (March 9, 2011) – A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society reveals the critical importance of western Arctic Alaska's Teshekpuk Lake region to tens of thousands of birds that breed in the area during the brief, but productive arctic summers, and makes clearer the case for permanent protection of the area. Results of the four-year study—the first to look at the full suite of bird species from around the world that descend on the Teshekpuk Lake region—showed that the region contains some of the highest nesting bird densities and nest productivity across ...