Behind every coincidence lies a plan - in the world of classical physics, at least. In principle, every event, including the fall of dice or the outcome of a game of roulette, can be explained in mathematical terms. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen have constructed a device that works on the principle of true randomness. With the help of quantum physics, their machine generates random numbers that cannot be predicted in advance. The researchers exploit the fact that measurements based on quantum physics can only produce a special ...

Fresh insight into how plants slow their growth in cold weather could help scientists develop crops suited to cooler environments. Researchers have shown for the first time that a gene – known as Spatula – limits the growth of plants in cool temperatures, possibly helping them adjust to cool conditions. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, who took part in the study, believe that by manipulating the gene, they could produce the opposite effect – enabling development of crops that grow well in cold climates. Scientists studied the Spatula gene in a weed known ...

One third of the world's population is infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), which leads to tuberculosis (TB), a leading cause of death world-wide. A new discovery, led by a team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, offers hope for new approaches to the prevention and treatment of TB. The team's discovery of a novel mechanism that may contribute to immune recognition of MTB is published in the September issue of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. Most individuals with TB recover from the initial infection and become asymptomatic, ...

Essays Title: The Prospects for Personalized Medicine Author: Shara Yurkiewicz Summary: Ten years after the release of a working draft of the human genome, major changes have made their way into medical practice, the marketplace, research, and policy. Title: Personalized Medicine's Ragged Edge Author: Leonard M. Fleck Summary: The phrase "personalized medicine" has a built-in positive spin. But little attention has been given to some challenging issues of justice it raises. Some people will clearly benefit a lot, some people will clearly not benefit at all, and ...

(WASHINGTON, September 9, 2010) – For cancer patients, who have an increased risk of developing venous thromboembolism (VTE) due to a hyperactive blood coagulation system, there is now an enhanced risk model to predict their chance of developing blood clots, according to a recent study published today in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology. VTE, the formation of blood clots in the veins, develops in up to 20 percent of cancer patients and is one of the leading causes of death among this patient population. Patients with hematologic malignancies (blood ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Tweet this, Ashton Kutcher, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears. Just because you have a ton of followers on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean you're among the most influential people in the Twitterverse, according to researchers from Northwestern University. If you really want to know the most influential people tweeting on the hot topics of the day, go to pulseofthetweeters.com. The website went online in May and has been tracking the top trending topics from Twitter in real time ever since. The website was created in the laboratory of Alok Choudhary, ...

COLLEGE STATION, Sept. 9, 2010 – DNA analysis is poised to experience a significant advancement thanks to the work of a Texas A&M University chemical engineer, who has discovered a way to achieve more effective separation of DNA fragments. Working with a widely used gelatin substance known as a hydrogel, Victor M. Ugaz, associate professor in the university's Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, and graduate student Nan Shi have been able to determine the specific type of conditions that result in the optimum gel pore structure for separation of a wide range ...

As speech recognition systems become more commonplace - on the computer desktop top, at the call centre and even in the car - it is increasingly important to ensure that the voice signal is as clear as possible before it is processed by a computer and acted upon. It could mean the difference between anything from a profitable financial deal to a safe vehicle or aircraft maneuver. Similarly, mobile phone conversations and even the clandestine recording of speech for security and law enforcement purposes could benefit. Now, researchers at the University Campus in Tunis, ...

The existence of Dark Matter particles in the Sun's interior seems inevitable, despite dark matter never having been observed (there or elsewhere), despite intensive ongoing searches. Once gravitationally captured by the Sun, these particles tend to accumulate in its core. In a paper to be published in the scientific journal " Science", Dr. Ilidio Lopes and Professor Joseph Silk propose that the presence of dark matter in the Sun's interior causes a significant drop in its central temperature. Their calculations have shown that, in some dark matter scenarios, an isothermal ...

A survey in the latest issue of the Hastings Center Report found that most hospices in Oregon, the first state to legalize physician-assistance in dying, either do not participate in or have limited participation in requests for such assistance. Both legal and moral reasons are identified. This finding is significant because hospices are considered important for assuring that physician-assisted death is carried out responsibly, write the authors, Courtney S. Campbell, the Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University, and Jessica C. Cox, the Hundere ...

Ghent, 9 September 2010 – Factoring the planet's multi-trillion dollar ecosystem services into policy-making can help save cities and regional authorities money while boosting the local economy, enhancing quality of life, securing livelihoods and generating employment. This is the finding from a major international study, launched in a report by TEEB for Local and Regional Policy Makers, being released in Belgium, Brazil, India, Japan and South Africa. In the Framework of the Belgian Presidency of the European Union, the Flemish Ministry of Environment, Nature and ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 8, 2010—Pediatric-onset obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's disorder (TD) share similarities in their underlying genetic and environmental factors, psychiatric features, and treatment methods. Advances in understanding the neurobiological basis of these disorders and discovering new and more effective therapies are highlighted in a special issue on OCD and TD in Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). The entire issue is available free ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Among Asian-Americans living in California, Laotian/Hmong-Americans have the lowest survival rates for the most common type of liver cancer, a new study by researchers with the UC Davis School of Medicine has found. The study, the largest population-based examination of liver cancer rates among Asian-Americans, highlights a profound disparity that calls for targeted outreach to detect and treat the disease earlier among Laotian/Hmong-Americans, said Moon Chen Jr., a professor of hematology and oncology in the UC Davis School of Medicine. "We ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — In an unanticipated finding, researchers at the UC Davis School of Medicine have discovered that, during early adulthood, the brain produces new excitatory neurons, and that these neurons arise from non-neuronal support cells in an area of the brain that processes smell. The study, conducted in mice, is the first to demonstrate that pyramidal neurons in the mature brain stem are generated by precursors of glial cells — non-neuronal support cells — and that these new neurons likely are capable of transmitting information to widespread regions of ...

The widespread use of a simplified clinical tool to estimate future coronary risk could lead to the classification of millions of Americans into different risk groups than when using the original, "gold-standard" tool. Millions of patients may have been misclassified into higher-risk groups and therefore potentially over-treated, while others may have ended up in lower-risk groups and therefore potentially under-treated for heart disease. The study¹, led by William Gordon from Weill Cornell Medical College in the US and colleagues, is published in the Journal of General ...

A method that is widely used to predict the risk of a major coronary event may over- or underestimate risk for millions of Americans, according to a study directed by a researcher at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco. The method in question is the simplified version of the so-called Framingham model, which is used to estimate a patient's 10-year risk of a heart attack, stroke, or other coronary event based on risk factors such as age, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and smoking. National guidelines recommend using ...

Rosemont, Ill. – The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) recently approved and released an evidence-based clinical practice guideline on the diagnosis of periprosthetic joint infections of the hip and knee. Clinical practice guidelines are one avenue the Academy uses to ensure that patients receive high quality care. A periprosthetic joint infection occurs when bacteria or other foreign organisms enter the wound during or at any point following joint replacement surgery, sometimes even years after surgery. An infection can cause the joint to be painful or cause ...

The complex fracture pattern created by the earthquake in Concepción (Chile) on 27 February 2010 was to a certain extent predictable. GPS observations from the years before the earthquake showed the pattern of stresses that had accumulated through the plate movements during the past 175 years in this area. The stress distribution derived from the observations correlates highly with the subsequent fracture distribution. In all likelihood the tremor removed all the stress that had accumulated since the last earthquake in this region, which was observed by Charles Darwin in ...

Health and social services are facing a new challenge, as many illicit drug users get older and face chronic health problems and a reduced quality of life. That is one of the key findings of research published in the September issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing. UK researchers interviewed eleven people aged 49 to 61 in contact with voluntary sector drug treatment services. "This exploratory study, together with our wider research, suggest that older people who continue to use problematic or illegal drugs are emerging as an important, but relatively under-researched, ...

New research into how music conveys emotion could benefit the treatment of depression and the management of physical pain. Using an innovative combination of music psychology and leading-edge audio engineering the project is looking in more detail than ever before at how music conveys emotion. The project, at Glasgow Caledonian University is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The research could lead to advances in the use of music to help regulate a person's mood, and promote the development of music-based therapies to tackle ...

Milan, 9 September, 2010 – In our dynamic 3D world, we can encounter a familiar face from any angle and still recognize that face with ease, even if the person has, for example, changed his hair style. This is because our brain has used the 2D snapshots perceived by our eyes (like a camera) to build and store a 3D mental representation of the face, which is resilient to such changes. This is an automatic process that most of us are not consciously aware of, and which appears to be a challenge for people with a particular type of face-blindness, as reported in the September ...

Milan, 9 September 2010 – The human brain is a powerful simulation machine. Sports professionals and amateurs alike are well aware of the advantages of mentally rehearsing a movement prior to its execution and it is not surprising that the phenomenon, known as motor imagery, has already been extensively investigated. However, a new study published in the September 2010 issue of Elsevier's Cortex (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex) suggests that there may be more to motor imagery than previously thought. A group of neuroscientists in Italy have shown that the brain is ...

A new study¹ looking at the effects of the 2006 Massachusetts Health Reform on access to care, health status and ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in healthcare, shows that the legislation has led to improvements in insurance coverage as well as a decline in financial barriers to care. However, to date, it has not increased people's access to a personal physician or improved their self-rated health. Neither has it reduced healthcare inequalities between ethnic or income groups. The research by Jane Zhu from Harvard Medical School and team suggests that health reform ...

Philadelphia, PA, 9 September, 2010 - There is new evidence that people can learn to control the activity of some brain regions when they get feedback signals provided by functional magnetic resonance brain imaging (fMRI). Dr. Andrea Caria and colleagues used this specialized imaging technique during training sessions in three groups of healthy participants who were asked to assess visual emotional stimuli (negative or neutral pictures). The scientists were interested in the signals generated by the insula, a brain region implicated in emotion regulation. While performing ...

PITTSBURGH—Computer vision systems can struggle to make sense of a single image, but a new method devised by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University enables computers to gain a deeper understanding of an image by reasoning about the physical constraints of the scene. In much the same way that a child might use a set of toy building blocks to assemble something that looks like a building depicted on the cover of the toy set, the computer would analyze an outdoor scene by using virtual blocks to build a three-dimensional approximation of the image that makes sense ...