PITTSBURGH—The fruit fly has evolved a method for arranging the tiny, hair-like structures it uses to feel and hear the world that's so efficient a team of scientists in Israel and at Carnegie Mellon University says it could be used to more effectively deploy wireless sensor networks and other distributed computing applications. With a minimum of communication and without advance knowledge of how they are connected with each other, the cells in the fly's developing nervous system manage to organize themselves so that a small number of cells serve as leaders that provide ...

Chickens genetically modified to prevent them spreading bird flu have been produced by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. The scientists have successfully developed genetically modified (transgenic) chickens that do not transmit avian influenza virus to other chickens with which they are in contact. This genetic modification has the potential to stop bird flu outbreaks spreading within poultry flocks. This would not only protect the health of domestic poultry but could also reduce the risk of bird flu epidemics leading to new flu virus epidemics ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center researchers have discovered a previously unknown feature of common tumor cells – massive overexpression of certain DNA sequences that do not code for proteins. These DNA sequences – called satellite repeats – have been studied for their role in chromosomal structure but previously were not suspected of having a role in cancer. The report will appear in the journal Science and is receiving early online release. "Satellite repeats make up a large part of our genome but had been thought to be inactive," explains David ...

Patients returning to dialysis after kidney transplant failure present unique challenges compared with other dialysis patients: they have been exposed to very powerful immunosuppressive medications and have been on dialysis for a longer period of time than other dialysis patients. This puts them at particularly high risk for various complications and death. According to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN), despite complications, these patients can choose to undergo dialysis in the comfort of their own ...

Planet X, an often-sought 10th planet, is so far a no-show, but Sukanya Chakrabarti has high hopes for finding what might be called Galaxy X – a dwarf galaxy that she predicts orbits our Milky Way Galaxy. Many large galaxies, such as the Milky Way, are thought to have lots of satellite galaxies too dim to see. They are dominated by "dark matter," which astronomers say makes up 85 percent of all matter in the universe but so far remains undetected. Chakrabarti, a post-doctoral fellow and theoretical astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed ...

Students can combat test anxiety and improve performance by writing about their worries immediately before the exam begins, according to a University of Chicago study published Friday in the journal Science. Researchers found that students who were prone to test anxiety improved their high-stakes test scores by nearly one grade point after they were given 10 minutes to write about what was causing them fear, according to the article, "Writing about Testing Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom." The article appears in the Jan. 14 issue of Science and is based on research ...

Among older adults with a recent heart attack (myocardial infarction), those with lower levels of kidney function are less likely to take their medications as prescribed, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). "Several types of medications have proven benefit for preventing recurrent heart attacks, yet only about half of people with heart disease take their medications correctly," comments Wolfgang C. Winkelmayer, MD, ScD (Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA). "Adherence ...

Among older adults with a recent heart attack (myocardial infarction), those with lower levels of kidney function are less likely to take their medications as prescribed, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). "Several types of medications have proven benefit for preventing recurrent heart attacks, yet only about half of people with heart disease take their medications correctly," comments Wolfgang C. Winkelmayer, MD, ScD (Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, CA). "Adherence ...

BOULDER –-The magnitude of climate change during Earth's deep past suggests that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases, a new analysis concludes. The study, by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl, will appear as a "Perspectives" piece in this week's issue of the journal Science. Building on recent research, the study examines the relationship between global temperatures and high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tens of millions of years ago. ...

Scientists at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) and the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health (FLI; Tuebingen) have challenged the notion that airborne prions are innocuous.Details of how inhalation of prion-tainted aerosols induced disease are published January 13 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens. It is known that prions can be transmitted through contaminated surgical instruments and, more rarely, through blood transfusions. However, prions are not generally considered to be airborne - in contrast to many viruses such as influenza and chicken pox. In ...

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association has proposed metrics that healthcare professionals can use to monitor the diagnosis and treatment of patients at stroke centers to help improve the quality of care stroke patients receive. The recommendations are published in a scientific statement in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. The metrics are being proposed to assist in the standardized designation of Comprehensive Stroke Centers. These centers would be expected to monitor new diagnostic and treatment metrics, in addition to the standard ...

Chevy Chase, MD—According to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), exposure to electrical light between dusk and bedtime strongly suppresses melatonin levels and may impact physiologic processes regulated by melatonin signaling, such as sleepiness, thermoregulation, blood pressure and glucose homeostasis. Melatonin is a hormone produced at night by the pineal gland in the brain. In addition to its role in regulating the sleep-wake cycle, melatonin has been shown to lower blood pressure ...

Chevy Chase, MD—A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), found higher Bisphenol A (BPA) levels in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) compared to controls. Furthermore, researchers found a statistically significant positive association between male sex hormones and BPA in these women suggesting a potential role of BPA in ovarian dysfunction. BPA is a very common industrial compound used in food and drink packaging, plastic consumer products and dental materials. PCOS is the most ...

When it comes to advising obese patients, blacks receive less weight reduction and exercise counseling from physicians than their white counterparts. This is according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who examined the impact of patient and doctor race concordance on weight-related counseling. The results are featured in the January 2011 online issue of Obesity. "Contrary to our expectations, we did not observe a positive association between patient-physician race concordance and weight-related counseling," ...

The continental crust is the principal record of conditions on the Earth for the last 4.4 billion years. Its formation modified the composition of the mantle and the atmosphere, it supports life, and it remains a sink for carbon dioxide through weathering and erosion. The continental crust therefore has had a key role in the evolution of the Earth, and yet the timing of its generation remains the topic of considerable debate. It is widely believed that the juvenile continental crust has grown from the depleted upper mantle. One common way to assess when new crust was ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that they can predict "with unprecedented accuracy" how well you will do on a complex task such as a strategic video game simply by analyzing activity in a specific region of your brain. The findings, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, offer detailed insights into the brain structures that facilitate learning, and may lead to the development of training strategies tailored to individual strengths and weaknesses. The new approach used established brain imaging techniques in a new way. Instead of measuring how brain activity ...

Airborne prions are also infectious and can induce mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disorder. This is the surprising conclusion of researchers at the University of Zurich, the University Hospital Zurich and the University of Tübingen. They recommend precautionary measures for scientific labs, slaughterhouses and animal feed plants. The prion is the infectious agent that caused the epidemic of mad cow disease, also termed bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), and claimed the life of over 280,000 cows in the past decades. Transmission of BSE to humans, e.g. by ...

A team of paleontologists and geologists from Argentina and the United States on Jan. 13 announced the discovery of a lanky dinosaur that roamed South America in search of prey as the age of dinosaurs began, approximately 230 million years ago. Sporting a long neck and tail and weighing only 10 to 15 pounds, the new dinosaur has been named Eodromaeus, the "dawn runner." "It really is the earliest look we have at the long line of meat eaters that would ultimately culminate in Tyrannosaurus rex near the end of the dinosaur era," said Paul Sereno, University of Chicago ...

Irvine, Calif. — The reward systems at universities heavily favor science, math and engineering research at the expense of teaching, which can and must change. That's the conclusion of UC Irvine biology professor Diane K. O'Dowd and research professors at Harvard University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and elsewhere. Writing in the Jan. 14 issue of Science magazine, the authors note that professors have two responsibilities: to generate new knowledge and to educate students. But, they maintain, "although education and lifelong learning ...

Researchers from Cardiff University are opening up a new way of using hydrocarbon feedstocks to make a range of valuable products. Hydrocarbons are an extremely important energy resource but, although widely available from fossil fuels, are extremely difficult to activate and require very high temperatures in current industrial processes. For the first time, the Cardiff study has shown that the primary carbon-hydrogen bonds in toluene, a hydrocarbon widely used as an industrial material, can be activated selectively at low temperatures. Professor Graham Hutchings ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Surviving cancer may also mean surviving pain, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System showing 20 percent of cancer survivors at least two years post diagnosis have current cancer-related chronic pain. The study, published online ahead of print in the American Cancer Society's journal Cancer, gives new insight on issues in cancer survivorship among the growing number of U.S. cancer survivors. More than 40 percent of patients surveyed had experienced pain since their diagnosis, and the pain experience was worse for blacks ...

Adults who take one of the world's most commonly prescribed sleep medications are significantly more at risk for nighttime falls and potential injury, according to a new study by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The study, which involved 25 healthy adults, showed 58 percent of the older adults and 27 percent of the young adults who took a hypnotic, sleep-inducing drug called zolpidem showed a significant loss of balance when awakened two hours after sleep. The findings are important because falls are the leading cause of injury in older adults, and 30 percent of ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Planck –– an international satellite that peers back into the beginning of the universe –– has produced what scientists are calling new and provocative data. The satellite is a European Space Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA. On Tuesday, the Planck mission released a new data catalog with initial maps of the entire sky. The catalog includes thousands of never-before-seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming, and some of the most massive clusters of galaxies ever observed. "Encoded in the Planck maps is an enormous ...

Doctors are calling for women to receive more information about the pitfalls of breast cancer screening, as well as the benefits, after some women who received false-positive results faced serious anxiety and reduced quality of life for at least a year. A study published online by BJS, the British Journal of Surgery, shows that patients with false-positive results - where the mammogram is abnormal but no cancer is present - had to undergo more diagnostic procedures than women with breast cancer before they were given the all clear. Researchers from The Netherlands ...

The first gravitational lens, a phenomenon in which light from a distant object is bent around a massive foreground object, was discovered in 1979 by a team led by Dr. Dennis Walsh from The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory. Since then, astronomers have used gravitational lenses in many ways, including studying dark matter and as "Nature's Telescope" to investigate galaxies in the distant universe. In a letter to the journal Nature, Professor Shude Mao of The University of Manchester, along with Stuart Wyithe (University of Melbourne), Haojing Yan ...