Curated News: Scientific Meetings

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Advances in renewable and sustainable energy, including mimicking photosynthesis and optimizing lithium-ion batteries, are the topics of three plenary talks at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, taking place here through Thursday. The presentations will be held on Sunday, March 16, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. at Ballroom A of the Dallas Convention Center.

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The paper proposes and tests four two-factor schemes that require servers to store a randomized hash of the passwords and a second device, such as the user’s security token or smartphone, to store a corresponding secret code.

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Programming highlights from Experimental Biology 2014, April 26-30 in San Diego. Topics include anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pathology, nutrition, and pharmacology.

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University of Washington computer scientists have built a low-cost gesture recognition system that runs without batteries and lets users control their electronic devices hidden from sight with simple hand movements. The prototype, called "AllSee," uses existing TV signals as both a power source and the means for detecting a user's gesture command.

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By analyzing four years of continuous measurements of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current at Drake Passage, the narrowest point in the Southern Ocean, three University of Rhode Island oceanographers have concluded that the current carries 20 percent more water than previous estimates. They also found that the current remains strong all the way to the seafloor.

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A hands-on outreach program about the world of chemistry for children and their families and a symposium on the many benefits of chemistry are among several special Presidential Events at the American Chemical Society’s 247th National Meeting & Exposition next month. The meeting will be held in Dallas, March 16-20.

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Researchers at Georgia Tech have created a prototype software, Gyrus, that takes extra steps to prevent malware from sending spam emails and instant messages, and blocking unauthorized commands such as money transfers.

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New research by a large team of scientists suggests that as the climate warms, the productivity of Alaska fisheries will be increasingly dependent on the survival rate of plankton through the winter months. And warming temperatures may make it difficult for them to survive the season.

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In a messy house, people use computers to manage paper and photo clutter; companies use computer systems to track their inventory. Now a team of researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., is taking a similar approach to cell-molecular inventory control for cancer. They have created computer models, using their programming framework (PySB), which enable them to explore the complex biochemical processes that drive cancer growth.

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Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, and their correctly folded three-dimensional structures are critical to cellular functions. Misfolded structures often fail to properly perform these vital jobs, leading to cellular stress and devastating neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease. Researchers will describe their multipronged efforts to gain a better understanding of the relationship between protein misfolding, aggregation and cell toxicity at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting.

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A team of researchers at the University of Florence in Italy and the University of Connecticut Health Center have used a multidisciplinary approach to provide an unprecedented glimpse of what happens to the heart during an "infarction" -- a heart attack -- by looking at how the attack affects electrical activity and calcium release in heart cells.

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For the millions of people living with HIV/AIDS, antiretroviral drugs can be a lifeline, slowing the progress of viral infection. Unfortunately, studies have shown that these benefits can be short-lived: therapy can lead to mutations in the HIV genetic code, which can make the virus resistant to drugs. However, researchers at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting will present new insight into how the therapy functions and how therapy-induced point mutations actually confer drug resistance.

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Understanding how antibodies work is important for designing new vaccines to fight infectious diseases and certain types of cancer and for treating disorders of the immune system in animals and humans. In research to be presented at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, Dr. Damian Ekiert will explain how the immune systems of cows are used to understand the diversity of antibodies and how that knowledge could improve the health of both people and livestock.

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Calico cats, renowned and beloved for their funky orange and black patchwork or "tortoiseshell" fur, can thank X chromosome inactivation or "silencing" for their unique look. A team of University of California San Francisco (UCSF) researchers is striving to unlock the mystery of how one X chromosome can be rendered nearly completely inactive. They will present their latest results at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting.

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To better understand the causes of male infertility, a team of Bay Area researchers is exploring the factors, both physiological and biochemical, that differentiate fertile sperm from infertile sperm. At the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, the team will present its work to identify and characterize proteins known as ion channels, which are crucial for sperm fertility and expressed within a sperm cell's plasma membrane.

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Plop living, swimming bacteria into a novel water-based, nontoxic liquid crystal and a new physics takes over. The dynamic interaction of the bacteria with the liquid crystal creates a novel form of soft matter: living liquid crystal. Researchers, based at Kent State University and Argonne National Laboratory, will present their findings on this new type of active material, which holds promise for improving the early detection of diseases, at the 58th annual Biophysical Society Meeting.

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Despite its heavy toll, the prevention and clinical treatment of dengue infection has been a "dramatic failure in public health compared to other infectious diseases like HIV," said Ping Liu of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Now, new research by Liu and her colleagues could offer vital insight into the mechanism of dengue virus entry into cells -- and aid vaccine and clinical drug development.

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Sadly, Alzheimer's disease has been the least prone to progress in the one area where we'd like to find change the most -- in our ability to fight it. Many research groups are working to change that, and at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, researchers will describe their progress making at unraveling the mystery of the amyloid beta ("Abeta") peptide, a tangling molecule found in the brain plaques associated with the disease.

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New insights into one of the molecular mechanisms behind light harvesting, which enables photosynthetic organisms to thrive, even as weather conditions change from full sunlight to deep cloud cover, will be presented at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting. Researchers will describe how probing these natural systems is helping us understand the basic mechanisms of light harvesting -- work that could help improve the design and efficiency of devices like solar cells in the future.

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Tularemia, aka "rabbit fever," is endemic in the northeastern United States, and is considered to be a significant risk to biosecurity -- much like anthrax or smallpox -- because it has already been weaponized in various regions of the world. At the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, Geoffrey K. Feld, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will describe his work to uncover the secrets of the bacterium Francisella tularensis, which causes tularemia.