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.

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A research team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., is the first to decipher the 3-D structure of a protein that confers antibiotic resistance from one of the most worrisome disease agents: a strain of bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can cause skin and other infections. The Vanderbilt team's findings may be an important step in combatting the MRSA public health threat over the next 5 to 10 years.

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In the first study of its kind, a consortium led by UCLA physicians found that giving stroke patients intravenous magnesium within an hour of symptom onset does not improve stroke outcomes, according to research presented today at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference.

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Journalists are invited to discover the world of biophysics later this month in San Francisco, when the largest gathering of biophysicists in the world convenes from February 15-19 at the Moscone Center on Howard Street for the 58th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society.

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Topics in this issue: 1. Discovery of Extended Radio Emission from Merging Galaxy Clusters: 2. Radio Astronomy Innovation Promises Big Boost to Data Transmission: 3. From Dust and Gas to Disks and Planets (2014 AAAS Meeting Symposium): 4. Galaxy Evolution in the Early Universe (2014 AAAS Meeting Symposium).

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University of Washington scientists and engineers are developing a low-cost device that could help pathologists diagnose pancreatic cancer earlier and faster. The prototype can perform the basic steps for processing a biopsy, relying on fluid transport instead of human hands to process the tissue.

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Six scientific societies will hold their joint scientific sessions and annual meetings, known as Experimental Biology (EB), from April 26-30, 2014, in San Diego. Free registration is available to credentialed representatives of the press, and an onsite newsroom will be available for media.

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A small, secretive creature with unlikely qualifications for defying gravity may hold the answer to an entirely new way of getting off the ground. Analysis of high-speed film reveals how salamanders—or at least several species of the Plethodontidae family—achieve vertical lift.

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As part of a study of more than 45,000 projects on Kickstarter, Georgia Tech researchers reveal dozens of phrases that pay and a few dozen more that may signal the likely failure of a crowd-sourced effort.

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An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of “hypervelocity stars” – solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy.

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The first of a set of unprecedented, super-deep views of the universe contain images of some of the intrinsically faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected. This is just the first of several primary target fields in The Frontier Fields program. The immense gravity in this foreground galaxy cluster, Abell 2744, warps space to brighten and magnify images of far-more-distant background galaxies as they looked over 12 billion years ago, not long after the big bang.

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Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter's "Great Red Spot."

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Your mother probably warned against playing with your food, but she may have neglected to mention playing with your drinks. Dr. Lisa Burton, a scientist from MIT, thankfully missed that lesson. Inspired by a love of experimental cuisine, Burton and her colleagues developed several bio-inspired edible cocktail novelties as part of her graduate research. These devices take advantage of fluid-surface interactions first observed in nature to provide a fun science twist to fancy beverages.

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Striking new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope capture, for the first time, the remains of a recent supernova brimming with freshly formed dust. If enough of this dust makes the perilous transition into interstellar space, it could explain how many galaxies acquired their dusty, dusky appearance.

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Imagine the challenge publishers face, pouring over thousands of manuscripts to determine if a book will be a hit. Stony Brook Department of Computer Science Assistant Professor Yejin Choi thinks she has a tool to bring some science to that art, and she is co-author of a paper, Success with Style: Using Writing Style to Predict the Success of Novels, which was unveiled at the conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2013.

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Love may be a battlefield, but most wouldn't expect the fighters to be a parasitic virus and its cricket host. Just like a common cold changes our behavior, sick crickets typically lose interest in everyday activities. But when Dr. Shelley Adamo of Dalhousie University found her cricket colony decimated by a pathogen, she was shocked that the dying insects didn't act sick. Not only had the infected crickets lost their usual starvation response, but they also continued to mate. A lot. How were the pathogen and the exuberant amorous behavior in the sick crickets connected?

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As winter approaches, many of us hunker down and virtually “hibernate” for the season. Classic hibernation in the wild conjures images of furry bears, but other animals are not so lucky to have immense fat stores or fur to protect them from the elements. Frogs that live at northern latitudes have neither of these, but must find ways to survive the harsh winter season. Their solution? Freezing…but not to death.

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Most adults remember their first success in learning to swim using the ‘dog paddle’. This classic maneuver has been used to describe swimming in armadillos, turtles, even humans – just about everything except dogs. Dr. Frank Fish, a professor of biology at West Chester University, set out with his colleagues to understand how real dogs perform the dog paddle. Fish has spent most of his career studying the swimming of marine mammals such as whales. But looking at swimming in dogs afforded Fish the opportunity to investigate how swimming in marine mammals may have evolved from walking in their terrestrial ancestors.

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Early studies of alligators led Dr. Guillette to realize that something in the environment was affecting their reproduction. Juvenile female alligators had malformed ovaries, while males had lower than average testosterone levels and a small penis. He and his colleagues discovered that the changes were caused by environmental contaminants, which were acting as endocrine disruptors.

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These Michigan Tech scientists couldn't find any visitors from another century, but they had a very interesting time trying.

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SICB Annual Meeting Workshop by Randy Olson. Olson’s solution to science boredom? ‘Narrative Training,’ an age-old discipline known to storytellers as the ability to structure stories – in this case about science and scientists – with a full narrative arc, a beginning, middle, and end, and a human connection that listeners can relate to.

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Governor Rick Scott declared, in an official proclamation, that the upcoming week of January 4-11, 2013 will be "Physics Education Week" in Florida.

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The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) has announced its 2014 Winter Meeting in Orlando, Florida. The meeting will take place on January 4-7. Plenary sessions will feature the Oersted Medal winner, Dean Zollman; the Richtmyer Memorial Award recipient, Professor Sir Michael Berry; NASA Astronaut, Donald R. Tettit; and the Kennedy Space Center’s Philip Metzger.

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The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) along with the Society for Physics Students (SPS) will host the Students Exploring Engineering and Science (SEES) program for 100 Title I 8th grade students from Howard Middle School at the Rosen Plaza Hotel in Orlando, Florida.

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The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) will host a Meet & Greet with NASA Astronaut Donald Pettit at its winter meeting in Orlando, Florida. The event will be held at the Rosen Plaza Hotel on Sunday, January 5th from 7:30 – 8:30PM. Pettit will also serve as a plenary speaker on the topic, Techno-Stories from Space during the meeting.

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Researchers are developing a new kind of geothermal power plant that will lock away unwanted carbon dioxide (CO2) underground—and use it as a tool to boost electric power generation by at least 10 times compared to existing geothermal energy approaches.

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Penn State researchers have proved the feasibility of a new type of transistor that could make possible fast and low-power computing devices for energy constrained applications.

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From 2000 to 2010, about 1,900 cyclones churned across the top of the world each year, leaving warm water and air in their wakes—and melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. That’s about 40 percent more than previously thought, according to a new analysis of these Arctic storms.

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It's official: East Antarctica is pushing West Antarctica around. Now that West Antarctica is losing weight--that is, billions of tons of ice per year--its softer mantle rock is being nudged westward by the harder mantle beneath East Antarctica.

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Less than 20 miles from the site where melting ice exposed the 5,000-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman, scientists have discovered new and compelling evidence that the Italian Alps are warming at an unprecedented rate. Part of that evidence comes in the form of a single dried-out leaf from a larch tree that grew thousands of years ago.

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In a first-of-its-kind activity for an interplanetary spacecraft, thousands of amateur (ham) radio operators around the world were able to say “Hi” to NASA’s Juno spacecraft Oct. 9 as it swung past Earth on its way to Jupiter.