Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have decoded the genome of a bacteria normally present in the healthy human mouth that can cause a deadly heart infection if it enters the bloodstream.
The ancient theater at Epidaurus in Greece has been known for centuries as an acoustic marvel that allowed spectators to hear in the back row. Georgia Tech researchers have discovered that Epidaurus' limestone seats created a sophisticated acoustic filter that carried instruments and voices all the way to the back row.
Beyond the lineage of primates, according to scientific gospel, social behavior is dictated primarily by competition for resources such as food, territory and reproduction.
As wise as the counsel to "finish what you've started" may be, it is also sometimes critically important to do just the opposite -- stop. And the ability to stop quickly may depend on a few "cables" in the brain, according to research by UC San Diego cognitive neuroscientist Adam Aron.
UCLA scientists have identified a new molecule that may help regulate the delivery of fats to cells for energy and storage. This could lead to a better understanding of how we utilize fats from the foods that we eat.
A study of young adult rats by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provides evidence that explains exactly how exposure to lead during brain development produces learning deficits. The study shows that exposure to levels of lead that are similar to those measured in lead-intoxicated children reduces the birth and survival of new neurons (neurogenesis) in the brain.
In a new MIT study, a computer model designed to mimic the way the brain itself processes visual information performs as well as humans do on rapid categorization tasks. This new study supports the hypothesis that rapid categorization happens without any feedback from cognitive or other areas of the brain. The results also indicate that the model can help neuroscientists make predictions and drive new experiments to explore brain mechanisms involved in human visual perception, cognition, and behavior.
Clarkson University Physics Professor Igor Sokolov and his team have discovered a method of making the brightest ever synthesized fluorescent silica particles. These nanostructured macroscopic silica particles have potential applications in medicine, forensic science and environmental protection, among many other uses. Sokolov's research is published in the March 5 issue of the scientific journal Small.
As the electronics industry continues to churn out smaller and slimmer portable devices, manufacturers have been challenged to find new ways to combat the persistent problem of thermal management. New research suggests that carbon nanotubes may soon be integrated to ensure the equipment does not overheat, malfunction, or fail.
Modern technology uses many frequencies of electromagnetic radiation for communication, including radio waves, TV signals, microwaves and visible light. A University of Utah study shows how far-infrared light "“ the last unexploited part of the electromagnetic spectrum "“ could be harnessed to build much faster wireless communications and to detect concealed explosives and biological weapons.
New research may explain why people who are able to easily and accurately recall historical dates or long-ago events, may have a harder time with word recall or remembering the day's current events. They may have too much memory, making it harder to filter out information and increasing the time it takes for new short-term memories to be processed and stored.
Compounds derived from the blue agave, the fruit used to make tequila, show promise as a more effective way to deliver drugs to the colon than conventional drug-carriers. The discovery could lead to improved treatments for a variety of colon diseases, including ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel and cancer.
New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science has revealed in unprecedented detail how osteoclasts "“ whose job is to digest bone "“ seal off their work area as they get down to business.
University of Arkansas scientists have found an important mechanism that regulates the destruction of larval fruit fly salivary glands that could point the way to understanding programmed cell death in the human immune system.
Some day, heart attack survivors might have a patch of laboratory-grown muscle placed in their heart, and children born with defective heart valves might get new ones that can grow in place. But while these possibilities are all within reach, and could transform the way heart care is delivered, hurdles still remain, according to a new article.
It is possible to manipulate small quantities of liquid using only the force of light, report University of Chicago and French scientists in the March 30 issue of Physical Review Letters.
New discoveries offer possibilities for developing drugs that improve on the therapeutic profile of niacin, the inexpensive, time-tested B-vitamin that boosts levels of HDL cholesterol with the potential to protect people against heart attacks and stroke.
A new type of environmentally friendly plastic that degrades in seawater may make it safe and practical to toss plastic waste overboard, freeing valuable storage space for military, merchant and cruise ships generating large volumes of plastic waste that must be stored onboard until they reach port.
At the root of scientific study are observations made with the eyes; yet in nanoscience, our eyes fail us. That's why nanoscale experiments offer such great opportunities to teach blind and visually impaired students about science and pique their interest in the field, say UW-Madison scientists.
Based on new evidence from experiments with laboratory rats, scientists report that high concentrations of nitrogen dioxide gas could cause serious lung damage, even when inhaled for brief periods following fires, explosions of military munitions, or detonations of terrorist devices.
Flourine-labeled nanoparticles could soon allow researchers and physicians to directly track cells used in medical treatments using unique signatures from the nanoparticle beacons. The nanoparticles are readily ingested by living cells and allow the cells to be easily and specifically located with MRI scanners once injected into an organism.
A pioneering "biofuel cell" that produces electricity from ordinary air spiked with small amounts of hydrogen offers significant potential as an inexpensive and renewable alternative to the costly platinum-based fuel cells that have dominated discussion about the "hydrogen economy" of the future, British scientists reported here today.
Producing three-dimensional polymer line structures as small as 65 nanometers wide just became easier with new two-photon absorbing molecules that are sensitive to laser light at short wavelengths, allowing researchers to create them without highly sophisticated fabrication methods.
By mimicking Nature's way of distinguishing one type of cell from another, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists now report they can more effectively seek out and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.
Researchers have developed molecular-scale scissors that open and close in response to light. The tiny scissors are the first example of a molecular machine capable of mechanically manipulating molecules by using light. The scissors are small enough to deliver drugs into cells or manipulate genes and other biological molecules.
It wouldn't have been the easiest way to get around. University of Alberta paleontologist has helped discover the existence of a 95 million-year-old snakelike marine animal, a finding that provides not only the earliest example of limbloss in lizards but the first example of limbloss in an aquatic lizard.
Identification of the oldest preserved pieces of Earth's crust in southern Greenland has provided evidence of active plate tectonics as early as 3.8 billion years ago, according to a report by an international team of geoscientists in the March 23 edition of Science magazine.
The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and resulting tsunami are now infamous for the damage they caused, but at the time many scientists believed this area was unlikely to create a quake of such magnitude. In the March 23 issue of the journal Science, a geophysicist from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute urges the public and policy makers to consider all subduction-type tectonic boundaries to be "locked, loaded, and dangerous.
Electrical noise, like the crackle heard on AM radio when lightning strikes nearby, is a nuisance that wreaks havoc on electronic devices. But within cells, a similar kind of biochemical "noise" is beneficial, helping cells transform from one state to another, according to a new study led by a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher.
A discovery by University of Maryland researchers has provided a clue that could lead to programming the ribosome to fight viruses like HIV AIDS and SARS.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will participate in a large-scale national clinical trial to learn if the nutritional supplement creatine can slow the progression of Parkinson's disease.
After years of results that repeatedly dogged him, University of Oregon geologist Douglas R. Toomey decided to follow the trail of data surfacing from the Pacific Ocean. In doing so, he and his collaborators may have altered long-held assumptions involving plate tectonics on the ocean floor.
Juicing up your cell phone or iPod may take on a whole new meaning, as researchers have developed a fuel cell that runs on virtually any sugar source, including soft drinks, and has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional batteries.
Current methods used to sniff out dangerous airborne pathogens may wrongly suggest that there is no threat to health when, in reality, there may be. But researchers have found a better method for collecting and analyzing these germs that could give a more accurate assessment of their actual threat.
The bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans survives enormous levels of ionizing radiation through a powerful mechanism that protects proteins from oxidative damage.
UCLA scientists have devised a novel way to correct abnormal gene splicing "“ a common mutation that often leads to disease. They created a custom mask that prevents the cell from seeing the genetic defects and restores splicing to the correct location in the gene.
Studies conducted by University of Arkansas researchers suggest locations where future Mars missions might seek liquid water underneath Martian soil.
More than three-quarters of the particulate pollution known as black carbon transported at high altitudes over the West Coast during spring is from Asian sources, according to a research team led by Professor V. Ramanathan at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
Although the Galápagos finches were to play a pivotal role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, he had no inkling of their significance when he collected them during his voyage on the HMS Beagle.
Light is made of particles and waves, research published in "Foundations of Physics" shows. Team's findings refute 80-year-old belief.
Assigning dates to the events in the life of a rock"”such as a collision, or a journey through the Earth's crust"”has long challenged geologists. But now, armed with a custom-built machine known as the Ultrachron, scientists are refining a technique that allows them to pin dates to geologic processes with unprecedented precision.
In a paper published March 6 by the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology, Arizona State University researchers have shown that a single gene, vitellogenin, controls multiple aspects of honey bee social organization.
Humans acquired pubic lice from gorillas several million years ago, but this seemingly seedy connection does not mean that monkey business went on with the great apes, a new University of Florida study finds.
About 5,000 tiny differences play a key role in the evolutionary divergence between the human and chimpanzee genomes. Before a new mutation can take its place in the human genome it has to pass through a rigorous two-step screening process. In step one, more radical changes are often removed. In step two, the radical mutations spread.
Superconductivity sometimes can, it seems, become stalled by a form of "electronic gridlock." A possible explanation why is offered by new research at Cornell University that concerns certain copper oxides that can become high-temperature superconductors, but also can become stalled by the gridlock.
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered what likely triggered the eruption of a "supervolcano" that coated much of the western half of the United States with ash fallout 760,000 years ago.
Equipped with high-speed computers and the laws of physics, scientists from the University of Delaware and Radboud University in the Netherlands have developed a new method to "flush out" the hidden properties of water. The research is reported in Science.
Scientists at North Carolina State University have discovered that the fungus-like pathogen that caused the 1840s Irish potato famine originally came from the Andes of South America.
A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has created the world's first material that reflects virtually no light. They describe an optical coating made from the material that enables vastly improved control over the basic properties of light. The research opens the door to much brighter LEDs, more efficient solar cells, and a new class of "smart" light sources that adjust to specific environments.
A University of Arkansas physics professor and his colleagues have created a nanoscale structure that contains both magnetic and superconducting properties at the same time, and they will be exploring the properties of this novel material this summer in Switzerland.
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