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- New model helps explain “hidden heritability”
- Innovative 3-D designs can more than double the solar power generated from a given area
- Combination treatment of gene therapy and bone marrow transplants could prove to be a promising treatment for infants with Batten disease
- Epigenetic changes in blood samples may point to schizophrenia
- Young infant imitation not guided by rational thinking: Rationality of infants has been overstated
- Researchers unravel genetic mechanism of fatty liver disease in obese children
- Geologists correct a rift in Africa
- Inspired by a toy, the ‘buckliball’ — a collapsible structure fabricated from a single piece of material — represents a new class of 3-D, origami-like structures
- New Analysis of Premature Infants’ Heartbeats and Breathing Could Give Cues About Their Readiness to Leave the NICU
- Two drugs - meropenem and clavulanate, already on the market show promise against tuberculosis
- Can a Machine Tell When You're Lying? Research Suggests the Answer is 'Yes'
- Tiny reader makes fast, cheap DNA sequencing feasible
- A 24-karat Gold Key to Unlock the Immune System
- Researcher Announces Progress Toward New Chemotherapy Agents
- Pass the lycopene: Scientist can protect supplements inside food
- University of Michigan analyzes new technique for measuring heart failure risk
- Infrared spectroscopy allows scientists to analyze protein structure on an ultrafast timescale
- New Synthetic Biology Technique Boosts Microbial Production of Diesel Fuel
- Amazing discovery on moving clusters of galaxies leaving subtle imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation
- Few Young Women with Cancer Take Steps to Preserve Fertility During Treatments
| New model helps explain “hidden heritability” Posted: 27 Mar 2012 07:18 AM PDT Many common diseases run in families. In some families, the risk of developing a particular disease can approach 50%. Recently, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified some of the genes that contribute to this risk, but for some diseases, a substantial portion remains unexplained. This gap has been called the “hidden heritability.” |
| Innovative 3-D designs can more than double the solar power generated from a given area Posted: 27 Mar 2012 07:12 AM PDT Intensive research around the world has focused on improving the performance of solar photovoltaic cells and bringing down their cost. But very little attention has been paid to the best ways of arranging those cells, which are typically placed flat on a rooftop or other surface, or sometimes attached to motorized structures that keep the cells pointed toward the sun as it crosses the sky. |
| Posted: 27 Mar 2012 06:56 AM PDT New research suggests that a combination treatment of gene therapy and bone marrow transplants could prove to be a promising treatment for infants with Batten disease, a rare but fatal neurological disorder. Scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London and Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis (USA) discovered dramatic improvements in life span and motor function in mice with the infantile form of the disease treated with this combination therapy. |
| Epigenetic changes in blood samples may point to schizophrenia Posted: 27 Mar 2012 06:34 AM PDT In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have identified epigenetic changes known as DNA methylation in the blood of patients with schizophrenia. The researchers were also able to detect differences depending on how old the patients were when they developed the disease and whether they had been treated with various drugs. In the future this new knowledge may be used to develop a simple test to diagnose patients with schizophrenia. |
| Young infant imitation not guided by rational thinking: Rationality of infants has been overstated Posted: 27 Mar 2012 06:28 AM PDT In a widely noticed study, developmental psychologists reported that 14-month-old infants imitate an unusual action if it was chosen deliberately by the person they observed, but not if it could be attributed to external constraints. This selective imitation was put forth as evidence for an early understanding of rational action and action goals. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig now present a much simpler explanation for the finding. |
| Researchers unravel genetic mechanism of fatty liver disease in obese children Posted: 26 Mar 2012 08:36 PM PDT Obese youths with particular genetic variants may be more prone to fatty liver disease, a leading cause of chronic liver disease in children and adolescents in industrialized countries, according to new findings by Yale School of Medicine researchers. The study, which focused on three ethnic groups, is published in the March issue of the journal Hepatology. |
| Geologists correct a rift in Africa Posted: 26 Mar 2012 08:36 PM PDT The huge changes in the Earth’s crust that influenced human evolution are being redefined, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience. The Great Rift Valley of East Africa – the birthplace of the human species – may have taken much longer to develop than previously believed. |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2012 03:52 PM PDT Motivated by the desire to determine the simplest 3-D structure that could take advantage of mechanical instability to collapse reversibly, a group of engineers at MIT and Harvard University were stymied — until one of them happened across a collapsible, spherical toy that resembled the structures they’d been exploring, but with a complex layout of 26 solid moving elements and 48 rotating hinges. |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:58 AM PDT Late gestation is a busy time for babies getting ready for life outside the womb, particularly for functions critical to life such as breathing and maintaining an adequate heartbeat. These two functions are connected in mature infants and healthy people throughout life, so measuring their level of connectedness can give doctors a cue about whether an infant is ready to head home or needs to remain in the care of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). |
| Two drugs - meropenem and clavulanate, already on the market show promise against tuberculosis Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:54 AM PDT A two-drug combination is one of the most promising advances in decades for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB) — a disease that kills 2 million people annually — a scientist reported today at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The treatment, which combines two medications already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), delivers a knockout punch to forms of TB that shrug off other antibiotics. |
| Can a Machine Tell When You're Lying? Research Suggests the Answer is 'Yes' Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:48 AM PDT Inspired by the work of psychologists who study the human face for clues that someone is telling a high-stakes lie, UB computer scientists are exploring whether machines can also read the visual cues that give away deceit. |
| Tiny reader makes fast, cheap DNA sequencing feasible Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:39 AM PDT  Researchers have devised a nanoscale sensor to electronically read the sequence of a single DNA molecule, a technique that is fast and inexpensive and could make DNA sequencing widely available. |
| A 24-karat Gold Key to Unlock the Immune System Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:31 AM PDT Developing a drug or vaccine requires a delicate balancing act with the immune system. On one hand, medications need to escape detection by the immune system in order to perform their function. But vaccinations — de-activated versions of a disease or virus — need to do the reverse. They prompt the immune system to create protective antibodies. But scientists are still stumped by how the immune system recognizes different particles, and how it chooses whether or not to react against them. |
| Researcher Announces Progress Toward New Chemotherapy Agents Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:28 AM PDT Advances in chemotherapy have dramatically improved the outlook for many cancer patients, but the side effects of this treatment are daunting. A new generation of chemotherapy drugs with fewer side effects is the goal of Edward J. Merino, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. |
| Pass the lycopene: Scientist can protect supplements inside food Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:24 AM PDT A Purdue University food scientist has developed a way to encase nutritional supplements in food-based products so that one day consumers might be able to sprinkle vitamins, antioxidants and other beneficial compounds right onto their meals. |
| University of Michigan analyzes new technique for measuring heart failure risk Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:15 AM PDT Diastolic function, or how well the heart muscle relaxes, is a major factor in heart failure, a condition on the rise among aging Americans. But current technology for measuring diastolic function is limited. |
| Infrared spectroscopy allows scientists to analyze protein structure on an ultrafast timescale Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:07 AM PDT Proteins can take many different shapes, and those shapes help determine each protein’s function. Analyzing those structures can tell scientists a great deal about how a protein behaves, but many of the methods now used to study structure require proteins to be crystallized or otherwise altered from their natural state. |
| New Synthetic Biology Technique Boosts Microbial Production of Diesel Fuel Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:34 AM PDT Significant boosts in the microbial production of clean, green and renewable biodiesel fuel has been achieved with the development of a new technique in synthetic biology by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI). This new technique – dubbed a dynamic sensor-regulator system (DSRS) – can detect metabolic changes in microbes during the production of fatty acid-based fuels or chemicals and control the expression of genes affecting that production. |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:10 AM PDT In 1972, a young astronomer predicted that moving clusters of galaxies would leave a subtle imprint on the cosmic microwave background radiation - but he had no way to check his prediction. Forty years later, another young astronomer has proved him right - by combining data from two huge international astronomy collaborations. |
| Few Young Women with Cancer Take Steps to Preserve Fertility During Treatments Posted: 26 Mar 2012 08:57 AM PDT A new study has found that very few young women with cancer take steps to preserve their fertility while undergoing cancer therapy. Also, certain groups of young women are more likely to do so than others. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that efforts are needed to provide counseling on fertility preservation in reproductive-aged women diagnosed with cancer. |
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