Scientists at Johns Hopkins report using a laser beam to activate a protein that makes a cluster of fruit fly cells act like a school of fish turning in social unison, following the lead of the one stimulated with light.
Scientists have just come several steps closer to understanding change blindness — the well studied failure of humans to detect seemingly obvious changes to scenes around them — with new research that used a computer-based model to predict what types of changes people are more likely to notice.
As turboprop and jet aircraft climb or descend under certain atmospheric conditions, they can inadvertently seed mid-level clouds and cause narrow bands of snow or rain to develop and fall to the ground, new research finds. Through this seeding process, they leave behind unusual “hole-punch clouds.”
How is it that some people who apparently freeze to death can be brought back to life with no long-term negative health consequences? New findings from the laboratory of Mark B. Roth, Ph.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center may help explain the mechanics behind this phenomenon.
Scientists are reporting the first identification of a chemical basis for people’s preference for certain brands of vodka, which outsells rum, gin, whiskey, and tequila. They found that vodka differs from simple water-ethanol solutions in ways that could alter vodka’s perceived taste.
More than 16 people are killed and more than 1,300 people are injured each day in crashes involving a distracted driver, a phenomenon that could be reduced with the right application of motion information and appropriate eye movements. Two studies conducted at Vanderbilt University and published in the Journal of Vision found that these factors can be beneficial to teaching people how to track objects without getting distracted or confused.
Scientists have discovered the secret behind an ancient Chinese mortar made from sticky rice, that delicious “sweet rice” that is a modern mainstay in Asian dishes. They also concluded that the mortar ― a paste used to bind and fill gaps between bricks, stone blocks and other construction materials ― remains the best available material for restoring ancient buildings. Their article appears in American Chemical Society’s monthly journal, Accounts of Chemical Research.
The “mineral-breathing” bacteria found in many oxygen-free environments may be “carbon-breathing” as well.
Reporting in Science, Indiana University Bloomington scientists identify an sRNA as a key regulator of social behavior in Myxococcus xanthus, a soil bacterium widely studied for its ability to produce stree-resistant spores.
Space satellites that detect nuclear events and environmental gasses face a data logjam because their increasingly powerful sensors produce more information than their bandwidth can easily transmit. Sandia National Laboratories experiments at the International Space Station indicate that sending more complex computer chips into space to pre-reduce the large data stream sent Earthbound could be the answer. But how well do the latest, most sensitive computing electronics fare in the harsh environment of outer space?
How high is the sky? Scientists have a pretty good handle on that one, what with their knowledge of the troposphere, stratosphere an the other “o-spheres.” Now, thanks to new work headed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they are closing in on the other half of that age-old query: How deep is the ocean?
A commonly used probe for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning and a new probe developed by researchers at UCLA reveal different functions in diverse cells of the immune system, providing a non-invasive and much clearer picture of an immune response in action.
In the May 7 edition of Physical Review Letters, a journal of the American Physical Society, an international team led by University of Delaware researchers reports new findings about helium that may lead to more accurate standards for how temperature and pressure are measured.
Ethics experts call for refocus of scientific and ethical review.
Networks permeate modern life, from Facebook to political allegiances. Now University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill mathematicians and colleagues have developed a new technique for examining networks to help identify patterns and see how connections evolve.
A team of Clarkson University scientists are using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to record sounds emanating from inside living insects like flies, mosquitoes and ladybugs. The research may help in finding solutions to the problems caused by insect pests.
A landmark study coordinated by NIST is the first to put numbers to the effect of changing the size of fire-fighting crews responding to residential fires.
What would have happened if Hitler had chosen to use the deadly nerve gas Tabun, that he alone possessed, to oppose the D-Day landings? What the little known chemist, Otto Ambros, told Adolph Hitler at their fateful 1943 meeting, saved countless lives, shortened history’s most horrific war and may have prevented a tragic D-Day defeat.
Scientists have used quantum mechanics to reveal that the most common mineral on Earth is relatively uncommon deep within the planet.
Research led by Michigan Technological University scientists has identified the molecular mechanism that poplar trees use to adapt to changing soil conditions, as well as some of the genes that turn the process on or off.
In response to growing concerns about our planet’s changing climate, rising global temperatures and sea levels, and increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), scientists are looking to the planet’s past to help predict its future. New results from a research expedition in Antarctic waters may provide critical clues to understanding one of the most dramatic periods of climatic change in Earth’s history – and a glimpse into what might lie far ahead in our climate’s future.
Working with highly sensitive photomultipliers, Indiana University nuclear physicist Hans-Otto Meyer has identified new attributes to a phenomenon called cryogenic electron emission.
Studies of calcium under pressure reveal an unexpected level of complexity and new phenomena that change our ideas about simple metals.
Using neutron beams and atomic-force microscopes, a team of university researchers working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may have resolved a 10-year-old question about an exotic class of "artificial muscles"—how do they work? Their results could influence the design of future specialized robotic tools.
A National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Maryland team has defined the workings of NIST technique for making liquid-filled vesicles called liposomes, "fat bubbles" that may one day be used to precisely deliver drugs within the body. The new insight could help make a microchip-scale liposome manufacturing process practical.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Georgia Tech have demonstrated that atomic scale moiré patterns, an interference pattern that appears when two or more grids are overlaid slightly askew, can be used to measure how sheets of graphene are stacked and reveal areas of strain.
More than 100 researchers from NCAR and other organizations will begin deploying a flotilla of instruments across the Great Plains next week, aiming to surround tornadoes with an unprecedented fleet of mobile radars and other tools in the second and final year of the most ambitious tornado study in history.
New research indicates that one of the largest fresh-water floods in Earth's history happened about 17,000 years ago and inundated a large area of Alaska that is now occupied in part by the city of Wasilla.
A team of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has discovered the structure of a protein that pinches off tiny pouches from cells’ outer membranes. Cells use these pouches, or vesicles, to carry nutrients and other essential substances, but many medicines also hitch a ride inside them.
Changing the hue of hospital gowns and bed sheets to match a patient’s skin color could greatly enhance a physician’s ability to detect cyanosis and other health-related skin color changes, according to a new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Researchers have developed and tested a modified enzyme that can break down cocaine into inactive products nearly 1,000 times faster than the human body does regularly. The engineered enzyme, called CocE, may be an excellent candidate for clinical use.
A team of researchers from Japan and Michigan Technological University has built a massively parallel molecular computer using lessons learned from the human brain.
Pericytes, cells surrounding capillaries, may use mechanical forces to initiate blood vessel “sprouting” called angiogenesis, according to researchers at Tufts and MIT. The researchers are among the first to examine how mechanical signaling by pericytes is related to angiogenesis, which contributes to the progression of cancer, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related macular degeneration.
New research suggests that hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) may be involved in decreasing bone mineral density during menopause.
They paved paradise and, it turns out, actually did put up a parking lot. A big one. Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California’s jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist. The deposits were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).
A Johns Hopkins team has identified a protein in sensory cells on the “tongues” of fruit flies that allows them to detect a noxious chemical and, ultimately, influences their decision about what to eat and what to avoid.
Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered and characterized a general mechanism that controls transcription elongation in bacteria. The mechanism, described in the April 23 issue of Science, relies on physical cooperation between a moving ribosome and RNA polymerase (RNAP) that allows for a precise adjustment of the transcriptional yield in response to translational needs. The study could lead to the development of new ways to interfere with bacterial gene expression and serve as a new target for antimicrobial therapy.
New research found documents that prove Alfred L. Rives was the designer and lead builder of the Cabin John Bridge, for 40 years the longest single-span stone bridge in the world and the longest in the U.S. still today. Rives was denied credit after joining the Confederacy.
Brain tumor specialists hoped to craft a drug delivery system using transferrin, a protein taking iron into cells. Brain tumors use huge amounts of iron, and unlike most proteins transferrin crosses the blood-brain barrier. But a new study using precise methods shows transferrin may not be useful.
Criminal poisoning cases can be hard to recognize and even harder to solve when law enforcement officials don't know what a poisoning looks like. "Criminal Poisoning: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives" contains information for law enforcement, attorneys and medical providers to use when investigating cases of suspected criminal poisonings.
Weizmann scientists find that the perception of an odor’s pleasantness is hard-wired to its molecular structure, indicating that smell may not be as subjective as once thought. These findings have implications for automated environmental toxicity and malodor monitoring, among other applications.
A multicellular green alga, Volvox carteri, may have finally unlocked the secrets behind the evolution of different sexes. A team led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies has shown that the genetic region that determines sex in Volvox has changed dramatically relative to that of the closely related unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
A University of Utah researcher helped discover how a “wimpy” protein motor gains the strength necessary to move nerve cells and components inside them. The findings provide clues to a rare brain disorder that often kills babies within months of birth.
NIST scientists have developed the world’s most efficient single photon detector, which is able to count individual particles of light traveling through fiber optic cables with roughly 99 percent efficiency. The team's efforts could bring improvements to secure electronic communication, advanced quantum computation and the measurement of optical power.
“Supervolcanoes” have been blamed for multiple mass extinctions in Earth’s history, but the cause of these massive eruptions remains poorly understood. To explore the origins of these seafloor giants, scientists drilled into a large, 145 million-year-old volcanic mountain chain lying underwater off the coast of Japan.
Working in a rare, “natural seafloor laboratory” of hydrothermal vents that had just been rocked by a volcanic eruption, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and other institutions have discovered what they believe is an undersea superhighway carrying tiny life forms unprecedented distances to inhabit the post-eruption site.
Geophysicist Roger Turpening has discovered how to detect the oil-rich heartwood inside living sandalwood trees, a system that could one day be used to find flaws in sawlogs. And he recently turbo-charged the process, thanks to a pair of computer-savvy freshmen.
An international team of scientists from Russia and the United States has discovered the newest superheavy element, element 117.
IU theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in research published in "Physics Letters B" uses Euclidean-based mathematical modeling to suggest that all black holes may have wormholes inside which exist universes created at the same time as the black holes.
Researchers at the University of South Carolina have drastically increased the toughness of a T-shirt, reinforcing it with boron carbide and making it strong enough to be used as body armor.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right