Curated News: Scientific Meetings

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Microbes may just be the next diet craze. Researchers have programmed bacteria to generate a molecule that, through normal metabolism, becomes a hunger-suppressing lipid. Mice that drank water laced with the programmed bacteria ate less, had lower body fat and staved off diabetes — even when fed a high-fat diet — offering a potential weight-loss strategy for humans. The team will describe their approach at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Water-borne algal blooms from farm fertilizer runoff can destroy aquatic life and clog rivers and lakes, but scientists will report today that they are working on a way to clean up these environmental scourges and turn them into useful products. The algae could serve as a feedstock for biofuels, and the feedstock leftovers could be recycled back into farm soil nutrients.

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Squid are the ultimate camouflage artists, blending almost flawlessly with their backgrounds so that unsuspecting prey can’t detect them. Using a protein that’s key to this process, scientists have designed “invisibility stickers” that could one day help soldiers disguise themselves, even when sought by enemies with tough-to-fool infrared cameras.

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Increasing natural gas production could provide a bridge to a lower carbon future. However, methane that is leaked into the atmosphere from this process could speed global warming and climate change. And there is controversy over just how much methane is lost. Researchers today will present new methods to determine methane’s leakage rate and problems inherent in discovering and assessing leakage at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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The sweet taste and smell of antifreeze tempts children and animals to drink the poisonous substance, resulting in thousands of accidental poisonings in the United States every year. But today researchers will describe a new, nontoxic product based on a common food additive that could address this health issue and help the environment at the same time.

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More than a year into Colorado’s experiment legalizing marijuana, labs testing the plants are able for the first time to take stock of the drug’s potency and contaminants – and openly paint a picture of what’s in today’s weed. At the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, one such lab will present trends — and some surprises — that its preliminary testing has revealed about the marijuana now on the market.

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Scientists will report in a presentation today that they have turned to the opossum to develop a promising new and inexpensive antidote for poisonous snake bites. They predict it could save thousands of lives worldwide without the side effects of current treatments. The presentation will take place here at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

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The burgeoning field of nanotechnology, nanoscience at prestigious U.S. national laboratories and the worldwide promotion of chemistry are the topics of three special Presidential Symposia planned for the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Using natural soil components to trap pollutants will allow producers to control soil contaminants and reuse draining water while protecting their agricultural crops, according to Mohamed Elsayed, a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at South Dakota State University’s chemistry and biochemistry department. His research seeks to increase the ability of humic acid to adsorb, or trap pollutants, in combination with either of two clay minerals—kaolinite or montmorillonite.

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An international team of astronomers used ALMA to dissect a cluster of star-forming clouds at the heart of NGC 253, one of the nearest starburst galaxies to the Milky Way.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have isolated a peptide, a type of biological molecule, which binds strongly to lithium manganese nickel oxide (LMNO), a material that can be used to make the cathode in high performance batteries. The peptide can latch onto nanosized particles of LMNO and connect them to conductive components of a battery electrode, improving the potential power and stability of the electrode.

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Mechanosensation is one of our fundamental physiological processes, on par with sight and smell, but how it works on a cellular level remains poorly understood, holding back development of effective treatments for mechanosensory disorders like chronic pain. Now, a team of researchers has identified a new model organism that may help elucidate the cellular mechanisms behind mechanosensation: the ordinary duck.

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Food dyes can give cakes, candy and sodas brilliant colors of the rainbow. Now a team of food scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey has found that food coloring may be able to play more than its traditional esthetic role in food presentation.

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Incredibly tough, slightly stretchy spider silk is a lightweight, biodegradable wonder material with numerous potential biomedical applications. But although humans have been colonizing relatively placid silkworms for thousands of years, harvesting silk from territorial and sometimes cannibalistic spiders has proven impractical. Instead, labs hoping to harness spider silk's mechanical properties are using its molecular structure as a template for their own biomimetic silks.

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Knowing how cells exert force and sense mechanical feedback in their microenvironment is crucial to understanding how they activate a wide range of cellular functions, such as cell reproduction, differentiation and adhesion. Now a more fine-grained picture of adhesion mechanics is emerging, thanks to a new tool developed in Illinois in recent years called a "tension gauge tether," which allows scientists to measure cell mechanics at the single-molecule level.

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Not unlike an urban restaurant, the success of a bacterial cell depends on three things: localization, localization and localization. But the complete set of controls by which bacteria control the movement of proteins and other essential biological materials globally within the confines of their membrane walls has been something of a mystery. Now, researchers have parsed out the localization mechanisms that E. coli use to sort through and organize their subcellular components.

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A large percentage of the world's population -- fully one third, by the World Health Organization's estimates -- is currently overweight or obese. This staggering statistics has made finding ways to address obesity a top priority for many scientists around the globe, and now a group of researchers at the University of Wyoming has found promise in the potential of capsaicin -- the chief ingredient in chili peppers -- as a diet-based supplement.

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Good drugs are hard to design: they must not only effectively treat a medical condition, but they must also do so without having side effects that outweigh their benefits. Sometimes, toxic side effects aren’t discovered until late in development, when substantial time and money have already been invested. Now, researchers have devised a new drug screen that capitalizes on the tendency of toxic compounds to alter the properties of the lipid bilayer that encases cells.

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By employing derivatives of humanin, a naturally occurring peptide encoded in the genome of cellular mitochondria, researchers at Ben Gurion University of the Negev are working to interrupt necrosis, buying precious time for tissues whose cellular mechanisms have called it quits.

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During the Biophysical Society's 59th Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Md., Christophe Lavelle, an expert in biophysics, epigenetics and food science who works for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, France, will describe his research dedicated to gaining a deeper understanding of genome compaction within the cells in our bodies and the way it influences gene expression.

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To prepare for people for safely journeying into space for extended periods of time in the future, it's crucial to gain a better understanding of the biophysics involved within reduced gravity and microgravity environments. To this end, a team of University of Delaware researchers is preparing to send transparent microscopic worms called "Caenorhabditas elegans" up to the International Space Station.

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Combining experimental data from X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, cryoelectron microscopy and lipidomics, researchers have built a complete model of the outer envelope of an influenza A virion for the first time. The approach, known as a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation, has allowed them to generate trajectories at different temperatures and lipid compositions – revealing various characteristics that may help scientists better understand how the virus survives in the wild or find new ways to combat it.

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Journalists are invited to discover the world of biophysics next month in Maryland, when the largest gathering of biophysicists in the world convenes from Feb. 7-11 at the Baltimore Convention Center for the 59th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society.

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WHO: More than 14,000 biomedical researchers from industry, government, nonprofits, the private sector and academia WHAT: Experimental Biology, the convergence of six scientific societies’ annual meetings WHEN: March 28 – April 1, 2015 WHERE: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 111 W. 415 Summer Street, Boston, Mass., 02210

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Astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have created a unique map of enigmatic molecules in our galaxy that are responsible for puzzling features in the light from stars.

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While many astronomical collaborations use powerful telescopes to target individual objects in the distant universe, a new project at The Ohio State University is doing something radically different: using small telescopes to study a growing portion of the nearby universe all at once. Since it began, the project has detected 89 bright supernovae and counting—more than all other professional astronomical surveys combined.

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If you’re sitting in a coffee shop, tapping away on your laptop, feeling safe from hackers because you didn’t connect to the shop’s wifi, think again. Hackers may be able to see what you’re doing just by analyzing the low-power electronic signals your laptop emits even when it’s not connected.

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A sudden jump in the number of lightning strikes inside a thunderstorm might give forecasters a new severe weather prediction toolPHOENIX (Jan. 7, 2015) — A sudden jump in the number of lightning strikes inside a garden-variety thunderstorm might soon give forecasters a new tool for predicting severe weather and issuing timely warnings, according to research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

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New research shows that mating pairs of the bird species known as great tits become more similar in their hormones over time. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 7, 2015.

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Hands-on, innovative educational material is being developed to help blind students learn about evolution. The development of toolboxes for the blind will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 6, 2015.

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New research shows rapid evolution has helped to make the venom of black widow spiders so toxic. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 6, 2015.

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The largest NASA Hubble Space Telescope image ever assembled, this sweeping view of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is the sharpest large composite image ever taken of our galactic neighbor. Though the galaxy is over 2 million light-years away, the Hubble telescope is powerful enough to resolve individual stars in a 61,000-light-year-long section of the galaxy's pancake-shaped disk.

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At a time when our earliest human ancestors had recently mastered walking upright, the heart of our Milky Way galaxy underwent a titanic eruption, driving gases and other material outward at 2 million miles per hour. Now, at least 2 million years later, astronomers are witnessing the aftermath of the explosion: billowing clouds of gas towering about 30,000 light-years above and below the plane of our galaxy.

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Last September, after years of watching, a team of scientists led by Amherst College astronomy professor Daryl Haggard observed and recorded the largest-ever flare in X-rays from a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

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In celebration of its 25th anniversary, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous "Pillars of Creation" region of the Eagle Nebula (M16), providing astronomers with a sharper and wider view. As a bonus, the pillars have been photographed in near-infrared light, as well as visible light.

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Diamonds are beautiful and enigmatic. Though chemical reactions that create the highly coveted sparkles still remain a mystery, a professor from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is studying a rare rock covered in diamonds that may hold clues to the gem's origins.

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New research shows that the circadian clock of arctic ground squirrels works differently during the cold of hibernation. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 5, 2015.

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New research on bioluminescent ostracods shows how tiny crustaceans are helping scientists to understand evolution by sexual selection. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 5, 2015.

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New research shows that being monogamous is an advantage for mantis shrimp, helping them to avoid predators. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.

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New research shows that flashes of light from an unusual clam help it to fend off predators and perhaps to attract prey. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.

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New research shows rapid evolution has helped to make the venom of black widow spiders so toxic. The results of this study will be presented at the annual conference of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in West Palm Beach, Florida on January 4, 2015.

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Many of the worst West Coast winter floods involve heavy rains and melting snow, and UW hydrology experts are using the physics of these events to better predict the risks.

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Spinning up a dust devil in the thin air of Mars requires a stronger updraft than is needed to create a similar vortex on Earth, according to research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). Early results from this research in UAH’s Atmospheric Science Department are scheduled for presentation today at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco. “To start a dust devil on Mars you need convection, a strong updraft,” said Bryce Williams, an atmospheric science graduate student at UAH. “We looked at the ratio between convection and surface turbulence to find the sweet spot where there is enough updraft to overcome the low level wind and turbulence. And on Mars, where we think the process that creates a vortex is more easily disrupted by frictional dissipation – turbulence and wind at the surface – you need twice as much convective updraft as you do on Earth.” Williams and UAH’s Dr. Udaysankar Nair looked for the dust devil sweet spot by combining dat

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A URI researcher who measured organic pollutants in the air and water around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario has found that airborne emissions are no longer the primary cause of the lakes’ contamination. Instead, most of the lakes’ chemical pollutants come from sources on land or in rivers.

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In a finding that meshes well with recent discoveries from the Rosetta mission, Ohio State University researchers have discovered a geochemical pathway by which Earth makes it own water through plate tectonics. This finding extends the planet's water cycle to billions of years—and suggests that enough water is buried in the deep earth right now to fill the Pacific Ocean.

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Of the many weather-related phenomena that can promote harmful algal blooms, a new study has revealed that one—the wind—is the most important. The finding suggests that environmental agencies will have to incorporate the threat of extreme weather events caused by climate change into efforts to prevent algal blooms.

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Research on underwater volcanoes, Great Lakes pollution, subseafloor life and much more will be among the 40 projects that will be presented by scientists from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 15 to 19.

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Ever wonder what’s in the black cloud that emits from some semi trucks that you pass on the freeway? Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientist Thomas Kirchstetter knows very precisely what’s in there, having conducted detailed measurements of thousands of heavy-duty trucks over months at a time at two San Francisco Bay Area locations.

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Computers scientists are tracking tweets to gather important information about common mental illnesses.

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Scientists now have an observational framework to help predict solar weather, says physicist Dr. S.T. Wu, distinguished professor emeritus of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.