Duke University
Ancient groundwater being tapped by Jordan, one of the 10 most water-deprived nations in the world, has been found to contain twenty times the radiation considered safe for drinking water in a new study by an international team of researchers.
A newly developed mathematical model that figures out the best strategy to win the popular board game CLUE© could some day help robot mine sweepers navigate strange surroundings to find hidden explosives.
A device that can bestow invisibility to an object by "cloaking" it from visual light is closer to reality.
A new understanding of the causes for symptoms of sickle cell disease, a condition affecting one in every 600 African-Americans, has resulted from a study by researchers at Duke University Medical Center and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Their findings may lead to a new, more direct method for treating the disease, they said.
Duke University neurobiologist Erich Jarvis and a team of 28 other neuroscientists have proposed sweeping changes to the terminology associated with the brain structures of birds--a century-old nomenclature the researchers consider outdated and irrelevant to birds' true brainpower.
A gene that plays many fundamental roles in cells throughout the body has, for the first time, been implicated in human disease, according to researchers at the Duke Center for Human Genetics. A defect in the ubiquitous gene dynamin 2 underlies one form of the prevalent, familial nerve disorder, known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). The disorder affects approximately 1 in every 2,500 people, making it one of the most common of all hereditary disorders, said the researchers.
Biomedical engineers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering have demonstrated for the first time that stimulating a specific nerve in the pelvis triggers the process that causes urine to begin flowing out from the bladder, refuting conventional thinking that "bladder emptying" requires signals from the brain. Their research, carried out with animals, could lead to a "bladder pacemaker" to restore bladder control for the more than 200,000 Americans living with spinal cord injury (SCI) or disease-related spinal cord problems.
In a finding that deepens our understanding of animal social cognition, researchers at Duke University Medical Center have demonstrated for the first time that monkeys, like humans, value information according to its social content. People readily pay to see powerful or sexually attractive individuals, and, according to this new study, monkeys will also "pay" to view these kinds of images.
Both economics and evolutionary theory predict that animals should selectively acquire information about others that is most useful for guiding behavior. In most monkey social groups, behavior is structured by kinship, dominance, and reproductive status, suggesting that social information should be valued according to these attributes. While previous studies had shown that monkeys would work to see other monkeys, no one knew whether the value they placed on seeing other individuals was related to the social relevance of those individuals.
Researchers at the Duke University Eye Center have determined that patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) experience significant improvement in their quality of life following a surgical procedure called "macular translocation with 360 degree peripheral retinectomy" (MT360). AMD is an eye disease that may lead to vision loss in the central region of a person's visual field, a defect that can seriously impact a patient's quality of life.
One of the most serious results of overeating, a condition known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), is on the rise, according to gastroenterologists at Duke University Medical Center. While there is no confirmed cause of NAFLD, many experts believe that weight loss and increased physical activity are good starting points to help prevent or slow the progress of the condition. Anna Mae Diehl, chief of gastroenterology at Duke, said that NAFLD has become much more widespread as the obesity crisis has worsened.
Duke University Medical Center researchers have shown that the protein produced by an artificial HIV-1 gene triggers anti-HIV-1 immune responses in animals. Such proteins -- produced by genes engineered to have "centralized" structures similar to those in several HIV strains -- could serve as a basis for vaccines that protect against many strains. Showing that artificial genes produce biologically functional proteins is a significant step in HIV vaccine development, the researchers said.
Since many health problems, including cardiovascular diseases, originate in childhood, the current epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States has led many medical experts to re-examine and update their recommendations for measures to help protect children's health. In order to detect potential medical problems as early as possible, the American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed the recommendations of a national children's health group calling for blood pressure screenings to begin for most children at age three.
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have demonstrated for the first time what happens inside a cell when it is deprived of the essential nutrient iron. Iron is found abundantly in red meats, shellfish dried fruits, whole grains, spinach, seeds and other foods. Their study in yeast cells demonstrated that iron-starved cells preserve the little iron they possess by shutting down the major iron users in order to maintain the cell's essential functions, said Dennis J. Thiele, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke. He said their discovery could aid in the diagnosis and ultimately the treatment of serious disorders caused by low iron levels.
While epilepsy has long been thought to boost production of new brain cells (neurons) as a means of repairing injury, a new study shows that chronic seizures actually decrease new neuron production in the brain's learning and memory center. The study is the first to demonstrate how new neuron production in the brain's "hippocampus" is affected by chronic, rather than acute, seizures, said the researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the Durham VA Medical Center. The hippocampus is the brain region where learning, memory and mood are regulated and where epilepsy causes injury.
A Duke University professor who has studied rural economic development in Indonesia and Sri Lanka says the loss of coastal villages' fishing fleets in this week's devastating tsunamis will be a major long-term obstacle to economic recovery there. Randall A. Kramer, professor of resource and environmental economics at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, has conducted house-to-house socioeconomic surveys in Indonesian coastal communities similar to those decimated in northern Sumatra.
