A method that can be used to predict the growth of earthquake faults also aids prediction of the tiniest of phenomena–how arrays of “artificial atoms,” or quantum dots, assemble and stack themselves on semiconductor materials, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers report in the July 15 issue of Physical Review B.
Higher education or a larger brain may protect against dementia, according to new findings by researchers from the University of South Florida and the University of Kentucky. The study, published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, provides important new evidence that either more years of formal education or better early brain development may help delay dementia in later life. The findings were drawn from the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease.
A new study has found that while a majority of health care professionals surveyed believe the United States is at a high or somewhat high risk of bioterrorism, the same professionals believe that their individual communities are at low risk of an attack. “It appears to be an it-can’t-happen-to-me response,” said Brooke Shadel, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of public health and associate director of the Center for the Study of Bioterrorism and Emerging Infections at Saint Louis University School of Public Health. “But here’s the problem. If you perceive the risk is low in your community then you may not value training information and you may be less likely to seek out information or maintain current references. This low perception of risk may leave the professionals who are supposed to be on the frontlines of such an event unprepared, and that’s our concern.”
Working from their university labs in two different corners of the world, U.S. and Australian researchers have created what they call a new class of creative beings, “the semi-living artist” ? a picture-drawing robot in Perth, Australia whose movements are controlled by the brain signals of cultured rat cells in Atlanta. Gripping three colored markers positioned above a white canvas, the robotic drawing arm operates based on the neural activity of a few thousand rat neurons placed in a special petri dish that keeps the cells alive. The dish, a Multi-Electrode Array (MEA), is instrumented with 60 two-way electrodes for communication between the neurons and external electronics. The neural signals are recorded and sent to a computer that translates neural activity into robotic movement.
A non-invasive test which allows faster, cheaper, and less risky prenatal genetic screening was announced by Australian researchers at the International Genetics Congress in Melbourne today. The new test can also be performed much earlier in pregnancy, say its developers Dr Ian Findlay and Mr Darryl Irwin of the Australian Genome Research Facility in Brisbane. It should open the opportunity of prenatal genetic testing to a wider group of women. “This test will focus conventional prenatal testing much more effectively,” said Dr Findlay.
Scientists from Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a strategy that could one day be used to create functional human organs such as kidneys and livers. The technique involves creating a network of microscopic tubes that branch out in a pattern, similar to that seen in the circulatory system, to provide oxygen and nutrients to liver or kidney cells that have been cultured in a lab. Using new fractal computational models, the network is designed and etched onto silicon surfaces which are then used as molds to transfer the pattern to biocompatible polymer films. Two films are then sealed together with a microporous membrane sandwiched between them.
Given only a fraction of a second to respond to images of men popping out from behind a garbage dumpster, people were more likely to shoot blacks than whites, even when the men were holding a harmless object such as a flashlight rather than a gun. The finding comes from a study that is to be published this week in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The research used a virtual reality simulation and was prompted by a number of mistaken shootings of unarmed blacks by police officers in recent years. It was directed by Anthony Greenwald, a University of Washington psychologist who examines the unconscious roots and levels of prejudice.
You can’t get something for nothing, physicists say, but sometimes a radical innovation can come close. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories — exceeding the predictions of a 100-year-old law of physics — have shown that filaments fabricated of tungsten lattices emit remarkably more energy than solid tungsten filaments in certain bands of near-infrared wavelengths when heated. This greater useful output offers the possibility of a superior energy source to supercharge hybrid electric cars, electric equipment on boats, and industrial waste-heat-driven electrical generators. The lattices’ energy emissions put more energy into wavelengths used by photovoltaic cells that change light into electricity to run engines.
A pickle-shaped root is revealing how plants develop from embryos to adults and also may hold answers about cancer cell growth. Purdue University researchers have uncovered nine specific genes that are shut off before plants make the developmental transition from the embryonic stage to adulthood. Results of the latest study are published in the July issue of The Plant Journal.
A California study has revealed a new class of cosmic particles that may shed light on the composition of dark matter in the universe. These particles, called superweakly interacting massive particles, or superWIMPs, may constitute the invisible matter that makes up as much as one-quarter of the universe’s mass.
A new method of extracting and analyzing fluid from a woman’s breast may provide a more accurate, less expensive and noninvasive way to determine a patient’s risk for breast cancer or to diagnose the disease in its early stages.
HIV eludes one of the body’s key smart bomb defenses against infection, and this finding may lay the groundwork for new drugs to treat AIDS, according to a new Salk Institute study. Nathaniel Landau, a Salk Institute associate professor, and his team have pinpointed how the body battles HIV, a tremendously complex and relentless virus. Their findings appear in the online issue of Cell and will be published in the July 11 print issue. “What we have uncovered is a war that is being fought on the molecular level between viruses and cells. The war has been going on for millions of years, but we didn’t know about it until now,” said Landau.
Results of a new study suggest that nearly one in four college students who drink alcohol heavily on a regular basis quit doing so before graduation. While many researchers have looked at why college students stop drinking once they graduate, the current study looks at students who stopped heavy drinking while still in school. Learning what drives heavy drinkers to temper their alcohol use might help researchers create more effective alcohol misuse intervention campaigns on college campuses.
A group of leading climate scientists has reaffirmed the “robust consensus view” emerging from the peer reviewed literature that the warmth experienced on at least a hemispheric scale in the late 20th century was an anomaly in the previous millennium and that human activity likely played an important role in causing it. In so doing, they refuted recent claims that the warmth of recent decades was not unprecedented in the context of the past thousand years.