American Chemical Society’s highest honor goes to pioneer of ‘Lego-like’ molecules

Peter J. Stang, Ph.D., distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Utah and editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), has been named winner of the 2013 Priestley Medal by the American Chemical Society (ACS). It is the highest honor bestowed by the world’s largest scientific society.

Stang will receive the award and present an address tonight during a banquet and ceremony that are part of the ACS’ 245th National Meeting & Exposition, being held here this week. The ceremony will honor recipients of other ACS national award recipients for outstanding contributions to chemistry.

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‘Artificial leaf’ gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water

Another innovative feature has been added to the world’s first practical “artificial leaf,” making the device even more suitable for providing people in developing countries and remote areas with electricity, scientists reported here today. It gives the leaf the ability to self-heal damage that occurs during production of energy.

Daniel G. Nocera, Ph.D., described the advance during the “Kavli Foundation Innovations in Chemistry Lecture” at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society. About 14,000 scientists and others are expected for the meeting, which continues through Thursday with almost 12,000 reports on advances in science.

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Copying is social phenomenon, not just learning say scientists

Mimicking the behaviour of mum and dad has long been considered a vital way in which children learn about the world around them.

Now psychologists at The University of Nottingham have shown that copying unnecessary behaviour is more likely to be a social phenomenon than part of the practical process of acquiring new skills.

In their study, published today in the journal Current Biology, the scientists found that autistic children, who have profound difficulty in engaging in social situations, were less likely to copy unnecessary behaviour when learning a new task.

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Quantum Light from Diamond and Plastic

Novel hybrid approach combining two completely different material systems

Researchers from Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin and Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) have developed a simple method to fabricate stable sources of single light quanta. The approach published in the Open Access Journal Scientific Reports of Nature Publishing Group is based on a novel hybrid approach combining two completely different material systems.

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Surprising Predictor of Ecosystem Chemistry

Carnegie scientists have found that the plant species making up an ecosystem are better predictors of ecosystem chemistry than environmental conditions such as terrain, geology, or altitude. This is the first study using a new, high-resolution airborne, chemical-detecting instrument to map multiple ecosystem chemicals. The result, published in the April 8, 2013, Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is a key step toward understanding how species composition affects carbon, nitrogen and other nutrient cycling, and the effects of climate change, land use, and other ecosystem pressures.

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Nanowires Have the Power to Revolutionize Solar Energy

Imagine a solar panel more efficient than today’s best solar panels, but using 10 000 times less material. This is what EPFL researchers expect given recent findings on these tiny filaments called nanowires. Solar technology integrating nanowires could capture large quantities of light and produce energy with incredible efficiency at a much lower cost. This technology is possibly the future for powering microchips and the basis for a new generation of solar panels.

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Using social networks for mobilization has its limits

Mobilization by social networks is fast but it does have certain limits. That is the main conclusion of an international study in which Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) scientists participated, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study analyzes the potential of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to coordinate people. In recent years there have been a number of examples of how social networks have served to mobilize volunteers during natural disasters, political campaigns, health emergencies, etc. But can we really depend on the use of social networks to carry out these tasks? And if it is possible, what is the risk that this strategy will fail?

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UC San Diego Computer Scientists Develop First-person Player Video Game that Teaches How to Program

Children learn some of the basic of Java after just one hour of play

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have developed an immersive, first-person player video game designed to teach students in elementary to high school how to program in Java, one of the most common programming languages in use today.

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'Pharmaceutical' approach boosts oil production from algae

Taking an approach similar to that used for discovering new therapeutic drugs, chemists at the University of California, Davis, have found several compounds that can boost oil production by green microscopic algae, a potential source of biodiesel and other "green" fuels. The work appears online in the journal Chemical Biology.

Microalgae are single-celled organisms that, like green plants, use photosynthesis to capture carbon dioxide and turn it into complex compounds, including oils and lipids. Marine algae species can be raised in saltwater ponds and so do not compete with food crops for land or fresh water.

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Air pollution stunts coral growth

A new study has found that pollution from fine particles in the air – mainly the result of burning coal or volcanic eruptions – can shade corals from sunlight and cool the surrounding water resulting in reduced growth rates.

Although coral reefs grow under the sea it seems that they have been responding to changes in the concentration of particulate pollution in the atmosphere, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience by a team of climate scientists and coral ecologists from the UK, Australia and Panama. Corals are colonies of simple animal cells but most rely on photosynthetic algae for their energy and nutrients.

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Microalgae produce more oil faster for energy, food or products

Scientists today described technology that accelerates microalgae’s ability to produce many different types of renewable oils for fuels, chemicals, foods and personal-care products within days using standard industrial fermentation. The presentation was part of the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The meeting, with 12,000 presentations on advances in science and other topics, continues here through Thursday.

Walter Rakitsky, Ph.D, explained that microalgae are the original oil producers on earth, and that all of the oil-producing machinery present in higher plants resides within these single-cell organisms.

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Do cells in the blood, heart and lungs smell the food we eat?

In a discovery suggesting that odors may have a far more important role in life than previously believed, scientists have found that heart, blood, lung and other cells in the body have the same receptors for sensing odors that exist in the nose. It opens the door to questions about whether the heart, for instance, “smells” that fresh-brewed cup of coffee or cinnamon bun, according to the research leader, who spoke here today at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

Peter Schieberle, Ph.D., an international authority on food chemistry and technology, explained that scientists thought that the nose had a monopoly on olfactory receptors. Located on special cells in the mucus-covered olfactory epithelium in the back of the nose, olfactory receptors are docking ports for the airborne chemical compounds responsible for the smell of food and other substances.

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Reducing waste of food: A key element in feeding billions more people

Families can be key players in a revolution needed to feed the world, and could save money by helping to cut food losses now occurring from field to fork to trash bin, an expert said here today. He described that often-invisible waste in food — 4 out of every 10 pounds produced in the United States alone — and the challenges of feeding a global population of 9 billion in a keynote talk at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.

“We will need another ‘Green Revolution’ to feed the world by 2050,” said John Floros, Ph.D., referring to the development of high-yield, disease-resistant breeds of grain and other agricultural innovations that took root in the 1960s.

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New tool promises private photo-sharing -- even using Facebook and Flickr

USC research team develops a way to encrypt a crucial portion of the photo to keep it secure, while leaving enough unencrypted that it can still be utilized by cloud filesharing services.

In the next five minutes, roughly a half-million photos will be shared online.

Embarrassing or not, many are only intended for a certain audience -- family, or friends maybe -- not the whole world. And yet, relatively few will be encrypted, leaving them vulnerable to simple data harvesting.

Thanks to a new tool developed by a research team at USC, that could all be about to change.

The tool, dubbed "P3" for "Privacy-Preserving Photo Sharing" removes small amounts of crucial data from a photo and encrypts them, allowing cloud file-sharing services like Facebook and Flickr to have only the unencrypted—but now unrecognizable—portion. The photo's owner can then choose to share the encrypted portion with other parties -- allowing them to see the whole picture -- without ever uploading it to the cloud.

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BMW Concept X4 – World Premiere

Every BMW SAV has been a trailblazer. The world premiere of the first BMW SAV (the BMW X5) in 1999 saw the BMW Group create the Sports Activity Vehicle (SAV) segment – one in which BMW SAVs remain the market leaders. The BMW X3 and BMW X1 were likewise the first SAVs in their classes, and continue to define these types of vehicles today.

The story of BMW light trucks took on a new dimension in May 2008 with the introduction of the BMW X6 – the first Sports Activity Coupe (SAC). This unique concept brought together the rugged looks of a BMW SAV with the emotional aura and sporting character of a BMW Coupe for the first time. The enduring popularity of BMW’s first SAC is borne out by its consistently high sales figures. The short history of the BMW X range is already a successful one. Since the first BMW SAV took to the stage, average sales across the BMW X line-up have progressed on a constant upward curve: one in four new BMW cars is now a BMW SAV.

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Edison2 to Unveil New Very Light Car Architecture at The Henry Ford, April 11, 2013

EDISON2 TO UNVEIL NEWEST EV VEHICLE ARCHITECTURE APRIL 11, HENRY FORD MUSEUM, DEARBORN, MI

Special Press Conference begins at 2pm inside Henry Ford Museum

Edison2, the winners of the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, will unveil their latest Very Light Car (VLC) architecture on Thursday, April 11, 2013 at The Henry Ford. This special press conference will begin at 2 p.m. next to the organization’s original winning VLC on display inside Henry Ford Museum’s Driving America exhibit.

After their 2010 X Prize victory, Edison2 went to work designing the next VLC. The new prototype is designed to address to consumers' needs and incorporates lessons learned from the prestigious X Prize competition.

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Promising drilling tool

A new-born “mole” homes in on small oil reservoirs – an almost untapped source of income.

An innovative new oil-drilling tool concept has seen the light of day.

The tool is being developed by scientists at SINTEF Petroleum Research, and it has characteristics that will enable it to take on a number of different tasks.

One of these is to bring up oil from small oil-filled pockets that lie close to large fields on the continental shelf. Although any single pocket may seem to be insignificant, taken together they hold very valuable quantities of oil.

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Breakthrough in neuroscience could help re-wire appetite control

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have made a discovery in neuroscience that could offer a long-lasting solution to eating disorders such as obesity.

It was previously thought that the nerve cells in the brain associated with appetite regulation were generated entirely during an embryo’s development in the womb and therefore their numbers were fixed for life.

But research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience has identified a population of stem cells capable of generating new appetite-regulating neurons in the brains of young and adult rodents.

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Power struggles are best kept out of the public eye

Audiences influence future status of quails following fights between rivals

For animals, prevailing in a fight affects their likelihood of winning future conflicts. The opposite is true of losing a fight. The sex hormone testosterone is often believed to mediate this “winner effect”. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have examined whether the presence of an audience influences the behaviour and the testosterone changes of Japanese quails (Coturnix japonica) after a fight. The evidence shows that both winners and losers exhibit raised testosterone levels after a conflict without an audience. Furthermore, both winners and losers are able to maintain their social status within their group. With an audience, on the other hand, this remained true for winners, but was not the case for losers: those who had lost had neither raised testosterone levels nor were they able to maintain their dominant status within the group. Thus, informed audiences determine the future social status of a male, while testosterone plays a secondary role.

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Ultrasonic sounds of the rainforest

Research aimed at developing ultrasonic microphones with insect-like sensitivity is to continue in the rainforests of Colombia and Ecuador.

Following the discovery of a previously unidentified hearing organ in the South American bushcrickets’ ear, a scientist from the University of Lincoln (UK) will now study the role of this Auditory Vesicle in hearing sensitivity.

Dr Fernando Montealegre-Zapata, from the University’s School of Life Sciences, aims to understand how bushcrickets or katydids pick up on ultrasonic frequencies in their natural environment. The insects communicate using the highest-pitched calls in nature (130-150 kHz), which are not detected by humans. The male produces sound by rubbing its wings to attract distant females.

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Stem cells enable personalised treatment for bleeding disorder

Scientists have shed light on a common bleeding disorder by growing and analysing stem cells from patients’ blood to discover the cause of the disease in individual patients.

The technique may  enable doctors to prescribe more effective treatments according to the defects identified in patients' cells.

In future, this approach could go much further: these same cells could be grown, manipulated, and applied as treatments for diseases of the heart, blood and circulation, including heart attacks and haemophilia.

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SFU researchers help unlock pine beetle's Pandora's box

Twenty researchers — more than half of them Simon Fraser University graduates and/or faculty — could become eastern Canada’s knights in shining white lab coats.

A paper detailing their newly created sequencing of the mountain pine beetle’s (MPB) genome will be gold in the hands of scientists trying to stem the beetle’s invasion into eastern forests. The journal Genome Biology has published the paper.

“We know a lot about how beetle infestations can devastate forests, just as the mountain pine beetle has been doing to B.C.’s lodgepole pines,” says Christopher Keeling, the paper’s lead author.

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Origins of life? Biologist’s study offers new clues

A structural biologist at the Florida State University College of Medicine has made discoveries that could lead scientists a step closer to understanding how life first emerged on Earth billions of years ago.

Professor Michael Blaber and his team produced data supporting the idea that 10 amino acids believed to exist on Earth around 4 billion years ago were capable of forming foldable proteins in a high-salt (halophile) environment. Such proteins would have been capable of providing metabolic activity for the first living organisms to emerge on the planet between 3.5 and 3.9 billion years ago.

The results of Blaber's three-year study, which was built around investigative techniques that took more than 17 years to develop, are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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ChemE Researchers' Accidental Discovery May Lead to Improved Polymers

 The accidental discovery by Chemical Engineering Professor Tim Bender and Post-Doctoral Fellow Benoit Lessard of an unexpected side product of polymer synthesis could have implications for the manufacture of commercial polymers used in sealants, adhesives, toys and even medical implants, the researchers say.

 Bender and Lessard discuss their discovery in a paper published this month in Macromolecular Rapid Communications and online at MaterialsView.com.

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Positive shift in work-life balance up to employees

Do you find yourself taking work home with you? Are you constantly checking your work email while lounging at home? Are you having trouble finding that perfect work-life balance? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you’re not alone.

Of the more than 25,000 Canadians who took part in the 2012 National Work-Life Balance Study, 54 per cent said they take work home to complete outside of their regular hours – evenings and weekends – averaging an additional seven hours in work per week.

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NanoRosetta- Own an Archival Print of the Human Genome

Preserve the Human Genome in your Home or Office

NanoRosetta is seeking to bring the archival industry into the modern age by using nanotechnology to print analog information onto nickel discs. With a life-span of 10,000 years, no other technology can match the durability and longevity of these discs, and because of the microscopic size of the images printed on the discs, we are able to print high volumes of data that were once thought to be unprintable.

To showcase this paradigm-shifting technology, we are seeking to print multiple sets of all 3.2 BILLION characters of the Human genome on five nickel discs about the size of CDs. Previously, this task would have required a room of books to archive the information as analog data.

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Material turns ‘schizophrenic’ on way to superconductivity

Strange state: Some electrons remain mobile while their neighbors are locked down

Rice University physicists on the hunt for the origins of high-temperature superconductivity have published new findings this week about a material that becomes “schizophrenic” — simultaneously exhibiting the characteristics of both a metallic conductor and an insulator.

In a theoretical analysis this week in Physical Review Letters (PRL), Rice physicists Qimiao Si and Rong Yu offer an explanation for a strange series of observations described earlier this year by researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif. In those experiments, physicists used X-rays to probe the behavior of electrons in superconducting materials made of potassium, iron and selenium.

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Not Slippery When Wet: Geckos Adhere to Surfaces Submerged Underwater

University of Akron study may help inform future bio-inspired gecko-like adhesives

Geckos are known for their sticky adhesive toes that allow them to stick to, climb on, and run along surfaces in any orientation--even upside down! But until recently, it was not well understood how geckos kept their sticking ability even on wet surfaces, as are common in the tropical regions in which most geckos live. A 2012 study in which geckos slipped on wet glass perplexed scientists trying to unlock the key to gecko adhesion in climates with plentiful rain and moisture.

A study supported by the National Science Foundation and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week solves the mystery, showing that wet, water-repellant surfaces, like those of leaves and tree trunks, actually secure a gecko's grip in a manner similar to dry surfaces.

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Antiparticles flooding the Earth deepen the dark matter mystery

Scientists have been trying already for years to resolve the issue whether dark matter really exists, and if so what are properties of its constituent particles. Physicists expected that results of the most recent measurements of anti-matter in cosmic rays arriving to Earth conducted with the help of the AMS-02 detector on board of the International Space Station (ISS) would help to resolve the issue. However, the presented yesterday results are still ambiguous.

High-energy antimatter particles do not arrive to Earth predominantly from any selected direction. That may suggest that we are observing effects of annihilation of particles within a cloud of dark matter ("halo") evenly surrounding our galaxy.

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Gravity-Bending Find Leads to Kepler Meeting Einstein

NASA's Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon -- a result of Einstein's general theory of relativity -- in binary, or double, star systems.

The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small "red dwarf" star. While the tiny white dwarf is physically smaller than the red dwarf, it is more massive.

"This white dwarf is about the size of Earth but has the mass of the sun," said Phil Muirhead of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, lead author of the findings to be published April 20 in the Astrophysical Journal. "It's so hefty that the red dwarf, though larger in physical size, is circling around the white dwarf."

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Invention could make spent nuclear fuel useful for irradiation purposes

A researcher at Oregon State University has invented a way to use spent nuclear fuel to produce the gamma rays needed to irradiate medical supplies, food and other products – an advance that could change what is now a costly waste disposal concern into a valued commodity.

The technology, if widely implemented, might allow each of the 104 nuclear reactors in the United States to create a revenue stream of $10 million a year while providing thousands of new jobs. And by lowering the cost of irradiation, it could become commercially feasible for a wider range of uses.

A provisional patent has been issued on the technology, and commercialization efforts are under way through a private company, G-Demption LLC, created for that purpose.

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Remote reefs can be tougher than they look

WA's Scott Reef has recovered from mass bleaching in 1998

Isolated coral reefs can recover from catastrophic damage as effectively as those with nearby undisturbed neighbours, a long-term study by marine biologists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) has shown.

Scott Reef, a remote coral system in the Indian Ocean, has largely recovered from a catastrophic mass bleaching event in 1998, according to the study published in Science today.

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Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars

Human travel to Mars has long been the unachievable dangling carrot for space programs. Now, astronauts could be a step closer to our nearest planetary neighbor through a unique manipulation of nuclear fusion, the same energy that powers the sun and stars.

University of Washington researchers and scientists at a Redmond-based space-propulsion company are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks.

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Listening to the Big Bang – in high fidelity (audio)

A decade ago, spurred by a question for a fifth-grade science project, University of Washington physicist John Cramer devised an audio recreation of the Big Bang that started our universe nearly 14 billion years ago.

Now, armed with more sophisticated data from a satellite mission observing the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow in the universe that acts as sort of a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang – Cramer has produced new recordings that fill in higher frequencies to create a fuller and richer sound. (The sound files run from 20 seconds to a little longer than 8 minutes.)

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Innovative Tomographic Imaging Process

Scanning Laser Optical Tomography (SLOT) is a fast method which can be used for imaging biological tissue or complete organs in a high 3-D resolution.

The Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) has filed a patent application for a SLOT process, which was originally developed as a 3-D fluorescence process for quickly scanning larger samples. SLOT, which can be viewed as the optical equivalent to computer tomography, works with isotropic resolution, that is, with the same resolution in all three spatial planes. It simultaneously records transmissive, scattered and fluorescent light. Samples can thus be imaged with a 3-D resolution of at least 1/1000 of the object size, in a short time. The goal of the current project is further development of this promising technology, so that an imaging speed of 20 seconds for 600 individual projections can be reached.

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Building better blood vessels could advance tissue engineering

One of the major obstacles to growing new organs—replacement hearts, lungs and kidneys—is the difficulty researchers face in building blood vessels that keep the tissues alive, but new findings from the University of Michigan could help overcome this roadblock.

"It's not just enough to make a piece of tissue that functions like your desired target," said Andrew Putnam, U-M associate professor of biomedical engineering. "If you don't nourish it with blood by vascularizing it, it's only going to be as big as the head of a pen.

"But we need a heart that's this big," he added, holding up his fist.

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UNH Scientists Document First Expansion of ‘Sea Potato’ Seaweed Into New England

There’s a new seaweed in town, a brown, bulbous balloon befitting the nickname “sea potato.” Its New England debut was spotted by two University of New Hampshire plant biology graduate students; now researchers are keeping a close eye on the sea potato’s progress to determine whether there is cause for alarm.

UNH graduate students Lindsay Green and Hannah Traggis discovered the rapid southern expansion of Colpomenia peregrina, also known as sea potato or oyster thief, during a SCUBA diving trip in Kittery, Maine, in the summer of 2011. “We saw this big brown beach ball,” says Traggis, who co-authored a study of their findings in the journal Botanica Marina.

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BUMBLEBEES USE LOGIC TO FIND THE BEST FLOWERS

Scientists at Queen Mary, University of London and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), have discovered why bees copy each other when looking for nectar – and the answer is remarkably simple.

Despite their tiny brains, bees are smart enough to pick out the most attractive flowers by watching other bees and learning from their behaviour. By using simple logic, they see which coloured flowers are the most popular, and conclude that those of the same colour must also contain lots of energy-rich nectar.

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University of Toronto-led study provides new insight into photosynthesis

Pigments found in plants and purple bacteria employed to provide protection from sun damage do more than just that. Researchers from the University of Toronto and University of Glasgow have found that they also help to harvest light energy during photosynthesis.

Carotenoids, the same pigments which give orange color to carrots and red to tomatoes, are often found together in plants with chlorophyll pigments that harvest solar energy. Their main function is photoprotection when rays of light from the sun are the most intense. However, a new study published today in Science shows how they capture blue/green light and pass the energy on to chlorophylls, which absorb red light.

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3-D printer builds synthetic tissues

A custom-built programmable 3D printer can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues, Oxford University scientists have demonstrated.

The new type of material consists of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies. These printed 'droplet networks' could be the building blocks of a new kind of technology for delivering drugs to places where they are needed and potentially one day replacing or interfacing with damaged human tissues. Because droplet networks are entirely synthetic, have no genome and do not replicate, they avoid some of the problems associated with other approaches to creating artificial tissues – such as those that use stem cells. The team report their findings in this week's Science.

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Power behind primordial soup discovered

Researchers at the University of Leeds may have solved a key puzzle about how objects from space could have kindled life on Earth.

While it is generally accepted that some important ingredients for life came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth, scientists have not been able to explain how that inanimate rock transformed into the building blocks of life.

This new study shows how a chemical, similar to one now found in all living cells and vital for generating the energy that makes something alive, could have been created when meteorites containing phosphorus minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids around volcanoes, which were likely to have been common across the early Earth.

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A 'light switch' in the brain illuminates neural networks

There are cells in your brain that recognize very specific places, and have that as one of their main jobs. These cells, called place cells, are found in an area behind your temple called the hippocampus. While these cells must be sent information from nearby cells to do their job, so far no one has been able to determine exactly what kind of nerve cells, or neurons, work with place cells to craft the code they create for each location. Neurons come in many different types with specialized functions. Some respond to edges and borders, others to specific locations, others act like a compass and react to which way you turn your head.

Now, researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have combined a range of advanced techniques that enable them to identify which neurons communicate with each other at different times in the rat brain, and in doing so, create the animal's sense of location. Their findings are published in the 5 April issue of Science.

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New camera system creates high-resolution 3-D images from up to a kilometer away

Applications include imaging man-made targets such as moving vehicles

A standard camera takes flat, 2-D pictures. To get 3-D information, such as the distance to a far-away object, scientists can bounce a laser beam off the object and measure how long it takes the light to travel back to a detector. The technique, called time-of-flight (ToF), is already used in machine vision, navigation systems for autonomous vehicles, and other applications, but many current ToF systems have a relatively short range and struggle to image objects that do not reflect laser light well. A team of Scotland-based physicists has recently tackled these limitations and reported their findings today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express.

The research team, led by Gerald Buller, a professor at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, describes a ToF imaging system that can gather high-resolution, 3-D information about objects that are typically very difficult to image, from up to a kilometer away.

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Revealing the weapons by which bacteria fight each other

A new study which was performed jointly at Umeå university and the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, discovered that bacteria can degrade the cell membrane of bacterial competitors with enzymes that do not harm their own membrane. This exciting finding opens the way for the development of new antibacterial drugs to fight bacteria using their own weapons. (NATURE, 2013).

During the infection of a host organism, pathogenic bacteria can excrete toxins that cause damage to host cells and tissue. Interestingly, bacteria also use similar mechanisms in competition with one another. Notably, they can use secretion systems with syringe-like structures to inject the toxins into other cells. Among the different secretion systems that are known in bacteria, the type VI secretion system is of particular importance to interbacterial competition, and is found in many different species of bacteria.

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The equine Adam lived fairly recently: close relationships among modern stallions

The analysis of DNA inherited from a single parent has provided valuable insights into the history of human and animal populations.  However, until recently we had insufficient information to be able to investigate the paternal lines of the domestic horse. This gap has been filled by Barbara Wallner and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, who present information on the genetic variability in the horse Y chromosome and show how various breeds of the modern horse are interrelated. The results have just been published in the prestigious online journal PLOS ONE.

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ONE EXTINCT TURTLE LESS - TURTLE SPECIES IN THE SEYCHELLES NEVER EXISTED

The turtle species Pelusios seychellensis regarded hitherto as extinct never existed. Scientists at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Dresden discovered this based on genetic evidence. The relevant study was published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

Turtles are the vertebrates under the greatest threat. Among the approximately 320 turtle species, the species confined to islands have been especially hard hit – humans have caused the extinction of a whole number of species. One of them – or at least it was thought so – is the Seychelles mud turtle Pelusios seychellensis. Just three specimens were collected at the end of the 19th century; they are still kept at the Natural History Museum in Vienna and the Zoological Museum in Hamburg.

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Stem cells fill gaps in bones

For many patients the removal of several centimetres of bone from the lower leg following a serious injury or a tumour extraction is only the beginning of a longlasting ordeal. Numerous surgeries are

necessary to restore the leg to health, and bone regeneration takes a long time – provided it succeeds at all. Striving to accelerate and to boost the healing process, scientists have now begun deploying autologous stem cells.

Sixty years ago, large bone defects of several centimetres would inevitably lead to an amputation of the affected leg or arm. In the 1950s, Russian scientists succeeded for the first time in repairing such defects to the lower leg using a technique that has been, on the whole, applied ever since.

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Wild mice have natural protection against Lyme borreliosis

Like humans, mice can become infected with Borrelia. However, not all mice that come into contact with these bacteria contract the dreaded Lyme disease: Animals with a particular gene variant are immune to the bacteria, as scientists from the universities of Zurich and Lund demonstrate. Wild mice are the primary hosts for Borrelia, which are transmitted by ticks.

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A fingerprint of exhaled breath

ETH researchers could show that exhaled human breath contains a characteristic molecular “fingerprint”. The scientists want to use this finding to diagnose diseases based on the chemical analysis of patient's exhaled breath, using highly sensitive and precise instrumental methods.

Bodily fluids contain lots of information about the health status of a person. Medical doctors routinely have blood and urine analysed in order to obtain hints for infectious and metabolic diseases, to diagnose cancer and organ failure, and to check the dose of medication, based on compounds present in these body fluids. Researchers at ETH Zurich and at the University Hospital Zurich now propose to extend such analyses to breath, and in particular to take advantage of modern high-resolution analytical methods that can provide real-time information on the chemical composition of exhaled breath.

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Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.

“Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. “Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future.”

Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang’s method can be performed using any source of biomass.

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