We’re all going to die; DNA strands on the end of our chromosomes hint when

(Feb.6, '15) New research finds new link between these biological clocks and lung disease

BYU biologist Jonathan Alder has a startling secret he doesn’t freely share: he knows when most of us are going to die.

OK, he doesn’t know exactly the day or time, but he has a pretty good idea, thanks to his research on tiny biological clocks attached to our chromosomes. These DNA end caps, called telomeres, are the great predictors of life expectancy: the shorter your telomeres, the shorter your lifespan.

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POSTECH Scientists Create Stronger and More Lightweight Steel Alternative

(Feb.5, '15)  In new research published in Nature, Professors Hansoo Kim and Nack J. Kim and doctoral student Sang-Heon Kim at the Graduate Institute of Ferrous Technology (GIFT) at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have developed a new type of steel with improved tensile strength and lightness.

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Researchers discover viral "Enigma machine"

(Feb.5, '15)  Researchers have cracked a code that governs infections by a major group of viruses including the common cold and polio.

Until now, scientists had not noticed the code, which had been hidden in plain sight in the sequence of the ribonucleic acid (RNA) that makes up this type of viral genome.

But a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Early Edition by a group from the University of Leeds and University of York unlocks its meaning and demonstrates that jamming the code can disrupt virus assembly. Stopping a virus assembling can stop it functioning and therefore prevent disease.

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Forever young: Meditation might slow the age-related loss of gray matter in the brain, say UCLA researchers

(Feb.5, '15) Since 1970, life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically, with people living more than 10 years longer. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that starting when people are in their mid-to-late-20s, the brain begins to wither — its volume and weight begin to decrease. As this occurs, the brain can begin to lose some of its functional abilities.

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Direct measurement of key molecule will increase accuracy of combustion models

(Feb.5, '15) Sandia National Laboratories researchers are the first to directly measure hydroperoxyalkyl radicals — a class of reactive molecules denoted as “QOOH” — that are key in the chain of reactions that controls the early stages of combustion. This breakthrough has generated data on QOOH reaction rates and outcomes that will improve the fidelity of models used by engine manufacturers to create cleaner and more efficient cars and trucks.

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Cesium atoms shaken, not stirred, to create elusive excitation in superfluid

(Feb.5, '15) Scientists discovered in 1937 that liquid helium-4, when chilled to extremely low temperatures, became a superfluid that could leak through glass, overflow its containers, or eternally gush like a fountain.

Future Nobel laureate Lev Landau came along in 1941, predicting that superfluid helium-4 should contain an exotic, particle-like excitation called a roton. But scientists, including Landau, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman and Wolf Prize recipient Philippe Nozières have debated what structure the roton would take ever since.

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In a Crisis, the Bigger Your Social Network the Better

(Feb.5, '15) The more you know your neighbors, the better off you may be when disaster strikes, a new study from the University of Arizona suggests.

Researchers in the UA School of Anthropology examined social networks in the late pre-Hispanic Southwest and found that communities that were more connected with their neighbors had a better chance of being able to successfully manage a crisis than did communities with fewer outside connections.

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UT STUDENTS RECEIVE WATER SCHOLARSHIPS

(Feb.5, '15) Because there is a considerable demand for talented technicians in the water sector, two UT students received a scholarship from Topsector Water on 6 February. The tuition fees of Daan Poppema and Bas Krewinkel, both Civil Engineering master's students specializing in Water Engineering and Management, will be paid for two years. Moreover, they will be given a mentor from the business community and will become industry ambassadors. The motivated students have their own view of the future of water management.

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Hubble captures rare triple moon transit of Jupiter

(Feb.5, '15) These new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope images capture a rare occurrence as three of Jupiter’s largest moons parade across the giant gas planet’s banded face. Hubble took a string of images of the event which show the three satellites — Europa, Callisto and Io — in action.

There are four Galilean satellites — named after the 17th century scientist Galileo Galilei who discovered them [1]. They complete orbits around Jupiter ranging from two to seventeen days in duration. The moons can commonly be seen transiting the face of Jupiter and casting shadows onto its layers of cloud. However, seeing three of them transiting the face of Jupiter at the same time is rare, occurring only once or twice a decade.

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Late news from the Big Bang

(Feb.5, '15) LMU cosmologist Viatcheslav Mukhanov models the first instants after the creation of our Universe. Data from the Planck telescope have now confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt his theory of the quantum origin of structure in the Universe.

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Artificially-intelligent Robot Scientist ‘Eve’ could boost search for new drugs

(Feb.5, '15) Eve, an artificially-intelligent ‘robot scientist’ could make drug discovery faster and much cheaper, say researchers writing in the Royal Society journal Interface. The team has demonstrated the success of the approach as Eve discovered that a compound shown to have anti-cancer properties might also be used in the fight against malaria.

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New UI study suggests similarity between how pigeons learn the equivalent of words and the way children do

(Feb.5, '15) The more scientists study pigeons, the more they learn how their brains—no bigger than the tip of an index finger—operate in ways not so different from our own.

In a new study from the University of Iowa, researchers found that pigeons can categorize and name both natural and manmade objects—and not just a few objects. These birds categorized 128 photographs into 16 categories, and they did so simultaneously.

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Octopus robot makes waves with ultra-fast propulsion

(Feb.5, '15) Scientists have developed an octopus-like robot, which can zoom through water with ultra-fast propulsion and acceleration never before seen in man-made underwater vehicles.

Most fast aquatic animals are sleek and slender to help them move easily through the water but cephalopods, such as the octopus, are capable of high-speed escapes by filling their bodies with water and then quickly expelling it to dart away.

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An “ambulance” for the brain

(Feb.5, '15) Chemists at IRB Barcelona patent and present a shuttle capable of transporting molecules into the brain; this achievement could facilitate the treatment of diseases with no therapy available.

98% of drugs targeting the central nervous system are discarded because they are unable to cross the physical barrier that protects the brain.

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Boarding schools only boost the academic performance of strong students

(Feb.5, '15) Sending disadvantaged children to boarding school does not automatically lead to an improvement in their academic performance, an economist from the University of Warwick has discovered.

Dr Clement de Chaisemartin’s investigation found that while stronger students benefit from excellent study conditions, the effects of being away from home prevent weaker children from thriving.

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A trap for greenhouse gas

(Feb.5, '15) Microcapsule method offers new approach to carbon capture and storage at power plants

A team of researchers has developed a novel class of materials that enable a safer, cheaper, and more energy-efficient process for removing greenhouse gas from power-plant emissions. The approach could be an important advance in carbon capture and sequestration.

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Autonomous Drone Flies in Dark, Tight Quarters To Assist Firefighting Inside Naval Vessels

Carnegie Mellon and Sensible Machines Demonstrate Micro-flyer for ONR

In a demonstration aboard a former U.S. Navy ship, a small quadrotor developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and spin-off company Sensible Machines flew autonomously through dark, smoke-filled compartments to map fires and locate victims.

Last fall's demonstration, part of an Office of Naval Research (ONR) project called Damage Control Technologies for the 21st Century (DC-21), showed that a small drone can operate in the confined spaces inside a ship to rapidly gather situational information to guide firefighting and rescue efforts.

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Physicists observe motion of tiny magnetic whirls

(Feb.4, '15)  Skyrmions are candidates for future data storage and information processing

Small magnetic whirls may revolutionize future data storage and information processing if they can be moved rapidly and reliably in small structures. A team of scientists of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and TU Berlin, together with colleagues from the Netherlands and Switzerland, has now been able to investigate the dynamics of these whirls experimentally. The skyrmions, as these tiny whirls are called after the British nuclear physicist Tony Skyrme, follow a complex trajectory and even continue to move after the external excitation is switched off.

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Mathematics to reveal the secrets of the brain

(Feb.4, '15)  Top researchers will now be using mathematical modelling and heavy computations to understand how the brain can both remember and learn.

Ten years ago, when the team of Marianne Fyhn and Torkel Hafting Fyhn cooperated with the Nobel Prize winning team of May-Britt and Edvard Moser at NTNU, they discovered the sense of orientation in the brain.

Now, in their own brain research group at the University of Oslo, they are studying how the brain is able to store new memories while being so stable that old memories are not diminished. They have recently established close cooperation with the foremost computation experts at the University of Oslo. Because regardless of how many experiments they do, they are dependent on mathematical expertise to find the connections between the enormous number of processes in the brain.

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Potassium Salt Outperforms Precious Metals As a Catalyst

(Feb.4, '15)  A team of Caltech chemists has discovered a method for producing a group of silicon-containing organic chemicals without relying on expensive precious metal catalysts. Instead, the new technique uses as a catalyst a cheap, abundant chemical that is commonly found in chemistry labs around the world—potassium tert-butoxide—to help create a host of products ranging from new medicines to advanced materials. And it turns out that the potassium salt is more effective than state-of-the-art precious metal complexes at running very challenging chemical reactions.

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Stanford historian explores how gender analysis leads to innovation

(Feb.4, '15)  Working with an international team, Stanford history Professor Londa Schiebinger has used gender analysis to spark discovery in science and innovation in technology.

Doing research wrong costs lives and money. Ten drugs were recently withdrawn from the U.S. market because of life-threatening health effects – eight of these posed greater threats for women.

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Kidney images reveal how organ develops

(Feb.4, '15)  Striking images reveal new insights into how the kidney develops from a group of cells into a complex organ.

The pictures are helping scientists to understand the early stages of development in mammals.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute used time-lapse imaging to capture mouse kidneys growing in the laboratory on camera.

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X-ray pulses uncover free nanoparticles for the first time in 3D

(Feb.4, '15)  Research team uses DESY’s X-ray laser FLASH as a super microscope

For the first time, a German-American research team has determined the three-dimensional shape of free-flying silver nanoparticles, using DESY’s X-ray laser FLASH. The tiny particles, hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair, were found to exhibit an unexpected variety of shapes, as the physicists from the Technical University (TU) Berlin, the University of Rostock, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States and from DESY report in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Besides this surprise, the results open up new scientific routes, such as direct observation of rapid changes in nanoparticles.

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Programming safety into self-driving cars

(Feb.4, '15)  UMass researchers improve artificial intelligence algorithms for semi-autonomous vehicles

For decades, researchers in artificial intelligence, or AI, worked on specialized problems, developing theoretical concepts and workable algorithms for various aspects of the field. Computer vision, planning and reasoning experts all struggled independently in areas that many thought would be easy to solve, but which proved incredibly difficult.

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Live Long and Measure: Quest to Create Real-World Tricorder

(Feb.4, '15)  Seeking to boldly go where medical science has not gone before, the Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI) at the University of California, San Diego has been named the official testing site for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a global competition sponsored by the Qualcomm Foundation to develop a consumer-friendly, mobile device capable of diagnosing and interpreting 15 physiological conditions and capturing vital health metrics.

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Researchers at Shanghai University create tri-layered artificial blood vessels for the first time

(February 3, 2015)  By combining micro-imprinting and electro-spinning techniques, researchers at Shanghai University’s Rapid Manufacturing Engineering Center have developed a vascular graft composed of three layers for the first time. This tri-layered composite has allowed researchers to utilize separate materials that respectively possess mechanical strength and promote new cell growth - a significant problem for existing vascular grafts that have only consisted of a single or double layer.

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New Nanoparticle Gene Therapy Strategy Effectively Treats Deadly Brain Cancer in Rats

(Feb.3, '15)  Despite improvements in the past few decades with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, a predictably curative treatment for glioma does not yet exist. New insights into specific gene mutations that arise in this often deadly form of brain cancer have pointed to the potential of gene therapy, but it’s very difficult to effectively deliver toxic or missing genes to cancer cells in the brain. Now, Johns Hopkins researchers report they have used nanoparticles to successfully deliver a new therapy to glioma cells in the brains of rats, prolonging their lives. A draft of the study appeared this week on the website of the journal ACS Nano.

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SUPERAGER BRAINS YIELD NEW CLUES TO THEIR REMARKABLE MEMORIES

(Feb.3, '15)  Brains of cognitively elite look distinctly different than their elderly peers

SuperAgers, aged 80 and above, have distinctly different looking brains than those of normal older people, according to new Northwestern Medicine® research that is beginning to reveal why the memories of these cognitively elite elders don’t suffer the usual ravages of time.

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Neurologists find movement tracking device helps assess severity of Parkinson’s disease

(Feb.3, '15)  A device that measures movement and balance can effectively help assess and track the progression of Parkinson’s disease, even when medications are used to reduce Parkinson’s symptoms, UT Southwestern Medical Center research found.

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Rediscovering Spontaneous Light Emission

(Feb.3, '15)  Berkeley Lab researchers have developed a nano-sized optical antenna that can greatly enhance the spontaneous emission of light from atoms, molecules and semiconductor quantum dots. This advance opens the door to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that can replace lasers for short-range optical communications, including optical interconnects for microchips, plus a host of other potential applications.

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One-Atom-Thin Silicon Transistors Hold Promise for Super-Fast Computing

(Feb.3, '15)  Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering have created the first transistors made of silicene, the world’s thinnest silicon material. Their research holds the promise of building dramatically faster, smaller and more efficient computer chips.

Made of a one-atom-thick layer of silicon atoms, silicene has outstanding electrical properties but has until now proved difficult to produce and work with.

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NTU unveils Singapore’s first 3D-printed concept car

(Feb.3, '15)  Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students have built Singapore’s first urban solar electric car with an innovative 3D-printed body shell that has 150 parts.

Mounted on a carbon fibre single shell chassis, the NTU Venture (NV) 8 will race in the Urban Concept category at this year’s Shell Eco-marathon Asia.

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Faster First Aid for Catastrophe Victims

(Feb.3, '15)  A new system aims to speed up the triage of victims during mass casualty incidents: Instead of colored paper tags, first responders use colored electronic wristbands. These serve to locate victims and transmit vital data to emergency response control centers. FIT also demonstrates an app for Android smartphones that lets victims buried alive under a collapsed building contact rescue teams even though mobile phone networks are down. Visit us at CeBIT, March 16 – 20, 2015, Hall 9, E40.

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Magnetic sense for everyone

(Feb.3, '15)  Scientists from Germany and Japan have developed a new magnetic sensor, which is thin, robust and pliable enough to be smoothly adapted to human skin, even to the most flexible part of the human palm. This is feeding the vision to equip humans with magnetic sense.

Magnetoception is a sense which allows bacteria, insects and even vertebrates like birds and sharks to detect magnetic fields for orientation and navigation. Humans are however unable to perceive magnetic fields naturally. Dr. Denys Makarov and his team have developed an electronic skin with a magneto-sensory system that equips the recipient with a “sixth sense” able to perceive the presence of static or dynamic magnetic fields.

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Looking at graphene and other 2D crystals in energy conversion and storage

(Feb.3, '15)  Scientists working with Europe’s Graphene Flagship provide a wide-ranging review of the potential for 2D crystals in energy conversion and storage.

The single-atom thick allotrope of carbon known as graphene has many potential applications, among them energy conversion and storage. Graphene and related two-dimensional crystals combine high electrical conductivity with physical flexibility and a huge surface to weight ratio. Such qualities make them suitable for storing electric charge in batteries and supercapacitors, and as catalysts in solar and fuel-cell electrodes.

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New technique doubles the distance of optical fibre communications

(Feb.3, '15)  A new way to process fibre optic signals has been demonstrated by UCL researchers, which could double the distance at which data travels error-free through transatlantic sub-marine cables.

The new method has the potential to reduce the costs of long-distance optical fibre communications as signals wouldn’t need to be electronically boosted on their journey, which is important when the cables are buried underground or at the bottom of the ocean.

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Penta-graphene, a new structural variant of carbon, discovered

(Feb.3, '15)  The unique structure of the thin sheet of pure carbon was inspired by pentagonal tile pattern found in the streets of Cairo.

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and universities in China and Japan have discovered a new structural variant of carbon called "penta-graphene" – a very thin sheet of pure carbon that has a unique structure inspired by a pentagonal pattern of tiles found paving the streets of Cairo.

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Graphene displays clear prospects for flexible electronics

(Feb.2, '15)  Semi-transparent, flexible electronics are no longer just science-fiction thanks to graphene’s unique properties, University of Manchester researchers have found.

Published in the scientific journal Nature Materials, University of Manchester and University of Sheffield researchers show that new 2D ‘designer materials’ can be produced to create flexible, see-through and more efficient electronic devices.

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Global warming slowdown: No systematic errors in climate models

(Feb.2, '15)  The rate of global warming in the 21st century has been significantly slower than all the models had predicted. Evidently, this was merely due to random variations.

Sceptics who still doubt anthropogenic climate change have now been stripped of one of their last-ditch arguments: It is true that there has been a warming hiatus and that the surface of the earth has warmed up much less rapidly since the turn of the millennium than all the relevant climate models had predicted. However, the gap between the calculated and measured warming is not due to systematic errors of the models, as the sceptics had suspected, but because there are always random fluctuations in the Earth’s climate.

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New technique captures real-time diagnostic 3-D images

(Feb.2, '15)  Summary: Researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutions are developing a technique which makes it possible to obtain diagnostic, three-dimensional images in real time. This enables scientists to instantly discover all types of processes ranging from how a fruit fly develops to whether a biopsy was correctly performed.

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Mini synthetic organism instead of test animals

(Feb.2, '15)  In medical research, animal-based experiments have thus far been a necessary evil. Fraunhofer researchers have developed a highly promising alternative, however: They are developing a mini-organism inside a chip. This way, complex metabolic processes within the human body can be analyzed realistically.

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Study Finds Deep Ocean is Source of Dissolved Iron in Central Pacific

A new study led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) points to the deep ocean as a major source of dissolved iron in the central Pacific Ocean. This finding highlights the vital role ocean mixing plays in determining whether deep sources of iron reach the surface-dwelling life that need it to survive.

"Our study is a long-term view—over the past 76 million years—of where iron has been coming from in the central Pacific," says Tristan Horner, a postdoctoral fellow in the Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department at WHOI and lead author of the paper to be published February 3, 2015, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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NYU’s Microscopic Monitoring May Yield Big Advances in Production of Consumer Products & Pharmaceuticals

A team of NYU physicists has developed a method to monitor the properties of microscopic particles as they grow within a chemical reaction vessel, creating new opportunities to improve the quality and consistency of a wide range of industrial and consumer products. Their work, which appears as a cover story in the journal Soft Matter, offers benefits for commodities ranging from food and pharmaceuticals to perfumes and cosmetics.

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Dance of the nanovortices

The trajectories of small magnetic entities referred to as skyrmions have been captured and recorded with the help of X-ray holography. Researchers gained new insight from the analysis of this motion: these nanoscale vortices possess mass.

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Wrinkle predictions

New mathematical theory may explain patterns in fingerprints, raisins, and microlenses.

As a grape slowly dries and shrivels, its surface creases, ultimately taking on the wrinkled form of a raisin. Similar patterns can be found on the surfaces of other dried materials, as well as in human fingerprints. While these patterns have long been observed in nature, and more recently in experiments, scientists have not been able to come up with a way to predict how such patterns arise in curved systems, such as microlenses.

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Friend, foe or queen? Study highlights the complexities of ant perception

Researchers report that trap-jaw ants recognize the unique odor of a fertile queen only if the queen also shares the workers’ own chemical cologne – a distinctive blend of dozens of smelly, waxy compounds that coat the ants’ bodies from head to tarsus. The discovery offers new insights into how social animals evolved and communicate with others in their group, the researchers say.

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Michelangelo bronzes discovered

(February 2, 2015)  It was thought that no bronzes by Michelangelo had survived - now experts believe they have found not one, but two - with a tiny detail in a 500-year-old drawing providing vital evidence.

They are naked, beautiful, muscular and ride triumphantly on two ferocious panthers. And now the secret of who created these magnificent metre-high bronze male nudes could well be solved. A team of international experts led by the University of Cambridge and Fitzwilliam Museum has gathered compelling evidence that argues that these masterpieces, which have spent over a century in relative obscurity, are early works by Michelangelo, made just after he completed the marble David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

If the attribution is correct, they are the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.

They are a non-matching pair, one figure older and lithe, the other young and athletic. Long admired for the beauty of their anatomy and powerful expressions, their first recorded attribution was to Michelangelo when they appeared in the collection of Adolphe de Rothschild in the 19th century. But, since they are undocumented and unsigned, this attribution was dismissed and over the last 120 years, the bronzes have been attributed to various other talented sculptors.

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Worms lead way to test nanoparticle toxicity

Rice University study validates low-cost, high-throughput technology

The lowly roundworm is the star of an ambitious Rice University project to measure the toxicity of nanoparticles.

The low-cost, high-throughput study by Rice scientists Weiwei Zhong and Qilin Li measures the effects of many types of nanoparticles not only on individual organisms but also on entire populations.

The Rice researchers tested 20 types of nanoparticles and determined that five, including the carbon-60 molecules (“buckyballs”) discovered at Rice in 1985, showed little to no toxicity.

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Winding borders may enhance graphene

Rice University theory suggests ‘sinuous’ grain boundries add strength, predictable semiconducting properties

Far from being a defect, a winding thread of odd rings at the border of two sheets of graphene has qualities that may prove valuable to manufacturers, according to Rice University scientists.

Graphene, the atom-thick form of carbon, rarely appears as a perfect lattice of chicken wire-like six-atom rings. When grown via chemical vapor deposition, it usually consists of “domains,” or separately grown sheets that bloom outward from hot catalysts until they meet up.

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The nanomedicines of the future will build on quantum chemistry

Quantum chemical calculations have been used to solve big mysteries in space. Soon the same calculations may be used to produce tomorrow’s cancer drugs.

Some years ago research scientists at the University of Oslo were able to show that the chemical bonding in the magnetic fields of small, compact stars, so-called white dwarf stars, is different from that on Earth. Their calculations pointed to a completely new bonding mechanism between two hydrogen atoms. The news attracted great attention in the media. The discovery, which in fact was made before astrophysicists themselves observed the first hydrogen molecules in white dwarf stars, was made by UiO’s Centre for Theoretical and Computational Chemistry. They based their work on accurate quantum chemical calculations of what happens when atoms and molecules are exposed to extreme conditions.

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