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Friday, January 31, 2014

ScienceDaily: Top Science News

ScienceDaily: Top Science News


Up close and 3-dimensional: HIV caught in the act inside the gut

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 04:04 PM PST

HIV infection has many unhealthy consequences on the body, but in particular it messes up the gut. A new study reports the first three-dimensional ultra-structural study of HIV infection in vivo. Not only does it reveal details on how the virus quickly infects immune cells in the gut, using them as virus-producing factories, but it also highlights where the virus "hides out" deep within the intestinal tissue.

Worry on the brain: Researchers find new area linked to anxiety

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST

Previous studies of anxiety in the brain have focused on the amygdala, but a team of researchers had a hunch that understanding a different brain area, the lateral septum (LS), could provide more clues into how the brain processes anxiety. Their instincts paid off -- the team has found a neural circuit that connects the LS with other brain structures in a manner that directly influences anxiety.

To hear without being heard: First nonreciprocal acoustic circulator created

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST

Scientists have built the first-ever nonreciprocal circulator for sound that is able to break sound wave reciprocity. The device is a 'one-way road for sound' that transmits acoustic waves in one direction but blocks them in the other. With this device, you can listen without being heard.

Trick identified that aids viral infection

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:12 AM PST

Scientists have identified a way some viruses protect themselves from the immune system's efforts to stop infections, a finding that may make new approaches to treating viral infections possible.

Drug trafficking leads to deforestation in Central America

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:12 AM PST

Add yet another threat to the list of problems facing the rapidly disappearing rainforests of Central America: drug trafficking. In a new study, researchers who have done work in Central America point to growing evidence that drug trafficking threatens forests in remote areas of Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and nearby countries.

Piezoelectrics and butterflies: Now scientists know more about how the materials actually work

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:31 AM PST

Piezoelectrics, materials that can change mechanical stress to electricity and back again, are everywhere in modern life. Computer hard drives. Loudspeakers. Medical ultrasound. Sonar. But there are major gaps in our understanding of how they work. Now researchers believe they've learned why one of the main classes of these materials, known as relaxors, behaves in distinctly different ways from the rest. The discovery comes in the shape of a butterfly.

Cell cycle speed is key to making aging cells young again

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 09:16 AM PST

Researchers identified a major obstacle to converting cells back to their youthful state -- the speed of the cell cycle, or the time required for a cell to divide. When the cell cycle accelerates to a certain speed, the barriers that keep a cell's fate on one path diminish. In such a state, cells are easily persuaded to change their identity and become pluripotent, or capable of becoming multiple cell types.

World's first butterfly bacteria sequenced: Suprising events found during metamorphosis

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:10 AM PST

For the first time ever, scientists have sequenced the internal bacterial makeup of the three major life stages of a butterfly species, a project that showed some surprising events occur during metamorphosis.

Antibiotic 'smart bomb' can target specific strains of bacteria

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:09 AM PST

Researchers have developed a de facto antibiotic "smart bomb" that can identify specific strains of bacteria and sever their DNA, eliminating the infection. The technique offers a potential approach to treat infections by multi-drug resistant bacteria.

Integration brings quantum computer a step closer

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST

Scientists have made an important advance towards a quantum computer by shrinking down key components and integrating them onto a silicon microchip.

Mysterious ocean circles off the Baltic coast explained

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST

Are they bomb craters from World War II? Are they landing marks for aliens? Since the first images of the mysterious ocean circles off the Baltic coast of Denmark were taken in 2008, people have tried to find an explanation. Now researchers finally present a scientific explanation.

Blood and lymphatic capillaries grown for the first time in the lab

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:07 AM PST

Researchers have engineered skin cells for the very first time containing blood and lymphatic capillaries. They succeeded in isolating all the necessary types of skin cells from human skin tissue and engineering a skin graft that is similar to full-thickness skin. 

Connectedness, human use of buildings shape indoor bacterial communities

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST

Microbes drawn from the dust in a university building have provided clues that could inspire future architectural designers to encourage a healthy indoor environment.

Slow reaction time linked with early death

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST

Having a slow reaction time in midlife increases risk of having died 15 years later, according to new research. Researchers looked at data from more than 5,000 participants, over a 15 year period. A total of 378 (7.4 percent) people in the sample died, but those with slower reaction times were 25 percent more likely to have died (from any cause) compared to those with average reaction times.

Deaths attributed directly to climate change cast pall over penguins

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST

Climate change is killing penguin chicks from the world's largest colony of Magellanic penguins, not just indirectly -- by depriving them of food, as has been repeatedly documented for these and other seabirds -- but directly as a result of drenching rainstorms and, at other times, heat, according to new finding.

A simple new way to induce pluripotency: Acid

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:44 PM PST

An unusual reprogramming phenomenon by which the fate of somatic cells can be drastically altered through changes to the external environment is described in two new articles.

Puzzling question in bacterial immune system answered

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 01:54 PM PST

Researchers have answered a central question about Cas9, an enzyme that plays an essential role in the bacterial immune system and is fast becoming a valuable tool for genetic engineering: How is Cas9 able to precisely discriminate between non-self DNA that must be degraded and self DNA that may be almost identical within genomes that are millions to billions of base pairs long.

Novel genes determine division of labor in insect societies

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 01:49 PM PST

Novel or highly modified genes play a major role in the development of the different castes within ant colonies. Evolutionary biologists came to this conclusion in a recent gene expression study by looking at the question of how the different female castes arise. An ant colony generally consists of a queen and the workers. Moreover, workers can differ depending on the task they perform, such as brood care, foraging, or nest defense.

Obesity-induced fatty liver disease reversed in mice

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 12:10 PM PST

Researchers have discovered that valproic acid, a widely prescribed drug for treating epilepsy, has the additional benefits of reducing fat accumulation in the liver and lowering blood sugar levels in the blood of obese mice.

ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

ScienceDaily: Top Technology News


What companies can learn from NASA tragedies

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:44 PM PST

Scientists have been researching how NASA recognizes "near-miss" events ever since the Columbia shuttle was destroyed in flight 11 years ago Saturday. A new study finds recognition of near-misses goes up when leaders emphasize project significance and weigh safety over other goals.

Lab clocks 'hot' electrons: Plasmon-generated electrons timed moving from nanorods to graphene

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:44 PM PST

Scientists time "hot" electrons as they transfer from excited plasmons in gold nanorods to graphene. Plasmonic nanoparticles are becoming known for their ability to turn light into heat, but how to use them to generate electricity is not nearly as well understood. Scientists are working on that, too. They suggest that the extraction of electrons generated by surface plasmons in metal nanoparticles may be optimized.

Researcher turns sights on prostate cancer, tissue engineering, blood vessel repair

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:43 PM PST

When biology and materials science converge, the results can be new materials that can be used to deliver targeted drugs, repair damaged arteries or rebuild failing tissues, such as the anterior cruciate ligament, the ACL injury that can end sports careers. One bioengineer is developing polymers designed to target all three.

Study supports new safety rule for truck drivers

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 12:29 PM PST

The US Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration today released the findings of a field study that provides evidence that a revised provision in new hours-of-service regulations for truck drivers is more effective at combating fatigue than the previous version. The new trucking regulations took effect last July.

New computer, Edison, electrifies scientific computing

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST

A new supercomputer, named Edison, electrifies scientific computing. Edison can execute nearly 2.4 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaflop/s) at peak theoretical speeds.

To hear without being heard: First nonreciprocal acoustic circulator created

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST

Scientists have built the first-ever nonreciprocal circulator for sound that is able to break sound wave reciprocity. The device is a 'one-way road for sound' that transmits acoustic waves in one direction but blocks them in the other. With this device, you can listen without being heard.

Faster X-ray technology paves the way for better catalysts: Researchers observe a catalyst surface at work with atomic resolution

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST

By using a novel X-ray technique, researchers have observed a catalyst surface at work in real time and were able to resolve its atomic structure in detail. The new technique may pave the way for the design of better catalysts and other materials on the atomic level.

Piezoelectrics and butterflies: Now scientists know more about how the materials actually work

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:31 AM PST

Piezoelectrics, materials that can change mechanical stress to electricity and back again, are everywhere in modern life. Computer hard drives. Loudspeakers. Medical ultrasound. Sonar. But there are major gaps in our understanding of how they work. Now researchers believe they've learned why one of the main classes of these materials, known as relaxors, behaves in distinctly different ways from the rest. The discovery comes in the shape of a butterfly.

Researchers develop new tool to identify genetic risk factors

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 09:16 AM PST

Researchers developed a new biological pathway-based computational model, called the Pathway-based Human Phenotype Network, to identify underlying genetic connections between different diseases. The Pathway-based Human Phenotype Network mines the data present in large publicly available disease datasets to find shared SNPs, genes, or pathways and expresses them in a visual form.

Storage system for 'big data' dramatically speeds access to information

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:10 AM PST

As computers enter ever more areas of our daily lives, the amount of data they produce has grown enormously. But for this "big data" to be useful it must first be analyzed, meaning it needs to be stored in such a way that it can be accessed quickly when required.

'Bubble CPAP' boosts neonatal survival rates: Helps babies struggling to breathe

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:21 AM PST

The first clinical study of a low-cost neonatal breathing system demonstrated that the device increased the survival rate of newborns with severe respiratory illness from 44 percent to 71 percent. A 10-month study of 87 patients in Blantyre, Malawi, found that treatment with low-cost "bubble CPAP" increased survival for severely ill premature babies as much as fourfold.

Integration brings quantum computer a step closer

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST

Scientists have made an important advance towards a quantum computer by shrinking down key components and integrating them onto a silicon microchip.

Thyroid cancer cells become less aggressive in outer space

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST

For those who think that space exploration offers no tangible benefits, new research involving thyroid cancer may prove otherwise. Researchers show that some tumors which are aggressive on earth are considerably less aggressive in microgravity. By understanding the genetic and cellular processes that occur in space, scientists may be able to develop treatments that accomplish the same thing on Earth.

Self-aligning DNA wires for application in nanoelectronics

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST

Since miniaturization in microelectronics is starting to reach physical limits, researchers seek new methods for device fabrication. One candidate is DNA origami in which strands of the biomolecule self-assemble into arbitrarily shaped nanostructures. The formation of entire circuits, however, requires the controlled positioning of these DNA structures on a surface -- which is only possible using elaborate techniques. Researchers have come up with a simpler strategy which combines DNA origami with self-organized pattern formation.

Robot with a taste for beer? Electronic tongue can identify brands of beer

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 06:28 AM PST

Researchers have managed to distinguish between different varieties of beer using an electronic tongue. The discovery is accurate in almost 82% of cases. Beer is the oldest and most widely consumed alcoholic drink in the world.

Photon recoil provides new insight into matter: New precision spectroscopy allows unprecedented accuracy

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 06:28 AM PST

Quantum logic spectroscopy has now been significantly extended: the new method is called "photon-recoil spectroscopy" (PRS). In contrast to the original quantum logic technique, the new method enables the investigation of very fast transitions in atoms or molecules. With this new method, spectroscopic investigations will be possible on nearly any kind of particles.

Super-strong graphene oxide: In situ bandgap tuning of graphene oxide achieved by electrochemical bias

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 06:13 AM PST

The ability to modulate the physical properties of graphene oxide within electronic components could have numerous applications in technology. Super-strong graphene oxide (GO) sheets are useful for ultrathin, flexible nano-electronic devices, and display unique properties including photoluminescence and room temperature ferromagnetism.

Prediction modeling may lead to more personalized heart care for patients

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 01:06 AM PST

Detailed prediction models that project long-term patient mortality following PCI and CABG surgery can be useful for the heart team when determining the best treatment strategy for individual patients.

Connectedness, human use of buildings shape indoor bacterial communities

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:48 PM PST

Microbes drawn from the dust in a university building have provided clues that could inspire future architectural designers to encourage a healthy indoor environment.

Improved ultrasound imaging provides an alternative way of visualizing tumors

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 03:46 PM PST

While ultrasound provides a less expensive and radiation-free alternative to detecting and monitoring cancer compared to technologies such as X-rays, CT scans and MRIs, the lower clarity and resolution of ultrasound has limited its use in cancer treatment. Researchers have overcome this limitation by combining ultrasound with a contrast agent comprised of micro-sized bubbles that pair with an antibody produced at elevated levels by many cancers.

Anti-soiling coating keeps solar reflectors clean and efficient

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 01:46 PM PST

Scientists are developing a low-cost, transparent, anti-soiling coating for solar reflectors to optimize energy efficiency while lowering operating and maintenance costs and avoiding negative environmental impacts.

Engineering: A career that pays, new salary survey suggests

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 10:48 AM PST

Salaries for engineers rose in 2013 amid the growing global demand for technology services across industry sectors, according to a survey.

Intuitive number games boost children's math performance

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:51 AM PST

A quick glance at two, unequal groups of paper clips leads most people to immediately intuit which group has more. In a new study, researchers report that practicing this kind of simple, instinctive numerical exercise can improve children's ability to solve math problems.

Are you political on Facebook?

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:47 AM PST

Social media and networks are ripe for politicization, for movement publicity, advocacy group awareness, not-for-profit fund-raising campaigns and perhaps even e-government. However, the majority of users perhaps see these tools as being useful for entertainment, interpersonal connections and sharing rather than politics. A research paper reinforces this notion. The results suggest that the potential for political activism must overcome the intrinsic user perception that online social networks are for enjoyment rather than utility, political or otherwise.

Lightwaves used by neuroscientists to improve brain tumor surgery

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:46 AM PST

First-of-its-kind research shows promise for developing a method of clearly identifying cancerous tissue during surgery on one of the most common and deadliest types of brain tumor.

Decibels and democracy: Voice voting can be skewed by single loud voice

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:45 AM PST

Voice votes, common in civic and political decision making at all levels, can be skewed by a single, loud voice, according to a study. The researchers propose locating everyone within equal distance from the vote recorder or controlling for sound on voters' microphones.

New theory may lead to more efficient solar cells

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 04:56 AM PST

A new theoretical model may hold the key to methods for developing better materials for solar cells. Researchers say the model could lead to new solar cell materials made from improved blends of semiconducting polymers and fullerenes.

ScienceDaily: Computers and Internet News

ScienceDaily: Computers and Internet News


New computer, Edison, electrifies scientific computing

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 11:13 AM PST

A new supercomputer, named Edison, electrifies scientific computing. Edison can execute nearly 2.4 quadrillion floating-point operations per second (petaflop/s) at peak theoretical speeds.

Storage system for 'big data' dramatically speeds access to information

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 08:10 AM PST

As computers enter ever more areas of our daily lives, the amount of data they produce has grown enormously. But for this "big data" to be useful it must first be analyzed, meaning it needs to be stored in such a way that it can be accessed quickly when required.

Integration brings quantum computer a step closer

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:20 AM PST

Scientists have made an important advance towards a quantum computer by shrinking down key components and integrating them onto a silicon microchip.

Are you political on Facebook?

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 08:47 AM PST

Social media and networks are ripe for politicization, for movement publicity, advocacy group awareness, not-for-profit fund-raising campaigns and perhaps even e-government. However, the majority of users perhaps see these tools as being useful for entertainment, interpersonal connections and sharing rather than politics. A research paper reinforces this notion. The results suggest that the potential for political activism must overcome the intrinsic user perception that online social networks are for enjoyment rather than utility, political or otherwise.

ScienceDaily: Consumer Electronics News

ScienceDaily: Consumer Electronics News


Piezoelectrics and butterflies: Now scientists know more about how the materials actually work

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 10:31 AM PST

Piezoelectrics, materials that can change mechanical stress to electricity and back again, are everywhere in modern life. Computer hard drives. Loudspeakers. Medical ultrasound. Sonar. But there are major gaps in our understanding of how they work. Now researchers believe they've learned why one of the main classes of these materials, known as relaxors, behaves in distinctly different ways from the rest. The discovery comes in the shape of a butterfly.

Super-strong graphene oxide: In situ bandgap tuning of graphene oxide achieved by electrochemical bias

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 06:13 AM PST

The ability to modulate the physical properties of graphene oxide within electronic components could have numerous applications in technology. Super-strong graphene oxide (GO) sheets are useful for ultrathin, flexible nano-electronic devices, and display unique properties including photoluminescence and room temperature ferromagnetism.

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