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372 articles from THURSDAY 12.1.2012

• THURSDAY 12. JANUARY, 2012
• 20:24 Deaf sign language users pick up faster on body language

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Deaf people who use sign language are quicker at recognizing and interpreting body language than hearing non-signers, according to new research from investigators at UC Davis and UC Irvine.  

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• 20:24 Diverse ecosystems are crucial climate change buffer

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Preserving diverse plant life will be crucial to buffer the negative effects of climate change and desertification in in the world's drylands, according to a new landmark study.  

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• 20:24 Electrochemical dissolution of platinum in an ionic liquid

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Precious metals, especially platinum, are important catalytic materials for many chemical reactions. For example, platinum is used in some fuel cells; however, broad commercialization of such fuel-cell technology is hampered by the fact that platinum is rare and thus far too expensive. Growing demand is making it necessary to develop efficient and environmentally friendly processes for recycling platinum. Jing-Fang Huang and Hao-Yuan Chen at the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan have now introduced a new approach in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Their method is based on the dissolution of the metal in an ionic liquid.  

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• 20:24 Electron's negativity cut in half by supercomputer

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  While physicists at the Large Hadron Collider smash together thousands of protons and other particles to see what matter is made of, they're never going to hurl electrons at each other. No matter how high the energy, the little negative particles won't break apart. But that doesn't mean they are indestructible.  

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• 20:24 Ford collaborates with Microsoft for in-car health and wellness research

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Ford, Microsoft Corp. and Healthrageous are researching how connected devices can help people monitor and maintain health and wellness  

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• 20:24 Global cyber anti-garbage drive aims to muster millions

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Cyber-environmentalists said Thursday they aim to mobilise millions of people around the world for a mass waste clean-up, saying they had to step in because governments had failed to do so.  

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• 20:24 Graphene quantum dots: The next big small thing

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  A Rice University laboratory has found a way to turn common carbon fiber into graphene quantum dots, tiny specks of matter with properties expected to prove useful in electronic, optical and biomedical applications.  

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• 20:24 In tackling lead pollution, fungi may be our friends

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Fungi may be unexpected allies in our efforts to keep hazardous lead under control. That's based on the unexpected discovery that fungi can transform lead into its most stable mineral form. The findings reported online on January 12 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggest that this interaction between fungi and lead may be occurring in nature anywhere the two are found together. It also suggests that the introduction or encouragement of fungi may be a useful treatment strategy for lead-polluted sites.  

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• 20:24 Largest bird alters its foraging due to climate change

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Paris/ Leipzig. Wandering albatrosses have altered their foraging due to changes in wind fields in the southern hemisphere during the last decades. Since winds have increased in intensity and moved to the south, the flight speed of albatrosses increased and they spend less time foraging. As a consequence, breeding success has improved and birds have gained 1 kilogram. These are the results of the study of an international research team published in the latest issue of the Science journal. However, these positive consequences of climate change may last short if future wind fields follow predictions of climate change scenarios, researchers warn.  

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• 20:24 New 'smart' nanotherapeutics can deliver drugs directly to the pancreas

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  A research collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston has developed "smart" injectable nanotherapeutics that can be programmed to selectively deliver drugs to the cells of the pancreas. Although this nanotechnology will need significant additional testing and development before being ready for clinical use, it could potentially improve treatment for Type I diabetes by increasing therapeutic efficacy and reducing side effects.  

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• 20:24 Newly identified type of immune cell may be important protector against sepsis

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Investigators in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology have discovered a previously unknown type of immune cell, a B cell that can produce the important growth factor GM-CSF, which stimulates many other immune cells. They also found that these novel cells may help protect against the overwhelming, life-threatening immune reaction known as sepsis.  

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• 20:24 ONR's information discovery and sharing environment undergoes 'Marathon' experiment

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  The ability to catch international smugglers and terrorists just got upgraded with a Jan. 12 demonstration of collaborative software funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).  

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• 20:24 Optical nanoantennas enable efficient multipurpose particle manipulation

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  University of Illinois researchers have shown that by tuning the properties of laser light illuminating arrays of metal nanoantennas, these nano-scale structures allow for dexterous optical tweezing as well as size-sorting of particles.  

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• 20:24 Planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research.  

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• 20:24 Receptor for tasting fat identified in humans (w/ Audio)

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Why do we like fatty foods so much? We can blame our taste buds.  

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• 20:24 Research team discovers genes and disease mechanisms behind a common form of muscular dystrophy

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Continuing a series of groundbreaking discoveries begun in 2010 about the genetic causes of the third most common form of inherited muscular dystrophy, an international team of researchers led by a scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has identified the genes and proteins that damage muscle cells, as well as the mechanisms that can cause the disease. The findings are online and will be reported in the Jan. 17 print edition of the journal Developmental Cell.  

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• 20:24 Researchers discover particle which could 'cool the planet'

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals.  

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• 20:24 Scientists learn how stem cell implants help heal traumatic brain injury

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  For years, researchers seeking new therapies for traumatic brain injury have been tantalized by the results of animal experiments with stem cells. In numerous studies, stem cell implantation has substantially improved brain function in experimental animals with brain trauma. But just how these improvements occur has remained a mystery.  

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• 20:24 Study finds chlorophyll can help prevent cancer - but questions traditional research methods

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  A recent study at Oregon State University found that the chlorophyll in green vegetables offers protection against cancer when tested against the modest carcinogen exposure levels most likely to be found in the environment.  

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• 20:24 Study provides new insights into an ancient mechanism of mammalian evolution

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  A team of geneticists and computational biologists in the UK today reveal how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome evolution. The new study is published in the journal Cell.  

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• 20:24 The world's smallest magnetic data storage unit

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) have built the world's smallest magnetic data storage unit. It uses just twelve atoms per bit, the basic unit of information, and squeezes a whole byte (8 bit) into as few as 96 atoms. A modern hard drive, for comparison, still needs more than half a billion atoms per byte. The team present their work in the weekly journal Science this Friday (13 January 2012). CFEL is a joint venture of the research centre Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) and the University of Hamburg. "With CFEL the partners have established an innovative institution on the DESY campus, delivering top-level research across a broad spectrum of disciplines," says DESY research director Edgar Weckert.  

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• 20:24 We may be less happy, but our language isn't

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  "If it bleeds, it leads," goes the cynical saying with television and newspaper editors. In other words, most news is bad news and the worst news gets the big story on the front page.  

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• 20:24 Wind turbine giant Vestas to cut 2,335 jobs this year

  Read the story at PhysOrg
  Wind turbine giant Vestas said Thursday it would slash 2,335 jobs, leaving Denmark's government red-faced after it made "green technologies" a top priority of its just-launched EU presidency.  

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• 20:23 Breakthrough model reveals evolution of ancient nervous systems through seashell colors

  Read the story at ScienceDaily
  Determining the evolution of pigmentation patterns on mollusk seashells -- which could aid in the understanding of ancient nervous systems -- has proved to be a challenging feat for researchers. Now, however, through mathematical equations and simulations, researchers have used 19 different species of the predatory sea snail Conus to generate a model of the pigmentation patterns of mollusk shells.  

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• 20:23 Chlorophyll can help prevent cancer -- but study raises other questions

  Read the story at ScienceDaily
  A recent study found that the chlorophyll in green vegetables offers protection against cancer when tested against the modest carcinogen exposure levels most likely to be found in the environment. However, chlorophyll actually increases the number of tumors at very high carcinogen exposure levels. The research raises serious questions about whether traditional lab studies done with mice and high levels of toxic exposure are providing accurate answers to what is a real health risk, what isn't, and what dietary or pharmaceutical approaches are useful.  

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