Many potential applications
Picture a flower that opens when facing the sunlight. In work that mimics that sensitivity to light, an MIT engineer and German colleagues have created the first plastics that can be deformed and temporarily fixed in a second, new shape by illumination with light having certain wavelengths. These programmed materials will only switch back to their original shape when exposed to light of specific different wavelengths.
The work, to be reported
Timing often matters when it comes to epileptic seizures that can occur after surgery designed to stop them. A multicenter study led by researchers at Jefferson Medical College has found that patients who had an initial seizure within the first four months of surgery were less likely to do as well in the long term as those individuals who did not.
“A patient has surgery to remove some brain tissue, hoping to cure his epilepsy, and has a seizure a week or a month or a year
Finding could lead to new therapeutic strategies
Scientists have discovered the mechanism that enables some CD4 T cells — the main target of HIV — to thwart the virus. The discovery, reported on April 13 in the online version of Nature, could open the door to an entirely new strategy for preventing the spread of HIV infection in the body’s cells, according to the senior author of the study, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology Director Warner C. Greene, MD, PhD.
Although not widely appreciated as a disease of the genes, cancer is always rooted in genetic errors or problems in gene regulation. Scientists have identified some of the first genetic triggers for cancer as mutations in specific oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes. Full-blown tumors and metastatic cancers, however, often exhibit many genetic mutations, sometimes dozens in a given tumor. An important scientific question, and one with significant clinical implications, has been what happens afte
Except for the fact that we call it home, for centuries astronomers didn’t have any particular reason to believe that our solar system was anything special in the universe. But, beginning with the discovery 10 years ago of the first planet outside our solar system, evidence suggests that, as far as planetary systems go, the solar system might be special indeed.
Instead of the nice circular orbits our nine planets enjoy, most of the more than 160 extrasolar planets detected in
Some adults with mild persistent asthma may be able to adequately control their asthma by taking corticosteroids only when needed, instead of taking anti-inflammatory medication daily, according to new results from the Improving Asthma Control Trial (IMPACT). Conducted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Asthma Clinical Research Network, the one-year, multi-center study found that participants who were treated with corticosteroids intermittently based on symptoms had
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that people who score in the upper 25 percent in anxiety level on a personality test have a moderately increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease decades later. They also found a similar link between pessimistic personalities and Parkinson’s.
“This is the first study that took a group of people with documented personality characteristics but no symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and showed that those with high levels of an anxious or pessimi
Pathological gamblers exhibit complex impairments in decision-making and executive function processes associated with the prefrontal cortex of the brain, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 57th Annual Meeting in Miami Beach, Fla., April 9 – 16, 2005.
Researchers learned that decision-making functions and inhibitory control in chronic pathological gamblers appear to be altered and may influence the trade-off between short-term reward
Mayo Clinic researchers have found that surgical removal of both ovaries doubles a woman’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and parkinsonism many years later in life. They also discovered that the younger a woman is at the time of the surgery, the higher her risk.
“The risk is higher for women with both ovaries removed; however, it may also be somewhat increased when only one ovary is removed,” says Walter Rocca, M.D., Mayo Clinic epidemiologist and lead study inv
What causes an outbreak of tularaemia (rabbit fever) has until now been a mystery, and where the bacteria go between outbreaks is still unknown. Climatic factors have now been shown to be a possible trigger for outbreaks of the disease in a study carried out by Thomas Palo, Mid Sweden University, and Clas Ahlm and Arne Tärnvik, Umeå University.
The investigation, which is being published in the journal Ecology and Society, demonstrates that the incidence of the disease in humans corr
The success of personalised healthcare hinges on a better understanding of how microbes in the gut interact with different medicines report scientists from Imperial College London and Astra Zeneca.
Personalised medicine aims to provide medical treatment tailored more precisely to the individual, maximising efficacy while reducing the risk of an adverse reaction.
According to an article published this month in Nature Reviews Microbiology, the researchers believe that gut m
The concept of time is self-evident. An hour consists of a certain number of minutes, a day of hours and a year of days. But we rarely think about the fundamental nature of time.
Time is passing non-stop, and we follow it with clocks and calendars. Yet we cannot study it with a microscope or experiment with it. And it still keeps passing. We just cannot say what exactly happens when time passes.
Time is represented through change, such as the circular motion of the moon
We all know that a viral infection can be developed extremely quickly, but in fact it’s even more dramatic than that – the process is literally explosive.
The pressure inside a virus is 40 atmospheres, and it is just waiting for an opportunity to blow up. The virus is like a living DNA cannon. How this cannon functions has been mapped by Dr. Alex Evilevitch at the Department of Biochemistry at Lund University in Sweden. This is knowledge that will have applications in ge
A research group at Cambridge think that the universe might once have been packed full of tiny black holes. Dr Martin Haehnelt, a researcher in the group led by Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, will present new evidence to support this controversial idea at the Institute of Physics conference Physics 2005 in Warwick.
Most cosmologists believe that supermassive black holes grew up in big galaxies, accumulating mass as time went on. But Haehnelt says there is increasing evidence for a
In an Australian first, UNSW researchers have developed three clones of cells from existing human embryonic stem cells. The breakthrough could lead to new treatments for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury.
“This cloning of cells involves a new technique, which is a very accurate way of extracting and then growing a single cell,” said UNSW Senior Lecturer Dr Kuldip Sidhu, who is leading the research and is based at the Diabetes Transplant Unit (DTU) at the Pri
Surgeon’s choice of laser or blade for corneal flap plays role in visual outcome of procedure
New scientific data being presented at this year’s ASCRS meeting reveals the key to a better-than-20/20 outcome in LASIK surgery may depend on whether your doctor uses a blade or a laser to create the corneal flap in the first step of the procedure.
“It turns out that the flap that we make in LASIK is not an innocent bystander,” says Roger F. Steinert, M.D., 2005 ASCRS president,
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