PhysOrg Newsletter Monday, Jan 16

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Here is your customized PHYSorg.com Newsletter for January 16, 2012:

Spotlight Stories Headlines

- Qualcomm's HaloIPT tech brings wireless charging for EVs
- Scientists replicate key evolutionary step in life on earth
- Carbon dioxide affecting fish brains: study
- Blood test for human form of mad cow disease developed
- 'Spooky action at distance' in particle physics?
- Weird gadgets at CES: Motorized unicycle, anyone?
- Powerful fungal infection drug amphotericin kills yeast by simply binding ergosterol
- Does the La Nina weather pattern lead to flu pandemics?
- Broken arm? Brain shifts quickly when using a sling or cast
- Study: Babies try lip-reading in learning to talk
- Europe's 'Big Bang' observatory completes cosmic survey
- People behave socially and 'well' even without rules: study
- Research provides new insights into antibiotics and pig feeds
- Researchers identify path to treat Parkinson's disease at its inception
- New computer model shows Titan atmosphere more Earth-like than thought

Space & Earth news

Drilling for climate change
Researchers aboard the drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution will finish their Mediterranean voyage next week to unearth thousands of centuries of climate data from beneath the ocean floor.

Space Image: Welcome disruption
(PhysOrg.com) -- The line of Saturn's rings disrupts the Cassini spacecraft's view of the moons Tethys and Titan.

NASA moves shuttle engines from Kennedy to Stennis
(PhysOrg.com) -- The relocation of the RS-25D space shuttle main engine inventory from Kennedy Space Center's Engine Shop in Cape Canaveral, Fla., is underway. The RS-25D flight engines, repurposed for NASA's Space Launch System, are being moved to NASA's Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi.

Warnings of ecological timebomb after Italy ship wreck
Fears rose of an environmental disaster from a wrecked cruise ship in an area of outstanding natural beauty in Italy on Monday as hopes faded of finding any more survivors on board.

Engineering team completes ambitious Antarctic expedition in the 'deep-field'
A team of four British engineers has returned to the UK after completing a gruelling journey to one of the most remote and hostile locations on the planet to put in place equipment and supplies for an ambitious project later this year. Enduring temperatures of minus 35°C the Subglacial Lake Ellsworth 'Advance Party' has successfully paved the way to explore an ancient lake buried beneath 3 km of Antarctic ice. A powerful 'tractor-train' towed nearly 70 tonnes of equipment across Antarctica's ice over deep snow and steep mountain passes. In December a science and engineering team will make the 16,000 km journey from the UK to collect water and sediments from the buried lake.

Russian Mars probe meets inglorious end in Pacific
Russia vowed Monday to expose the officials responsible for the failure of a Mars probe that the military said crashed into the Pacific Ocean after orbiting the Earth for more than two months.

Tropical clouds hold clues for the global water cycle
(PhysOrg.com) -- To study the wellspring of atmospheric water, you have to start with tropical clouds. Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory showed that global climate models are not accurately depicting the true depth and strength of tropical clouds that have a strong hold on the general circulation of atmospheric heat and the global water balance. Their analysis points to the need for model improvements to project water cycle changes in the 21st century. The research was published in the Journal of Climate.

Earth from Space: A southern summer bloom
(PhysOrg.com) -- In this Envisat image, a phytoplankton bloom swirls a figure-of-8 in the South Atlantic Ocean about 600 km east of the Falkland Islands.   During this period in the southern hemisphere, the ocean becomes rich in minerals from the mixing of surface waters with deeper waters. Phytoplankton depend on these minerals, making blooms like this common in the spring and summer.

New research reveals legacy of lead from old inner city roads a major source of airborne contamination
(PhysOrg.com) -- An international research study published last week in the journal Atmospheric Environment has found that re-suspended roadside soil dust is a major source of atmospheric lead in old inner city areas.

New climate-cooling molecule found
Scientists have succeeded in detecting and analyzing a new atmospheric molecule whose existence has long been suspected but never proved.

Scientists still searching for the Beagle 2 crash site on Mars
Since its disappearance in December 2003, scientists and citizen scientists alike have continued the search for Europe’s Beagle 2 lander which likely crashed on Mars. Its disappearance is a mystery and if the spacecraft could be located, it might be possible to discover what went wrong.

Goldilocks moons
The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the ‘habitable zones’ of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding Earth-like planets around other stars is the primary goal of NASA’s Kepler Mission.

'Proplyd-like' objects discovered in Cygnus OB2
The well known Orion Nebula is perhaps the most well known star forming regions in the sky. The four massive stars known as the trapezium illuminate the massive cloud of gas and dust busily forming into new stars providing astronomers a stunning vista to explore stellar formation and young systems. In the region are numerous “protoplanetary disks” or proplyds for short which are regions of dense gas around a newly formed star. Such disks are common around young stars and have recently been discovered in an even more massive, but less well known star forming region within our own galaxy: Cygnus OB2.

India has Red Planet Fever
Mars fever has gripped India. In a recent report from the Planetary Science and Exploration conference that was held in December 2011, scientists from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) are making preliminary plans for a robotic mission to the Red Planet sometime next year. 

Carbon dioxide affecting fish brains: study
Rising human carbon dioxide emissions may be affecting the brains and central nervous systems of sea fish, with serious consequences for their survival, according to new research.

Strong quakes rattle remote Antarctica
Two strong earthquakes 40 minutes apart rocked the remote South Orkney Islands in Antarctica on Sunday, experts from the US Geological Survey said.

Team finds natural reasons behind nitrogen-rich forests
(PhysOrg.com) -- Many tropical forests are extremely rich in nitrogen even when there are no farms or industries nearby, says Montana State University researcher Jack Brookshire.

New research shows 1992 earthquake in Pakistan was due to rare horizontal shift
(PhysOrg.com) -- The media (and school teachers, of course) has done a very good job of informing most people about how earthquakes work. We can all very easily imagine two great plates rubbing against one another, like two fists rubbing together, creating havoc along fault lines. But what most of us have never likely imagined is the type of earthquake that occurred back in 1992 in Kohat, Pakistan.

Black hole jets
(PhysOrg.com) -- Black holes are irresistible sinks for matter and energy. They are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational clutches. Massive black holes (equal to millions or even billions of solar masses) develop during collisions between galaxies. More ordinary, stellar-mass-sized black holes form as remnants of the explosive deaths of stars, and are thought to contain not more than about twenty solar masses of material.

Re-thinking an alien world
Forty light years from Earth, a rocky world named "55 Cancri e" circles perilously close to a stellar inferno.  Completing one orbit in only 18 hours, the alien planet is 26 times closer to its parent star than Mercury is to the Sun. If Earth were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F.  Researchers have long thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of parched rock.

New computer model shows Titan atmosphere more Earth-like than thought
(PhysOrg.com) -- Two scientists from the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris have built a computer model that simulates the atmosphere on Titan, one of Saturn’s sixty two moons, and as a result now believe that Titan has two different atmospheric boundary layers, the lower of which appears to impact the formation of methane clouds, dune movement on the surface and wind patterns. The researchers, Benjamin Charnay and Sébastien Lebonnois have published their findings in Nature Geoscience.

Europe's 'Big Bang' observatory completes cosmic survey
A 900-million-dollar orbital observatory has completed the biggest-ever search for remnants of the "Big Bang" that created the Universe, the European Space Agency said on Monday.

Technology news

Improving web search
Research from Victoria University could help search engines understand people’s queries much better.

China's number of Web users rises to 513 million
(AP) -- The number of Internet users in China has surged past 500 million as millions of new Web surfers go online using mobile phones and tablet computers, an industry group reported Monday.

Hulu to launch first original scripted show
(AP) -- Hulu will broadcast its first original scripted series next month, a political comedy that will debut during the real-life Republican presidential primary.

'French Steve Jobs' shakes up mobile phone market
Hailed as the French Steve Jobs, entrepreneur Xavier Niel is shaking up the country's mobile phone market with a maverick style far removed from France's traditionally conservative business practices.

Websites of Israel bourse, airline brought down
The websites of Israeli national carrier El Al and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) were both offline on Monday morning, hours after they were reportedly threatened by a Saudi hacker.

Improved ergonomics for wheelchair users
(PhysOrg.com) -- Empa engineers, together with the firm r going, have succeeded in developing an ergonomic seat for electric wheelchairs which encourages the user to move around frequently. True to the motto life is movement the aim is to enhance the freedom of movement of wheelchair users with a range of disabilities.

MHI develops 12-inch wafer bonding machine capable of producing 3-D integrated LSI circuits at room temperature
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (MHI) has developed the world's first fully automated 12-inch (300 millimeters) wafer bonding machine, dubbed the "Bond Meister MWB-12-ST," capable of producing 3-dimensionally integrated LSI (large-scale integration) circuits at room temperature. The company delivered the first unit to the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Leveraging the new machine's ability to eliminate heat stress and strain in the bonding process and help achieve high productivity, MHI looks to contribute to efforts to further enhance the capacity and performance of LSIs, which currently face limitations in miniaturization.

Google, Facebook fight Indian criminal case
Google and Facebook on Monday fought in the Delhi High Court to quash criminal charges that they are responsible for obscene online content.

UN chief launches sustainable energy initiative
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched on Monday an initiative designating 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, with the aim of reaching its set goals by 2030.

US shoe seller says hacker compromised accounts
US online shoe seller Zappos.com was notifying some 24 million customers Monday that a hacker had gained entry to its computer network, but said credit card data was not affected.

China's Internet population tops 500 million
China now has more than 500 million people on the Internet and nearly half use weibos, microblogs similar to Twitter that can circumvent the country's powerful censors, official data showed Monday.

Comparing energy conversion of plants and solar cells
Scientists now have a way to more accurately compare how efficiently plants and photovoltaic, or solar, cells convert sunlight into energy, thanks to findings by a research consortium that included a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist.

Wikipedia to black out Wednesday in protest
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says the online encyclopedia will black out its website Wednesday to protest anti-piracy legislation under consideration in Congress.

Qualcomm's HaloIPT tech brings wireless charging for EVs
(PhysOrg.com) -- Qualcomm has demonstrated its new wireless power transmission system for electric vehicles (EVs) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The system, including one pad for power transmitting, another for power-receiving, and control unit, uses the inductive transfer method to charge an EV. The chip-maker’s technology, Inductive Power Transfer (IPT), has a technology history that rests with the company that it acquired in November, HaloIPT. The latter, which made a name for itself in developing wireless charging technology for EVs, was a spinoff from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Medicine & Health news

Fewer children require hospitalization following drowning-related incidents
Fewer children required hospitalization following a drowning incident over the last two decades, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. According to the study, pediatric hospitalizations from drowning-related incidents declined 51 percent from 1993 to 2008. The rates declined significantly for all ages and for both genders, although drowning-related hospitalizations remained higher for boys at every age. Hospitalization rates also decreased significantly across the U.S., with the greatest decline in the South. Despite the steep decline, the South still experienced the highest rate of pediatric hospitalizations for drowning. The study will be published in the February issue of Pediatrics, and available on the journal's website January 16.

Cancer studies warn over NHS cost-cutting
A leading cancer researcher has identified very high levels of doctor-patient trust and confidence within the NHS.

SDSU researchers develop an assessment tool to identify birth defects
(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers with the National Children’s Study at South Dakota State University, in collaboration with Dr. H. Eugene Hoyme, chief academic officer at Sanford Health and president and senior scientist for Sanford Research/University of South Dakota, are working to develop a standardized assessment tool that would be used to identify birth defects in infants. An evaluation model of this type would have a significant impact on the study of human genetics and birth defects.  

Active lifestyle associated with less Alzheimer disease-related brain change among persons with APOE epsilon4 genotype
A sedentary lifestyle is associated with greater cerebral amyloid deposition, which is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), among cognitively normal individuals with the ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Pellet guns and children
Last week an eighth-grader in Brownsville was shot and killed when he refused to stand down and lower his weapon.

Benefits of aspirin more modest than previously believed
(Medical Xpress) -- People without a history of cardiovascular disease (such as heart attack or stroke) are unlikely to benefit from a regular dose of aspirin, given the associated risk of internal bleeding. This is the finding of the largest study to date into the effects of aspirin in people without established cardiovascular conditions.

Female feticide in Canada requires action
Canada should prohibit disclosure of the sex of a fetus until after 30 weeks of pregnancy to combat female feticide which is practised by some ethnic groups in Canada and the United States, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Hospitalized patients are very accepting of nurse-delivered brief alcohol interventions
The U.S. Joint Commission recently approved new hospital accreditation measures related to alcohol screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) for all hospitalized patients. Yet little is known about the effectiveness of brief interventions (BIs) or inpatient acceptability of SBIRT when performed by healthcare professionals other than physicians. A new study has found high hospital-patient acceptability of and comfort with nurse-delivered SBIRT.

Comparing alcohol use and other disorders between the United States and South Korea
Hazardous alcohol use and depression are among the 10 leading causes of disability and premature death worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Many low- to middle-income countries have begun to see a steady increase in alcohol use and have entered the early stages of a tobacco epidemic. A study of alcohol use disorders (AUDs), nicotine dependence (ND), and mood and anxiety disorders in the United States and South Korea has found that while AUDs are substantially more common among Americans than South Koreans, alcohol-dependent Americans are significantly more likely to seek treatment.

How exercise helps you avoid a broken heart
Joseph Libonati, PhD, associate professor of nursing at Penn Nursing answer’s questions about how exercise betters your heart health. Dr. Libonati is a cardiac physiology expert who focuses on heart health and hypertension.

Ukraine urged to step up AIDS fight
(AP) -- The head of a global health fund on Monday urged Ukraine to step up its efforts to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Europe's largest.

Ultra short telomeres linked to osteoarthritis
Telomeres, the very ends of chromosomes, become shorter as we age. When a cell divides it first duplicates its DNA and, because the DNA replication machinery fails to get all the way to the end, with each successive cell division a little bit more is missed. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy shows that cells from osteoarthritic knees have abnormally shortened telomeres and that the percentage of cells with ultra short telomeres increases the closer to the damaged region within the joint.

Researchers identify potential new therapy approach for hepatitis C
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found a new way to block infection from the hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the liver that could lead to new therapies for those affected by this and other infectious diseases.

Australia experts call for energy drink warnings
Researchers in Australia on Monday called for health warnings on caffeine-loaded energy drinks following a spike in the number of people reporting medical problems after drinking them.

China struggles to meet surging demand for dairy
Despite a major safety scandal in 2008, China's demand for milk is surging as people grow wealthier, but the country's poorly kept and often undernourished dairy herds are struggling to keep pace.

Computer models that predict crowd behaviour could be used to prevent the spread of infections at mass gatherings
(Medical Xpress) -- Computer models that provide accurate simulations of how crowds behave can be used to identify health and safety issues at MGs, and could be adapted to simulate the spread of infections and to test the potential of public health interventions to disrupt or prevent an outbreak, according to the fourth paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases Series on mass gatherings health.

Taking another look at the roots of social psychology
(Medical Xpress) -- Psychology textbooks have made the same historical mistake over and over. Now the inaccuracy is pointed out in a new article published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Scientists: They are surprisingly normal
(Medical Xpress) -- A multi-media production with a musical narrative set in the day room of a psychiatric hospital, Inside a Quiet Mind brought together Cambridge Neuroscientists and mental health service users to perform side by side, in this way breaking conventional barriers that exist between the two groups.

Vitamin D deficiency strikes one-third of Australians
(Medical Xpress) -- Nearly one third of Australian adults are suffering vitamin D deficiency according to a study involving more than 11,000 adults from around the country.

Women soldiers see more combat than in prior eras, have same PTSD rate as men, study says
(Medical Xpress) -- Women who served in the U.S. Army in Iraq and Afghanistan were involved in combat at significantly higher rates than in previous conflicts, and screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder at the same rate as men, according to a study led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

Opioids erase memory traces of pain
A team of researchers at the MedUni Vienna's Department of Neurophysiology (Centre for Brain Research) has discovered a previously unknown effect of opioids: the study, which has now been published in Science and was led by Ruth Drdla-Schutting and Jürgen Sandkühler, shows that opioids not only temporarily relieve pain, but at the right dose can also erase memory traces of pain in the spinal cord and therefore eliminate a key cause of chronic pain.

Inequality in wealthy states rises, diseases decline: WHO
Social inequality in wealthy nations is increasing while in parts of the developing world many diseases are on the wane, Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization said Monday.

One in ten Canadians cannot afford prescription drugs: study
One in ten Canadians cannot afford to take their prescription drugs as directed, according to an analysis by researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto.

Declines in melanoma deaths limited to the most educated
A new study from the American Cancer Society finds recent declines in melanoma mortality rates in non-Hispanic Whites in the U.S. mainly reflect declines in those with the highest level of education, and reveals a widening disparity in melanoma mortality rates by education. The authors say the findings call for early detection strategies to effectively target high-risk, low-educated, non-Hispanic White individuals. The study is published Online First by Archives of Dermatology.

New indicator may help identify patients with increased risk from throat cancer
Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System have found a new indicator that may predict which patients with a common type of throat cancer are most likely have the cancer spread to other parts of their bodies.

A family history of alcoholism may make adolescent brains respond differently
Researchers know that adolescents with a family history of alcoholism (FHP) are at risk for developing alcohol use disorders. Some studies have shown that, compared to their peers, FHP adolescents have deficits in behavioral inhibition. A study of the neural substrates of risk-taking in both FHP adolescents and their peers with a negative family history of alcoholism (FHN) has shown that FHP youth demonstrated atypical brain activity while completing the same task as the FHN youth.

Researchers quantify the damage of alcohol by timing and exposure during pregnancy
Prenatal exposure to alcohol is associated with a spectrum of abnormalities, referred to as Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. Physical features of the more serious Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) include smooth philtrum, thin vermillion border, short palpebral fissures, microcephaly, and growth deficiencies in weight and height. A new study has specified how specific quantities of alcohol exposure, patterns of drinking, and timing of exposure can have an impact on each of these features.

A genetic accelerator hits the gas on autoimmune diseases
A "genetic accelerator" is responsible for the most severe cases of Lupus (systemic lupus erythemathosus), an autoimmune disease: the accelerator, called enhancer HS1.2, speeds up the activity of some critical genes of the immune system involved in the disease.

Allergy to Plavix can be overcome: study
Allergies to Plavix, also know by its chemical name, Clopidogrel occur in about six percent of patients given the drug, vital for the prevention of life-threatening stent thrombosis after angioplasty and percutaneous coronary interventions. Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University found that a combination of steroids and antihistamines can successfully alleviate the allergic reaction and enable patients to remain on the drug. Until now, hypersensitivity required drug interruption, placing the patient at risk for restenosis or a major coronary event.

Revolutionary surgical technique for perforations of the eardrum
A revolutionary surgical technique for treating perforations of the tympanic membrane (eardrum) in children and adults has been developed at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre, an affiliate of the Université de Montreal, by Dr. Issam Saliba. The new technique, which is as effective as traditional surgery and far less expensive, can be performed in 20 minutes at an outpatient clinic during a routine visit to an ENT specialist. The result is a therapeutic treatment that will be much easier for patients and parents, making surgery more readily available and substantially reducing clogged waiting lists.

India reports new TB strain resistant to all drugs
Indian doctors have reported the country's first cases of "totally drug-resistant tuberculosis," a long-feared and virtually untreatable form of the killer lung disease.

Planned actions improve the way we process information
Preparing to act in a particular way can improve the way we process information, and this has potential implications for those with learning disabilities. Researchers funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) have shown that using a grabbing action with our hands can help our processing of visual information.

Parkin larvae bring researchers closer to solving Parkinson's disease puzzle
(Medical Xpress) -- Scientists at the University of York have made a significant step forward in isolating the cause of Parkinson’s disease in younger adults.

No walk in the park: Factors that predict walking difficulty in elderly
Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that the likelihood of becoming disabled with age increases with the following factors: having a chronic condition or cognitive impairment; low physical activity; slower gross motor coordination; having poor lower-extremity function; and being hospitalized. Women are also more likely than men to become disabled in their later years.

Traditional physical autopsies -- not high-tech 'virtopsies' -- still 'gold standard'
TV crime shows like Bones and CSI are quick to explain each death by showing highly detailed scans and video images of victims' insides. Traditional autopsies, if shown at all, are at best in supporting roles to the high-tech equipment, and usually gloss over the sometimes physically grueling tasks of sawing through skin and bone.

New gene discovery unlocks mystery to epilepsy in infants
(Medical Xpress) -- A team of Australian researchers has come a step closer to unlocking a mystery that causes epileptic seizures in babies.

Fluorescent dye pinpoints tiniest signs of oesophageal cancer
(Medical Xpress) -- A fluorescent dye that can be sprayed onto the oesophagus – the food pipe – could be used to detect oesophageal cancer earlier and spare patients unnecessary treatment, according to research published today (Sunday) in Nature Medicine.

Researchers identify facial expression for anxiety
(Medical Xpress) -- Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King's College London have, for the first time, identified the facial expression of anxiety. The facial expression for the emotion of anxiety comprises an environmental scanning look that appears to aid risk assessment. The research was published this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 

Broken arm? Brain shifts quickly when using a sling or cast
Using a sling or cast after injuring an arm may cause your brain to shift quickly to adjust, according to a study published in the January 17, 2012, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study found increases in the size of brain areas that were compensating for the injured side, and decreases in areas that were not being used due to the cast or sling.

Does the La Nina weather pattern lead to flu pandemics?
Worldwide pandemics of influenza caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. A new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics finds that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific. The study's authors--Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health—note that the La Niña pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds, which are thought to be a primary reservoir of human influenza. The scientists theorize that altered migration patterns promote the development of dangerous new strains of influenza.

Blood test for human form of mad cow disease developed
(Medical Xpress) -- Mad cow disease is serious business in the U.K., the human form, known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob after Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt and Alfons Maria Jakob (CJD), who independently first described its existence in humans, (more commonly known as variant CJD, or vCJD), has killed 176 people in that country since 1995, and worse, authorities suspect that thousands more may have it right now. Fortunately, it appears that a blood test has been developed that can identify the prion involved, which until now has only been identifiable via brain autopsies, or sometimes through tonsil biopsies. Currently, there is no cure for vCJD. Those infected lose proper brain function and eventually die within a few months to a couple of years after onset of symptoms. After death, the victims brains appear sponge-like due to the holes left behind as clumps of tissue die. The disease is neither viral nor bacterial and is instead, caused by a prion, which is an infectious type of prot! ein.

Study: Babies try lip-reading in learning to talk
Babies don't learn to talk just from hearing sounds. New research suggests they're lip-readers too.

Researchers identify path to treat Parkinson's disease at its inception
(Medical Xpress) -- Imagine if doctors could spot Parkinson’s disease at its inception and treat the protein that triggers it before the disease can sicken the patient.   A team of researchers led by Basir Ahmad, a postdoctoral researcher at Michigan State University, has demonstrated that slow-wriggling alpha-synuclein proteins are the cause of aggregation, or clumping together, which is the first step of Parkinson’s. The results are published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Biology news

Nutrient data in time for the new year
Two timely nutrient data sets provided by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are being used by the beef and pork industries to provide new Nutrition Facts labels for their products. Federal rules require specific meat and poultry products to carry new nutrition information.

Maize gene could lead to bumper harvest
(PhysOrg.com) -- The discovery of a new ‘provisioning’ gene in maize plants that regulates the transfer of nutrients from the plant to the seed could lead to increased crop yields and improve food security.

Acid rain poses a previously unrecognized threat to Great Lakes sugar maples
(PhysOrg.com) -- The number of sugar maples in Upper Great Lakes forests is likely to decline in coming decades, according to University of Michigan ecologists and their colleagues, due to a previously unrecognized threat from a familiar enemy: acid rain.

Genetic fingerprint reveals new efficient maize cultivars
(PhysOrg.com) -- The parent’s performance has little to do with the child's success – at least in maize. Even weak parent plants can be crossed in a way in which they produce vigorous offspring. But not all plants by far are suitable parents. Every single one has to prove its potential in time and cost intensive crossing experiments. Scientists Mark Stitt and Lothar Willmitzer from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam, in collaboration with their colleagues Albrecht Melchinger, from the University of Hohenheim, and Thomas Altmann, from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Gatersleben, wanted to speed up this process. Together they developed a mathematical model that predicts surprisingly well if a plant will make a good parent or not. The model is based on genomic information obtained from the maize kernels and the metabolic profile of the seedlings. The results will be especially valuable for breeders.

Study offers insight into delicate biochemical balance required for plant growth
(PhysOrg.com) -- In an ongoing effort to understand how modifying plant cell walls might affect the production of biomass and its breakdown for use in biofuels, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered a delicate biochemical balance essential for sustainable plant growth and reproduction. Their research on pectin, a sugary component of plant cell walls commonly used as a gelling and stabilizing agent in foods, might also suggest new ways to improve its properties for industrial and food applications.

Bits of life, drop by drop
(PhysOrg.com) -- Swiss scientists are working on creating artificial living tissues using a very special kind of inkjet printer. Still in its initial stages, this technology could nonetheless soon provide biological samples that could be used for testing new drugs.

New tool puts plant hormone under surveillance
(PhysOrg.com) -- Charles Darwin was the first to speculate that plants contain hormones. His pioneering research led to the identification of the very first and key plant growth hormone — auxin — in 1937.

Research provides new insights into antibiotics and pig feeds
Antibiotics in pig feed increased the number of antibiotic resistant genes in gastrointestinal microbes in pigs, according to a study conducted by Michigan State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

Scientists replicate key evolutionary step in life on earth
(PhysOrg.com) -- More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals.

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