When an assembly of microgel particles includes one particle that's significantly larger than the rest, that oversized particle spontaneously shrinks to match the size of its smaller neighbors. This self-healing nature of the system allows the microparticles to form defect-free colloidal crystals, an unusual property not seen in systems made up of "hard" particles.
Body
AUGUSTA, Ga. - A series of tests physicians routinely order to help diagnose and follow their patients with an elevated antibody level that is a marker for cancer risk, often do not benefit the patient but do increase health care costs, pathologists report.
Dissection might prove unnecessary when identifying new molluscs after scientists Corey Whisson, Western Australian Museum, and Dr Abraham Breure, Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, the Netherlands, and Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium, described a previously unknown land snail based on its genitalia, yet without damaging the specimen in the slightest.
As blood vessels grow, the cells that compose them must make a choice between forming side-branches or expanding the vessel surface and increasing its diameter. Now Prof. Holger Gerhardt at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in the Helmholtz Association and his international research teams have made a crucial disovery about this process: the cells can behave as a collective, moving in the same direction together.
You not only pick up aromas through your nose, but also through your mouth while you chew your food. Some people simply can smell better than others and those may enjoy an enhanced flavor of foods. Unfortunately, for some, this ability decreases with age, report Tyler Flaherty and Juyun Lim of Oregon State University in the US in Springer's journal Chemosensory Perception.
Many tropical forest trees depend on large fruit-eating animals such as elephants, tapirs, monkeys and hornbills for dispersing their sizeable seeds. Declines of these large mammals and birds due to hunting and forest disturbance, and consequent declines of tree species that they disperse, constitute a global conservation problem. Now, an international consortium of researchers predicts that such losses can cause substantial changes in the potential for tropical forests across the globe to store carbon, and thereby alter their ability to regulate our world's climate.
Berlin, 26 April 2016 - Hidden conflicts of interest can distort study results and endanger trust in medical research. This is the finding of new article published in the Open Access journal Innovative Surgical Science, which addresses transparency and conflicts of interest in surgical studies. Transparency is particularly relevant in this area, as surgical practice is strongly influenced by medical devices, meaning there are often close relationships between industry and professionals.
The team of researchers from the Institute of Parasitology at Vetmeduni Vienna sampled nearly 1,500 house mosquitoes in eastern Austria. The northern house mosquito Culex pipiens, representing more than 90% of the total catch, was the most abundant. Culex pipiens comprises a complex of ecologically different forms that are morphologically indistinct. Two of these forms are endemic to eastern Austria. First author of the study Carina Zittra has now succeeded in identifying a hybrid of these two forms.
Hybrid of ecological forms with different preferences
The Journal of Pain Research has published the original research "Nocebo hyperalgesia: contributions of social observation and body-related cognitive styles".
HANOVER, N.H. - A Dartmouth College scientist and his collaborators have created an artificial protein that organizes new materials at the nanoscale.
In 2010, as part of a national sodium reduction strategy, a multi-stakeholder working group published Canada's Sodium Reduction Strategy. This strategy was meant to act as an essential public health intervention to address the high levels of sodium currently in the Canadian diet, which causes high blood pressure and increases risk for stroke and heart disease. The interim goal was to reduce the average sodium consumption of Canadians to 2,300 mg/day by 2016. To achieve this, the Strategy recommended initiatives directed at the food supply, education and awareness, and research initiatives.
The wide diversity of flu in pigs across multiple continents, mostly introduced from humans, highlights the significant potential of new swine flu strains emerging, according to a study to be published in eLife.
While swine flu viruses have long been considered a risk for human pandemics, and were the source of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus, attention has recently turned to the transmission of flu viruses from humans to pigs.
It was 30 years ago that a meltdown at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station in the former Soviet Union released radioactive contaminants into the surroundings in northern Ukraine. Airborne contamination from what is now generally termed the Chernobyl disaster spread well beyond the immediate environs of the power plant, and a roughly 1000-square-mile region in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia remains cordoned off, an exclusion zone where human habitation is forbidden.
DURHAM, N.C. - The alarming increase in U.S. childhood obesity rates that began nearly 30 years ago continues unabated, with the biggest increases in severe obesity, according to a study led by a Duke Clinical Research Institute scientist.
"Despite some other recent reports, we found no indication of a decline in obesity prevalence in the United States in any group of children aged 2 through 19," said lead author Asheley Skinner, Ph.D., associate professor at Duke. "This is particularly true with severe obesity, which remains high, especially among adolescents."
One of the most recent and extensively studied determinants of fracture risk is trabecular bone score (TBS). TBS, which is assessed by lumbar spine dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) imaging, provides information about the micro-architectural deterioration of bone tissue. Previous studies have shown that TBS predicts fracture in postmenopausal women and older men.