Tech
Obesity - as research in the past decade has shown - is first and foremost a brain disease. Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München, partners in the German Center for Diabetes Research, have now discovered a molecular switch that controls the function of satiety neurons and therefore body weight. The findings were published in the journal Nature Metabolism.
Little life could endure the Earth-spanning cataclysm known as the Great Dying, but plants may have suffered its wrath long before many animal counterparts, says new research led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
NEW YORK, January 30, 2019 - The MDMX and MDM2 proteins play critical roles in keeping the tumor-suppressing protein p53 from damaging the production of healthy cells. But researchers have also found a causal connection between overexpression of MDMX and MDM2 and breast cancer.
A team of UCLA-led scientists has discovered important clues to what goes wrong in the brains of people with autism -- a developmental disorder with no cure and for which scientists have no deep understanding of what causes it.
The new insights involve RNA editing -- in which genetic material is normal, but modifications in RNA alter nucleotides, whose patterns carry the data required for constructing proteins.
DALLAS - Jan. 30, 2019 - Exercise is often cited as the best preventive medicine, but how much is too much for the hearts of middle-aged athletes?
Watch video: Running to extremes: High-endurance exercise OK for heart health
Sports cardiologist Dr. Benjamin Levine led a study, now published in JAMA Cardiology, to find the answer. Dr. Levine is a Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine, a collaboration between UT Southwestern Medical Center and Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.
Leukaemia promotes premature ageing in healthy bone marrow cells - according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
Findings published today in the journal Blood show that healthy bone marrow cells were prematurely aged by cancer cells around them.
It is well known that ageing promotes cancer development. But this is the first time that the reverse has been shown to be true.
Importantly, the aged bone marrow cells accelerated the growth and development of the leukaemia - creating a vicious cycle that fuels the disease.
A study carried out in Bajondillo Cave (in the town of Torremolinos, in the province of Malaga) by an international team made up of researchers from Spain, Japan and the U.K. revealed that modern humans replaced Neanderthals 44,000 years ago. This study, published today in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution and in which University of Cordoba and University of Granada scientists participated, demonstrates that replacing Neanderthals for modern humans in southern Iberia is an early, not late, occurrence, in the context of Western Europe.
Water molecules distort the electrical resistance of graphene, but a team of European researchers has discovered that when this two-dimensional material is integrated with the metal of a circuit, contact resistance is not impaired by humidity. This finding will help to develop new sensors -the interface between circuits and the real world- with a significant cost reduction.
Acinic cell carcinoma is the third most common malignant form of salivary gland cancer. These tumours are similar to normal salivary gland tissue and occur most frequently in the parotid gland. Until now, the molecular causes for the illness were unknown. Researchers at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen at FAU, the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) have now been able to shed light on them.
Rembrandt van Rijn's paintings are renowned for their masterful representations of light and shadow and a characteristic plasticity generated by a technique called impasto. Now, scientists have analyzed impasto layers in some of Rembrandt's paintings, and the study, which is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, reveals that the impasto unexpectedly contains a very rare lead mineral called plumbonacrite. This finding suggests that Rembrandt used a unique paint recipe.
HOUSTON -- (Jan. 29, 2019) -- In his free time last summer, Rice University geoscientist Ming Tang made a habit of comparing the niobium content in various rocks in a global minerals database. What he found was worth skipping a few nights out with friends.
In a paper published this month by Nature Communications, Tang, Rice petrologist Cin-Ty Lee and colleagues offered an answer to one of Earth science's fundamental questions: Where do continents form?
Nostalgia for events experienced by members of your own group can make you prefer domestic products over foreign ones, concludes the first systematic investigation into the effects of collective nostalgia on consumer decisions. The results could help countries bolster domestic industries without resorting to hard interventions, such as tariffs or international trade re-negotiations.
A team of mathematicians has determined the ideal wing shape for fast flapping flight--a discovery that offers promise for better methods for harvesting energy from water as well as for enhancing air speed.
The work, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, relies on a technique that mimics evolutionary biology to ascertain which structure yields the best pace.
A new study in The Condor: Ornithological Applications shows that certain endangered owls may continue to persist and even flourish after large forest fires.
Throughout western North America, longer, hotter fire seasons and dense fuels are yielding more frequent, larger, and higher-severity wildfires. Spurred by climate change, megafires in the region are often characterized by unusually large, continuous patches of high-severity fire in mature forests.
Researchers have created a new testing ground for quantum systems in which they can literally turn certain particle interactions on and off, potentially paving the way for advances in spintronics.
Spin transport electronics have the potential to revolutionize electronic devices as we know them, especially when it comes to computing. While standard electronics use an electron's charge to encode information, spintronic devices rely on another intrinsic property of the electron: its spin.