News Articles

Recently, some people subjected themselves to perhaps the most annoying study of 2012; they had to sample and pick the most irritating noises in the world, and they did it for science. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how the brains of 13 volunteers responded to a range of sounds. Listening to the noises inside the scanner they rated them from the most unpleasant to the most pleasing. Scientists were then able to study the brain response to each type of sound and they believe they have found the interaction between the region of the brain that processes sound, the auditory cortex, and the amygdala, which is active in the processing of negative emotions when we hear unpleasant sounds.

Scientists have used a three GeV synchrotron radiation facility to visualize an interaction between gluten and T-cells in the human immune system, providing insight into how celiac disease is triggered. And it will lead to a vaccine, they believe.An increasingly diagnosed chronic inflammatory disorder, celiac disease affects the digestive process of the small intestine. When a person with celiac disease consumes gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley, their immune system triggers T-cells to fight the offending proteins, which damages the small intestine and inhibits absorption of important nutrients into the body. There are no treatments, apart from making sure to eat no foods with gluten.

Can researchers improve the quality of matter akin to that found in plasma screens? A new study improves the understanding of plasma sources, where a certain portion of the particles are ionized. Under certain circumstances, plasma tends to form structures - filaments of electric discharge that are like mini-lightning. Researchers recently investigated barrier discharge, which features at least one electrical insulating material within the discharge gap that acts as an electrically insulating barrier and can be used as a plasma source. They investigated the transition from a highly ordered filament pattern, which is arranged hexagonally, to a disordered system due to the reduction of the externally applied voltage.

In January, 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe bounced, slid and wobbled its way to rest for 10 seconds after touching down on Saturn’s moon, Titan. As you can imagine, that tells scientists quite a bit about the nature of that moon’s surface.They reconstructed the chain of events by analyzing data from a variety of instruments that were active during the impact, in particular changes in the acceleration experienced by the probe. The instrument data were compared with results from computer simulations and a drop test using a model of Huygens designed to replicate the landing and the analysis revealed that, on first contact with Titan’s surface, Huygens dug a hole 12 cm deep before bouncing out onto a flat surface.

Unless you are a microbiologist, you probably don't want to think about all of the things that are happening in your mouth right now. One thing you share with microbiologists is incomplete knowledge regarding what determines the specific types of microorganisms that live there. Is it genes that decide who lives in your microbial village, or your environment? In a new paper, researchers contend that environment plays a much larger role in determining oral microbiota than biology, a finding that sheds new light on a major factor in oral health.

Is it feasible to use dead stars to navigate spacecraft in deep space? Long-term space travel may be a pipe dream outside science fiction math but people inside science are at least thinking about how to make navigation possible. 

When temperatures get low, close to absolute zero, some chemical reactions still occur at a much higher rate than classical chemistry says they should – in that extreme chill, quantum effects enter the picture. Researchers have now confirmed this experimentally, providing insight into processes in the intriguing quantum world in which particles act as waves and perhaps also explaining how chemical reactions occur in the vast frigid regions of interstellar space.

Body hair in mammals is typically thought to have evolved to keep us warm in colder prehistoric periods but in elephants it may do the opposite.  A new study contends epidermal hair may have evolved to help the animals keep cool in the hot regions they live in.Low surface densities of hair can help dissipate heat but the biological and evolutionary significance of sparse skin hair is not well known. The authors of the new paper studied the effects of skin hair densities in Asian and African elephants on thermoregulation in these animals, and concluded that elephant skin hair significantly enhances their capacity to keep cool under different scenarios like higher daytime temperatures or less windy days. 

Synthetic biology uses genes as interchangeable parts to design cellular circuits that can perform new functions, such as sensing environmental conditions. But their complexity is limited by a critical bottleneck: the difficulty in assembling genetic components that don't interfere with each other.Unlike electronic circuits on a silicon chip, biological circuits inside a cell cannot be physically isolated from one another. Because all the cellular machinery for reading genes and synthesizing proteins is jumbled together, researchers have to be careful that proteins that control one part of their synthetic circuit don't hinder other parts of the circuit.

Researchers say that a form of oxytocin — the hormone correlated with human love — has a similar effect on fish, suggesting it is a key regulator of social behavior that has evolved and endured since ancient times.The findings may help answer an evolutionary psychology question: why do some species develop complex social behaviors while others spend much of their lives alone? To find some clues, they examined the cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher, a highly social species found in Lake Tanganyika in Africa. These cichlids are unusual because they form permanent hierarchical social groups made up of a dominant breeding pair and many helpers that look after the young and defend their territory.

Implemented in 2006, Medicare prescription drug benefit (Part D) spent $65.8 billion for prescription drugs in 2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But Medicare beneficiaries are overpaying by hundreds of dollars annually because of difficulties selecting the ideal prescription drug plan for their medical needs, an investigation by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health reveals.  Their work also could be useful in designing health insurance exchanges, which are state-regulated organizations created under the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") to offer standardized health care plans.

The 100 Year Spaceship Symposium, an international event advocating human expansion into other star systems, has some crucial hurdles to overcome. Basically, interstellar travel will depend upon extremely precise measurements of every factor involved in the mission, which isn't possible yet.  But a University of Missouri researcher thinks he has found the solution to a puzzle that has stumped astrophysicists for decades.