A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
A new study from North Carolina State University shows that painted road markings, such as the lines separating traffic lanes, are significantly better at reflecting headlights in the direction that the paint was applied. This finding will help determine how states comply with new federal safety regulations and save money on painting their roadways.
What's in a name? Perhaps more (or less) money. Before employers have a chance to judge job applicants on their merits, they may have already judged them on the sound of their names, says a study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Labor Economics.
Who hasn't tried to bleach their hair with hydrogen peroxide in college? I can't tell you how many young scientists we know who tried to go for that young Reed Richards look.It turns out that hydrogen peroxide may be responsbile for bleached hair in aging also, though not intentionally. Researchers of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany nd the University of Bradford say they have now unlocked the secret of hair turning white or gray in old age. According to them, free oxygen radicals are significantly involved in the loss of hair color.
Sulfuryl fluoride, a gas used for fumigation, has the potential to contribute significantly to future greenhouse warming, but because its production has not yet reached high levels there is still time to nip this potential contributor in the bud, according to an international team of researchers.Their study of sulfuryl fluoride this month in the Journal of Geophysical Research, measured the levels of the gas in the atmosphere and determined its emissions and lifetime to help gauge its potential future effects on climate.
If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions. In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologists William Hart of the University of Florida and Dolores AlbarracÃn from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reveal that the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior.
Polymorphisms are variations in genes which can result in changes in the way a particular gene functions and thus may be associated with susceptibility to common diseases.In a new study in Psychological Science, psychologist Tina B. Lonsdorf and her colleagues from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Greifswald in Germany examined the effect of specific polymorphisms on how fear is learned and how that fear is subsequently overcome.
You might think that predicting eye color is easy because we all learned in high school about recessive genes and eye color is a great example of those. But it isn't easy. In fact, human eye color, which is determined by the extent and type of pigmentation on the eye's iris, is what geneticists call a 'complex trait, meaning that several genes control which color the eyes will ultimately have. Over the past decades a number of such 'eye-color genes' have been identified, and people with different eye color, will have a different DNA sequence at certain points in these genes.
There's no question that employees at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have watched with some concern as the LHC got all the press about being the future of physics despite the fact it hadn't actually produced anything. They have also quietly continued setting world records and are once again reminding people that Fermilab's Tevatron, currently the world's most powerful operating particle accelerator, is actually ahead, even in the race to find the as-yet undefined "Higgs particle."
Animals have an astonishing ability to develop reliably, in spite of variable conditions during embryogenesis. New research published this week addresses how living things can develop into precise, adult forms when there is so much variation present during their development stages. A team led by John Reinitz at Stony Brook University, and funded by the National Institutes of Health, shows how fruit fly embryos can "forget" initial incorrect versions of their body plan and develop into recognizable adult flies.
Having a bad 2009? It's only going to get worse when those printing presses they use to make more money finally break down. But there is always a bright spot on dark days; babies.
Each year some 1,500 Swedes decide to end their lives. No one can be sure what the reasons are but they often include mental and sometimes physical issues.It could also be surroundings, say researchers at Stockholm University and the University of Oxford, though that would seem to be taking a 'Keep up with the Jones'es' mentality a little far. But various types of behavior, feelings, and attitudes are spread in social networks and the researchers have studied whether such a drastic step as taking your life can also be influenced by others. They used register data on all individuals who lived and worked in Stockholm County during the 1990s.
Researchers say they have found the first unambiguous evidence that an animal other than humans can make spontaneous plans for future events. The report in Current Biology highlights a decade of observations of a male chimpanzee calmly collecting stones and fashioning concrete discs that he would later use to hurl at zoo visitors.While researchers have observed many ape behaviors that could involve planning both in the wild and in captivity, it generally hasn't been possible to judge whether they were really meeting a current or future need, he added. For instance, when a chimp breaks a twig for termite fishing or collects a stone for nut cracking, it can always be argued that they are motivated by immediate rather than future circumstances.
