News Articles

A team of bioinformaticians at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) report in Nature the discovery of a structural alphabet that can be used to infer the 3D structure of ribonucleic acid (RNA) from sequence data, providing new tools to understand the role of this important class of cellular regulators.
The folding of a single-stranded RNA molecule is determined by the interactions between its constituent nucleotides. The classical approach to RNA modelling suffers from an important limitation: it only takes into account the canonical Watson-Crick interactions A:U and G:C, that is those where the nucleotides are facing each other.
The non-canonical Hoogsteen and sugar interactions, those where the nucleotides are side by side or on top of each other, are not taken into account by conventional modelling algorithms. The result can be incomplete or erroneous models which can mislead researchers.

In a recent edition of Advanced Materials Magazine, Michael Bockstaller and Krzysztof Matyjaszewski demonstrate that controlling the structure of nanoparticles can “shrink” their visible size by a factor of thousands without affecting a particle’s actual physical dimension.
It's invisibility in the optical range, something that cannot be done with current metamaterials
“What we are doing is creating a novel technique to control the architecture of nanoparticles that will remedy many of the problems associated with the application of nanomaterials that are so essential to business sectors such as the aerospace and cosmetics industry,” said Bockstaller, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

It's what you always feared. Your brain actually does react differently to donuts, according to fMRI-based research led by Marsel Mesulam, M.D., a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Krispy Kremes, in perhaps their first starring role in neurological research, helped lead to the discovery.
In the study, subjects were tested twice -- once after gorging on up to eight Krispy Kreme donuts until they couldn't eat anymore, and on another day after fasting for eight hours. In both sessions, people were shown pictures of donuts and screwdrivers, while researchers examined their brains in fMRI's.

Krispy Kremes - All Your Diets Are Belong To Us.

Nancy Mathiowetz is “drowning in data” but so is almost everyone else.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee sociology professor and president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research says the results of public opinion polls measure nearly every aspect of our lives today, from who we favor for public office to what kinds of cookies we prefer.
Mathiowetz views them as necessary and useful tools and, while not perfect, she says polls still are a reliable way for people to have their voices heard by lawmakers.

Anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin may reduce breast cancer by up to 20 per cent, according to an extensive review carried out by experts at London’s Guy’s Hospital published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice.
But they stress that further research is needed to determine the best type, dose and duration and whether the benefits of regularly using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) outweigh the side effects, especially for high-risk groups.
“Our review of research published over the last 27 years suggests that, in addition to possible prevention, there may also be a role for NSAIDs in the treatment of women with established breast cancer” says Professor Ian Fentiman from the Hedley Atkins Breast Unit at the hospital, part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.

Scientists have discovered how to prevent certain craniofacial disorders in what could ultimately lead to at-risk babies being treated in the womb.
University of Manchester researchers, working with colleagues at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas, have successfully treated mice with Treacher Collins syndrome – a rare genetic disorder characterised by underdeveloped facial bones, absent or deformed ears and occasionally cleft palate.
The team had previously found that the condition, which affects one in 10,000 individuals, was caused by a mutation in a single gene called TCOF1. They later discovered that this mutation causes cells, known as neural crest cells, to die prematurely in the early stages of pregnancy resulting in the facial anomalies.

Astrophysicists are having a heated debate over the wave structure of the Sun’s Corona - a debate which may one day influence solar weather forecasting and the theory behind fusion reactors. The Sun’s core is about 6000 degrees C, but its outer layer, the Corona, which is filled with a strong magnetic field, is 200 to 300 times hotter.
Last year American scientists thought they had cracked this paradox with research showing how high-energy Alfvén wave structures could super-heat the Corona.
The astrophysicists said they could detect Alfvén waves within the Corona – waves that have a corkscrew motion along the magnetic field at supersonic speed.

Alfvén waves or magneto-acoustic kink waves?

A new study published in The Journal of Finance explores the economic significance of “smart money” in the U.S. and U.K. mutual fund marketplaces.
The “Smart Money” hypothesis states that investor money is “smart” enough to flow to funds that will outperform in the future, and that investors have genuine fund selection ability. The current study employs a British data set of monthly fund information differentiated between individual and institutional investors.
Research by Aneel Keswani at the Cass Business School in London, England, and David Stolin at the Toulouse Business School in Toulouse, France, documented a smart money effect in the United Kingdom using monthly data available from 1991 to 2000. Inflows, not outflows, gave rise to the smart money effect in the U.K.

The method to the madness of quasicrystals has been a mystery to scientists. Quasicrystals are solids whose atoms aren't arranged in a repeating pattern, as they are in ordinary crystals. Yet they form intricate patterns that are technologically useful.
A computer simulation performed by University of Michigan scientists has given new insights into how this unique class of solids forms. Quasicrystals incorporate clusters of atoms as they are, without rearranging them as regular crystals do, said Sharon Glotzer, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering.

The Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, Ariz., has taken celestial images using its twin side-by-side, 8.4-meter (27.6 foot) primary mirrors together, achieving first "binocular" light.
U.S., Italian and German partners in the telescope, known as the LBT, are releasing the images today. First binocular light is a milestone not only for the LBT, “now the world's most powerful telescope" but for astronomy itself, the partners say. The University of Arizona in Tucson is a quarter owner of telescope observing time.
The first binocular light images show three false-color renditions of the spiral galaxy NGC 2770. The galaxy is 102 million light years from our Milky Way, a relatively close neighbor.

Scientists studying images from The High Resolution Imaging Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered never-before-seen impact "megabreccia" and a possibly once-habitable ancient lake on Mars at a place called Holden crater.
The megabreccia is topped by layers of fine sediments that formed in what apparently was a long-lived, calm lake that filled Holden crater on early Mars, HiRISE scientists say.
"Holden crater has some of the best-exposed lake deposits and ancient megabreccia known on Mars," said HiRISE's principal investigator, professor Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. "Both contain minerals that formed in the presence of water and mark potentially habitable environments.

An atomic clock that uses an aluminum atom to apply the logic of computers to the peculiarities of the quantum world now rivals the world's most accurate clock, based on a single mercury atom. Both clocks are at least 10 times more accurate than the current U.S. time standard.
The measurements were made in a yearlong comparison of the two next-generation clocks, both designed and built at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The clocks were compared with record precision, allowing scientists to measure the relative frequencies of the two clocks to 17 digits-the most accurate measurement of this type ever made.