News Articles

Oxytocin, a hormone involved in child-birth and breast-feeding, helps people recognize familiar faces, according to new research in the January 7 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Study participants who had one dose of an oxytocin nasal spray showed improved recognition memory for faces, but not for inanimate objects.

Eight-year-old boys dream of being superheroes - flying high above the clouds with nothing to limit themselves but their imaginations - and Danner Cronise got his dream, courtesy of his dad, Ray, co-founder of Zero Gravity Corporation. In the process he set the record as the youngest person to experience zero-gravity flight.
Danner was joined by his father Ray, and older sisters Erin (10) and Alex (12). A NASA engineer for more than 15 years, Ray Cronise had a unique and personal reason for wanting to see his children enjoy weightlessness first hand. "It is awe inspiring to be able to take your kids on such a memorable experience. Being exposed to these kinds of adventures kindles curiosity and keeps them dreaming," said Ray.

A team of researchers at Penn Sate has used an animal model to reveal, for the first time, a physiological basis for the effect of alcohol on male sexual behavior, including increased sexual arousal and decreased sexual inhibition.
The research in PLoS ONE resulted in four novel findings with broad importance for further addiction research. It is the first study to characterize the effects of chronic alcohol exposure in fruit flies. "Physiological evidence supporting various theories about the effect of alcoholic drinks has been lacking, so our now having a suitable animal model makes it possible to conduct much-needed laboratory research on this issue," explains research-team-leader Kyung-An Han, associate professor of biology and a neuroscientist at Penn State.

A glitch in the mechanism by which cells recycle damaged components may trigger Parkinson’s disease, according to a study by scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The research appears in The Journal of Clinical Investigation and could lead to new strategies for treating Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
All cells depend on a surveillance system known as autophagy (which literally means “self eating”) to digest and recycle the damaged molecules that arise as cells age. In autophagy, defective proteins and other molecules are transported to membrane-bound sacs called lysosomes. After attaching to the lysosomal membrane, the molecules enter the lysosome, where they are digested by enzymes.

A diagnosis of childhood cancer 50 years ago meant almost certain death. Now, because of scientific advances, the majority of newly diagnosed children can expect to survive.

You may not think of oceanography when it comes to cancer research but an unexpected discovery in marine biomedical laboratories at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has led to information on how a marine organism creates a natural product currently being tested to treat cancer in humans.

What are the United States presidential candidates’ positions on scientific topics ranging from evolution to global warming? A special news report in the January 4th issue of Science addresses these questions and profiles the nine leading candidates on where they stand on important scientific issues.
The 10-page special report, Science and the Next U.S. President profiles Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson and offers voters a glimpse at each candidate’s views on science.

Hydrogen peroxide, the same mild acid that many people use to disinfectant their kitchens or treat cuts and abrasions, is also produced by the body to keep cells healthy. Now, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have solved how part of this complex process works.
Reporting in the January 3 issue of Nature, a team led by W. Todd Lowther, Ph.D., developed a three-dimensional snapshot of how two proteins produced by cells interact to regulate the levels of hydrogen peroxide.
For example, when the immune system is activated in response to bacteria, large amounts of hydrogen peroxide are produced by certain cells to fight the infection. Lowther and colleagues studied how a molecule known as peroxiredoxin (Prx) helps control levels of the agent.

A group of scientists in Princeton's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology has uncovered a new biological mechanism that could provide a clearer window into a cell's inner workings.
What's more, this mechanism could represent an "epigenetic" pathway -- a route that bypasses an organism's normal DNA genetic program -- for so-called Lamarckian evolution, enabling an organism to pass on to its offspring characteristics acquired during its lifetime to improve their chances for survival. Lamarckian evolution is the notion, for example, that the giraffe's long neck evolved by its continually stretching higher and higher in order to munch on the more plentiful top tree leaves and gain a better shot at surviving.

Many people pay silly amounts of money to wear a particular logo or a designer brand. A designer outfit doesn't keep you any warmer or dryer than an unbranded one, but functionality is only part of the story. Designer products say something about you – you are a trendy, sexy or sophisticated person. Brands help us to express who we think we are and who we want to be.
Big name brands are an integral part of our lives, says Davide Ravasi, associate professor in the Institute of Strategic Management of Bocconi University, Italy. Whether its Levi jeans, BMW cars or Nokia phones, we know the brands we like.

Should a rural, sparsely populated and predominantly white conservative state be the initial battleground for presidential nominations?
Well, someone has to go first but Steven S. Smith, the Kate M. Gregg Professor of Social Sciences Washington University in St. Louis, says it's time for Iowa to just go.
Smith says he has nothing against Iowa or New Hampshire, but he has serious misgivings about their special role as the first in the nation to select nominees. Iowa, he says, is far from representative of the nation — its population is too rural and too white to play such a critical role in choosing the nominee.

For the past 40 years, light-emitting diodes have been successfully employed wherever small amounts of light are needed. Present-day applications include car indicators, reversing and brake lights. However, the efficiency and luminosity of LEDs have never yet been sufficient to achieve a major breakthrough.
Thanks to new technologies for chip manufacturing, structural design and beam shaping developed by scientists at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors the light output of LEDs has been vastly improved. In Berlin on December 6, President Horst Köhler presented the team of OSRAM and Fraunhofer researchers with the prestigious German President’s award for technology and innovation, worth 250,000 euros, in recognition of their achievement.