News Articles

The success of long term hip replacement surgery may lie in the genes, suggests research published ahead of print in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
The researchers analysed genetic variations in 312 people, just over half of whom (162) had problems after hip replacement in the 10 years following surgery.
Among those with symptoms, 91 had early signs of “aseptic loosening,” which describes a condition in which the artificial joint comes loose and the surrounding bone begins to dissolve.

Ultrasound-based tests allowing women undergoing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) to count their chickens before they've hatched may provide alternatives to the hormone-based tests used today. Less costly and invasive than the current ovarian reserve tests, clinicians may in future consider using ultrasound scans of a woman's ovaries to predict her ovaries' response to IVF.
Research published today in Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology details how Janet Kwee et. al. from Vrije Universiteit Medical Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands studied 110 women aged 18-39 who had difficulty conceiving. She counted the number of antral follicles, small egg-bearing ovarian follicles about 2-10 mm in diameter, with transvaginal sonography (ultrasound).

For the first time, scientists of the BaBar experiment at the Department of Energy's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) have observed the transition of one type of particle, the neutral D-meson, into its antimatter particle. This observation will now be used as a test of the Standard Model, the current theory that best describes all the universe's luminous matter and its associated forces.

Silicon Vertex Tracker. The SVT is the heart of the BABAR experiment at SLAC—in the photo, physicists are putting the finishing touches on improvements to the detector. (Photo Courtesy of Peter Ginter)

With an innovative combination of a novel application of synchrotron imaging, high-resolution microtomography, and developmental analysis, the team reconstructed tooth growth and determined the age at death of a fossil juvenile from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. This study represents the first non-destructive approach to characterize dental development with a high degree of precision, as synchrotron images reveal microscopic internal growth lines without damage to the specimen. The team found that the Moroccan fossil child showed an equivalent degree of tooth development to living human children at the same age.

In the debate over alternative energy resources, geothermal technology has received scant media attention. Advocates call it one of the cleanest, sustainable energy resources available. However, steep construction, equipment and drilling costs have prevented more widespread development of geothermal technology. An Ohio University hydrothermal systems expert is working to change that.

Geothermal power plants harness energy created by heat at the Earth's core. Credit: Dina Lopez/Ohio University

The origins of modern humans continues to be one of the most hotly debated topics among anthropologists, and there is little consensus about where and when the first members of our species, Homo sapiens, became fully modern. While fossil evidence tells a complex tale of mosaic change during the African Stone Age, almost nothing is known about changes in human 'life history,' or the timing of development, reproductive scheduling, and lifespan. Research during the past two decades has shown that early fossil humans (australopithecines and early Homo) possessed short growth periods, which were more similar to chimpanzees than to living humans.

Although scientists know about basic voice production—the two "vocal folds" in the larynx vibrate and pulsate airflow from the lungs—the larynx is one of the body's least understood organs.
Sound produced by vocal-fold vibration has been extensively researched, but the specifics of how airflow actually affects sound have not been shown using an animal model—until now.
Vortices, or areas of rotational motion that look like smoke rings, produce sound in jet engines. New research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) uses methods developed from the study of jet noise to identify similar vortices in an animal model.

Unlike most of our sensory systems that detect only one type of stimuli, our sense of smell works double duty, detecting both chemical and mechanical stimuli to improve how we smell, according to University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers in the March issue of Nature Neuroscience.
This finding, plus the fact that both types of stimuli produce reaction in olfactory nerve cells, which control how our brain perceives what we smell, explains why we sniff to smell something, and why our sense of smell is synchronized with inhaling.

With hundreds of nanotechnology-enabled products already on the market and many more in the commercial pipeline, a new report by a former senior Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official urges policymakers to give greater attention to the challenges of crafting an oversight system that can effectively address health and safety issues particular to nanoscale materials and devices.
"It is time for government, industry, the scientific community, non-governmental organizations and other interested parties to begin a more systematic discussion about the core elements of an oversight framework for nanoscale materials" writes Mark Greenwood in Thinking Big About Things Small: Creating an Effective Oversight System for Nanotechnology. Greenwood worked for EPA for over 16 years and was director of EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics from 1990 to 1994.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have found that adolescence is a time of remodeling in the prefrontal cortex, a brain structure dedicated to higher functions such as planning and social behaviors.
The study of rats found that both males and females lose neurons in the ventral prefrontal cortex between adolescence and adulthood, with females losing about 13 percent more neurons in this brain region than males.

Psychology professor Janice Juraska, right, and graduate student Julie Markham have found that adolescents begin to lose neurons in the prefrontal cortex. Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer

Assigning dates to the events in the life of a rock—for example, a collision with a piece of continent, or a journey through the Earth’s crust—has long challenged geologists, as the events themselves can confound evidence of the past.
But now, armed with a custom-built machine known as the Ultrachron, University of Massachusetts Amherst scientists are refining a technique that allows them to pin dates to geologic processes with unprecedented precision.

Genetically modified crops were supposed to improve efficiency and make life easier for farmers in poor countries. The opposite may be true, according to a Washington University in St. Louis study. Technology may be racing too fast for farmers to keep up. It may even be linked to higher suicide rates.
The arrival of genetically modified crops has added another level of complexity to farming in the developing world, says a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
Glenn D. Stone, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and of environmental studies, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University in St. Louis, has completed the first detailed anthropological fieldwork on these crops and the way they impact — and are impacted by — local culture.