News Articles

Aging is one of the most mysterious processes in biology. We don't know, scientifically speaking, what exactly it is. We do know for sure when it ends, but to make matters even more inscrutable, the timing of death is determined by factors that are in many cases statistically random.
Researchers in the lab of Walter Fontana, Harvard Medical School professor of systems biology, have found patterns in this randomness that provide clues into the biological basis of aging.

Removal of a gene protected mice against arterial disease, and they stayed lean even when they ate more. The phenomenon underlying this beneficial phenotype is more active brown adipose tissue.
Scientists from Finland developed a mouse model which did not gain weight or develop hardening of arteries, even when they were fed a high-fat diet. The study was published by Science Translational Medicine.

Multinational American companies with significant operations in countries with low corporate taxes take on less debt than companies that face higher taxes, according to a new study from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. The finding helps to solve an academic mystery: A link between higher corporate taxes and debt levels is predicted by economic theory, but some recent studies have either failed to find such a connection or found it to be weaker than expected.
The paper, by the Smith School finance professor Michael Faulkender and Jason Smith, of Utah State University -- and accepted at the Journal of Financial Economics -- provides yet more evidence that varying corporate-tax rates across countries distort economic activity.

An international team, made up of researchers from the University of Granada, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of South Florida, has linked the symptoms of schizophrenia with the anatomical characteristics of the brain, by employing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Their research, published in the academic journal NeuroImage, could herald a significant step forward in the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia. In a major breakthrough, scientists have successfully linked the symptoms of the illness with the brain's anatomical features, using sophisticated brain-imaging techniques.

As our sensory organs register objects and structures in the outside world, they are continually engaged in two-way communication with the brain. In research recently published in Nature Neuroscience, Weizmann Institute scientists found that for rats, which use their whiskers to feel out their surroundings at night, clumps of nerve endings called mechanoreceptors located at the base of each whisker act as tiny calculators. These receptors continuously compute the way the whisker's base rotates in its socket, expressing it as a fraction of the entire projected rotation of the whisker, so that the brain is continually updated on the way that the whisker's rotation is being followed through.

European scientists have gathered tiny fungi that take shelter in Antarctic rocks and sent them to the International Space Station. After 18 months on board in conditions similar to those on Mars, more than 60% of their cells remained intact, with stable DNA. The results provide new information for the search for life on the red planet. Lichens from the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) and the Alps (Austria) also travelled into space for the same experiment.

HOUSTON -- (Jan. 28, 2016) -- In a surprising find, physicists from the United States, Germany and China have discovered that nuclear effects help bring about superconductivity in ytterbium dirhodium disilicide (YRS), one of the most-studied materials in a class of quantum critical compounds known as "heavy fermions."
The discovery, which is described in this week's issue of Science, marks the first time that superconductivity has been observed in YRS, a composite material that physicists have studied for more than a decade in an effort to probe the quantum effects believed to underlie high-temperature superconductivity.

MADISON, Wis. -- In a twist of virtual fate, people with the best 3-D vision are also the people most likely to suffer from motion sickness while using virtual reality displays.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison demonstrated this irony by playing motion-heavy videos for study participants through the Oculus Rift -- a 3-D virtual reality headset worn like a pair of goggles.
Nearly two-thirds of the study subjects quit watching the videos early, overcome by nausea in the virtual environment for much the same reason discomfort catches up to people in real-world situations.
Motion sickness is the product of mismatched sensory information.

Analysis of ancient Babylonian tablets reveals that, to calculate the position of Jupiter, the tablets' makers used geometry, a technique scientists previously believed humans had not developed until at least 1,400 years later, in 14th century Europe. These tablets are the earliest known examples of using geometry to calculate positions in time-space and suggest that ancient Babylonian astronomers may have influenced the emergence of such techniques in Western science. In this Report, Mathieu Ossendrijver discusses the translation of four almost completely intact tablets that were most likely written in Babylon between 350 and 50 BCE. They depict two intervals from when Jupiter first appears along the horizon, calculating the planet's position at 60 and 120 days.

Fat is back, at least in some sense. It has just been replaced with polyunsaturated fats in the minds of nutritionists. 
Studies on low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets and the recently popular fad called the Mediterranean diet have shown similar results in weight loss but are mixed when it comes to cholesterol, mostly because nutritional epidemiology relies on people remembering what they ate. To try and augment those, studies are done with animals, and they can provide some guidance but are often misused (what food hasn't been found to be a carcinogen in rats by now?). Still, that is what we have and they can at least provide some guidance on what works best for improved health. Then studies can be done with people.

A new simple nanowire manufacturing technique uses self-catalytic growth process assisted by thermal decomposition of natural gas. According to the research team, this method is simple, reproducible, size-controllable, and cost-effective in that lithium-ion batteries could also benefit from it.
In their approach, they discovered that germanium nanowires are grown by the reduction of germanium oxide particles and subsequent self-catalytic growth during the thermal decomposition of natural gas, and simultaneously, carbon sheath layers are uniformly coated on the nanowire surface. 

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Health care systems and providers need to understand the unique realities of military culture in order to work effectively with veterans and military families, according to the findings of a study by a University at Buffalo research team.
Results of the paper published in the journal Military Behavioral Health suggest that health care and mental health care providers and staff should receive training that provides them with enough knowledge to understand the military's culture and values and how that belief system also affects the veterans' transition from a service member identity to a civilian identity.