In the 1980s, scientists captured the precise mechanics of a protein machine. It looked strange, to researchers its tall thin structure with stubby legs invoked the enchanted broomstick that stole the show in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Disney's 1940 Fantasia film.
City folk may not think much of rural living - but they are healthier.
A new study finds that diabetes, once rather uncommon, is now affecting 387 million people worldwide - and 77 percent of it is in developed nations.
The reason is stress, write the authors of a paper in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology&Metabolism. City life - noise, crime and traffic all lead to higher stress and the body producing more of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol can counteract insulin, the hormone that regulates blood sugar, and slow the body's production of it and that makes people more susceptible to diabetes.
Computers don't really boot up any faster than they have in decades and that is due to limitations in electric currents (and ignoring the bloated software rolled out after every new chip), which are also a significant power drain.
The solution may be on the horizon. A team has created a room-temperature magnetoelectric memory device, equivalent to one computer bit, that could lead to next-generation nonvolatile memory: magnetic switchability, in two steps, with nothing but an electric field. When data can be encoded without current - for example, by an electric field applied across an insulator - it requires much less energy and that means low-power, instant-on computing is a reality.
There is a running joke in America that there are three times as many people in the U.S. claiming to be Irish as there are actual people in Ireland.
Though it's nice to claim to be Irish because of a last name, America is a melting pot. And it is so melted that the genetic ancestry of racial and ethnic groups varies significantly even across different geographic regions in the United States. A paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers analyzed the genomes of more than 160,000 African-Americans, Latin-Americans and European-Americans, providing insights into the subtle differences in genetic ancestry across the United States.
Climate change impacts could mean uncertain transformations of global agriculture systems by 2050, according to a new paper from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
A new paper has found that inhibiting or blocking stem cells ability to make a specific decision, leads to better cell growth and could lead to defined ways to differentiate stem cells.
Th authors say their research is the first comprehensive analysis of a pathway important for stem and cancer cell decisions known as Erk. As a result, they hope the work could contain clues to cancer treatment as well as helping to establish a platform to make stem cell treatments for gut related disorders like the pancreas or the liver.
Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, the Kepler spacecraft is still alive and working and its data has found a new "super-Earth".
NASA's Kepler spacecraft detected planets by looking for transits, when a star dims slightly as a planet crosses in front of it. The smaller the planet, the weaker the dimming, so brightness measurements must be precise and that requires maintaining a steady pointing. Kepler can't really do that any more, its primary functionality came to an end when the second of four reaction wheels used to stabilize the spacecraft failed. Without at least three functioning reaction wheels, Kepler couldn't be pointed accurately.
In the former mining area Herrerias in Andalusia, the deep waters of Pit Lake Guadiana show extremely high concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2).
Levels are so high that if it were to bubble up, human beings close-by would be jeopardized. To demonstrate a possible fix, scientists of the Spanish Institute of Geology and Mining, the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, Bilbao) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) constructed a pilot plant for degassing.
A fountain pulls deep water through a pipe to the surface, where the gas can escape from the water. The buoyancy produced by the bubbles provides the energy required for driving the flow.
Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is a strong oxidizer. You may know it as a wound disinfectant or as a bleaching agent for hair and teeth but it is also created naturally in our bodies, as part of our cellular oxidation.
H2O2 belongs to a group of natural chemicals called reactive oxygen species (ROS) and when the process gets out of hand, too much oxidation can have a damaging effect on cells and their components. Unchecked free radicals, the most well-known ROS, are believed to play a role in carcinogenesis, degenerative diseases, and even aging. To prevent that, our cells also contain antioxidant enzymes known as peroxiredoxins that degrade H2O2 molecules. We don't want to have no H202, despite the chemophobia of environmental and food activists, we want just enough.
Though it has higher risks in older people, and those are well-known and cautioned against, prescription use of benzodiazepines increases steadily with age, despite the known risks for older people, according to a comprehensive analysis of benzodiazepine prescribing in the United States.
Benzodiazepines are a widely used class of sedative and anti-anxiety medications. They are effective in relieving anxiety and take effect more quickly than antidepressant medications often prescribed for anxiety. However, the prevalence of anxiety disorders declines with age. Guidelines recommend non-pharmacologic approaches and antidepressants over benzodiazepines as first-line treatment in older people.
Though deaths due to drug use and hepatitis C have gone up, falling death rates due to cancer and heart disease have resulted in a global life expectancy increase of 5.8 years in men and 6.6 years in women between 1990 and 2013, according to an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013).
In high-income regions, falling death rates from most cancers (down by 15%) and cardiovascular diseases (down by 22%) have increased life expectancy, while rapidly declining death rates for diarrhea, lower respiratory tract infections, and neonatal disorders have helped extend life expectancy in low-income countries (see figure 7 page 14, and table 2 pages 15-23).
Airline pilots can be exposed to the same amount of UV-A radiation as if they visited a tanning bed, because airplane windshields do not completely block UV-A radiation.
In 2009, researchers detected methane on Mars, suggesting the planet may be biologically or geologically active. Now NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.
