news 2012

Physics/Material Science - 26.12.2012
One step closer: scarcity of anti-matter
A pool holding four anti-neutrino detectors begins filling with ultra-pure water in September, 2012 at the Daya Bay Neutrino experiment. The experiment, just recognized by Science magazine as a breakthrough of the year, is helping to explain why the universe contains virtually no anti-matter.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 25.12.2012
Team Mimicking a Natural Defense Against Malaria to Develop New Treatments
One of the world's most devastating diseases is malaria, responsible for at least a million deaths annually, despite global efforts to combat it. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania , working with collaborators from Drexel University, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Johns Hopkins University, have identified a protein in human blood platelets that points to a powerful new weapon against the disease.

Environmental Sciences - Earth Sciences - 24.12.2012
Bumblebees Do Best Where There Is Less Pavement and More Floral Diversity
AUSTIN, Texas — Landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction have lower numbers of ground-nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators, a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows.

Pedagogy/Education Science - Medicine/Pharmacology - 24.12.2012
Youth seeking weight loss treatment report bullying by those they trust
Even as adolescents struggle to lose weight through treatment programs, they often continue to experience weight-based discrimination - not just from their peers, but from adults they trust, including parents and teachers.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 20.12.2012
Major source of evolutionary differences among species
Researchers have uncovered a genetic basis for fundamental differences between humans and other vertebrates that could also help explain why humans are susceptible to diseases not found in other species.

Social Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 20.12.2012
Child abuse risks: parent's addiction, unemployment and divorce
Adults whose parents struggled with addiction, unemployment and divorce are 10 times more likely to have been victims of childhood physical abuse, says a new study from the University of Toronto. - More than one-third of adults who grew up in homes where all three risk factors were present reported they had been physically abused by someone close to them while under the age of 18 and still living at home, said researchers at U of T's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

Astronomy - Administration/Government - 20.12.2012
New tool is probing the structure of the Milky Way's heart
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The discovery that hundreds of stars are rapidly moving together in long, looping orbits around the center of our galaxy has been announced by a team of scientists including a Penn State University astronomer and others collaborating in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III).

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 19.12.2012
Protein Kinase Akt Identified as Arbiter of Cancer Stem Cell Fate, According to Penn Study
The protein kinase Akt is a key regulator of cell growth, proliferation, metabolism, survival, and death. New work on Akt's role in cancer stem cell biology from the lab of senior author Honglin Zhou, MD, PhD and Weihua Li, co-first author, both from the Center for Resuscitation Sciences, Department of Emergency Medicine , Perelman School of Medicine , University of Pennsylvania, and Xiaowei Xu, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine , appears in Molecular Cell .

Life Sciences - Computer Science/Telecom - 19.12.2012
Scientists construct first map of how the brain organizes everything we see
Our eyes may be our window to the world, but how do we make sense of the thousands of images that flood our retinas each day? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the brain is wired to put in order all the categories of objects and actions that we see.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 18.12.2012
The best-laid plans: How we update our goals based on new information
Humans are adept at setting goals and updating them as new situations arise — for example, a person who is playing a video game may switch to a new goal when their phone rings. - Now, Princeton University researchers have identified mechanisms that govern how the brain incorporates information about new situations into our existing goals, according to research recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

History/Archeology - Earth Sciences - 18.12.2012
Study of pipestone artifacts overturns a century-old assumption
CHAMPAIGN, lll. - In the early 1900s, an archaeologist, William Mills, dug up a treasure-trove of carved stone pipes that had been buried almost 2,000 years earlier. Mills was the first to dig the Native American site, called Tremper Mound, in southern Ohio.

Physics/Material Science - Life Sciences - 17.12.2012
Technique offers high-speed, 3-D images in living tissue
Scientists trying to decipher the microenvironment of living biological tissues now have a way of taking high-resolution, high-speed, three-dimensional images of their inner workings. - Cornell researchers led by Chris Xu, associate professor of applied and engineering physics, have demonstrated a new imaging technique that can quickly provide information not only about light intensity but also its "lifetime" - how long it takes for a photon to be re-emitted after excitation.

Chemistry - Earth Sciences - 17.12.2012
Within the Earth, blobs of molten iron on the move
New research by Yale University scientists suggests an explanation for the amount of iron in the Earth's largest interior layer, the mantle: migrating "iron-rich blobs" generated by chemical interactions in the zone between the planet's core and mantle.

Life Sciences - Medicine/Pharmacology - 17.12.2012
Cocaine Addiction Resistance May Be Passed Down from Father to Son
New research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reveals that sons of male rats exposed to cocaine are resistant to the rewarding effects of the drug, suggesting that cocaine-induced changes in physiology are passed down from father to son.

Medicine/Pharmacology - 17.12.2012
GOOOAAALLL! What soccer can teach health researchers
Make no mistake, Alex Clark and Lionel Messi were not separated at birth. - Both might be stars in their own right, but Clark, associate dean of research in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, realizes he's not about to woo stadiums of crazed soccer fans like FC Barcelona's all-time top scorer.