ScienceDaily Top Science Headlines -- for Sunday, January 29, 2012

ScienceDaily Top Science Headlines

for Sunday, January 29, 2012

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Life discovered on dead hydrothermal vents (January 28, 2012) -- Microbiologists have found that the microbes that thrive on hot fluid methane and sulfur spewed by active hydrothermal vents are supplanted, once the vents go cold, by microbes that feed on the solid iron and sulfur that make up the vents themselves. ... > full story

Discovery of new vaccine approach for treatment of cancer (January 28, 2012) -- Scientists have developed a new vaccine to treat cancer at the pre-clinical level. They developed a new approach for treating the disease based on manipulating the immune response to malignant tumors. ... > full story

Kitchen gadget inspires scientist to make more effective plastic electronics (January 28, 2012) -- A kitchen gadget that vacuum seals food in plastic inspired a physicist to improve the performance of organic transistors for potential use in video displays. ... > full story

Genetic variation that raises risk of serious complication linked to osteoporosis drugs identified (January 28, 2012) -- Researchers have identified a genetic variation that raises the risk of developing serious necrotic jaw bone lesions in patients who take bisphosphonates, a common class of osteoclastic inhibitors. ... > full story

Space weather center to add world's first 'ensemble forecasting' capability (January 28, 2012) -- Leaner, greener flying machines for the year 2025 are on the drawing boards of three industry teams under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project. ... > full story

The amygdala and fear are not the same thing (January 28, 2012) -- In a 2007 episode of the television show Boston Legal, a character claimed to have figured out that a cop was racist because his amygdala activated – displaying fear, when they showed him pictures of black people. ... > full story

Heart of silk: Scientists use silk from the tasar silkworm as a scaffold for heart tissue (January 28, 2012) -- Damaged human heart muscle cannot be regenerated. Scar tissue grows in place of the damaged muscle cells. Scientists are seeking to restore complete cardiac function with the help of artificial cardiac tissue. They have succeeded in loading cardiac muscle cells onto a three-dimensional scaffold, created using the silk produced by a tropical silkworm. ... > full story

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor: Finding may have implications for Rett Syndrome, other neurological disorders (January 28, 2012) -- Researchers have discovered that a molecule critical to the development and plasticity of nerve cells -- brain-derived neurotrophic factor -- is severely lacking in brainstem neurons in mutations leading to Rett syndrome, a neurological developmental disorder. The finding has implications for the treatment of neurological disorders, including Rett syndrome that affects one in 10,000 baby girls. ... > full story

Where there's a worm there's a whale: First distribution model of marine parasites provides revealing insights (January 28, 2012) -- Each year around 20,000 people are infected by nematodes of the genus Anisakis and suffer from illnesses ranging from gastrointestinal diseases to serious allergic reactions as a result. For the first time, parasitologists have gathered data on the occurrence of the parasitic worm and have modeled the worldwide distribution of individual species in the ocean. The resulting maps not only enable statements to be made on the occurrence and migration behavior of certain hosts of the parasites, such as Baleen or toothed whales,  but also provide conclusions on the risk of human infection. ... > full story

New information for flu fight: Researchers study RNA interference to determine host genes used by influenza for virus replication (January 28, 2012) -- Influenza virus can rapidly evolve from one form to another, complicating the effectiveness of vaccines and anti-viral drugs used to treat it. By first understanding the complex host cell pathways that the flu uses for replication, researchers are finding new strategies for therapies and vaccines, according to a new study. ... > full story

Noise-free spectroscopy: Reversing the problem clarifies molecular structure (January 28, 2012) -- Optical techniques enable us to examine single molecules, but do we really understand what we are seeing? After all, the fuzziness caused by effects such as light interference makes these images very difficult to interpret. Researchers have now adopted a "reverse" approach to spectroscopy which cleaned up images by eliminating background noise. ... > full story

The pupils are the windows to the mind (January 28, 2012) -- The eyes are the window into the soul -- or at least the mind, according to a new article. ... > full story