Posts

People who excel at lying are good talkers and tell more lies than others, usually to family, friends, romantic partners and colleagues, according to the research led by Dr. Brianna Verigin, at the University of Portsmouth. Expert liars also prefer to lie face-to-face, rather than via text messages, and social media was the least likely place where they’d tell a lie. Dr. Verigin, who splits her time between the Universities of Portsmouth and Maastricht, in the Netherlands, said: “We found a significant link between expertise at lying and gender....

A study of more than 117,000 pro tennis matches and more than 5 million observations in online amateur chess indicates that even when competitors are evenly matched, players perform worse against an opponent they know has been climbing in rank. As players rise, they gather what social scientists call “status momentum,” said Hemant Kakkar, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Fuqua and author of the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

According to a detailed analysis of the gut microbes of research participants who took three different types of supplements in various orders, those who had been consuming the least amount of fiber before the study benefited most from supplements, regardless of the kind they took. “The people who responded the best had been eating the least fiber to start with,” said study leader Lawrence David, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke University....

Understanding which elements are present in a star in what abundance can help researchers estimate the makeup of the exoplanets that orbit them, which can help predict how similar the planets are to the Earth. “Until recently, it was difficult to obtain detailed chemical abundances for this kind of star,” said lead author Souto, who developed a technique to make these measurements last year. Like the exoplanet’s host star Ross 128, about 70 percent of all stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs, which are much cooler and smaller than our Sun....

Researchers centered at Nagoya University have developed a nanowire device able to detect microscopic levels of urinary markers potentially implicated in cancer. Cells communicate with each other through a number of different mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are well-known: in animals, for example, predatory threats can drive the release of norepinephrine, a hormone that travels through the bloodstream and triggers heart and muscle cells to initiate a “fight-or-flight” response. A far less familiar mode of cellular transport is the extracellular vesicle (EV)....

The University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Center (ORC) is pioneering research into developing the strongest silica nanofibers in the world. Globally the quest has been on to find ultrahigh-strength composites, leading ORC scientists to investigate light, ultrahigh-strength nanowires that are not compromised by defects. Historically carbon nanotubes were the strongest material available, but high strengths could only be measured in very short samples just a few microns long, providing little practical value....

Scientists analyzed ultrasounds for a wide range of birth defects from life-long and severe to short-term and mildStudy advances earlier CDC data that found similar resultsIn the U.S., 3 to 5% of births are impacted by birth defects The exclusion of pregnant patients in initial COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials left many patients and doctors wondering how the vaccine might affect pregnant patients and their unborn babies. A new Northwestern Medicine study has found the vaccine is not associated with birth defects that are detectable on ultrasound....

The study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, showed that blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) learned best by watching their own species, whereas great tits (Parus major) learned just as well from great tits and blue tits. In addition to learning directly from trial and error, birds can decrease the likelihood of bad experiences — and potential poisoning — by watching others. Such social transmission of information about novel prey could have significant effects on prey evolution, and help explain why different bird species flock together....

Scientists from the University of Maryland, the University of Leeds, and the University of California, San Diego, have reviewed decades of satellite measurements to reveal how and why Antarctica’s glaciers, ice shelves, and sea ice are changing. Their report, published in a special Antarctica-focused issue of the journal Nature on June 14, 2018, explains how ice shelf thinning and collapse have triggered an increase in the continent’s contribution to sea level rise....

The solar cells are dual-sided, meaning both the front and back of the cell generate power. Principal Investigator Dr. Kean Chern Fong said the so-called bifacial solar cells easily beat the performance of single-sided silicon solar cells. “We have developed what I would call a true bifacial solar cell, as it has nearly symmetrical power generation capacity on both surfaces of the device,” Dr. Fong said. “When deployed on a conventional solar farm, a bifacial cell absorbs direct incoming light, while also taking advantage of ground reflection, which can contribute up to an additional 30 percent power generation....

Decades of research has shown that we can transplant individual human and rodent neurons into rodent brains, and, more recently, it has been demonstrated that human brain organoids can integrate with developing rodent brains. However, whether these organoid grafts can functionally integrate with the visual system of injured adult brains has yet to be explored. “We focused on not just transplanting individual cells, but actually transplanting tissue,” says senior author H....

The Genetics of Regeneration When it comes to regeneration, some animals are capable of amazing feats. If you cut off a salamander’s leg, it will grow back. When threatened, some geckos drop their tails to distract their predator, only to regrow them later. Other animals take the process even further. Planarian worms, jellyfish, and sea anemones can actually regenerate their bodies after being cut in half. Led by Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Mansi Srivastava, a team of researchers is shedding new light on how animals pull off the feat, along the way uncovering a number of DNA switches that appear to control genes for whole-body regeneration....

The study is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Dutch company Hoekmine BV and shows how genetics can change the color, and appearance, of certain types of brightly-colored bacteria. The results open up the possibility of harvesting these bacteria for the large-scale manufacturing of nanostructured materials: biodegradable, non-toxic paints could be ‘grown’ and not made, for example. Flavobacterium is a type of bacteria that packs together in colonies that produce striking metallic colors, which come not from pigments, but from their internal structure, which reflects light at certain wavelengths....

Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have discovered that controlling super-selective binding interactions between nanomaterials and protein surfaces not only depends on molecular density but also on pattern and structural rigidity. This breakthrough has the potential to optimize existing techniques for virus prevention and cancer detection. So much of biology comes down to the biophysical process of binding: making a strong connection between one or more groups of atoms – known as ligands – to their corresponding receptor molecule on a surface....

City of Hope scientists have developed and tested the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy using chlorotoxin (CLTX), a component of scorpion venom, to direct T cells to target brain tumor cells, according to a preclinical study published today (March 4, 2020) in Science Translational Medicine. The institution has also opened the first in-human clinical trial to use the therapy. CARs commonly incorporate a monoclonal antibody sequence in their targeting domain, enabling CAR T cells to recognize antigens and kill tumor cells....

Other than some decals and a few extra antennas, there’s nothing outwardly remarkable about the white Audi TTS zipping around the track at Thunderhill Raceway, north of Sacramento, California. Its tires squeal as it zigs through chicanes. Its engine growls as it tops 120 mph on the straights. The car gets around the 3-mile course in less than 2-1/2 minutes, a time that rivals those posted by professional drivers. Shelley is the product of a collaboration between Stanford’s Dynamic Design Lab and the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab....

From the Terminator to Spiderman’s suit, self-repairing robots and devices abound in sci-fi movies. In reality, though, wear and tear reduce the effectiveness of electronic devices until they need to be replaced. What is the cracked screen of your mobile phone healing itself overnight, or the solar panels providing energy to satellites continually repairing the damage caused by micro-meteorites? The field of self-repairing materials is rapidly expanding, and what used to be science fiction might soon become reality, thanks to Technion – Israel Institute of Technology scientists who developed eco-friendly nanocrystal semiconductors capable of self-healing....

Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That luminous glow is the zodiacal light, or sunlight reflected toward Earth by a cloud of tiny dust particles orbiting the Sun. Astronomers have long thought that the dust is brought into the inner solar system by a few of the asteroid and comet families that venture in from afar....

A correlation between neurodegeneration in obese people and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients has been found in a new study led by scientists at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill University. This suggests that losing excess weight could slow cognitive decline in aging and lower risk for AD. Previous research has shown that obesity is linked with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-related changes, such as cerebrovascular damage and amyloid-ß accumulation. However, to date, no research has made a direct comparison between brain atrophy patterns in AD and obesity....

Four or more cups of black, green, or oolong tea every day is linked to a 17% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Moderate consumption of black, green, or Oolong tea is linked to a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D), according to the results of a systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 cohort studies involving more than 1 million adults from eight countries. The findings suggest that drinking at least four cups of tea a day is associated with a 17% lower risk of T2D over an average period of 10 years....