Worms turn metal into semiconductors

Worms are useful in the garden and great for fish bait, but one of their talents has remained hidden — until now. Scientists have discovered that worms can manufacture tiny semiconductors.

At King's College in London, researchers fed an ordinary red worm, Lumbricus rubellus, soil laced with metals. The worm produced quantum dots, nano-sized semiconductors that are used in imaging, LED technologies and solar cells. The experiment was published in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

The worms created these electronic components because of their ability to detoxify their body tissue. When worms ingest the metals, proteins in their body shuttle these "toxins" to tissues called chloragogen cells that are similar to a liver in mammals. In the case of cadmium, a molecule called metallothionein attaches to it to take it away. Through several chemical steps the worm separates the metals from the organic molecules they are attached to and stores them in tiny cavities its body, but not forever: eventually whatever toxic metals the worm eats are excreted.

Metamaterials experts show a way to reduce electrons' effective mass to nearly zero

The field of metamaterials involves augmenting materials with specially designed patterns, enabling those materials to manipulate electromagnetic waves and fields in previously impossible ways. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have come up with a theory for moving this phenomenon onto the quantum scale, laying out blueprints for materials where electrons have nearly zero effective mass.

Such materials could make for faster circuits with novel properties.

The work was conducted by Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Mario G. Silveirinha, who was a visiting scholar at the Engineering School when their collaboration began. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal.

Their paper was published in the journal Physical Review B: Rapid Communications.

Their idea was born out of the similarities and analogies between the mathematics that govern electromagnetic waves -- Maxwell's Equations -- and those that govern the quantum mechanics of electrons -- Schrödinger's Equations.

Risks: Coffee Linked to Fewer Oral Cancer Deaths

A large study has found that drinking coffee is associated with a reduced risk of death from oral cancer.

Researchers studied 968,432 initially healthy men and women beginning in 1982. All completed questionnaires on health and dietary habits, including amounts of tea and coffee consumed, at the start of the study period. Twenty-six years later, 868 people had died of oral or throat cancer.

After adjusting for smoking, alcohol consumption and other factors, the researchers found that the risk of death from oral or throat cancer was 26 percent lower among those who drank one cup a day, 33 percent lower among those who drank two to three cups daily, and 50 percent lower among those who drank four to six cups daily, compared with those who drank no caffeinated coffee.

There was a barely significant association of decaffeinated coffee with reduced risk, and no link at all to tea. The report was posted online this month in The American Journal of Epidemiology.

Should physicians prescribe cognitive enhancers to healthy individuals?

Physicians should not prescribe cognitive enhancers to healthy individuals, states a report being published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). Dr. Eric Racine and his research team at the IRCM, the study's authors, provide their recommendation based on the professional integrity of physicians, the drugs' uncertain benefits and harms, and limited health care resources.

Prescription stimulants and other neuropharmaceuticals, generally prescribed to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD), are often used by healthy people to enhance concentration, memory, alertness and mood, a phenomenon described as cognitive enhancement.

"Individuals take prescription stimulants to perform better in school or at work," says Dr. Racine, a Montréal neuroethics specialist and Director of the Neuroethics research unit at the IRCM. "However, because these drugs are available in Canada by prescription only, people must request them from their doctors. Physicians are thus important stakeholders in this debate, given the risks and regulations of prescription drugs and the potential for requests from patients for such cognitive enhancers."

The prevalence of cognitive enhancers used by students on university campuses ranges from 1 per cent to 11 per cent. Taking such stimulants is associated with risks of dependence, cardiovascular problems, and psychosis.

"Current evidence has not shown that the desired benefits of enhanced mental performance are achieved with these substances," explains Cynthia Forlini, first author of the study and doctoral student in Dr. Racine's research unit. "With uncertain benefits and clear harms, it is difficult to support the notion that physicians should prescribe a medication to a healthy individual for enhancement purposes."

The person inside the present: Narcissists buy to big themselves up

But what is the psychology behind gift-giving?

Early results from research led by Dr Aiden Gregg from the University of Southampton, have shown that people with narcissistic tendencies want to purchase products, both for others and for themselves, that positively distinguish them -- that is, that make them stand out from the crowd.

The study -- conducted in collaboration with McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management and Hanyang University in South Korea -- investigated why narcissistic consumers chose certain products and how those products made them feel. Volunteers from both the universities in South Korea or Canada took part in one of four studies.

Why Are Genius and Madness Connected?

Many of history's most celebrated creative geniuses were mentally ill, from renowned artists Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo to literary giants Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe. Today, the fabled connection between genius and madness is no longer merely anecdotal. Mounting research shows these two extremes of the human mind really are linked — and scientists are beginning to understand why.

A panel of experts discussed recent and ongoing research on the subject at an event held Thursday (May 31) in New York as part of the 5th annual World Science Festival. All three panelists suffer from mental illnesses themselves.

Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said the findings of some 20 or 30 scientific studies endorse the notion of the "tortured genius." Of the many varieties of psychosis, creativity appears to be most strongly linked to mood disorders, and especially bipolar disorder, which Jamison suffers from herself. For example, one study tested the intelligence of 700,000 Swedish 16-year-olds and then followed up a decade later to learn which of them had developed mental illnesses. The startling results were published in 2010. "They found that people who excelled when they were 16 years old were four times as likely to go on to develop bipolar disorder," she said.

Resistance to cocaine addiction may be passed down from father to son

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. The findings are published in the latest edition of Nature Neuroscience.

"We know that genetic factors contribute significantly to the risk of cocaine abuse, but the potential role of epigenetic influences -- how the expression of certain genes related to addiction is controlled -- is still relatively unknown," said senior author R. Christopher Pierce, PhD, associate professor of Neuroscience in Psychiatry at Penn. "This study is the first to show that the chemical effects of cocaine use can be passed down to future generations to cause a resistance to addictive behavior, indicating that paternal exposure to toxins such as cocaine can have profound effects on gene expression and behavior in their offspring."

In the current study, the team used an animal model to study inherited effects of cocaine abuse. Male rats self-administered cocaine for 60 days, while controls were administered saline. The male rats were mated with females that had never been exposed to the drug. To eliminate any influence that the males' behavior would have on the pregnant females, they were separated directly after they mated.

The rats' offspring were monitored to see whether they would begin to self-administer cocaine when it was offered to them. The researchers discovered that male offspring of rats exposed to the drug, but not the female offspring, acquired cocaine self-administration more slowly and had decreased levels of cocaine intake relative to controls. Moreover, control animals were willing to work significantly harder for a single cocaine dose than the offspring of cocaine-addicted rats, suggesting that the rewarding effect of cocaine was decreased.

Two Higgs Bosons? CERN Scientists Revisit Large Hadron Collider Particle Data

A month ago scientists at the Large Hadron Collider released the latest Higgs boson results. And although the data held few obvious surprises, most intriguing were the results that scientists didn’t share.

The original Higgs data from back in July had shown that the Higgs seemed to be decaying into two photons more often than it should—an enticing though faint hint of something new, some sort of physics beyond our understanding. In November, scientists at the Atlas and LHC experiments updated everything except the two-photon data. This week we learned why.

Yesterday researchers at the Atlas experiment finally updated the two-photon results. What they seem to have found is bizarre—so bizarre, in fact, that physicists assume something must be wrong with it. Instead of one clean peak in the data, they have found two. There seems to be a Higgs boson with a mass of 123.5 GeV (gigaelectron volts, the measuring unit that particle physicists most often use for mass), and another Higgs boson at 126.6 GeV—a statistically significant difference of nearly 3 GeV. Apparently, the Atlas scientists have spent the past month trying to figure out if they could be making a mistake in the data analysis, to little avail. Might there be two Higgs bosons?

We are basically honest – except when we are at work, study suggests

A new study has revealed we are more honest than you might think. The research by the University of Oxford and the University of Bonn suggests that it pains us to tell lies, particularly when we are in our own homes. It appears that being honest is hugely important to our sense of who we are. However, while it might bother us to tell lies at home, we are less circumspect at work where we are probably more likely to bend the truth, suggests the study.

The researchers conducted simple honesty tests by ringing people in their own homes in Germany and asking them to flip a coin. The study participants were asked over the phone to report on how it landed. The catch to this test was that each of the individuals taking part was given a strong financial incentive to lie without the fear of being found out. The study participants were told that if the coin landed tails up, they would receive 15 euros or a gift voucher; while if the coin landed heads up, they would receive nothing.

Using randomly generated home phone numbers, 658 people were contacted who agreed to take part. Although the researchers could not directly observe the behaviour of the individuals in their own homes, the aggregated reports show a remarkably high level of honesty. Over half of the study participants (55.6 per cent) reported that the coin landed heads-up, which meant they would receive nothing. Only 44.4 per cent reported tails up, collecting their financial reward as a result.

Extending Einstein's ideas: New kind of quantum entanglement demonstrated

Physicists at the University of Calgary and at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo have published new research in Nature Physics which builds on the original ideas of Einstein and adds a new ingredient: a third entangled particle.

Quantum entanglement is one of the central principles of quantum physics, which is the science of sub-atomic particles. Multiple particles, such as photons, are connected with each other even when they are very far apart and what happens to one particle can have an effect on the other one at the same moment, even though these effects can not be used to send information faster than light.

The new form of three-particle entanglement demonstrated in this experiment, which is based on the position and momentum properties of photons, may prove to be a valuable part of future communications networks that operate on the rules of quantum mechanics, and could lead to new fundamental tests of quantum theory that deepen our understanding of the world around us.
"This work opens up a rich area of exploration that combines fundamental questions in quantum mechanics and quantum technologies," says Christoph Simon, paper co-author and researcher at the University of Calgary.

This research extends the theories of Einstein, seventy-seven years later. In 1935, Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, commonly referred to as EPR, published a thought experiment designed to show that quantum mechanics, by itself, is not sufficient to describe reality.

The limits of the productive capacity of ecosystems

In a letter to Science published today, Karl-Heinz Erb from the Institute of Social Ecology Vienna and a number of co-authors discuss how the measurement of biomass production and consumption can be used to gain a better understanding of the limits of the productive capacity of ecosystems.

Future growth of population and GDP are challenged byglobal biophysical limits, such as the scarcity of resources (land, energy, raw materials) as well as the limited capacity of the biosphere to cope with end products (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions). One promising indicator, which is frequently mentioned in this context, and is the subject of research at the Alpen-Adria-Universität, is the human utilization, or "appropriation" of net primary production (HANPP); that is, of the biomass production of green plants. Biomass represents the basis for all human and animal food chains. Furthermore, biomass is not only a source of energy, but also plays a significant role for the carbon sequestration of ecosystems.

In a current letter to the editor of Science, Karl-Heinz Erb from the Institute of Social Ecology at the Alpen-Adria-Universität joins two AAU colleagues and an international group of colleagues in a discussion of how the measurement of biomass production and consumption can be used to gain a better understanding of the "productive capacity of ecosystems." "We identify the factors -- for example, land use intensity -- which are important for a clearer grasp of the global limits of the productive capacity of ecosystems," Karl-Heinz Erb explains.

Phew! Universe's Constant Has Stayed Constant | Proton-Electron Mass Ratio

The constant — the ratio of the mass of a proton to the mass of an electron — has changed by only one hundred thousandth of a percent or less over the past 7 billion years, the observations show.

The scientists determined this by pointing the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope at a distant galaxy that lies 7 billion light-years away, meaning its light has taken that long to reach Earth. Thus, astronomers are seeing the galaxy as it existed 7 billion years ago. The telescope looked for special light features that reflect the absorption of methanol, a simple form of alcohol that contains carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

If the ratio of the mass of the protons and electrons inside those atoms were different than it is here and now in our own galaxy, the scientists would be able to detect this in the properties of the light.

"This idea makes the methanol molecule an ideal probe to detect a possible temporal variation in the proton-electron mass ratio," astrophysicist Wim Ubachs of VU University Amsterdam said in a statement. "We proposed to search for methanol molecules in the far-distant universe, to compare the structure of those molecules with that observed in the present epoch in laboratory experiments."

Their observations confirmed that the proton-electron mass ratio has changed by no more than 10^-7 over the past 7 billion years. The universe itself is 13.7 billion years old. [The Universe: Big Bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps ]

Schizophrenia linked to social inequality

Higher rates of schizophrenia in urban areas can be attributed to increased deprivation, increased population density and an increase in inequality within a neighbourhood, new research reveals. The research, led by the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Queen Mary University of London, was published today in the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Dr James Kirkbride, lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge, said: "Although we already know that schizophrenia tends to be elevated in more urban communities, it was unclear why. Our research suggests that more densely populated, more deprived and less equal communities experience higher rates of schizophrenia and other similar disorders. This is important because other research has shown that many health and social outcomes also tend to be optimal when societies are more equal."

The scientists used data from a large population-based incidence study (the East London first-episode psychosis study directed by Professor Jeremy Coid at the East London NHS Foundation Trust and Queen Mary, University of London) conducted in three neighbouring inner city, ethnically diverse boroughs in East London: City & Hackney, Newham, and Tower Hamlets.

427 people aged 18-64 years old were included in the study, all of whom experienced a first episode of psychotic disorder in East London between 1996 and 2000. The researchers assessed their social environment through measures of the neighbourhood in which they lived at the time they first presented to mental health services because of a psychotic disorder. Using the 2001 census, they estimated the population aged 18-64 years old in each neighbourhood, and then compared the incidence rate between neighbourhoods.

Too many antibiotics? Bacterial ecology that lives on humans has changed in last 100 years

A University of Oklahoma-led study has demonstrated that ancient DNA can be used to understand ancient human microbiomes. The microbiomes from ancient people have broad reaching implications for understanding recent changes to human health, such as what good bacteria might have been lost as a result of our current abundant use of antibiotics and aseptic practices.

Cecil M. Lewis Jr., professor of anthropology in the OU College of Arts and Sciences and director of the OU Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, and Raul Tito, OU Research Associate, led the research study that analyzed microbiome data from ancient human fecal samples collected from three different archaeological sites in the Americas, each dating to over 1000 years ago. In addition, the team provided a new analysis of published data from two samples that reflect rare and extraordinary preservation: Otzi the Iceman and a soldier frozen for 93 years on a glacier.

"The results support the hypothesis that ancient human gut microbiomes are more similar to those of non-human primates and rural non-western communities than to those of people living a modern lifestyle in the United States," says Lewis. "From these data, the team concluded that the last 100 years has been a time of major change to the human gut microbiome in cosmopolitan areas."

Gay sex makes fish more attractive to females

A little fish that appears to enjoy homosexual relations with other males simultaneously increases their attractiveness to females, German researchers have discovered.

A new study by scientists from the University of Frankfurt found the Shortfin molly – a popular fish for tropical aquariums – places a premium on sexual activity. Therefore a male engaging in homosexual behaviour can impress a female with his virility and fitness.

“Sexual activity in itself is a sign of quality for females because sick or underfed males show little sexual behaviour,” said evolutionary biologist David Bierbach, adding this could possibly explain bisexuality in some other species as well.

Female sharks capable of virgin birth

Female sharks can fertilize their own eggs and give birth without sperm from males, according to a new study of the asexual reproduction of a hammerhead in a U.S. zoo.

The joint Northern Ireland-U.S. research, being published Wednesday in the Royal Society's peer-reviewed Biology Letter journal, analyzed the DNA of a shark born in 2001 in the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb. The shark was born in a tank with three potential mothers, none of whom had contact with a male hammerhead for at least three years.

Analysis of the baby shark's DNA found no trace of any chromosomal contribution from a male partner. Shark experts said this was the first confirmed case in a shark of parthenogenesis, which is derived from Greek and means "virgin birth."

3-D printer helps create a 'biobot'

These bots were made for walking — out of rat heart cells and hydrogel.

Scientists have paired these unlikely ingredients to create simple biological machines that look something like a front-loaded inchworm and can step their way through fluid at speeds up to 236 micrometers per second.

Bioengineers working at the boundary between organics and mechanics dream of harnessing the power of biology's nuts and bolts. Some have built tweezers out of DNA; others have made sensors by sticking bacteria on a chip. It's no easy task — plastic and metal are far more predictable materials to work with.

But in work published recently in Scientific Reports, a team of bioengineers described how they came up with a way to manufacture biobots quickly and efficiently with a three-dimensional printer.

The printer builds preprogrammed shapes layer by ultrathin layer, until it has constructed a soft "body" out of hydrogel, a class of polymers that includes the stuff contact lenses are made from, said senior author Rashid Bashir, a bioengineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Engineered immune cells produce complete response in child with an aggressive leukemia

By reprogramming a 7-year-old girl's own immune cells to attack an aggressive form of childhood leukemia, a pediatric oncologist has achieved a complete response in his patient, who faced grim prospects when she relapsed after conventional treatment. The innovative experimental therapy used bioengineered T cells, custom-designed to multiply rapidly in the patient, and then destroy leukemia cells. After the treatment, the child's doctors found that she had no evidence of cancer.

Google Search Algorithm Models Cancer Spread

The equations Google employs to predict the Web pages users visit has inspired a new way to track the spread of cancer cells throughout the body.

“Each of the sites where a spreading, or “metastatic,” tumor could show up are analogous to Web pages,” said Paul Newton, a mathematician at the University of Southern California, who has been working with cancer specialists at the Scripps Research Institute.

Google ranks Web pages by the likelihood that an individual would end up visiting each one randomly. These predictions are based on the trends of millions of users across the Web. Google uses something called the "steady state distribution" to calculate the probability of someone visiting a page.

“You have millions of people wandering the Web, [and] Google would like to know what proportion are visiting any given Web page at a given time,” Newton explained.

“It occurred to me that steady state distribution is equivalent to the metastatic tumor distribution that shows up in the autopsy datasets.”

Violent video games: More playing time equals more aggression

A new study provides the first experimental evidence that the negative effects of playing violent video games can accumulate over time.

'Time reversal' research may open doors to future tech

Imagine a cell phone charger that recharges your phone remotely without even knowing where it is; a device that targets and destroys tumors, wherever they are in the body; or a security field that can disable electronics, even a listening device hiding in a prosthetic toe, without knowing where it is.

While these applications remain only dreams, researchers at the University of Maryland have come up with a sci-fi seeming technology that one day could make them real. Using a "time-reversal" technique, the team has discovered how to transmit power, sound or images to a "nonlinear object" without knowing the object's exact location or affecting objects around it.

"That's the magic of time reversal," says Steven Anlage, a university physics professor involved in the project. "When you reverse the waveform's direction in space and time, it follows the same path it took coming out and finds its way exactly back to the source."

How calorie restriction influences longevity: Protecting cells from damage caused by chronic disease

Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have identified a novel mechanism by which a type of low-carb, low-calorie diet -- called a "ketogenic diet" -- could delay the effects of aging. This fundamental discovery reveals how such a diet could slow the aging process and may one day allow scientists to better treat or prevent age-related diseases, including heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and many forms of cancer.

As the aging population continues to grow, age-related illnesses have become increasingly common. Already in the United States, nearly one in six people are over the age of 65. Heart disease continues to be the nation's number one killer, with cancer and Alzheimer's close behind. Such diseases place tremendous strain on patients, families and our healthcare system. But now, researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Senior Investigator Eric Verdin, MD, have identified the role that a chemical compound in the human body plays in the aging process -- and which may be key to new therapies for treating or preventing a variety of age-related diseases.

In the latest issue of the journal Science, available online December 6, Dr. Verdin and his team examined the role of the compound β-hydroxybutyrate (βOHB), a so-called "ketone body" that is produced during a prolonged low-calorie or ketogenic diet. While ketone bodies such as βOHB can be toxic when present at very high concentrations in people with diseases such as Type I diabetes, Dr. Verdin and colleagues found that at lower concentrations, βOHB helps protect cells from "oxidative stress" -- which occurs as certain molecules build to toxic levels in the body and contributes to the aging process.

What happens to plant growth when you remove gravity?

It is well known that plant growth patterns are influenced by a variety of stimuli, gravity being one amongst many. On Earth plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviours called 'waving' and 'skewing', which were thought to be gravity-dependent events. However, Arabidopsis plants grown on the International Space Station (ISS) have proved this theory wrong, according to a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Plant Biology: root 'waving' and 'skewing' occur in spaceflight plants independently of gravity.

In plant roots, 'waving' consists of a series of regular, undulating changes in the direction of root tips during growth. It is thought to be associated with perception and avoidance of obstacles, and is dependent on gravity sensing and responsiveness. 'Skewing' is the slanted progression of roots growing along a near-vertical surface. It is thought to be a deviation of the roots from the direction of gravity and also subject to similar mechanisms that affect waving. Even though the precise basis of these growth patterns is not well understood, gravity is considered to be a major player in these processes.

To test what happens to plant root growth when you remove gravity entirely, a research team from the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, grew two types of Arabidopsis thaliana cultivars -- Wassilewskija (WS) and Columbia (Col-0) -- on the ISS. The plants were grown in specialized growth units that combined a plant habitat with a camera system which captured images every six hours. Imaging hardware delivered the telemetric data in real-time from the ISS, and comparable ground controls were grown at the Kennedy Space Centre.

How common 'cat parasite' gets into human brain and influences human behavior

Toxoplasma is a common 'cat parasite', and has previously been in the spotlight owing to its observed effect on risk-taking and other human behaviours. To some extent, it has also been associated with mental illness. A study led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now demonstrates for the first time how the parasite enters the brain to influence its host.

"We believe that this knowledge may be important for the further understanding of complex interactions in some major public health issues, that modern science still hasn't been able to explain fully," says Antonio Barragan, researcher at the Center for Infectious Medicine at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control. "At the same time, it's important to emphasize that humans have lived with this parasite for many millennia, so today's carriers of Toxoplasma need not be particularly worried."

The current study, which is published in the scientific journal PLoS Pathogens, was led by Dr Barragan and conducted together with researchers at Uppsala University.

Toxoplasmosis is caused by the extremely common Toxoplasma gondii parasite. Between 30 and 50 per cent of the global population is thought to be infected, and an estimated twenty per cent or so of people in Sweden. The infection is also found in animals, especially domestic cats. People contract the parasite mostly by eating the poorly cooked flesh of infected animals or through contact with cat faeces. The infection causes mild flu-like symptoms in adults and otherwise healthy people before entering a chronic and dormant phase, which has previously been regarded as symptom-free. It is, however, known that toxoplasmosis in the brain can be fatal in people with depleted immune defence and in fetuses, which can be infected through the mother. Because of this risk, pregnant women are recommended to avoid contact with cat litter trays.

New antidepressant acts very rapidly and is long lasting

A first-of-its-kind antidepressant drug discovered by a Northwestern University professor and now tested on adults who have failed other antidepressant therapies has been shown to alleviate symptoms within hours, have good safety and produce positive effects that last for about seven days from a single dose.

The novel therapeutic targets brain receptors responsible for learning and memory -- a very different approach from existing antidepressants. The new drug and others like it also could be helpful in treating other neurological conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety and Alzheimer's disease.

The results of the phase IIa clinical trial were presented today (Dec. 6) at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology in Hollywood, Fla.

Also this week a paper reporting some of the background scientific research that provided the foundation for the clinical development of GLYX-13 was published by the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

The compound, called GLYX-13, is the result of more than two decades of work by Joseph Moskal, research professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and director of the University's Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics.

Women can tell a cheating man just by looking at them - study

Women can tell with some accuracy whether an unfamiliar male is faithful simply by looking at his face, but men seem to lack the same ability when checking out women, according to an Australian study published on Wednesday.

In a paper that appeared in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers found that women tended to make that judgement based on how masculine-looking the man was.

"Women's ratings of unfaithfulness showed small-moderate, significant correlations with measures of actual infidelity," wrote the team, led by Gillian Rhodes at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

"More masculine-looking men (were) rated as more probable to be unfaithful and having a sexual history of being more unfaithful."

Attractiveness was not a factor in the women making the link.

Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mothers’ Brains

The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm.

The physical connection between mother and fetus is provided by the placenta, an organ, built of cells from both the mother and fetus, which serves as a conduit for the exchange of nutrients, gasses, and wastes. Cells may migrate through the placenta between the mother and the fetus, taking up residence in many organs of the body including the lung, thyroid muscle, liver, heart, kidney and skin. These may have a broad range of impacts, from tissue repair and cancer prevention to sparking immune disorders.

We all consider our bodies to be our own unique being, so the notion that we may harbor cells from other people in our bodies seems strange. Even stranger is the thought that, although we certainly consider our actions and decisions as originating in the activity of our own individual brains, cells from other individuals are living and functioning in that complex structure. However, the mixing of cells from genetically distinct individuals is not at all uncommon. This condition is called chimerism after the fire-breathing Chimera from Greek mythology, a creature that was part serpent part lion and part goat. Naturally occurring chimeras are far less ominous though, and include such creatures as the slime mold and corals.

Diabetes prevalence 20 percent higher in countries with higher availability of high fructose corn syrup, analysis finds

A new study by University of Southern California (USC) and University of Oxford researchers indicates that large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) found in national food supplies across the world may be one explanation for the rising global epidemic of type 2 diabetes and resulting higher health care costs.

The study reports that countries that use HFCS in their food supply had a 20 percent higher prevalence of diabetes than countries that did not use HFCS. The analysis also revealed that HFCS's association with the "significantly increased prevalence of diabetes" occurred independent of total sugar intake and obesity levels.

The article, "High Fructose Corn Syrup and Diabetes Prevalence: A Global Perspective," is published in the journal Global Public Health.

"HFCS appears to pose a serious public health problem on a global scale," said principal study author Michael I. Goran, professor of preventive medicine, director of the Childhood Obesity Research Center and co-director of the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. "The study adds to a growing body of scientific literature that indicates HFCS consumption may result in negative health consequences distinct from and more deleterious than natural sugar."