To train the eye, keep it simple
...ed no better with clear displays. "That was a huge surprise to us," Lu said. "High noise training comes for free." The researchers believe that noisy displays impose an artificial limit on a subject's potential improvement. The roughness of the image trains the eye's "filtering" ability but also masks the int......ns, this technique has already been used to make a surprise finding about the process of photosynthesis. The technique was developed by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. "I think this w...Discovery of an American salamander where it shouldn't be: Korea
... University of California, Berkeley, an equivalent surprise was the recent discovery in Korea of a type of salamander that comprises the majority of species in the world, but is totally unknown in Asia and rare outside the Americas. "I've discovered and named nearly 50 species of salamanders - more than 10 pe...Disabling gene defuses rheumatoid arthritis in mice
...ined healthy even after the injections. "It was a surprise finding," Peng says. "We really didn't expect to see this kind of response." Further study revealed that neutrophils in the mice were killing themselves through a cellular self-destruct process known as apoptosis. Damaged or highly stressed cells ca...Quantifying network vulnerability, and the best way to find hidden items
...ng out about 7% of the nodes. It should come as no surprise that crime rings and terrorist networks go to great trouble to keep their most powerful and highly connected members secret. The bottom line: secrecy is the best defense for networks under attack, and good intelligence is vital for taking networks do...One gene links newborn neurons with those that die in diseases such as Alzheimer's
...ential medical implications of the study came as a surprise to the researchers. They set out to answer fundamental questions about the small number of brain neurons that can be replaced when they die: Are these cells similar to other neurons that are not replaced in adult life? Or, in terms of which genes are...Geckos: It's not always about sex
...the treadmill," said Kearney. "This was a bit of a surprise because a similar study of another kind of parthenogenetic lizard from the deserts of the United States showed the opposite pattern." Added Autumn: "If there was an Olympic team of Bynoe's geckos, there wouldn't be a single male on it. These geckos ...Researchers get first peek at amyloid's spine
...ets composed of the main chain of amino acids. The surprise came with the molecular side chains that give each amino acid its unique identity and hold the pairs of beta sheets in formation. Nelson expected to see only the ends of the side chains reaching out and touching each other, they way they do in the D...Geneticists identify 'master switch' that causes female flies to behave like males
... to other animals, including humans. ''It wouldn't surprise me to learn that human sexual behaviors also have, underneath them, a basic circuitry in the nervous system that mediates attraction and mating,'' Baker notes, adding that recent research suggests specific genes build the circuits for instinctive beh...Leukemia, infection tied to aging stem cells, Stanford researchers say
...ancer and Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, said one surprise came when the group transplanted older stem cells into younger mice. Those cells continued to behave like old stem cells, producing fewer immune cells and turning on cancer-causing genes. From previous work in mouse muscle cells, he said he expected ...Increasing reproductive tourism in Europe is a 'safety valve' that promotes peaceful coexistence
...s made to take into account other views. It should surprise no one that non-Catholic Italians feel frustrated, ignored, angry and unfairly treated. Patients and practitioners will vote with their feet and this process has started already, with hundreds of non-sterile couples at high genetic risk of a particul...UNC plant researchers discover proteins interact to form hair-trigger protection against invaders
...versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a big surprise while investigating how plants respond to attacks from disease organisms such as bacteria and viruses. "Contrary to what we thought we'd find, our experiments showed that at least three different proteins work in concert with one another in tug-of wa...North & South American researchers find architectural abnormalities in T. cruzi ribosome
...one ribosome, you've seen them all. It was a total surprise to see such a different structure." Last year, Levin traveled to Frank's lab in New York with purified ribosomes from T. cruzi. There, postdoctoral fellow Haixiao Gao led the experiment, using a technique that works on a principle similar to a medica......presence of salt, though not dependent on it. In a surprise twist, the researchers discovered that one other known carbonic anhydrase - found in mouse kidney - sported a similar, salt-tolerant construction. Pondering why a structure conferring salt tolerance should evolve once in a Dead Sea organism and once ...Naturally occurring asbestos linked to lung cancer
...tos in an industrial setting. It would have been a surprise to find otherwise." Similarly, she said, it was no real surprise to scientists when passive smoking was found to cause lung cancer. "Like smoking, exposure to asbest...Researchers identify gene's role in suppressing longevity
...han to promote it," said Alt. "That has been a big surprise to the field since it does not fit with preconceived notions of the role of SIRT1." In further studies, the researchers found that SIRT1 might regulate senescence by down-regulating expression of p19ARF, known to be an important mediator of senescenc...Nerve cells' power plants caught in a traffic jam
...ear exactly how the compensation occurs. "The real surprise is that there are mechanisms in place that can manage the system somehow," he said. "We didn't know about them." The findings made by Zinsmaier and his colleagues have significant implications for neurobiologists, who may now begin looking more close......claims to the contrary. Instead there has been a surprise finding, which relates to a synthetic antioxidant, the drug Probucol, which is no longer prescribed in Australia. "There has been a lot of hype which suggested that antioxidant vitamin supplements had a beneficial outcome for cardiovascular disease. ...International research team announces finished rice genome
...tion. Those tiny grains add up. So maybe it's no surprise that this important food crop turns out to have more genes than humans. It's certainly not to researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), who have been sequencing the first food crop genome as part of an international consortium for the......cteria that they touch. The finding was a complete surprise to the scientists, said Low. The discovery may eventually lead to new antimicrobial agents to halt bacterial growth which would be an entirely new system to shut bacteria down, according to the scientists. "This has potential implications for new a...