Story tips from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory
...om tens of centimeters to a few nanometers. "We're talking about eight orders of magnitude or a size measurement range of about 100 million times," said Peter Blau, who heads ORNL's Machining, Inspection and Tribology User Center. The new instrument, which is on loan for two years, allows nano-scratch testi...'Blind' cells see the light; maybe someday humans will, too
...urons in a complex network of neurons, all of them talking to one another, we can try to figure out who talks to whom." These potassium channels also can be made sensitive to molecules instead of light, so that a nerve cell could be turned on or off by DNA or heavy metals, for example. Kramer and Trauner are...Calit2 launches prize program to encourage bioinformatics research by UCSD undergraduates
...to graduate schools. "When I was applying and then talking to the various schools, I was able to give them information about my publication," said Friedman. "It certainly gives you something important to say in the interview." Friedman is waiting to hear from several schools, but says MIT is his first choice...Weight-loss and exercise study compares center- and home-based programs
...us. "Home-based" participants learn by reading and talking to consultants over the phone. They walk for exercise at self-selected locations. All of the participants are postmenopausal women who are 50 to 65 years old and healthy. They are nonsmokers who initially were 20 to 50 pounds overweight. "Recent data......en that it happened in just 10 to 20 years. "We're talking about an area about the size of Lake Ontario that has been reduced to about a tenth of its original size," says Dr. Warner. "So, if you can imagine Lake Ontario disappearing, that's essentially what has happened to the marshes in southern Iraq." The ...'Free-for-all' illegal logging of mahogany in Peruvian parks, says Duke-based monitoring group
...h densities of commercially viable mahogany' we're talking about only one big tree in a hectare (2 1/2 acres) or less," she noted. "In general, it is a tree that is not easy to regenerate," Martinez said. "And the loggers go for the mature trees, which diminishes chances for seed production. It is also a tre...Clearing the air on airplane cabin air
...s touching common surfaces, sneezing, coughing and talking with an infected individual on an airplane, can transmit infections. Proximity to an infected individual increases risk more than the duration of a flight. Infectious disease specialists recommend that air travelers should wash their hands frequently...Talking robots, green buildings, and shockwave healing
...iversity in Tokyo have created an "anthropomorphic talking robot" called WT-4 (Waseda Talker No. 4). WT-4 con...ue, lips, teeth, nasal cavity and soft palate. The talking robot can produce vowel and consonant sounds by mimicking vibrations of the vocal cords. Kotaro Fuku...Important brain finding results from boy's rare, fatal disease
...radually disappears, a child typically has trouble talking and walking. As the disease progresses over several years the child has seizures, goes into a coma and often dies before reaching teen-age years. Currently there is no treatment. In Nathan's case, slow speech development around the age of two was on...Prenatal cocaine exposure exerts subtle effects on schoolchildren
...heir developmental processes, but again, we're not talking about dramatic effects. And as they moved on to age 3, we began to see even more effects." Cocaine-exposed children were assessed at age 3 in part by using the standardized assessment known as the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, which assesses a...Stegosaur plates and spikes for looks only, researchers say
...ations. They can be relatively easily explained by talking about species or mate recognition." Padian, Main and coauthors John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., and Armand de Ricqls of the University of Paris report their analysis of dinosaur scutes and stegosaur plates in the spring ...Road salt affects mitigation wetlands
...says Silver. "They have been extremely good about talking to the college to minimize the effects of having a road across campus and have gone out of their way to be as environmentally responsible as possible." When building the section of road across the Behrend campus, PennDOT installed an elaborate drain...Difference in talking louder, talking over noise depends on verbal cues, internal targets
...pens when you're asked to "talk louder," or you're talking and the background noise level suddenly goes up? Purdue University researchers found that how you get louder is a function of how you're told to speak louder and environmental cues. Far more surprising, they discovered that trying to talk louder in ......corpion venom. But when Pessah and Molinski got to talking at a party some years ago, they quickly realized that they could apply the same methods to screen 124 sponges that Molinski's group had recently collected off the coast of Western Australia. In one of the samples they came up with xestospongin C, the...Scientists use gene transfer technology and common virus to block neuropathic pain
... to keep things quiet. You can't have every neuron talking to every other neuron all the time or you'd have chaos." Other scientists have shown that decreased GABA activity in the spinal cord contributes to the development of neuropathic pain, according to Fink. Physicians have drugs that block neural trans...Alzheimer's disease linked to inflammation
...ld a crude indicator ofperiodontal disease. "We're talking about gum disease, but it was measured by teeth lostor loose," Gatz said. "It's not perfect. Given it's not perfect, it'seven more striking that it's such a solid risk factor." The conclusion is not that good oral health can prevent Alzheimer's,but t...Gene changes linked to deficient immune suppression in MS
...n't live without the FOXP3-positive cell, so we're talking about a degree of expression" in MS patients, Vandenbark pointed out. But questions remain. "How much is enough, how does that pair with the loss of regulation of pathogenic cells and how long does it take things to happen?" And what effect does a s...Asthma, allergies may reduce risk of brain cancer
...earch. The kind of genetic variant Schwartzbaum is talking about is called a polymorphism. While a mutation consists of a rare and abnormal DNA pattern, a polymorphism consists of common patterns, each considered normal. "We needed an objective way to measure the accuracy of allergy self reports, one that is......new about (bird) flu because Kevin Winker has been talking about flu for years," said George Happ, Director of the IDeA Networks for Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) at UAF, which is funding the UA avian influenza program. "Before I came nobody was paying attention to the extensive overlap between the ...Nutrition, education improve the well-being of cancer survivors
...educational sessions that covered topics including talking to children about cancer; maintaining a healthy relationship with their partners; the impact their treatment has on their reproductive health; and the genetics of cancer. The third group received information about maintaining a healthy diet, includin...