news 2017

New image brings people face to face with Seventeenth Century Scottish soldier (14 December 2017) The face of one of the Seventeenth Century Scottish soldiers who was imprisoned and died in Durham following the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 has been revealed through a remarkable new digital reconstruction.

For the very first time, the "Innovation Lab", a special exhibition for digital transformations in the construction industry, will be held at Swissbau 2018 from 16 to 20 January. NEST, the modular research and demonstration platform from Empa and Eawag, will be presenting with its partners (in hall 1.1, booth L88) how digital construction is implemented in reality and exactly what kind of potential for digital innovation is offered by the set of demonstrators on the Empa campus in Dübendorf.

EPFL scientists have discovered that neutrophils, a type of immune cell, can actually help lung tumors grow. The work is published in Cell Reports, and has enormous implications for cancer immunotherapy. Neutrophils inside lung adenocarcinoma tumors. On the left, neutrophils inside a mouse tumor are stained brown; on the right, neutrophils inside a human tumor are stained red (credit: E. Meylan/EPFL).

UCLA-led study holds promise for development of vaccines and therapeutic drugs to fight the virus Enrique Rivero Survivors of the first known Ebola outbreak, which occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, may be key to development of vaccines and therapeutic drugs to treat future outbreaks, according to a new study led by researchers at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

A new study co-authored by Prof. Michael Greenstone finds infants born to mothers living up to about 2 miles from a hydraulic fracturing site suffer from poorer health. From North Dakota to Texas to Pennsylvania, hydraulic fracturing has transformed many places in America into energy powerhouses.

Cystic fibrosis is a severe hereditary disease of the lung, for which there is currently no cure. The underlying cause of the disease is a malfunction of the chloride channel CFTR, which prevents the secretion of chloride in certain body cells.

Matthew Aliota, assistant scientist in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences in the School of Veterinary Medicine, works with a strain of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes stored in a research lab insectary in the Hanson Biomedical Sciences Building. Aliota is an expert on mosquito-borne pathogens such as the Zika virus, dengue fever and yellow fever infections.

FINDINGS An experimental blood test developed at UCLA that uses gene activity data from immune cells was 93 percent accurate in predicting survival rates for people with advanced heart failure who had surgery to implant mechanical circulatory support devices. BACKGROUND Mechanical circulatory support devices, such as ventricular assist devices and temporary total artificial hearts, can be surgically implanted in people with advanced heart failure to help the heart's pumping function.

A perplexing question in immunology has been, how do immune cells remember an infection or a vaccination so that they can spring into action decades later? Research led by scientists at the UCalifornia, Berkeley, in collaboration with investigators at Emory University, has found an answer: A small pool of the same immune cells that responded to the original invasion remain alive for years, developing unique features that keep them primed and waiting for the same microbe to re-invade the body.

As resistance to existing antibiotics increases, new approaches to serious bacterial infections are needed. Now researchers at Lund University in Sweden, together with colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) in the US, have investigated one such alternative. New approach to resistant bacteria.

The flight speed of birds is more complex than research has previously managed to show. In a new study from Lund University in Sweden, researchers have found that birds use multiple - each one simple yet effective - methods to control their speed in the air and compensate for tailwind, headwind and sidewind.

How sensitive is the human sense of touch? Sensitive enough to feel the difference between surfaces that differ by just a single layer of molecules, a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has shown. "This is the greatest tactile sensitivity that has ever been shown in humans," said Darren Lipomi, a professor of nanoengineering and member of the Center for Wearable Sensors at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, who led the interdisciplinary project with V. S.

Researchers from Cardiff University's Otter Project have discovered that genetically distinct populations of wild otters from across the UK have their own regional odours for communicating vital information to each other. The findings could have implications for wild mammal conservation efforts. The study, which profiled chemical secretions from the Eurasian otter, suggests that genetically distinct populations of wild mammals have different odour dialects, which may have been driven by geographical separation.

It is the first representative survey of the state's youth population to measure gender expression Rachel Dowd A new UCLA study finds that 27 percent, or 796,000, of California's youth, ages 12 to 17, report they are viewed by others as gender nonconforming at school. The study also assessed differences in mental health among gender nonconforming youth and gender conforming youth in the state, and found no significant difference in the rates of lifetime suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts between gender nonconforming youth and their gender conforming peers.

Autophagy refers to a fundamental recycling process of cells that occurs in yeast, fungi, plants, as well as animals and humans. This process allows cells to degrade their own components and thus activate energy resources to be able to adapt to nutritional needs. In addition, autophagy plays a central role in steering an organism's immune response.

A story aired on the ABC that reported on issues concerning long-acting contraceptives was unbalanced and alarmist writes Associate Professor Kirsten Black. Last night ABC's 7.30 featured a  report on long-acting reversible contraception  (LARC) that was unbalanced and alarmist. This could have a long-lasting detrimental impact on women's reproductive health in Australia.

Josh Tenenbaum, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, directs research on the development of intelligence at the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, a multiuniversity, multidisciplinary project based at MIT that seeks to explain and replicate human intelligence.

While dinosaurs reigned on dry land and in the sky, other reptiles populated the seas and oceans. Of the latter, plesiosaurs, whose means of locomotion may be described as “underwater flight,” formed the most diverse group. But when did they first appear? The discovery of the oldest of these reptiles provides evidence that they had diversified by the start of the Mesozoic Era, during the Triassic Period.

New research by Yale Cancer Center (YCC) researchers shows a majority of pediatric cancer providers endorse the potential use of medical marijuana for children with advanced cancer, although providers who are legally eligible to certify its use are more cautious than those who aren't. The findings also show clinicians would prefer to see much stronger clinical evidence that marijuana treatments can help in relieving symptoms, such as nausea and pain.

Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have discovered how high glucose levels — whether caused by diabetes or other factors — keep heart cells from maturing normally. Their findings help explain why babies born to women with diabetes are more likely to develop congenital heart disease.