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"Um das Gedächtnis auf Trab zu halten, lösen gerade ältere Menschen oft Kreuzworträtsel oder Sudokus. Das ist laut der neuen Studie von Dewar und ihren Kollegen nicht die Ideallösung, zumindest nicht, wenn direkt nach dem Erlernen der Neuigkeit gespielt wird. Einfach einmal zehn Minuten hinsetzen und nichts tun ist besser - denn dann hat das Gehirn Zeit und Ruhe, sich das neu Erlernte einzuprägen. Das Team von der University of Edinburgh hat dazu zwei Studien durchgeführt. In der ersten erzählten die Wissenschaftler älteren Menschen zwischen 61 und 87 Jahren zwei Kurzgeschichten. Danach durfte eine Gruppe zehn Minuten in einem dunklen Raum pausieren, während die andere ein „Finde den Unterschied"-Spiel am Computer spielte. Anschließend sollten die Probanden die Geschichte möglichst detailgetreu nacherzählen. Nach einer Woche forderten die Forscher sie erneut dazu auf."

Low lobster prices are making it tough for Maine fishemen, such as this father and son team in Port Clyde Maine.

"Igor Efimov, Sarah Gutbrod Using an inexpensive 3-D printer, biomedical engineers have developed a custom-fitted, implantable device with embedded sensors that could transform treatment and prediction of cardiac disorders. The 3-D elastic membrane is made of a soft, flexible, silicon material that is precisely shaped to match the heart's outer layer of the wall. Current technology is two-dimensional and cannot cover the full surface of the epicardium or maintain reliable contact for continual use without sutures or adhesives. The team can then print tiny sensors onto the membrane that can precisely measure temperature, mechanical strain and pH, among other markers, or deliver a pulse of electricity in cases of arrhythmi"

"Werbung macht Arzneimittel wirksamer Ob Kopfschmerztablette, Schnupfenmittel oder Allergiehemmer: Spots für solche rezeptfreien Medikamente sind im Fernsehen alltäglich. Die Pharma-Unternehmen geben Milliarden aus, um solche TV-Spots zu produzieren und ihre Produkte so beim Verbraucher bekannt und nach Möglichkeit auch beliebt zu machen. Ein Team von US-Forschern hat nun untersucht, wie diese Werbung den Glauben der Konsumenten in diese Medikamente beeinflusst"

""A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for." By Christie Wilcox | February 14, 2013 A year and a half ago, the decision to pack up shop at ScienceBlogs and begin blogging at Scientific American was an easy one. The inimitable Bora Zivkovic had assembled a blogging dream team, a group of people I respected and admired and couldn't wait to call networkmates. Under Bora's nurturing oversight, we all have flourished, and the SciAm blog network has become the most diverse and prolific science blogging network around"

The open-access.net platform aims to meet the growing demand for information on the subject of Open Access (OA). Our editorial team gathers information which is scattered across many sources and bundles it thematically for presentation to various target groups.

"Faulheit und Fast Food sind nicht die einzigen Ursachen für Übergewicht, da sind sich Mediziner heute sicher. So simpel ist unser Stoffwechsel nicht gestrickt. Wie viel Fett wir ansetzen, entscheiden unzählige Faktoren, die zum Teil noch gar nicht genau erforscht sind. Die Verdauung zum Beispiel. Eine Studie des Biomediziners Oluf Pedersen von der Universität Kopenhagen zeigt nun, dass Übergewicht eng mit der Darmflora verknüpft ist: Menschen, deren Darm von zahlreichen unterschiedlichen Bakterienstämmen besiedelt ist, haben ein geringeres Risiko, dick zu werden, schreiben Pedersen und sein Team im Magazin Nature. "

Our genetic code is translated by two super-families of modern-day enzymes. Carter's research team created and superimposed digital three-dimensional versions of the two super-families to see how their structures aligned. Carter found that all the enzymes have virtually identical cores that can be extracted to produce "molecular fossils" he calls Urzymes-Ur meaning earliest or original. The other parts, he said, are variations that were introduced later, as evolution unfolded. These two Urzymes are as close as scientists have gotten to the actual ancient enzymes that would have populated the Earth billions of years ago.

In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object - a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi's team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand. The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane - and that we detect the brane's growth as cosmic expansion. "Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang - but that is just a mirage," says Afshordi.

"MIT-based researchers and instructors Marcelo Coelho and Skylar Tibbits teamed up to tackle this very problem. Working under a grant from Ars Electronica, the pair conceived of a whole new way to do 3-D printing. Hyperform is a new strategy for designing and printing large objects irrespective of a printer's bed size. So not only can you print out that chair at home, you can also print a table, bed frame, and everything else you need to furnish a bedroom. The solution is breathtakingly simple. By merely folding the object you want to print, you can jig it to fit into a small-scale printer. In Tibbits and Coelho's project, the object is rendered in 1-D--a line--and endlessly folded into a space-filling curve proportioned to the printer's cubic dimensions. (The designers partnered with Formlabs and iterated the process using a Form 1 tabletop printer.) When the object is exhumed from the printer bed, it doesn't at all resemble its final shape. Rather, it's a dense cluster of thin but sturdy polymer links packaged in a three-dimensional puzzle that can be intuitively assembled"

"Die Natur produziert die besten Lösungen: Keine Maschine klettert so wendig engste Rohre hinauf wie eine Ratte. Und eine effektivere Schmutzabwehr als bei der Lotusblüte gibt es kaum. Den Erfolg der Evolution in der Natur auf die Informatik übertragen, will nun ein internationales Team.. Denn obwohl Partner benötigt werden - und diese zu finden einen beträchtlichen Aufwand bedeutet -, scheint sich Sex zu lohnen, wie die Evolution beweist. Das Ergebnis der sexuellen Fortpflanzung - „die Lösung" - ist robuster, selbst bei veränderter Umgebung. Ob und wie sich dieser evolutionäre Prozess auf Algorithmen, die anders als in der Natur z. B. auch mehr als zwei „Partner" rekombinieren können, übertragen lässt, das wird Prof. Friedrich gemeinsam mit einem neuen Postdoktoranden in Jena untersuchen. Dabei ist ihm durchaus bewusst, dass die Natur viel zu komplex ist, um sie 1:1 zu übertragen"

Results from a DNA study of a young boy's skeletal remains believed to be 24,000 years old could turn the archaeological world upside down -- it's been demonstrated that nearly 30 percent of modern Native American's ancestry came from this youngster's gene pool, suggesting First Americans came directly from Siberia, according to a research team that includes a Texas A&M University professor.

"Mao's support of Chinese medicine was inspired by political necessity. In a 1950 speech (unwittingly echoed by the Senate's concerns about "providing health care to underserved populations"), he said: Our nation's health work teams are large. They have to concern themselves with over 500 million people [including the] young, old, and ill. … At present, doctors of Western medicine are few, and thus the broad masses of the people, and in particular the peasants, rely on Chinese medicine to treat illness. Therefore, we must strive for the complete unification of Chinese medicine"

SciVal® Experts is an expertise profiling and research networking tool that helps users find researchers with specific areas of expertise for collaboration and enables researchers in your institution to demonstrate their activities to the global research community. Pre-populated with deep publication histories from Elsevier's Scopus® - the world's largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature - SciVal Experts makes it easier to find experts and form teams within your institution and across organizations.

"The Knowledge Web today is an activity rather than a web site-an expedition in time, space, and technology to map the interior landscape of human thought and experience. Thanks to the work of a team of dedicated volunteers, it will soon be an interactive space on the web where students, teachers, and other knowledge seekers can explore information in a highly interconnected, holistic way that allows for an almost infinite number of paths of exploration among people, places, things, and events."

ScienceDaily (June 28, 2010) - An Australian National University-led team has developed the most efficient quantum memory for light in the world, taking us closer to a future of super-fast computers and communication secured by the laws of physics.

Three new genes associated with Alzheimer's have been discovered, to the delight of researchers in the field. In two papers published in Nature Genetics, two teams describe how they compared the genomes of sufferers to healthy controls to identify potential gene variations leading to the disease.

Just days after NASA released the first cosmic dreamscapes taken by the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope three teams of astronomers have used the rejuvenated observatory to find what appears to be a bounty of the most distant galaxies known.

To see if quantum processes play a role in determining the shape of DNA, Elisabeth Rieper of the National University of Singapore and colleagues modelled each base pair as a cloud of electrons that oscillates around a positively charged nucleus. The team found that quantum entanglement between these clouds helped DNA to maintain its helical structure.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 2, 2010) - A team of physicists from the University of Toronto and Rutgers University has mimicked a supernova -- an explosion of a star -- in miniature.