Author Archives: Guest Post

Safeguards Needed for Tissue Donors

Donors to biobanks – vast collections of human tissue samples that scientists hope will lead to new treatments for diseases – have a right to basic information about how their donations may be used, a Michigan State University ethicist argues in a new paper.

The idea behind biobanks is that a repository with hundreds of thousands of samples, each linked to medical records and other health information, can yield discoveries smaller data sets can’t match. Once samples are collected, researchers in many fields can use the data repeatedly. (more…)

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Reconcilable Differences: Study Uncovers the Common Ground of Scientific Opposites

Searching for common elements in seemingly incompatible scientific theories may lead to the discovery of new ones that revolutionize our understanding of the world.

Such is the idea behind a mathematical framework Princeton University researchers developed that strips away the differences between scientific laws and theories to reveal how the ideas are compatible. In a recent report in the journal Physical Review Letters, the authors explain how the mathematical model finds common ground between the famously at-odds physics equations that govern classical and quantum mechanics. (more…)

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Internet Banging: Gangs Use Social Media to Trade Insults, Threats

ANN ARBOR — Gangs now occupy two spaces: the streets and the Internet.

A new University of Michigan study reports that, in addition to carrying guns, gang members have armed themselves with social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to incite dares, trade insults or make threats that may result in homicide or other crimes.

Researchers have described this new interaction as “Internet banging.” They examine several factors, including the role of hip-hop music in this phenomenon and urban masculinity’s influence on social media behavior. (more…)

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A Better Way to Culture Central Nervous Cells

A protein associated with neuron damage in Alzheimer’s patients provides a superior scaffold for growing central nervous system cells in the lab. The findings could have clinical implications for producing neural implants and offers new insights on the complex link between the apoE4 apolipoprotein and Alzheimer’s disease. Results appear in the journal Biomaterials. (more…)

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Synchrotron Infrared Unveils a Mysterious Microbial Community

Berkeley Lab scientists join an international collaboration to understand how archaea and bacteria work together deep in a cold sulfur spring

In the fall of 2010, Hoi-Ying Holman of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) was approached by an international team researching a mysterious microbial community discovered deep in cold sulfur springs in southern Germany.

“They told me what they were doing and said, ‘We know what you contributed to the oil-spill research,’” recalls Holman, who heads the Chemical Ecology group in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division. “They wondered if I could help them determine the biochemistry of their microbe samples.” (more…)

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