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Racing the Clock to Help Young Patients with Old Hearts

By Guest PostJuly 11, 2014Healthapc2, army private cloud, biomolekuele als katalysator, cell types, cloud deal, genetically engineered, heart failure, hiatus phenomenon, kohlenstoff molekuele, muscle cells, normaldruck, nullpunkt, paul scheier, protein, schneebaelle, stem cells, stroke, university of maryland, xiao hai yan

UMD study of premature aging may help explain effects of normal aging

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Children with progeria, a rare disorder that causes premature aging, die in their teens of ailments that are common in octogenarians: heart failure and stroke. Kan Cao, a University of Maryland assistant professor of cell biology and molecular genetics, urgently wants to help find a cure. Cao and her colleagues have taken a big step in that direction, showing that a toxic protein destroys muscle cells inside the patients’ arteries. The researchers suspect the damaged arteries are more prone to failure. (more…)

Canal between Ears Helps Alligators Pinpoint Sound

By Guest PostApril 26, 2014Nature, Scienceakw tihange, alligators, bastian schiller, christopher robert, daphne soares, daria knoch, eardrum, euratom vertrag, gehirnprozesse, kernkraftwerk tihange, lehren aus fukushima, lorena gianotti, university of maryland, vibration, workplace relationships

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – By reptile standards, alligators are positively chatty. They are the most vocal of the non-avian reptiles and are known to be able to pinpoint the source of sounds with accuracy. But it wasn’t clear exactly how they did it because they lack external auditory structures.

In a new study, an international team of biologists shows that the alligator’s ear is strongly directional because of large, air-filled channels connecting the two middle ears. This configuration is similar in birds, which have an interaural canal that increases directionality. (more…)

New study reveals insights on plate tectonics, the forces behind earthquakes, volcanoes

By Guest PostMarch 24, 2014Scienceasthenosphere, caroline beghein, compositional boundary, ct, direction of flow, earth crust, earthquakes, evolution, force, geology, geophysical data, lithospheric plate, mantle, mid ocean ridge, nicholas schmerr, outer core, pacific plate, plate tectonics, rock composition, rocks, scans, seismic data, seismic tomography, seismic waves, subduction, tectonic force, university of maryland, volcanoes

The Earth’s outer layer is made up of a series of moving, interacting plates whose motion at the surface generates earthquakes, creates volcanoes and builds mountains. Geoscientists have long sought to understand the plates’ fundamental properties and the mechanisms that cause them to move and drift, and the questions have become the subjects of lively debate.

A study published online Feb. 27 by the journal Science is a significant step toward answering those questions. (more…)

A Short Stay in Darkness May Heal Hearing Woes

By Guest PostFebruary 12, 2014Scienceamal isaiah, critical period, darkness, emily petrus, heal hearing woes, hey kyoung lee, light dark cycle, patrick kanold, ray charles effect, short stay, university of maryland, visual deficits

Simulated blindness gives adult mice sharper hearing, researchers find

COLLEGE PARK, Md – Call it the Ray Charles Effect: a young child who is blind develops a keen ability to hear things others cannot. Researchers have known this can happen in the brains of the very young, which are malleable enough to re-wire some circuits that process sensory information. Now researchers at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University have overturned conventional wisdom, showing the brains of adult mice can also be re-wired, compensating for a temporary vision loss by improving their hearing. (more…)

Racism May Accelerate Aging in African American Men

By Guest PostJanuary 14, 2014Healthafrican american men, african americans, aging, anti black attitudes, biological age, biological level, biomarker, cellular level, chromosome, chronological age, david h chae, disease risk, gene h brody, indicator, leukocyte telomere length, physiological stress, racial discrimination, racism, sequences of dna, systemic aging, tear, telomere, university of maryland, wear

UMD-led study is first to link racism-related factors and cellular age

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A new University of Maryland-led study reveals that racism may impact aging at the cellular level. Researchers found signs of accelerated aging in African American men who reported high levels of racial discrimination and who had internalized anti-Black attitudes. Findings from the study, which is the first to link racism-related factors and biological aging, are published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Racial disparities in health are well-documented, with African Americans having shorter life expectancy, and a greater likelihood of suffering from aging-related illnesses at younger ages compared to whites. Accelerated aging at the biological level may be one mechanism linking racism and disease risk. (more…)

With Fewer Hard Frosts, Tropical Mangroves Push North

By Guest PostJanuary 4, 2014Environmentatlantic coast, australia, biodiversity, birds, brazil, climate change, coastal insects, daniel s gruner, evolutionary biology, florida, florida atlantic coast, landsat 5, mangrove forests, Mexico, miami, NASA, new zealand, palm beach county, peru, rising sea levels, salt marshes, temperature, tropical mangroves, university of maryland

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Cold-sensitive mangrove forests have expanded dramatically along Florida’s Atlantic Coast as the frequency of killing frosts has declined, according to a new study based on 28 years of satellite data from the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md.

Between 1984 and 2011, the Florida Atlantic coast from the Miami area northward gained more than 3,000 acres (1,240 hectares) of mangroves. All the increase occurred north of Palm Beach County. Between Cape Canaveral National Seashore and Saint Augustine, mangroves doubled in area. Meanwhile between the study’s first five years and its last five years, nearby Daytona Beach recorded 1.4 fewer days per year when temperatures fell below 28.4 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 degrees Celsius). The number of killing frosts in southern Florida was unchanged. (more…)

Evolution, Civil War History Entwine in Fossil Find

By Guest PostDecember 14, 2013Sciencebenjamin butler, civil war history, dutch gap, early cretaceous, eudicots, evolution, flowering plant evolution, fossil, fossil beds, fossil leaf fragment, freedmen, geologic deposits, greek word, james river, leo j hickey, nathan jud, North America, oldest flowering plants, paleobotanist, plant evolution, pollen, potomac river region, potomacapnos, potomacapnos apeleutheron, smithsonian institution, steven miller, union army, university of maryland, virginia canal bank

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A fossil leaf fragment collected decades ago on a Virginia canal bank has been identified by a University of Maryland doctoral student as one of North America’s oldest flowering plants, a 115- to 125-million-year-old species new to science. The fossil find, an ancient relative of today’s bleeding hearts, poses a new puzzle in the study of plant evolution: did Earth’s dominant group of flowering plants evolve along with its distinctive pollen? Or did pollen come later?

The find also unearths a forgotten chapter in Civil War history reminiscent of the film “Twelve Years a Slave,” but with a twist. In 1864, Union Army troops forced a group of freed slaves into involuntary labor, digging a canal along the James River at Dutch Gap, Va. The captive men’s shovels exposed the oldest flowering plant fossil beds in North America, where the new plant species was ultimately found. (more…)

The Era of Neutrino Astronomy has Begun

By Guest PostNovember 30, 2013Scienceactive galactic nuclei, antarctic ice, askaryan radio array, astronomy, astrophysicists, black holes, cosmic neutrinos, data collection, era, extraterrestrial neutrinos, francis halzen, Galaxy, gamma ray, gregory sullivan, high energy particles, ice, icecube neutrino observatory, kara hoffman, magnetic fields, massless particles, mysterious phenomena, neutrino astronomy, neutrino detector, new age, nsf, origin and cause, solar system, south pole, statistically significant signal, stream to earth, telescope, teraelectronvolts, tev, university of maryland, vladimir papitashvili

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Astrophysicists using a telescope embedded in Antarctic ice have succeeded in a quest to detect and record the mysterious phenomena known as cosmic neutrinos – nearly massless particles that stream to Earth at the speed of light from outside our solar system, striking the surface in a burst of energy that can be as powerful as a baseball pitcher’s fastball. Next, they hope to build on the early success of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory to detect the source of these high-energy particles, said Physics Professor Gregory Sullivan, who led the University of Maryland’s 12-person team of contributors to the IceCube Collaboration.

“The era of neutrino astronomy has begun,” Sullivan said as the IceCube Collaboration announced the observation of 28 very high-energy particle events that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic sources. (more…)

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