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Physicists create superinsulators

ARGONNE, Ill., April 9 (UPI) - U.S. and European scientists have discovered a fundamental state of matter that they say opens new directions of inquiry in condensed matter physics.Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with several European institutions, have created "superinsulators" that they say might result in a new generation of microelectronic devices.Led by Argonne senior scientist Valerii Vinokur and Russian scientist Tatyana Baturina, the researchers from Belgium, Germany, Russia and the United States fashioned a thin film of titanium nitride that they then chilled to near absolute zero.When they tried to pass a current through the material, the researchers noticed its resistance suddenly increased by a factor of 100,000 once the temperature dropped below a certain threshold. The same sudden change also occurred when the researchers decreased the external magnetic field.Like superconductors, which have applications in many different areas of physics, the scientists say superinsulators could eventually find their way into a number of products, including circuits, sensors and battery shields.

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Very active 2008 hurricane season forecast

FORT COLLINS, Colo., April 10 (UPI) - U.S. hurricane experts William Gray and Philip Klotzbach say they expect a busy 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, with as many as 15 named storms.The Colorado State University scientists in their April forecast said they also anticipate an above average probability of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States.Gray and Klotzbach said they expect 2008 will have about eight hurricanes (the average is 5.9) and four intense hurricanes (average is 2.3).They also predict:- A 69 percent probability of at least one major hurricane striking the U.S. coastline, with the average for the last century being 52 percent.- A 45 percent probability for the U.S. east coast, including the Florida peninsula. The last century's average was 31 percent.- A 44 percent probability for the U.S. Gulf Coast, from Florida's panhandle to Brownsville, Texas. The last century's average was 30 percent.- An above average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean.The two hurricane experts said current Atlantic basin conditions appear "quite favorable" for an active hurricane season, with surface temperature patterns being similar to those typically observed before very active seasons.The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

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Potential diabetes drug target identified

TORONTO, April 10 (UPI) - Canadian scientists announced the discovery of a novel signaling pathway to the gut, brain and liver that lowers blood sugar when it is activated.The scientists at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, led by Dr. Tony Lam, used a rat model to discover that fats can activate a subset of nerves in the intestine, which then send a signal to the brain and subsequently to the liver to lower glucose production."This is a new approach in developing more effective methods to lower glucose or blood sugar levels in those who are obese or have diabetes," said Lam."We already knew that the brain and liver can regulate blood glucose levels," he said, "but the question has been, how do you therapeutically target either of these two organs without incurring side effects? We may have found a way around this problem by suggesting that the gut can be the initial target instead."If new medicines can be developed that stimulate this sensing mechanism in the gut, we may have an effective way of slowing down the body's production of sugar, thereby lowering blood sugar levels in diabetes," said Lam.The research appears in the online issue of the journal Science in advance of print publication.

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Synthetic peptoids might fight cancer

DALLAS, April 9 (UPI) - A U.S. study suggests creation of synthetic molecules might be a less expensive alternative to using therapeutic antibodies to battle various diseases.Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center said they've developed a simple and inexpensive method to screen small synthetic molecules - called peptoids - using some to treat cancer and other diseases.In one screen of more than 300,000 such molecules, researchers identified five promising candidates that mimicked an antibody already on the market for treating cancer."Many new drugs being made today are antibodies, but they are extremely expensive to make," "Our results show that a peptoid can attack a harmful receptor in the body with the same precision as an antibody, but would cost much less to develop." said Dr. Thomas Kodadek, senior author of the study.Current screening techniques require extensive automation and generally cost $40,000 or more, the researchers said, while their new method can be conducted for less than $1,000.The study appears online and in an upcoming print issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

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Origin of Alzheimer brain plaques studied

ST. LOUIS, April 10 (UPI) - U.S. researchers say they've found a nerve cell's normal intake and communication processes are essential to the production of Alzheimer's brain plaques.The Washington University School of Medicine researchers in St. Louis said such plaques are accumulations of fragments of amyloid beta protein, and are found in post-mortem examinations of the brains of Alzheimer's patients.Neuroscientists at the school experimentally manipulated the ability of brain cells to take in substances from their surface - a process called endycytosis. To mice having a disease similar to Alzheimer's, the researchers administered a drug that stops the process of endocytosis. The result was a 70 percent reduction in the production of amyloid beta protein.In another experiment, the researchers gave the mice a drug that reduced brain cell communication, but did not affect endocytosis. The result was a 60 percent reduction in amyloid beta production."Blocking endocytosis isn't a viable option for treatment because cells throughout the body, including brain cells, need endocytosis for healthy function," "But we are starting to understand the origins of amyloid beta in more detail now Â…" said John Cirrito, a research instructor and first author of the study.The study appears in the journal Neuron.

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New method to curtail tumor growth found

ATLANTA, April 9 (UPI) - A U.S. study suggests increasing a blood pressure-regulating enzyme in mice enhances the immune system's ability to sense tumor growth.Emory University School of Medicine researchers engineered mice to make more angiotensin-converting enzymes in white blood cells called macrophages. When that occurred, the mice could more effectively limit the growth of injected tumors.Scientists said the enzyme works by "trimming" small bits of protein that originate from the tumors, allowing the immune system to identify those tumors and mount a response more efficiently.The study's senior author, Dr. Kenneth Bernstein, said the findings suggest a strategy for amplifying immune system function in humans."We think we've discovered a means of tweaking the immune response by modifying the process of antigen presentation," Bernstein said, suggesting physicians might be able to enhance a cancer patient's ability to resist a tumor by removing his or her white blood cells, boosting their production of angiotensin-converting enzyme and re-infusing them.The study is reported online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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Expedition 17 is en route to the ISS

HOUSTON, April 9 (UPI) - The International Space Station's Expedition 17 crew was en route to a temporary space home Wednesday aboard a Soyuz rocket.The crew was launched at 7:16 a.m. EDT Tuesday from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.Expedition 17 crew members Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with spaceflight participant So-yeon Yi, will dock with the space station Thursday, National Aeronautics and Space Administration controllers in Houston said..Yi, from South Korea, will be aboard the ISS for nine days, conducting experiments and Earth photography. She is scheduled to return to Earth with Expedition 16 crew members Peggy Whitson and Yuri Malenchenko April 19.

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Genetic variants linked with hypertension

NEW HAVEN, Conn., April 8 (UPI) - Yale University scientists in Connecticut said rare genetic variants can be associated with a dramatically lower risk of high blood pressure.The researchers say their finding that rare mutations might collectively play a large part in the development of common, yet complex, diseases such as hypertension also has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of such diseases as diabetes and schizophrenia."Collectively, common variants have explained a small fraction of the risk of most diseases in the population, as we would expect from the effects of natural selection,'' said Yale Professor Richard Lifton, who led the study with Daniel Levy, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes's Framingham Heart Study." The question this leaves open is whether many rare variations in genes will collectively account for a large influence on common disease.''Lifton said the new study underscores the importance of sequencing the genome of many individuals in order to discover disease-causing mutations.The research is reported in the journal Nature Genetics.

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Black hole found in Omega Centauri

GARCHING, Germany, April 10 (UPI) - German and U.S. astronomers say they've found evidence of a black hole in the center of Omega Centauri, a cluster of stars 17,000 light years from Earth.The astronomers say the black hole suggests Omega Centauri is a dwarf galaxy, not a globular cluster.First identified as a single star nearly 2,000 years ago, Omega Centauri was later reclassified as a nebula, and more recently as a globular cluster. It's visible to the unaided eye to those in the southern hemisphere.The discovery was led by Eva Noyola of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, using images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, in addition to spectrographic data from the Gemini South telescope in Chile.Noyola and her colleagues, including astronomer Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin, found the high velocities of stars in the cluster's center could be accounted for only by the presence of an invisible object in the center of the cluster with a mass 40,000 times that of the Earth's sun."Finding a black hole at the heart of Omega Centauri could have profound implications for our understanding of its past interaction with the Milky Way," said Noyola.

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Scientists study Canadian CO2 emissions

NEW HAVEN, Conn., April 8 (UPI) - Yale University scientists in Connecticut said rare genetic variants can be associated with a dramatically lower risk of high blood pressure.The researchers say their finding that rare mutations might collectively play a large part in the development of common, yet complex, diseases such as hypertension also has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of such diseases as diabetes and schizophrenia."Collectively, common variants have explained a small fraction of the risk of most diseases in the population, as we would expect from the effects of natural selection,'' said Yale Professor Richard Lifton, who led the study with Daniel Levy, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes's Framingham Heart Study." The question this leaves open is whether many rare variations in genes will collectively account for a large influence on common disease.''Lifton said the new study underscores the importance of sequencing the genome of many individuals in order to discover disease-causing mutations.The research is reported in the journal Nature Genetics.

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