Physicists investigating tubular biological microstructures that showed unexpected luminescence after heating. Bioinspired peptides, like the ones investigated, could be useful for applications in optical fibers, biolasers and future quantum computers.

The luminous peptide microstructures self-assemble in a water environment. After heating them with a laser, they showed luminescence in the green range of the optical spectrum.

Dyscalculia is a broad term for difficulty in understanding numbers, arithmetic and mathematics. It is different than 'I am not good at math', people with dyscalculia have difficulty with counting and adding, understanding patterns - when you should add, when to subtract - and even telling time.

In the wild world of epidemiology, there has been conjecture that being a pre-term baby was a risk factor for dyscalculia, because being pre-term children has also been linked to other cognitive deficits.

Artesunate, a common herbal-based anti-malarial drug, can be used to control asthma, with better treatment outcomes than other drugs currently available, according to a paper by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS).

The authors write that artesunate is able to suppress airway inflammation and produce an array of anti-inflammatory effects similar to those by dexamethasone, the most potent steroid currently available, and with less side effects. 

Asthma is an incurable lung disease that inflames and narrows the airways, causing recurring periods of wheezing, chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. It is a chronic condition that affects people of all ages, but it most often starts during childhood.

A new study in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) found that preventing weight gain, obesity, and ultimately diabetes could be as simple as keeping a nuclear receptor, PPARgamma, from being activated in a small part of the brain.

When researchers blocked the effects of PPARgamma in a small number of brain cells in mice, the animals ate less and became resistant to a high-fat diet.

Proopiomelanocortin (POMC) neurons are found in the hypothalamus and regulate food intake. When activated, these neurons cause a feeling of fullness and curb appetite. PPARgamma regulates the activation of these neurons.

Scientists have recently gathered some of the strongest evidence to date to explain what makes the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than its surface. The new observations of the small-scale extremely hot temperatures are consistent with only one current theory - nanoflares – a constant peppering of impulsive bursts of heating, none of which can be individually detected, provide the mysterious extra heat.

The other day I wrote a post reporting of the lowered expectations of SUSY enthusiasts, who now apparently look forward to seeing 2-sigma effects in the next Run data of the CMS and ATLAS collaborations. That would keep their hope going, apparently.

I would have no problem letting them wait for late 2015, when the first inverse femtobarns of 13 TeV collisions will have been given a look at. But another thing happened today which made me change my mind - a colleague noted in the comments thread of that article that the LHC experiments appear to not publish their 2- and 3-sigma excesses when they see them, waiting for more data that "wipes out" the fluctuation. This is a strong (and probably unsupported) claim!

In the world we commonly perceive around us, it takes only a slight disturbance for a pencil standing on its tip to fall in one direction or another, but in the quantum world it is possible in principle for particles of a system to fall both left and right at the same time.

Differentiating this “and” state – the quantum entanglement of particles – from the classical “or” is an experimental challenge. Scientists have now devised a  quantum metrology method that enables entanglement verification for states of large atomic systems.

Dietary capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers, produces chronic activation of a receptor on cells lining the intestines of mice, triggering a reaction that ultimately reduces the risk of colorectal tumors, finds a study in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

More than 10,000 reptile species have been recorded into the Reptile Database, a web-based catalog of all living reptile species and classification, making the reptile species among the most diverse vertebrate groups in the world, alongside bird and fish species, and likely the largest known.

Experts projected that 2014 would mark the year that reptiles would become the most diverse vertebrate group in the world. Reptiles include snakes, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, tuataras and amphisbaenians.

Nothing boosts the prospects of page hits on a blog – or funding of a grant proposal – like the phrase “big data.” Why are we enamored with “big data”?