Polymer nanocomposites mix particles billionths of a meter (nanometers, nm) in diameter with polymers, which are long molecular chains. Often used to make injection-molded products, they are common in automobiles, fire retardants, packaging materials, drug-delivery systems, medical devices, coatings, adhesives, sensors, membranes and consumer goods. When a team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory tried to verify that shrinking the nanoparticle size would adversely aff...

It is well accepted that severe spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to functional disconnection of ascending and descending spinal pathways, impairing neural circuitry through and below the SCI. However, in clinically complete SCI, defined as American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) level A, a portion of neural tissue commonly remains intact across the injury site1 and may provide nonspecific supraspinal influence on sublesional spinal circuitry.2, 3, 4, 5 This injury profile is defi...

Hormone replacement therapy has long been controversial. While some studies suggest that it lowers the risk of osteoporosis and improves some aspects of heart health, others link it to higher risk of cancer and stroke. A new imaging study by investigators at Cedars-Sinai suggests that women using hormone replacement therapy to relieve menopause symptoms face a lower risk of death and show lower levels of atherosclerosis — plaque buildup in the heart's arteries — than women who do not use horm...

A study by Indiana University researchers has identified 24 compounds -- including caffeine -- with the potential to boost an enzyme in the brain shown to protect against dementia.   The protective effect of the enzyme, called NMNAT2, was discovered last year through research conducted at IU Bloomington. The new study appears today in the journal Scientific Reports. "This work could help advance efforts to develop drugs that increase levels of this enzyme in the brain, creating a c...

In politics, Right-leaning politicians are in general physically more attractive, but in academia it is the other way around. A new study conducted at the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki argues that Right-leaning politicians are more highly rewarded for attractive looks than Left-leaning politicians. Previous research by Berggren, Jordahl and Poutvaara (2015) shows that in elections run in Australia, the European Union, Finland and the United States, Right-lea...

University of Maryland study has found that fruit flies genetically coded to take frequent naps had the strongest resistance to both a fungal infection and bacteria that the World Health Organization says is one of the world’s most dangerous superbugs for humans. Researchers study the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, because these tiny flies provide a great model system for studying issues important to human health. More than 70 percent of human disease-causing genes have a correspo...