Rochester chemists find new means to ‘block’ cancer cell growth
A pathway that enables embryonic cells to develop into different organs can be reactivated by cancer cells. A cyclic peptide has been found that can block the activation of this pathway, and is also less likely to trigger resistance in cancer cells.
At 85, chemist Donald Batesky makes late-career discovery
Back in 1959, early in his career as a Kodak chemist, Donald Batesky was lead author of a paper in the Journal of Organic Chemistry. Now the 85-year-old research associate is lead author again, for discovering a technique that had been overlooked for years.
Political experts say U.S. democracy healthier than public thinks
The third Bright Line Watch survey, co-authored by Rochester political scientist Gretchen Helmke, focuses on the health of U.S. democratic institutions and compares the results from thousands of political professionals with the general public.
Early school start times may increase teen depression, anxiety
Teenagers whose classes begin before 8:30 a.m. may be at particular risk, according to a recent Medical Center study that is one of the first to look specifically at school start times and compromised sleep quality.
Generating terahertz radiation from water makes ‘the impossible, possible’
Optics professor Xi-Cheng Zhang has worked for nearly a decade to solve a scientific puzzle.
Firefly researchers mapping ‘world’s second-most interesting genome’
“Fireflies only tend to be out during the summer months in Rochester,” says assistant professor of biology Amanda Larracuente. “The end of summer is when we’re frantic about getting all our work done.” Her team is now the first to successfully sequence the firefly genome.
Quadcast: Rebooting the brain for better vision after a stroke
Krystel Huxlin has developed rigorous visual training that can restore some of the basic vision lost to traumatic brain injury, stroke, or a tumor. Here Huxlin discusses how this therapy teaches undamaged parts of the brain to take over.
Climate change for aliens
For more than 50 years, the Kardashev scale has been the gold standard for classifying hypothetical “exo-civilizations” by their ability to harness energy. A team of researchers led by Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank have devised a new system that takes into account the impacts of that energy use.
Monkey sees. . . monkey knows?
Monkeys had higher confidence in their ability to remember an image when the visual contrast was high. These kinds of metacognitive illusions—false beliefs about how we learn or remember best—are shared by humans, leading brain and cognitive scientists to believe that metacognition could have an evolutionary basis.
Icy air reveals human-made methane levels higher than previously believed
Professor Vasilii Petrenko and his team are studying the air trapped in ice cores that date back nearly 12,000 years, long before mankind’s use of fossil fuels, to separate man-made from naturally occurring methane sources.