JoVE in the news

Researchers in the US have developed a technique that could prove critical in the fight against so-called "superbugs" — virulent and sometimes deadly strains of bacteria that have developed resistance to antibiotic drugs. In a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), Dr. Vitaly Vodyanoy of Auburn University demonstrates how certain bacteria-killing viruses could be used to identify resistant superbugs, potentially providing a much faster way to treat patients and disinfect hospitals.

The team behind the world's smallest microscope announced in 2010, has published a video in the peer-reviewed video journal, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE), explaining how to assemble a camera phone microscope.

CIAT has just published its latest peer-reviewed video in The Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). The team, led by entomologist Soroush Parsa, filmed a protocol for evaluating whether friendly fungi can be introduced into plants to boost their resistance to pest attacks. The work is part of a proof-of-concept project funded by a Grand challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The idea to print skeletons from CT scans came from Evan Doney, an engineering student working in the lab of Matthew Leevy, who runs the biological imaging facility at the University of Notre Dame. ”At first I didn’t really know what the killer app would be, I just knew it would be really cool,” Leevy said. But he began to see new possibilities after striking up a conversation with an ear, nose, and throat specialist during an office visit for a sinus problem. “I actually got out my computer and showed him some slides, and by the end of it we were collaborating.”

A video game that uses a computer-generated layout of a building can help to prepare the blind to navigate the venue in real life by improving their spatial awareness, researchers said on Wednesday.

Back in 2006, Moshe Pritsker thought to use video technology to capture and transmit the intricacies of life science research, facilitating both the understanding and reproduction of experiments and techniques. This idea of “letting scientists look over each other’s shoulders” led to the launch of JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, which is peer reviewed and PubMed-indexed. As a scientific journal, it has an editorial board and hierarchical structure, and ensures consistent quality of its video content by maintaining a network of professional videographers spread across major science centres. Scientists from leading institutions participate by submitting video articles that visualize their experiments.

Moshe Pritsker was about 30,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, with North America ahead of his airplane and Europe receding, when he began seriously wondering why he was there. The year was 2003, and Mr. Pritsker, then a graduate student at Princeton University, had been to Scotland to learn how to grow stem cells. His adviser had asked him to reproduce a stem-cell experiment published in a prestigious journal. It didn't work. He tried again and failed again. So his adviser put him on a plane to Edinburgh, where the method had been perfected. The young scientist learned the technique.

JoVE is an intriguing vehicle for the dissemination of scientific information, but is among the most expensive such resources. Still, schools with research-intensive programs in the applied sciences will find it useful, and it will be a welcome complement to other resources describing laboratory protocols. It is recommended for academic institutions, especially research universities; some special libraries may also find the journal very useful.

Problems of replication in science have gotten a lot of attention lately. It's a difficult problem. But for this one aspect of the problem—the challenge of providing precise and complete instructions for complicated and subtle procedures—a 21st century solution is at hand: Just train the camera on the bench to demonstrate how the experiment is done, Pritsker says. Video cameras—including those in smartphones, laptops, and tablets—are handy, inexpensive, ubiquitous, and easy to use. Video is better than text because some of the subtleties that must be employed in order to make a complex experiment work cannot easily be recorded on paper.

If a photo is worth a thousand words, imagine the understanding that can be captured from 10 minutes at 30 frames per second. A scientific journal dedicated to video—a medium seldom seen in peer-reviewed publications—is finding out.

That vicious cycle of overeating because you are sad and you’re sad because you overeat is actually based on how food affects your brain. Much like drugs, rich foods can have you crashing into depression.

Findings published earlier this week could lay the groundwork for advancements in portable biological-weapon scanner technology, the Journal of Visualized Experiments announced.

On May 15, 2012, JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) will publish two articles in partnership with the United States government's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). JoVE is proud to present the work from Temple University's Dr. Chris Schafmeister and State University of New York Buffalo's Dr. David Pawlowski and Dr. Richard Karalus.

Have you ever been disappointed by a cantaloupe from the grocery store? Too ripe? Not ripe enough? Luckily for you, researchers from the University of California, Davis might have found a way to make imperfectly ripe fruit a thing of the past.

"Metabolically, judo turned out to be a mix of aerobic sports like running and anaerobic sports like weightlifting, the researchers report online this month in the Journal of Visualized Experiments. “Normally, judo is thought to be highly lactic” because it requires intense bursts of energy, Franchini says. But the data revealed that phosphagen metabolism was crucial for throwing people, and aerobic metabolism was also higher than expected."

"Martial arts are exhausting, as anyone who's traded a few punches, kicks, or throws can attest. But where exactly does the energy come from? Every form of exercise uses a different combination of the body's metabolic systems for energy. Cyclical sports such as running and cycling are relatively easy to replicate with exercise machines in a laboratory, but that's harder to do with more unpredictable sports such as martial arts. So a team of Brazilian researchers have taken the lab into the dojo to study the energy requirements of the Japanese art of judo."

"Scientists at Clemson University have rigged an HP Deskjet 500 printer to make microscope slides full of living cells. It spits out a a special cell-packed ink from the printer's standard cartridge. The process creates cells with temporarily permeability in the cell walls, and the holes in the cells are large enough to allow fluorescent molecules to be injected. That glowing stuffing illuminates the membranes, so researchers can get a look at what's happening inside the cells. When studying a heart, for example, the technique can be used to examine how the cardiac muscles respond to mechanical force and fluid shear."

"A science journal that broke the mold of academic publishing with a YouTube-inspired approach to sharing new studies is celebrating its fifth year with a growing Web audience. The Journal of Visualized Experiments, or JoVE, is an online, peer-reviewed and indexed scientific journal that highlights the latest research on everything from plankton cells to human diseases."