PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

New evidence dinosaurs were strong swimmers

2013-04-08
(Press-News.org) A University of Alberta researcher has identified some of the strongest evidence ever found that dinosaurs could paddle long distances. Working together with an international research team, U of A graduate student Scott Persons examined unusual claw marks left on a river bottom in China that is known to have been a major travel-way for dinosaurs. Alongside easily identified fossilized footprints of many Cretaceous era animals including giant long neck dinosaur's researchers found a series of claw marks that Persons says indicates a coordinated, left-right, left-right progression. "What we have are scratches left by the tips of a two-legged dinosaur's feet," said Persons. "The dinosaur's claw marks show it was swimming along in this river and just its tippy toes were touching bottom." The claw marks cover a distance of 15 meters which the researchers say is evidence of a dinosaur's ability to swim with coordinated leg movements. The tracks were made by carnivorous theropod dinosaur that is estimated to have stood roughly 1 meter at the hip. Fossilized rippling and evidence of mud cracks indicate that over 100 million years ago the river, in what is now China's Szechuan Province, went through dry and wet cycles. The river bed, which Persons describes as a "dinosaur super-highway" has yielded plenty of full foot prints of other theropods and gigantic four-legged sauropods. With just claw scratches on the river bottom to go with, Persons says the exact identity of the paddling dinosaur can't be determined, but he suspects it could have been an early tyrannosaur or a Sinocalliopteryx. Both species of predators were known to have been in that area of China. ### Persons is a U of A, PhD candidate and co-author of the research. It was published April 8 in the journal Chinese Science Bulletin. For research artwork please contact Brian Murphy brian.murphy@ualberta.ca END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

'Extracellular vesicles' may open new opportunities for brain cancer diagnosis and treatment

2013-04-08
Philadelphia, Pa. (April 8, 2013) – The recent discovery of circulating "nano-sized extracellular vesicles" (EVs) carrying proteins and nucleic acids derived from brain tumors may lead to exciting new avenues for brain cancer diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment, according to a special article in the April issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The review article by Dr. David Gonda from the laboratory of the corresponding author Dr. Clark ...

Non-invasive mapping helps to localize language centers before brain surgery

2013-04-08
Philadelphia, Pa. (April 8, 2013) – A new functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique may provide neurosurgeons with a non-invasive tool to help in mapping critical areas of the brain before surgery, reports a study in the April issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Evaluating brain fMRI responses to a "single, short auditory language task" can reliably localize critical language areas of the brain—in healthy people as well ...

Tin nanocrystals for the battery of the future

2013-04-08
This press release is available in German. They provide power for electric cars, electric bicycles, Smartphones and laptops: nowadays, rechargeable lithium ion batteries are the storage media of choice when it comes to supplying a large amount of energy in a small space and lightweight. All over the world, scientists are currently researching a new generation of such batteries with an improved performance. Scientists headed by Maksym Kovalenko from the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry at ETH Zurich and Empa have now developed a nanomaterial which enables considerably ...

Penn study finds increased sleep could reduce rate of adolescent obesity

2013-04-08
Philadelphia – Increasing the number of hours of sleep adolescents get each night may reduce the prevalence of adolescent obesity, according to a new study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Results of the study show that fewer hours of sleep is associated with greater increases in adolescent body mass index (BMI) for participants between 14 and 18-years-old. The findings suggest that increasing sleep duration to 10 hours per day, especially for those in the upper half of the BMI distribution, could help to reduce the ...

Rapid climate change and the role of the Southern Ocean

2013-04-08
Scientists from Cardiff University and the University of Barcelona have discovered new clues about past rapid climate change. The research, published this month in the journal Nature Geoscience, concludes that oceanographic reorganisations and biological processes are linked to the supply of airborne dust in the Southern Ocean and this connection played a key role in past rapid fluctuations of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, an important component in the climate system. The scientists studied a marine sediment core from the Southern Ocean and reconstructed chemical ...

ACMG releases statement on noninvasive prenatal screening

2013-04-08
The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) has just released an important new Policy Statement on "Noninvasive Prenatal Screening for Fetal Aneuploidy." The Statement can be found in the Publications section of the ACMG website at http://www.acmg.net and will soon be published in the peer-reviewed medical journal, Genetics in Medicine. As background, in recent decades there have been many changes and improvements in prenatal genetic screening and diagnosis. The risk, however, of testing with specimens obtained by invasive procedures such as amniocentesis ...

EARTH: Widely used index may have overestimated drought

2013-04-08
Alexandria, VA – For decades, scientists have used sophisticated instruments and computer models to predict the nature of droughts. With the threat of climate change looming large, the majority of these models have steadily predicted an increasingly frequent and severe global drought cycle. But a recent study from a team of researchers at Princeton University and the Australian National University suggests that one of these widely used tools — the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) — may be incorrect. The PDSI was developed in the 1960s as a way to convert multiyear ...

Pathological gambling is associated with age

2013-04-08
Researchers of the Psychiatry and Mental Health research group at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), in the Bellvitge University Hospital, have shown that patient age influences the onset of pathological gambling disorder and its clinical course. The study results were published in the Journal of Gambling Studies. Personality traits The study was conducted with more than 2,300 patients aged from 17 to 86 years. The coordinator of the study, Susana Jiménez-Murcia, explains that some personality traits associated with age are risk factors in different ...

High salt levels in Saharan groundwater endanger oases farming

2013-04-08
DURHAM, N.C. -- For more than 40 years, snowmelt and runoff from Morocco's High Atlas Mountains has been dammed and redirected hundreds of kilometers to the south to irrigate oases farms in the arid, sub-Saharan Draa Basin. But a new study by American and Moroccan scientists finds that far from alleviating water woes for the six farm oases in the basin, the inflow of imported water has exacerbated problems by dramatically increasing the natural saltiness of their groundwater. Researchers from Duke University in Durham, N.C., and Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, Morocco, ...

Newly discovered blood protein solves 60-year-old riddle

2013-04-08
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered a new protein that controls the presence of the Vel blood group antigen on our red blood cells. The discovery makes it possible to use simple DNA testing to find blood donors for patients who lack the Vel antigen and need a blood transfusion. Because there has not previously been any simple way to find these rare donors, there is a global shortage of Vel-negative blood. The largest known accumulation of this type of blood donor is found in the Swedish county of Västerbotten, which exports Vel-negative blood all ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Record-breaking 2024 Amazon fires drive unprecedented carbon emissions and ecosystem degradation

Birds thrive despite pollution from ‘forever’ chemicals

Deadwood brings wild orchids to life

Changes in gut microbiota influence which patients get AIG-related neuroendocrine tumors

Medicaid expansion linked to improved long-term survival in cancer patients

Women with surgical menopause may exit workforce earlier, but hormone therapy could help

Trailblazing Young Scientists honored with $250,000 prizes at Blavatnik National Awards Gala

Revolutionary blood test for ME / Chronic Fatigue unveiled

Calorie labelling linked to 2% average reduction in energy content of menu items

Widely prescribed opioid painkiller tramadol not that effective for easing chronic pain

Exercise snacks may boost cardiorespiratory fitness of physically inactive adults

15,000 women a year with breast cancer could benefit from whole genome sequencing, say researchers

Study highlights risks of Caesarean births to future pregnancies

GLP-1 agonists pose emerging challenge for PET-CT imaging, study finds

Scripps Research scientists unlock new patterns of protein behavior in cell membranes

Panama Canal may face frequent extreme water lows in coming decades

Flash Joule heating lights up lithium extraction from ores

COMBINEDBrain and MUSC announce partnership to establish biorepository for pediatric cerebrospinal fluid and CNS tissue bank

Questionable lead reporting for drinking water virtually vanished after Flint water crisis, study reveals

Assessing overconfidence among national security officials

Bridging two frontiers: Mitochondria & microbiota, Targeting Extracellular Vesicles 2025 to explore game-changing pathways in medicine

New imaging tech promises to help doctors better diagnose and treat skin cancers

Once dominant, US agricultural exports falter amid trade disputes and rising competition

Biochar from invasive weed shields rice from toxic nanoplastics and heavy metals

Rice University announces second cohort of Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows

Soil bacteria and minerals form a natural “battery” that breaks down antibiotics in the dark

Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

FIU cybersecurity researchers develop midflight defense against drone hijacking

Kennesaw State researcher aims to discover how ideas spread in the digital age

Next-generation perovskite solar cells are closer to commercial use

[Press-News.org] New evidence dinosaurs were strong swimmers