WEST LAFAYETTE, IN - Growing vegetables in greenhouses extends crop production seasons in northern latitudes, but the greenhouse environment is far from ideal for providing plants with optimal photosynthetic light. In fact, available photosynthetic daily light in greenhouses can be reduced by up to 50% or more by the structures' glazing material, superstructure, and shading. In northern latitudes, low light is considered the most limiting environmental factor in greenhouse vegetable production. For example, low light levels can result in the formation of loose heads and ...

To help address the global obesity epidemic, scientists are developing a new class of compounds called "micelle sequestrant polymers," or MSPs, that could prevent fat particles from getting absorbed in the body and thus potentially reduce weight gain. They report on their novel agents, which they tested on mice, in the ACS journal Biomacromolecules. Research has shown that worldwide, obesity rates have been climbing for years. Treatments for overweight and obesity include diet and exercise, surgery and prescription medications. But currently available drugs can have serious ...

HANNOVER, GERMANY -- "Cracking" is a problem for sweet cherry production wherever the high-value crop is grown. However, despite considerable research, the reason that this phenomenon occurs has not been clear. In a new study, Andreas Winkler, Max Ossenbrink, and Moritz Knoche reveal their discovery of what makes sweet cherries crack. Knoche, lead author of the study published in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science, said the scientists from the Institute for Horticultural Production Systems at Leibniz University set out to investigate consequences ...

Wine-making is steeped in age-old traditions, but to address the threat of pests and concerns over heavy pesticide use, vintners are turning to science. With the goal of designing better grape breeds, scientists are parsing the differences between wild American grapes -- which make terrible wine but are pest-resistant -- and the less hardy grape species pressed for fine wines worldwide. They report their findings in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. With every sip of their preferred drink, wine lovers from across the globe are appreciating the taste of ...

With 2.5 million daily users, the Tor network is the world's most popular system for protecting Internet users' anonymity. For more than a decade, people living under repressive regimes have used Tor to conceal their Web-browsing habits from electronic surveillance, and websites hosting content that's been deemed subversive have used it to hide the locations of their servers. Researchers at MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) have now demonstrated a vulnerability in Tor's design. At the Usenix Security Symposium this summer, they show that an adversary ...

Two decades ago, the Brain Trauma Foundation published its first set of guidelines for treating traumatic brain injury. Now, a study by the Los Angeles County Trauma Consortium -- which includes several physicians from UCLA -- has found that compliance with those guidelines doesn't necessarily translate into better results for patients. In research published online by the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Surgery, the consortium analyzed 2009 and 2010 data from all 14 L.A. County trauma centers and found no evidence that compliance with the guidelines led to lower mortality ...

Researchers at Barrow Neurological Institute have spent years of medical sleuthing across three continents to uncover a brain surgery that changed history. After more than two-years of international investigation, the scientists have concluded that Napoleon likely would have conquered Russia in 1812 if not for the life-saving brain surgery performed on Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov by the French surgeon Jean Massot, who operated on Kutuzov after bullets twice passed through his head. "It's a story of how medicine changed the course of civilization," says Mark C. Preul, ...

Berlin, 29th July 2015 - Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of cancer in children. It can occur in various forms, differing not only by specific changes in the genetic material of the leukemia cells but also by their response to therapies. Now, an international team of scientists from Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hannover, Heidelberg, Kiel, and Zurich have succeeded in decoding the molecular characteristics of an as yet incurable subtype of leukemia, paving the way for new therapeutic approaches. Their results have been published in the current issue ...

Politicians, children, teachers, Europeans... what do they have in common? As discovered in a study led by Luca Piretti and his colleagues from SISSA (International School for Advanced Studies) of Trieste, they are all social groups, a special semantic category for the human brain that is closely linked with emotions. Until recently, most neuroscientists believed that the representation of knowledge in the brain was based on two distinct systems: one involved in representing animate objects (or, generally, anything organic), and the other for representing inanimate objects ...

When they reach for the glass, they often know no limits: Hazardous drinking is fairly common among young Swiss men. The good news: Based on a survey of around 5,700 young Swiss men with a mean age of 20, scientists from the University of Zurich reveal that legal regulations - such as the minimum legal drinking age and restrictions on the sale or advertising of alcoholic beverages - have a preventive effect on young consumers. Around half of the respondents are high-risk drinkers, which means they consume at least six or more alcoholic drinks in a single session every ...

A promising agent for the treatment of cancer has so far had little effect on the most common lung tumours, but new research from The University of Manchester has suggested how this resistance might be overcome. In two papers released in the journal PNAS, the research team examined factors which mean that the most common type of lung cancer - itself the most common cause of cancer deaths - is resistant to a cytokine called TRAIL that causes cell death in many other types of tumour. The researchers found that in non-small cell lung cancer, which accounts for around 85 ...

Mice that have a particular brain chemical switched off become hyperactive and sleep for just 65 per cent of their normal time. This discovery, published in the journal Neuron, could help researchers to develop new drugs that promote better sleep, or control hyperactivity in people with the medical condition mania. Scientists altered the neurochemistry of mice to help investigate why we need to sleep, what controls our wakefulness, and how a balance between these two states influences brain functions like concentration and memory and our general health. The chemicals ...

From slight sparrows to preening peacocks to soaring falcons, birds have long been known to possess distinct abilities in their sense of smell, but little has been known about the evolution of olfaction. Now, a large comparative genomic study of the olfactory genes tied to a bird's sense of smell has revealed important differences that correlate with their ecological niches and specific behaviors. Authors Agostinho Antunes et al., in a new study published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, analyzed olfactory receptor genes (OR gene ...

Physicists at the University of York have revealed a new understanding of nucleosynthesis in stars, providing insight into the role massive stars play in the evolution of the Milky Way and the origins of the Solar System. Radioactive aluminium (aluminium-26, or Al26) is an element that emits gamma radiation through its decay enabling astronomers to image its location in our galaxy. Studying how Al26 is created in massive stars, scientists have distinguished between previously conflicting assumptions about its rate of production by nuclear fusion. Funded by the Science ...

University of Adelaide research has shown for the first time that, despite not having a nervous system, plants use signals normally associated with animals when they encounter stress. Published today in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology reported how plants respond to their environment with a similar combination of chemical and electrical responses to animals, but through machinery that is specific to plants. "We've known for a long-time that the animal neurotransmitter ...

Bari, Italy, July 28, 2015 -- A new study by researchers at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy, Geriatric Unit & Laboratory of Gerontology and Geriatrics, IRCCS "Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza", San Giovanni Rotondo, Foggia, Italy, and Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), Roma, Italy, estimates the association between change or constant habits in coffee consumption and the incidence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), evaluating 1,445 individuals recruited from 5,632 subjects, aged 65-84 year old, from the Italian Longitudinal Study on Aging (ILSA), a population-based ...

Rewritable CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs owe their existence to phase-change materials, those materials that change their internal order when heated and whose structures can be switched back and forth between their crystalline and amorphous phases. Phase-change materials have even more exciting applications on the horizon, but our limited ability to precisely control their phase changes is a hurdle to the development of new technology. One of the most popular and useful phase-change materials is GST, which consists of germanium, antimony, and tellurium. This material is ...

Hercules, CA -- July 28, 2015 -- Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR™) has been shown to be a useful tool for the identification of microRNAs (miRNA) circulating in the blood that could serve as potential cancer biomarkers. A study in the journal Oncotarget further supports these findings and identifies a novel miRNA that shows great potential for breast cancer diagnosis. These findings confirm the potential clinical utility of ddPCR technology to precisely and reliably quantify cell-free miRNAs. The study also emphasizes that sample type as well as its preparation are critical ...

ANN ARBOR--Secondary students found healthier foods on more lunch menus in 2013 than in 2011, resulting in fewer nutrition disparities for small schools or those with racially diverse student bodies. The findings by University of Michigan researchers show significant improvements made in the National School Lunch Program at public middle and high schools in 2013 after many years of meal disparities based on school size or demographics. "While these improvements are encouraging, continued progress is needed," said Yvonne Terry-McElrath, a researcher at the U-M Institute ...

Wild chimpanzees in the forests of Uganda are increasingly eating clay to supplement the minerals in their diet, according to a long-term international study published in the early version of the journal PLOS ONE. The paper led by the University of Oxford describes how the researchers observed wild chimpanzees in the Budongo forest eating and drinking from clay pits and termite mounds. The paper concludes that this change in diet may be partly due to the widespread destruction of raffia palm trees that chimps relied on for their minerals in the past. However, the main reason ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- UC Davis health economists have for the first time projected the total costs of caring for all people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the U.S. for the current calendar year and in 10 years if effective interventions and preventive treatments for the condition are not identified and widely available. Their forecasts for ASD-related medical, nonmedical and productivity losses are $268 billion for 2015 and $461 billion for 2025. The researchers noted that these estimates are conservative and, if ASD prevalence continues to increase as it has ...

The continuous quality improvement (CQI) approach was introduced on a pilot basis to 30 sites across Uganda. This approach identified barriers in achieving national standards for voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC), identified possible solutions to overcome these barriers, and carried out improvement plans to test these changes while collecting performance data to objectively measure whether they had bridged gaps. Teams used a 53-indicator quality assessment tool adapted by the Ministry of Health and based on the WHO VMMC Quality Toolkit as a management tool to ...

Surgeons at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) joined with colleagues from Penn Medicine recently to complete the world's first bilateral hand transplant on a child. Earlier this month, the surgical team successfully transplanted donor hands and forearms onto eight-year-old Zion Harvey who, several years earlier, had undergone amputation of his hands and feet and a kidney transplant following a serious infection. Led by L. Scott Levin, M.D., FACS*, Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Penn Medicine, Director of the Hand Transplantation Program ...

Whether online auctions are selling rare Pokemon cards or fine art, the science behind inciting the highest bids gets a boost from a paper to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Retailing. Researchers from Germany and Australia teamed up to explore how bidders' emotions are affected by different types of auctions and how those emotions affect their bidding. In "Auction Fever! How Time Pressure and Social Competition Affect Bidders' Arousal and Bids in Retail Auctions," the three authors - Marc T.P. Adam of the University of Newcastle, Professor ...

PHILADELPHIA - Whether you're a human, a mouse, or even a fruitfly, losing sleep is a bad thing, leading to physiological effects and behavioral changes. One example that has been studied for many years is a link between sleep loss and aggression. But it can be difficult to distinguish sleep loss effects from stress responses, especially in rodent or human models. A team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania used fruitflies to probe deeper into the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern aggression and sleep. They ...