In Eastern Australia, the ocean has been warming at a rate that's 4-times that of the global average. Many marine species have been appearing further south than they ever have before, while others have stayed put. A new study identifies which characteristics seem to be important for species to shift their ranges so quickly. As expected, swimming ability is important, as fish are stretching their ranges south faster than organisms such as starfish and crustaceans. Researchers also found that animals that already have large range sizes are the most responsive and shift ...

California-grown almonds dominate the global market, providing over 80% of the world's commercial almonds. Two new articles published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology examine the environmental impacts of California's almond production, focusing on greenhouse gas emissions and energy. Investigators noted that certain practices reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use substantially, including strategic utilization of co-products and the choice of water source and irrigation technology. Both of these may be influenced by regional variability in resources. "Our ...

Studies that have assessed the effects of total knee replacement on quality of life are scarce and have been almost exclusively limited to patients with osteoarthritis, even though rheumatoid arthritis is the most common inflammatory arthritis for which the surgery is indicated. In a new study that assessed the effects of total knee replacement in rheumatoid arthritis patients versus osteoarthritis patients, researchers found that the surgery is highly effective in reducing knee pain and also provides benefits in other subjective quality of life indices in patients with ...

Examining post-mortem tissue from the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, Stanford University School of Medicine investigators identified what appear to be iron-containing microglia -- specialized scavenger cells that sometimes become inflammatory -- in a particular part of the hippocampus, a key brain structure whose integrity is critical to memory formation. In post-mortem brain tissue from people not diagnosed with Alzheimer's, neither the iron deposits nor the scavenger cells engulfing them were present in that brain region. The findings, recounted in a ...

In a new study, women considered the position and shape of the urethral opening to be the least important aspects of a penis' appearance. They also perceived the genitals of men who underwent surgery to treat distal hypospadias--a congenital condition in which the opening of the urethra is on the underside of the penis--to be as normal-looking as nonaffected, circumcised genitals. "The information may help prevent the development of shame or impaired genital perceptions about penile appearance," said Dr. Norma Ruppen, lead author of The Journal of Sexual Medicine study. INFORMATION: ...

In a study of 2239 individuals with chronic widespread pain, the key feature of fibromyalgia, those who regularly consumed alcohol had lower levels of disability than those who never or rarely drank. Those who drank 21 to 35 units of alcohol per week were 67% less likely than never drinkers to experience disability. (One unit of alcohol is a half pint of average strength beer/lager, one small glass of wine, or one single measure of spirits.). "Although we cannot say that alcohol consumption causes less disability among people with chronic widespread pain, the observed ...

New research provides mathematical evidence that Michelangelo used the Golden Ratio of 1.6 when painting The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Golden Ratio is found when you divide a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. The Golden Ratio has been linked with greater structural efficiency and has puzzled scientists for centuries due to its frequent occurrence in nature--for example in snail shells and flower petals. The Golden Ratio can also be found in a ...

Fossil fuel emissions could soon make it impossible for radiocarbon dating to distinguish new materials from artefacts that are hundreds of years old. Carbon released by burning fossil fuels is diluting radioactive carbon-14 and artificially raising the radiocarbon 'age' of the atmosphere, according to a paper published today (Monday 20 July 2015) in the journal PNAS. Radiocarbon measurements have a range of uses, from analysing archaeological finds, to detecting fraudulent works of art, to identifying illegal ivory trading, to assessing the regeneration of brain cells ...

Music enhances the teenage brain's response to sound; sharpens language skills Band class had larger effect on brain than fitness-based ROTC training Results highlight music's place in the high school curriculum Kraus: 'Music may engender what educators refer to as learning to learn' EVANSTON, Ill. --- Music training, begun as late as high school, may help improve the teenage brain's responses to sound and sharpen hearing and language skills, suggests a new Northwestern University study. The research, to be published the week of July 20 in the Proceedings ...

Scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center's Center for Cognitive Neurology have evidence that monoclonal antibodies they developed may provide the blueprint for effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease. A team led by Fernando Goni, PhD, an adjunct associate professor of Neurology, and Thomas Wisniewski MD, director of the Center for Cognitive Neurology at NYU Langone, showed that a novel class of monoclonal antibodies successfully targeted proteins that change shape and misfold, becoming toxic and triggering ...

Infants can use their expectations about the world to rapidly shape their developing brains, researchers have found. A series of experiments with infants ages 5 to 7 months has shown that portions of babies' brains responsible for visual processing respond not just to the presence of visual stimuli, but also to the mere expectation of visual stimuli, according to the researchers from Princeton University, the University of Rochester and the University of South Carolina. That type of sophisticated neural processing was once thought to happen only in adults and not infants, ...

Washington, DC - July 20, 2015 - Biofilms are tough, opportunistic, highly antibiotic resistant bacterial coatings that form on catheters and on medical devices implanted within the body. University of Maryland investigators have now shown that a "messenger molecule" produced by the opportunistic human pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, encourages bacteria to colonize catheters in the bladders of laboratory mice, where they form biofilms. The research appears July 20th in the Journal of Bacteriology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. Normally, in ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University study in rats finds that gut worms can protect babies' brains from long-term learning and memory problems caused by newborn infections. Baby rats with tapeworms avoided the brain inflammation that plagued worm-free rats after exposure to immune triggers in adulthood. What's more, the benefits began early, while still in the womb. Expectant mother rats with tapeworms passed similar protection on to their worm-free pups, the researchers found. The findings could point to new ways to treat or prevent the chronic brain inflammation ...

When modern football helmets were introduced, they all but eliminated traumatic skull fractures caused by blunt force impacts. Mounting evidence, however, suggests that concussions are caused by a different type of head motion, namely brain and skull rotation. Now, a group of Stanford engineers has produced a collection of results that suggest that current helmet-testing equipment and techniques are not optimized for evaluating these additional injury-causing elements. The ideal way to test any protective gear is to gain a sense of what causes the trauma, set up a system ...

Angelina Jolie received widespread media attention in 2013 when she told the public that she'd tested positive for BRCA1, a gene associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers, and subsequently had a double mastectomy. Now research shows that this publicity did influence some women's intentions to seek out similar genetic testing. "We put a questionnaire online within three days of Jolie's announcement, to see if the announcement influenced anyone's intention to get genetic testing," says Kami Kosenko, an associate professor of communication at North ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Researchers on Mayo Clinic's Florida campus have identified key differences between patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and those with the most common genetic form of ALS, a mutation in the C9orf72 gene. Their findings, reported online today in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrate that ALS patients show abnormalities in levels and processing of ribonucleic acids (RNA), biological molecules that determine what gene information is used to guide protein synthesis. More than 30,000 Americans live with ALS, ...

VANCOUVER, B.C. and DURHAM, N.C. - Results from HPTN 067, a Phase II, randomized, open-label study, demonstrate most study participants had higher coverage of sex events and better adherence when they were assigned to the daily dosing arm, investigators from the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) reported today at the 8th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Vancouver, Canada. HPTN 067, also known as the ADAPT Study, was designed to evaluate the feasibility of non-daily pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) regimens. The ...

VANCOUVER, B.C. and DURHAM, N.C. - Antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV infection provides lasting protection against the sexual transmission of the virus from infected men and women to their HIV-uninfected sexual partners, investigators from the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) reported today at the 8th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention in Vancouver, Canada. The study, known as HPTN 052, began in 2005 and enrolled 1,763 HIV sero-discordant couples - where one person is HIV-infected and the other is not - at 13 ...

WASHINGTON --Emergency physicians can safely reduce x-rays in children with hurt ankles by as much as 23 percent and save emergency patients both money and time. The results of a cost analysis of the Low Risk Ankle Rule (LRAR) were published online Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine "Cost Consequence Analysis of Implementing the Low Risk Ankle Rule in Emergency Departments". "Currently, x-rays are ordered for up to 95 percent of children who come to emergency departments with ankle injuries, though only 12 percent of those x-rays show fractures," said lead study ...

Solar panels are an investment -- not only in terms of money, but also energy. It takes energy to mine, process and purify raw materials, and then to manufacture and install the final product. Silicon-based panels, which dominate the market for solar power, usually need about two years to return this energy investment. But for technology made with perovskites -- a class of materials causing quite a buzz in the solar research community -- the energy payback time could be as quick as two to three months. By this metric, perovskite modules are better than any solar technology ...

Tropical Depression Halola is getting stronger. NASA data pinpointed the area of strongest sustained winds on July 19 and the extent of those winds expanded on July 20 as Halola became a tropical storm again. NASA also gathered infrared data that showed cloud top temperatures getting colder, indicating more uplift or strength in the storm. On July 19 at 2 p.m. GMT (10 a.m. EDT), the RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station gathered data on surface winds in Tropical Depression Halola. RapidScat saw the strongest sustained winds were on the northeastern ...

Antiretroviral treatment that consistently suppresses HIV is highly effective at preventing sexual transmission of the virus in heterosexual couples where one person is HIV-infected and the other is not, investigators report today at the 8th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment & Prevention (IAS 2015) in Vancouver, Canada. The finding comes from the decade-long HPTN 052 clinical trial funded primarily by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and conducted by the NIH-funded ...

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have discovered a way of improving biotech drugs. Better, cheaper and more effective drugs to combat cancer, arthritis and many other disorders. This is the result of a ground-breaking new technique developed by a group of researchers from the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. The method can improve a large number of so-called glycoprotein-based pharmaceuticals used to treat a variety of diseases. The technique has recently been described in one of the world's most distinguished scientific ...

No one likes to lose a friend, especially adolescents. But why do friendships end? Researchers in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science at Florida Atlantic University sought to answer this question with a study examining whether adolescent friendships end because of undesirable characteristics of friends, because of differences between friends, or both. Findings from this long-term longitudinal study of 410 adolescents involved in 573 friendships are published in the current issue of Psychological Science. Adolescent friendships are fleeting. The majority dissolve ...

WASHINGTON, July 20, 2015 -- If you're stumped in the wine aisle of the store, then you're not alone. Every bottle has unique nuances of taste and smell. How can something made of grapes smell buttery or taste like grass? Learn about the complex chemistry behind wine and then impress your friends at your next party thanks to Reactions. Check out our wine chemistry primer here: http://youtu.be/_UaS743_aEs. Subscribe to the series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. INFORMATION: The American ...