A simple, lower-cost new method for DNA profiling of human hairs developed by the University of Adelaide should improve opportunities to link criminals to serious crimes. The researchers have modified existing laboratory methods and been able to produce accurate DNA profiles from trace amounts at a much higher success rate. "Technological advancements over the last 10 years have allowed police and forensic scientists to profile crime-scene DNA from ever smaller and more challenging samples collected from fingerprints, skin cells, saliva and hairs," says Associate Professor ...

Scientists, including SFU professor Peter Ruben, have found that sudden death caused by cardiac arrhythmia can be triggered by changes in body temperature. The study is published in the Journal of Physiology. The soccer player who drops dead in the middle of a game, or the infant who dies during sleep is often a victim of arrhythmia. Sudden cardiac death has several causes, including inheritable mutations in our DNA affecting structure and function of proteins in the heart. Simon Fraser University professor Peter Ruben found when studying the proteins that underlie electrical ...

A recent study looks at why some children put on weight faster than others. The study's goal is to identify factors that can lead to obesity. Assistant Professor Silje Steinsbekk and Professor Lars Wichstrøm at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Department of Psychology are conducting the survey. "We've looked to see if physical activity, television time and appetite traits can explain why some children's body mass index (BMI) increases more than others' do," says Steinsbekk. At the clinic, most parents have seen the percentile curves on the ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- July 15, 2015 -- Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have identified a genetic mutation associated with the appearance of premature aging and severe loss of body fat in children. TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders found that the appearance of premature aging, a neonatal form of Progeroid syndrome, in a 3-year-old girl was caused by a mutation in the gene CAV1, according to a study published today in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. The Center for Rare Childhood Disorders was established in 2010 to examine the ...

15 July, 2015, Hoffman Estates, IL - Sodium intake in the U.S. exceeds dietary recommendations and has been identified as a nutrient of public health concern in the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee1 due to its link to increased risk of hypertension, heart disease, and stroke2. While authorities continue to call for people to lower their sodium intake, much progress still needs to be made and multiple solutions are necessary to meet the recommended maximum intake of 2,300 milligrams per day for the general population and 1,500 milligrams ...

Mainz/Barcelona. A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) discovered that electrical conduction in graphene on the picosecond timescale - a picosecond being one thousandth of one billionth of a second - is governed by the same basic laws that describe the thermal properties of gases. This much simpler thermodynamic approach to the electrical conduction in graphene will allow scientists and engineers not only to better understand but also to improve the performance of graphene-based nanoelectronic devices. The researchers found that ...

Researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego, have developed a new user-friendly resource to accompany the powerful gene editing tool called CRISPR/Cas9, which has been widely adopted to make precise, targeted changes in DNA. This breakthrough has the potential to facilitate new discoveries in gene therapies and basic genetics research. The research was published in the July 13 issue of Nature Methods. The study describes an approach to simplify a laborious part of the gene editing process using the CRISPR/Cas9 system: choosing the best ...

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is becoming increasingly recognized as a very real and devastating problem in which impaired breathing is thought to play a critical role. Researchers believe breathing may be impaired during and after seizures, without the patient's knowledge. By using electrical stimulation to activate the amygdala, a group of University of Iowa researchers has identified areas of the human brain in which breathing is controlled and, in some cases, impaired, providing an important insight into SUDEP. Their study - which marks the first time ...

NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Typhoon Halola in the northwestern Pacific Ocean and captured temperature data on the storm. Satellite data showed that wind shear is affecting the stubborn storm. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Halola on July 14 at 20:20 UTC (4:20 p.m. EDT/1:20 p.m. PDT) infrared data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that also flies aboard Aqua showed cloud top temperatures were as cold as -63F/-52C. Cloud top temperatures that cold have the ability to drop heavy rainfall. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that animated ...

High school students who take part in pre-college programs that focus on science are much more likely to pursue higher education and, eventually, careers in science, technology, engineering and medicine - the STEM disciplines. In a paper published in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Michigan State University researchers from the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics and the College of Education used an MSU program as a case study for why these programs are key to training tomorrow's generation ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA - July 15, 2015 - Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) remains under-recognized in hospitalized patients, despite being associated with cardiovascular complications and sudden death. A multi-disciplinary group of researchers and physicians at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals have created a clinical pathway, or screening process, to identify the disorder in higher-risk, hospitalized patients and recently published the results in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. "The results showed that our screening process identified sleep disordered breathing ...

New York, NY, July 15, 2015--Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have found that key parts of the human brain network that give us the power to control and redirect our attention--a core cognitive ability--may be unique to humans. The research, which was published in the July 13 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the network may have evolved in response to increasingly complex social cues. "The human brain is powerful, but even it cannot make sense of the entire sum of stimuli that bombard our senses," ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.--Patients who received rehabilitation instructions via video teleconference, or "telerehabilitation," following total knee replacement (TKR) surgery had comparable outcomes to patients who received in-person physical therapy, according to a study appearing in the July 15 issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (JBJS). "This study is the first to provide strong evidence for use of telerehabilitation as an alternative to conventional face-to-face care following total knee replacement surgery," said Hélène Moffet, PhD, lead study author, physical ...

JUPITER, FL, July 15, 2015 - As early as 1943, when autism was first described by psychiatrist Leo Kanner, reports were made that some, but not all, children with autism spectrum disorder have relatively enlarged heads. But even today, more than half a century later, the exact cause of this early abnormal growth of the head and brain has remained unclear. Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have uncovered how mutations in a specific autism risk gene alter the basic trajectory of early brain development in animal models. The ...

Montreal, July 15, 2015 - A Canadian research team at the IRCM in Montreal, led by molecular virologist Eric A. Cohen, PhD, made a significant discovery on how HIV escapes the body's antiviral responses. The team uncovered how an HIV viral protein known as Vpu tricks the immune system by using its own regulatory process to evade the host's first line of defence. This breakthrough was published yesterday in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens and will be presented at the upcoming IAS 2015 conference in Vancouver. The findings pave the way for future HIV prevention or cure ...

BOSTON - New research led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides the first direct evidence linking traumatic brain injury to Alzheimer's disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) -- and offers the potential for early intervention to prevent the development of these debilitating neurodegenerative diseases. TBI can result from repetitive contact sport injuries or from exposure to military blasts, and is one of the most significant risk factors for both Alzheimer's disease and CTE. In a study published today in the online edition ...

Scientists at the University of Basel were able to identify for the first time a molecule responsible for the absorption of starlight in space: the positively charged Buckminsterfullerene, or so-called football molecule. Their results have been published in the current issue of Nature. Almost 100 years ago, astronomers discovered that the spectrum of star light arrived on earth with dark gaps, so-called interstellar bands. Ever since, researchers have been trying to find out which type of matter in space absorbs the light and is responsible for these "diffuse interstellar ...

About 1 in 88 children has an autism spectrum disorder. This represents a 78% increase in the incidence of autism spectrum disorder since 2002 (although some of the increase may be due to improved diagnostic capabilities). Individuals with an autism spectrum disorder may have poor nutrition because they often exhibit selective eating patterns as well as sensory sensitivity that predispose them to restrict their diets. The July 2015 issue of Advances in Nutrition, the international review journal of the American Society for Nutrition, features "Nutritional Status of ...

GeoSpace Greenland's fjords are far deeper than previously thought, and glaciers will melt faster, researchers find West Greenland's fjords are vastly deeper than rudimentary models have shown and intruding ocean water can badly undercut glacier faces. A new study in Geophysical Research Letters explores how this process will raise sea levels faster than expected. Eos.org A University-Government Partnership for Oceanographic Research After 44 years of coordinating the U.S. academic research fleet and facilities, the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Air pollution controls installed at an Oregon coal-fired power plant to curb mercury emissions are unexpectedly reducing another class of harmful emissions as well, an Oregon State University study has found. Portland General Electric added emission control systems at its generating plant in Boardman, Oregon, in 2011 to capture and remove mercury from the exhaust. Before-and-after measurements by a team of OSU scientists found that concentrations of two major groups of air pollutants went down by 40 and 72 percent, respectively, after the plant was ...

A new computational model of how the brain makes altruistic choices is able to predict when a person will act generously in a scenario involving the sacrifice of money. The work, led by California Institute of Technology scientists and, appearing July 15 in the journal Neuron, also helps explain why being generous sometimes feels so difficult. The reason people act altruistically is well contested among academics. Some argue that people are innately selfish and the only way to override our greedy tendencies is to exercise self-control. Others are more positive, believing ...

WASHINGTON, DC - July 15, 2015 - For decades, researchers have worked to improve cacao fermentation by controlling the microbes involved. Now, to their surprise, a team of Belgian researchers has discovered that the same species of yeast used in production of beer, bread, and wine works particularly well in chocolate fermentation. The research was published ahead of print July 6th in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. "Chemical analyses as well as tasting the chocolate showed that the chocolate produced with ...

LAWRENCE -- American media in effort to highlight a diverse set of voices in covering politics generally over-represent the amount of people who contribute to policy making when compared with journalists in South Korea. A University of Kansas researcher made the findings as part of a recent study that examined how government officials were treated in front-page news coverage between the two free-press nations. The article by Jiso Yoon, a KU assistant professor of political science, and co-author Amber Boydstum, an assistant professor of political science at the University ...

AURORA, Colo. (July 15, 2015) - Physicians at the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus have published research that suggests a safe and lower-cost way to diagnose and treat problems in the upper gastrointestinal tract of children. The researchers assessed the effectiveness of unsedated transnasal endoscopy (TNE) in evaluating pediatric patients with potentially chronic problems in their esophagus, which is the tube that connects the patient's mouth to the stomach. The research team included Joel A. Friedlander, DO, MA-Bioethics, Jeremy ...

The human genome encodes roughly 20,000 genes, only a few thousand more than fruit flies. The complexity of the human body, therefore, comes from far more than just the sequence of nucleotides that comprise our DNA, it arises from modifications that occur at the level of gene, RNA and protein. In a new study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine show how one of these modifications, which occurs after RNA is translated into proteins, has the power to greatly influence the function of an enzyme called PRPS2, which is required for ...