Higher consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFA), commonly used in processed foods to improve taste, texture and durability, has been linked to worsened memory function in men 45 years old and younger, according to a University of California, San Diego School of Medicine study published online on June 17 in PLOS ONE. Researchers evaluated data from 1,018 men and women who were asked to complete a dietary survey and memory test involving word recall. On average, men aged 45 and younger recalled 86 words; however, for each additional gram of trans fats consumed daily, ...

Visitation at U.S. National Parks may potentially increase with increasing temperature in temperate areas, but may decrease with temperatures rising over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a study using future climate and visitation modeling scenarios published June 17 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nicholas Fisichelli and colleagues from U.S. National Park Service. Climate change may affect not only natural and cultural resources within protected areas, but also park tourism. To assess the relationship between climate and park visitation, the authors of this ...

Highly specialized coronulid barnacles may be able to identify and attach to the fins of quick-swimming dolphins, locating areas suited for finding food and developing larvae, according to a study carried out as a collaboration between the University of Valencia, Spain, and the University of Southern Mississippi, and published June 17, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Juan Carrillo and colleagues. Scientists have reported several types of symbiotic barnacles that settle on living host organisms. The highly specialized coronulid barnacle, Xenobalanus globicipitis, ...

San Diego, June 17 -- A team of researchers led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego provide new insights on how hearts 'stay young' and keep functioning over a lifetime despite the fact that most organisms generate few new heart cells. Identifying key gene expression changes that promote heart function as organisms age could lead to new therapy targets that address age-related heart failure. The researchers found that the contractile function of the hearts of fruit flies is greatly improved in flies that overexpress the protein vinculin, which also ...

Sydney, Australia - Fossilised remains of a new bat species, which lived 16 million years ago, walked on four limbs and was three times larger than today's average bat, have been discovered in New Zealand. The fossils were found near Central Otago on South Island, in sediment left over from a vast prehistoric body of water known as Lake Manuherikia, which was part of warmer subtropical rainforest during the early Miocene era, between 16 and 19-million-years-ago. The new species, Mystacina miocenalis, was described today in the journal PLOS ONE, and is related to another ...

In a finding that furthers the understanding of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), researchers from Children's Hospital Los Angeles discovered two locations where a single difference in HIV's genetic code altered the way the virus infected the cell, thereby influencing the progression of the disease. The results of this study will be published in PLOS ONE on June 17. HIV targets specific white blood cells, called CD4+ T-cells, which play an important role in organizing the immune response to bacteria and viruses. By using two different receptors, CCR5 (R5) or CXCR4 ...

A new study led from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden links male infertility to autoimmune prostatic inflammation. The findings are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Involuntary childlessness is common, and in half of all cases attributable to infertility in the man. Although male infertility has many possible causes, it often remains unexplained. In the present study, the researchers have discovered a reason for reduced fertility in people with autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1 (APS1), which increases the risk of developing autoimmune ...

BOSTON -- A new drug screening technology developed at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has identified a new potential anti-diabetes compound--and a powerful way to quickly test whether other molecules can have a positive effect on a critical molecular pathway believed to be central to diseases ranging from diabetes to retinitis pigmentosa, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and Alzheimer's. The study appears in the June 17, 2015 issue of Science Translational Medicine. The compound, which the authors have called azoramide*, works by focusing on an ...

Scientists at the Charité - University Medicine Berlin, Department for General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery, led by Dr. Georg Damm (and Prof. Dr. Daniel Seehofer) have established a protocol for an uncomplicated isolation of primary human hepatocytes (PHH), Kupffer cells (KC), liver endothelial cells (LEC), and human Stellate cells (HSC) from human donor tissue. Liver cells were isolated from the tissue using a two-step EDTA/collagenase perfusion technique, followed by a separation of PHH and different non-parenchymal cell (NPC) fractions through Percoll density ...

This Week From AGU: Gender parity in the geosciences, Tibetan Plateau formation From eos.org: Working Toward Gender Parity in the Geosciences How are women represented in the geosciences? The author of a new AGU book, Women in the Geosciences: Practical, Positive Practices Toward Parity, answers some questions. From AGU's journals: Dynamics of the Earth's Surface in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau The evolution of mountains is written in the histories of the rocks that make up their ranges. Scientists have long used areas where rivers cut deep incisions in rock ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have made an important discovery that forms the basis for the development of new applications in biofuels and the sustainable manufacturing of chemicals. Based at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), researchers have identified the exact mechanism and structure of two key enzymes isolated from yeast moulds that together provide a new, cleaner route to the production of hydrocarbons. Published in Nature, the research offers the possibility of replacing the need for oil in current industrial processes with a greener ...

The moon is engulfed in a permanent but lopsided dust cloud that increases in density when annual events like the Geminids spew shooting stars, according to a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder. The cloud is made up primarily of tiny dust grains kicked up from the moon's surface by the impact of high-speed, interplanetary dust particles, said CU-Boulder physics Professor Mihaly Horanyi. A single dust particle from a comet striking the moon's surface lofts thousands of smaller dust specks into the airless environment, and the lunar cloud is maintained by ...

In a remarkable demonstration of the curative power of memory, published in Nature, scientists have established that artificial reactivation of memories stored during a positive experience can suppress the effects of stress-induced depression. The research, conducted by scientists at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, a joint collaboration of RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and MIT, shows how positive and negative memories interact in mood disorders, and provides a specific brain circuit for future clinical interventions. The research, conducted ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Sit down with a friend in a quiet restaurant and begin talking, just before the dinner crowd's arrival. Business is slow at first, but picks up quickly, just like the sound level. Music plays, glasses clink, servers discuss specials. Discussions are everywhere, colliding and competing with the other noises. All of these sounds are hitting the eardrum at the same time, yet the initial conversation that began amidst surrounding silence continues easily because of a process that allows humans to isolate, identify and prioritize overlapping sounds. Sometimes ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An international team of researchers from Indiana University and Switzerland is using data mapping methods created to track the spread of information on social networks to trace its dissemination across a surprisingly different system: the human brain. The research team from the IU Bloomington Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and School of Informatics and Computing found that applying social network models to the brain reveals specific connections and nodes that may be responsible for higher forms of cognition. The results are reported ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 17, 2015) -- Infants and children who are given prescription acid-reducing medications face a substantially higher risk of developing Clostridium difficile infection, a potentially severe colonic disorder. The findings, reported by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, suggest that pediatricians may do more harm than good by prescribing these drugs for children who have non-specific gastrointestinal symptoms such as occasional vomiting. The study was published recently in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases. "There's ...

PITTSBURGH--The role of history in negotiations is a double-edged sword. Although different sides can develop trust over time, there are also countless instances of prolonged feuds that developed because of conflicting histories. A prime example is World War II, which was fought in part to rectify perceived wrongs from the past. The phenomenon also extends to day-to-day situations such as sharing utility costs with a roommate or jockeying for position at grocery store checkout lanes. New research published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization examines ...

For the first time in the long and vaunted history of scanning electron microscopy, the unique atomic structure at the surface of a material has been resolved. This landmark in scientific imaging was made possible by a new analytic technique developed by a multi-institutional team of researchers, including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). "We've developed a reasonably direct method for determining the atomic structure of a surface that also addresses the very challenging problem of buried interfaces," ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - For those wishing to lose weight and keep it off, here's a simple strategy that works: step on a scale each day and track the results. A two-year Cornell study, recently published in the Journal of Obesity, found that frequent self-weighing and tracking results on a chart were effective for both losing weight and keeping it off, especially for men. Subjects who lost weight the first year in the program were able to maintain that lost weight throughout the second year. This is important because studies show that about 40 percent of weight lost with any ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Alaska's melting glaciers are adding enough water to the Earth's oceans to cover the state of Alaska with a 1-foot thick layer of water every seven years, a new study shows. The study found that climate-related melting is the primary control on mountain glacier loss. Glacier loss from Alaska is unlikely to slow down, and this will be a major driver of global sea level change in the coming decades, according to the study's authors. "The Alaska region has long been considered a primary player in the global sea level budget, but the exact details on ...

Thanks to the extraordinary sensitivity of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have detected what they believe is the long-sought radio emission coming from a supermassive black hole at the center of one of our closest neighboring galaxies. Evidence for the black hole's existence previously came only from studies of stellar motions in the galaxy and from X-ray observations. The galaxy, called Messier 32 (M32), is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy, our own Milky Way's giant neighbor. Unlike the Milky Way and Andromeda, which are star-forming spiral ...

The percentage of patients with early-stage breast cancer undergoing breast-conserving therapy increased from 54.3 percent in 1998 to 60.1 percent in 2011, although nonclinical factors including socioeconomic demographics, insurance and the distance patients must travel to treatment facilities persist as key barriers to the treatment, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a consensus statement in 1990 in support of this treatment method and that led to a substantial decline in rates of mastectomy and widespread ...

Sunscreen labels may still be confusing to consumers, with only 43 percent of those surveyed understanding the definition of the sun protection factor (SPF) value, according to the results of a small study published in a research letter online by JAMA Dermatology. UV-A radiation is associated with skin aging, UV-B radiation is associated with sunburns, and exposure to both is a risk factor for skin cancer. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced new regulations for sunscreen labels to emphasize protection against both UV-A and UV-B radiation, now known ...

The risk for tic disorders, including Tourette syndrome and chronic tic disorders, increased with the degree of genetic relatedness in a study of families in Sweden, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. While tic disorders are thought to be strongly familial and heritable, precise estimates of familial risk and heritability are lacking, although gene-searching efforts are under way. Limitations also exist in previous research. David Mataix-Cols, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and coauthors tried to overcome some of those limitations ...

Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder/ social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study carried out at Uppsala University, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. Individuals with social phobia make too much serotonin. The more serotonin they produce, the more anxious they are in social situations. Many people feel anxious if they have to speak in front of an audience or socialise with others. If the anxiety becomes a disability, it may mean that the person suffers ...