San Antonio -- August 11, 2015 -- The latest data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal diverse features on Pluto's surface and an atmosphere dominated by nitrogen gas. However, Pluto's small mass allows hundreds of tons of atmospheric nitrogen to escape into space each hour. So where does all this nitrogen come from? Dr. Kelsi Singer, a postdoctoral researcher at Southwest Research Institute, and her mentor Dr. Alan Stern, SwRI associate vice president and the science lead for the New Horizons mission, outlined likely sources in a paper titled, "On the Provenance ...

New research on monkeys vaccinated against HIV's relative SIV calls into question an idea that has driven AIDS vaccine work for years. The assumption: a protective vaccine only needs to stimulate moderate levels of antibodies that neutralize the virus. However, scientists at Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Emory Vaccine Center have found that when SIV manages to infect vaccinated monkeys that have potent neutralizing antibodies in their blood, the virus appears to shrug the antibodies off. No stealthy escape by mutation was necessary. The results were ...

TORONTO, August 11 2015 -- There can be a difference in how well babies focus attention on an object of interest, depending on whether they were delivered by natural birth or Caesarean section, a recent York University study indicates. "Our research has revealed that being born by a C-section slows a baby's spatial attention, which plays a role in its ability to focus on a particular area or object of interest," says Professor Scott Adler in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health at YorkU. According to Adler and his co-researcher Audrey Wong Kee-You, very ...

Every day, we expend energy when we con­trol the net­works in our lives. For example, to drive our car, we utilize a net­work whose com­po­nents include the car's accel­er­ator, steering wheel, and brake. Knowing how much that effort "costs" can help deter­mine which com­po­nents to manipulate--and to what degree--to ensure the smoothest, safest ride as you acclerate from 55 to 90 miles per hour. On Monday, North­eastern researchers revealed just such a mea­suring strategy in a new paper pub­lished in Nature Physics. "We ...

WASHINGTON -- An initiative to better understand how melting ice sheets will contribute to sea-level rise, efforts to decode the genomes of organisms to understand evolutionary adaptations, and a next-generation cosmic microwave background experiment to address fundamental questions about the origin of the universe are the top research goals for Antarctic and Southern Ocean science recommended in a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report, which offers a strategic vision to guide the U.S. Antarctic Program at the National ...

Vortioxetine (trade name: Brintellix) has been approved since December 2013 for the treatment of depression in adults, but did not become actually available before May 2015. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. Such an added benefit cannot be derived from the dossier because it contained no data evaluable for the assessment. SSRI is drug component of comparator therapy The Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) distinguished between ...

The fixed-ratio combination of the two drugs insulin degludec and liraglutide (trade name: Xultophy) has been approved since September 2014 for adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. It is given as an injection in addition to other blood-glucose lowering drugs when these alone or in combination with basal insulin are insufficient to lower blood glucose levels. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this fixed-ratio combination offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. Such ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Some depressed patients may be hoping for answers from their therapists, but a new study suggests questions may be the key. Researchers examined how cognitive therapy for depression achieves its positive effects. Their study is the first to show that depressed patients see substantial improvements in their depressive symptoms when their therapists use a technique called "Socratic questioning." These are a series of guided questions in which the therapist asks a patient to consider new perspectives on themselves and their place in the world. "People ...

Being delivered through a caesarean section influences at least one form of babies' ability to concentrate. It slows their spatial attention, which plays a role in how well they are able to prioritize and focus on a particular area or object that is of interest. These are the findings of Scott Adler and Audrey Wong-Kee-You of York University in Canada, published in Springer's journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. Very early birth factors such as birth weight and a mother's age impact the development of a child. However, very little is known about how the actual ...

The study specifically concentrated on chitosan extracted from chitin in the carapaces of insects and crustaceans. The biopolymer was first discovered in 1859 but only recently has it become possible to establish its production within desired parameters, when researchers from the Bioengineering Center of RAS designed narrow-dispersion chitosan. This gave an opportunity to modern scientists to customize the biological properties of certain types of the biopolymer. "We found that some forms of chitosan are toxic. They can disrupt the membranes of pathogenic microorganisms" ...

A Case Western Reserve University graduate student turned a research paper into a field test that quickly determines whether an Asian carp invading Lake Erie is sterile or can reproduce. If proven successful, the technique could save money and time in the effort to keep the carp out of the Great Lakes, where the fish could grow unchecked and devour food supplies and habitat critical to native species.. Grass carp, the species Ctenopharyngodon idella, have been introduced throughout the Midwest and South to clear ponds choked with weeds. Also called the white amur, fertile ...

Over time selective high schools have oriented themselves to address a context of increasingly competitive college admissions School work, college applications, extracurricular activities, and parental expectations all contribute to teenagers' stress Youth, schools, and experts identified substance use as a common strategy for coping with stress "School, homework, extracurricular activities, sleep, repeat--that's what it can be for some of these students," says Noelle Leonard, PhD, a senior research scientist at the New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN). ...

If the thought of a post workout ice bath is enough to make you shiver, new research from QUT and The University of Queensland (UQ) will warm your heart. The comprehensive study found cold water immersion after strength training hindered muscle adaptation - pouring cold water on the long-held theory that an ice bath helps speed up recovery. Dr Llion Roberts, from UQ's School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences, and Dr Jonathan Peake, from QUT's School of Biomedical Sciences, led the research, with colleagues from the Queensland Academy of Sport, Norwegian School ...

Drugs called ion channel blockers, which are commonly used to treat cardiac, neurological, and psychiatric disorders, might prove useful in cancer therapy, according to research findings in fruit flies and mice by UC San Francisco scientists that led to unconventional treatment of a case of metastatic brain cancer. Ion channels, proteins that form pores in cell membranes, play central roles in organs in which conduction of electrical signals is vital, such as the brain and heart, but they are found in cells throughout the body. Although about 20 percent of FDA-approved ...

Sydney, Australia -- Reintroducing Tasmanian devils to the mainland could improve biodiversity by limiting the spread of red foxes and feral cats in habitats where dingoes have been culled, a new study suggests. Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) once lived across the Australian continent, but went extinct on the mainland about 3,000 years ago - likely as a consequence of being hunted by dingoes. Today, extensive dingo culls to protect livestock have shifted the ecological balance, paving the way for invasive predators to wreak havoc with native mammals, worsening ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 11, 2015 - A statistical model--now an easy-to-use software tool--local police can use to identify a series of related crimes and nab a suspect was unveiled today by Michael D. Porter during a presentation at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle. Porter presented a talk titled "A Statistical Approach to Crime Linkage during a session focused on improving analysis of defense systems using statistical methods. He collaborated on the project with Brian J. Reich, associate professor of statistics at North Carolina State University. Crime ...

An international team of researchers found that the evolutionary loss of the "altruistic" worker caste in ants is not accompanied by a loss of genes. Social insects, such as ants, are typically characterized by two distinct female castes: workers and queens. Previous research has found that workers and queens each express different sets of genes leading scientists to speculate that there are worker specific or "altruistic" genes that promote sociality. Testing this "novel gene" hypothesis is difficult given that all ants are social. However, not all ants make workers. ...

Controlling feral pigs is the most cost-effective strategy to help save 148 endangered plant and animal species in the Lake Eyre Basin, and is just one of the significant findings of a three-year study led by QUT applied ecologist Associate Professor Jennifer Firn. Professor Firn, from QUT's Institute for Future Environments, worked with Dr Josie Carwardine and CSIRO's Conservation Decisions team and a research team from the University of Queensland including Dr Ramona Maggini, to identify and prioritise 23 strategies to protect endemic species in the world's largest ...

Until now only known for role in polyglutamine diseases, such as Huntington's. Scientists at VIB and KU Leuven have revealed that variable polyglutamine repeats in the DNA tune the function of the protein in which they reside. To date, these repeats were known only to cause severe neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's. These findings now show that polyglutamine repeats may be more than just harmful elements. The study was published in the leading molecular biology journal Molecular Cell and opens the door to further studies exploring new therapies for human ...

Widespread species are at just as high risk of being wiped out as rare ones after global mass extinction events, says new research by UK scientists. There have been five mass extinction events in the Earth's history, including climate change caused by volcanoes and an asteroid hit that wiped out the dinosaurs. In general, geographically widespread animals are less likely to become extinct than animals with smaller geographic ranges, offering insurance against regional environmental catastrophes. However, a study published in Nature Communications has found this insurance ...

A natural compound called limonene, which is found in oranges and lemons, could be indicative in early-stage diagnosis of liver disease, according to research published in the journal EBioMedicine by researchers in the Molecular Physics Group at the University of Birmingham. Limonene occurs in the greatest abundance in citrus fruits, but it is also found in a large variety of other fruit and vegetables. It can be ingested or inhaled as it is a common additive in commercial food and drinks, is used to give the fruit flavour to some sweets and is used in cosmetics, ...

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that educating pet owners about canine body language may not be the answer to preventing dog bites as originally thought. Experts have argued that dog bites are preventable if owners are properly educated on how to read canine behaviour and identify high risk situations. Until now, however, the effectiveness of this theory has not been evaluated in any great depth. At a time when data suggests dog bite incidents are increasing, the team at Liverpool interviewed victims of dog attacks to gain further understanding ...

In 1884, a delegation of international representatives convened in Washington, D.C. to recommend that Earth's prime meridian (the north-south line marking zero degrees longitude) should pass through the Airy Transit Circle at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. (A transit circle is an instrument for measuring star positions, and could be used for determining local time; this one was named for its designer, British Astronomer Royal George Airy.) But modern navigators, mapmakers, surveyors and London tourists now find that zero longitude runs 334 feet east of ...

Using an innovative method, EPFL scientists show that the brain is not as compact as we have thought all along. To study the fine structure of the brain, including its connections between neurons, the synapses, scientists must use electron microscopes. However, the tissue must first be fixed to prepare it for this high magnification imaging method. This process causes the brain to shrink; as a result, microscope images can be distorted, e.g. showing neurons to be much closer than they actually are. EPFL scientists have now solved the problem by using a technique that ...

1. Clinical scoring system suggests possibility of more precise colon cancer screening Free abstract: http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M14-1720 Editorial: http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M15-1677 URLs go live when embargo lifts A clinical scoring system for colon cancer risk could help physicians identify which average-risk patients could potentially skip a colonoscopy and instead be screened with a less-invasive method. The researchers suggest that this approach could increase the uptake and efficiency of colorectal cancer (CRC) ...