Archaeologists working in Guatemala have unearthed new information about the Maya civilization's transition from a mobile, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary way of life. Led by University of Arizona archaeologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, the team's excavations of the ancient Maya lowlands site of Ceibal suggest that as the society transitioned from a heavy reliance on foraging to farming, mobile communities and settled groups co-existed and may have come together to collaborate on construction projects and participate in public ceremonies. The findings, ...

CLEMSON, S.C. -- Researchers have long believed that supercomputers give universities a competitive edge in scientific research, but now they have some hard data showing it's true. A Clemson University team found that universities with locally available supercomputers were more efficient in producing research in critical fields than universities that lacked supercomputers. A supercomputer that can do 551 trillion calculations per second is housed at Clemson's Information Technology Center. A supercomputer that can do 551 trillion calculations per second is housed at ...

DALLAS, March 23, 2015 -- Kids exposed to their parents' smoking may have a higher risk of developing heart disease in adulthood than those whose parents didn't smoke, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. The study's results add to the growing evidence that exposure to smoking from parents has a lasting effect on children's cardiovascular health in adulthood. Researchers tracked participants in the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, which included childhood exposure to parental smoking in 1980 and 1983. They collected carotid ...

A blood test that measures the number of cells shed from prostate tumours into the bloodstream can act as an early warning sign that treatment is not working, a major new study shows. Researchers showed that measuring the numbers of circulating tumour cells in the blood predicted which men were benefitting least from a prostate cancer drug after as little as 12 weeks of treatment. They hope their work will allow doctors to switch patients to alternative treatments earlier than is currently possible, if these results are confirmed by further studies. The research could ...

Insulin resistance is a risk factor for developing both type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Almost one third of the U.S. population has some degree of insulin resistance, though it is undiagnosed in many of these individuals. Obesity is associated with reduced insulin sensitivity and the development of insulin resistance. However, recent large-scale genetic studies have indicated that insulin resistance is heritable. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation identifies a gene that is strongly associated with the presence of many features of insulin resistance. ...

Gliobststoma (GBM) is a highly aggressive brain tumor that is resistant to many conventional cancer therapies. The kinase mTOR induces pathways that are aberrantly activated in GBM. However, mTOR inhibitors have not shown much promise for treating GBM. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation indicates that mTOR inhibitor resistance in GBM is likely the result of compensatory glutamine metabolism. Kazuhiro Tanaka and colleagues at Kobe University determined that glutaminase and glutamine levels increase in GBM cells and xenografts in response to mTOR inhibition. ...

TORONTO, March 23, 2015 -- Across all income levels, Canadian moms in better socioeconomic standing have better health outcomes than moms in lower socioeconomic brackets. The same relationship between socioeconomic position and health outcomes holds true for these moms' newborn babies, according to a new study. A team of researchers placed 68,705 Canadian new moms and their babies along a socioeconomic spectrum by using factors about the moms such as education, whether she was living in poverty and the income of the neighbourhood she lives in. The researchers compared ...

(PHILADELPHIA) - Open the medicine cabinet of a senior and you're likely to find scores of pill bottles. Physicians are often unaware of all the medications a patient is taking, which can result in unnecessary additional prescriptions, non-prescription medications and potential drug-drug interactions that cause unexpected adverse effects. When a cancer diagnosis is thrown into the mix, the drug-drug interactions can become even more complex. A new study evaluates the currently available screening tools for determining if and when seniors with cancer are taking too many ...

In the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis (CF), the most severe symptoms are recurring episodes of lung inflammation and bacterial infection (known as "exacerbations") that happen from one to three times a year and cause ever-increasing amounts of lung damage through the course of a CF patient's life. While it is well understood that CF lung problems are ultimately due to bacterial infections encouraged by a CF patient's abnormally thick mucus, medical science has been unable to define specific causes that trigger the periodic flare-ups. In a recent article in the Journal ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Population growth could cause global demand for water to outpace supply by mid-century if current levels of consumption continue. But it wouldn't be the first time this has happened, a Duke University study finds. Using a delayed-feedback mathematical model that analyzes historic data to help project future trends, the researchers identified a regularly recurring pattern of global water use in recent centuries. Periods of increased demand for water -- often coinciding with population growth or other major demographic and social changes -- were followed ...

The World Health Organization and UNICEF have commissioned the first comprehensive, multi-country analysis on water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) services in health care facilities, calling for global action to push toward 100 percent coverage of these services through new policies, collaboration, monitoring and training. The report, released March 17, evaluated available WaSH data from 66,101 health-care facilities in 54 low- and middle-income countries and found that 38 percent of those facilities lack an improved water source, 19 percent lack improved sanitation, ...

Does taking a drug and then getting better mean that the drug made you better? Did that tax cut really stimulate the economy or did it recover on its own? The problem of answering such questions - of inferring causal relationships from correlations - reaches across the sciences, and beyond. Normally, correlation by itself does not imply causation. But new research from Perimeter and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) has found that in the case of quantum variables, it sometimes can. The new work, just published in Nature Physics, is the result of a collaboration ...

Numerous studies have documented racial differences in deaths from cancer among non-Hispanic whites and African Americans, but little has been known about survival outcomes for Asian Americans who have been diagnosed with cancer, until now. A new study from Quoc-Dien Trinh, MD and colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) examined cancer patients in eight different Asian American subgroups and found their cancer-specific mortality (CSM) was substantially lower than that of non-Hispanic white patients. The findings are published in the March 20 issue of the Journal ...

Integer overflows are one of the most common bugs in computer programs -- not only causing programs to crash but, even worse, potentially offering points of attack for malicious hackers. Computer scientists have devised a battery of techniques to identify them, but all have drawbacks. This month, at the Association for Computing Machinery's International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present a new algorithm for identifying ...

MADISON, Wis. -- By figuring out how to precisely order the molecules that make up what scientists call organic glass -- the materials at the heart of some electronic displays, light-emitting diodes and solar cells -- a team of chemists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has set the stage for more efficient and sturdier portable electronic devices and possibly a new generation of solar cells based on organic materials. Writing this week (March 23, 2015) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team led by UW-Madison chemistry Professor Mark ...

Jupiter may have swept through the early solar system like a wrecking ball, destroying a first generation of inner planets before retreating into its current orbit, according to a new study published March 23 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings help explain why our solar system is so different from the hundreds of other planetary systems that astronomers have discovered in recent years. "Now that we can look at our own solar system in the context of all these other planetary systems, one of the most interesting features is the absence of planets ...

'Attractive' male birds that mate with many females aren't passing on the best genes to their offspring, according to new UCL research which found promiscuity in male birds leads to small, genetic faults in the species' genome. Although minor, these genetic flaws may limit how well future generations can adapt to changing environments. The study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and funded by the European Research Council, shows for the first time the power of sexual selection - where some individuals are better at securing mates ...

Leprosy is a chronic infection of the skin, peripheral nerves, eyes and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract, affecting over a quarter million people worldwide. Its symptoms can be gruesome and devastating, as the bacteria reduce sensitivity in the body, resulting in skin lesions, nerve damage and disabilities. Until recently, leprosy was attributed to a single bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae; we now suspect that its close relative, Mycobacterium lepromatosis, might cause a rare but severe form of leprosy. Scientists at École Polytechnique Fe?de?rale de Lausanne (EPFL) ...

Western U.S. forests killed by the mountain pine beetle epidemic are no more at risk to burn than healthy Western forests, according to new findings by the University of Colorado Boulder that fly in the face of both public perception and policy. The CU-Boulder study authors looked at the three peak years of Western wildfires since 2002, using maps produced by federal land management agencies. The researchers superimposed maps of areas burned in the West in 2006, 2007 and 2012 on maps of areas identified as infested by mountain pine beetles. The area of forests burned ...

A molecule that prevents Type 1 diabetes in mice has provoked an immune response in human cells, according to researchers at National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado. The findings, published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that a mutated insulin fragment could be used to prevent Type 1 diabetes in humans. "The incidence of Type 1 diabetes is increasing dramatically," said John Kappler, PhD, professor of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health. "Our findings provide an important proof of concept in humans for a ...

Non-native plants are commonly listed as invasive species, presuming that they cause harm to the environment at both global and regional scales. New research by scientists at the University of York has shown that non-native plants - commonly described as having negative ecological or human impacts - are not a threat to floral diversity in Britain. Using repeat census field survey data for British plants from 1990 and 2007, Professor Chris Thomas and Dr Georgina Palmer from the Department of Biology at York analysed changes in the cover and diversity of native and non-native ...

A 60-year-old maths problem first put forward by Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi has been solved by researchers at the University of East Anglia, the Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy) and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (US). In 1955, a team of physicists, computer scientists and mathematicians led by Fermi used a computer for the first time to try and solve a numerical experiment. The outcome of the experiment wasn't what they were expecting, and the complexity of the problem underpinned the then new field of non-linear physics and paved the way for six ...

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who develop snake-like robots have picked up a few tricks from real sidewinder rattlesnakes on how to make rapid and even sharp turns with their undulating, modular device. Working with colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Zoo Atlanta, they have analyzed the motions of sidewinders and tested their observations on CMU's snake robots. They showed how the complex motion of a sidewinder can be described in terms of two wave motions - vertical and horizontal body waves - and how changing the phase and amplitude of ...

Troy, N.Y. - A team of researchers, including Rensselaer professor Morgan Schaller, has used mathematical modeling to show that continental erosion over the last 40 million years has contributed to the success of diatoms, a group of tiny marine algae that plays a key role in the global carbon cycle. The research was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Diatoms consume 70 million tons of carbon from the world's oceans daily, producing organic matter, a portion of which sinks and is buried in deep ocean sediments. Diatoms account for over ...

Archaeologists working in Guatemala have unearthed new information about the Maya civilization's transition from a mobile, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary way of life. Led by University of Arizona archaeologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, the team's excavations of the ancient Maya lowlands site of Ceibal suggest that as the society transitioned from a heavy reliance on foraging to farming, mobile communities and settled groups co-existed and may have come together to collaborate on construction projects and participate in public ceremonies. The findings, ...