MOOCs -- massive open online courses -- grant huge numbers of people access to world-class educational resources, but they also suffer high rates of attrition. To some degree, that's inevitable: Many people who enroll in MOOCs may have no interest in doing homework, but simply plan to listen to video lectures in their spare time. Others, however, may begin courses with the firm intention of completing them but get derailed by life's other demands. Identifying those people before they drop out and providing them with extra help could make their MOOC participation much ...

The production of petroleum from Canada's oil sands is on the rise with much of it destined for U.S. refineries. As the U.S. takes stock of its greenhouse gas emissions, scientists report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology that the current oil sands production of fuels from "well-to-wheels" releases about 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than making gasoline and diesel from conventional crudes. In 2013, the oil industry was producing nearly 2 million barrels per day from Canadian oil sands. By 2030, that number is expected to rise ...

JILA researchers have designed a microscope instrument so stable that it can accurately measure the 3D movement of individual molecules over many hours--hundreds of times longer than the current limit measured in seconds.* The technology was designed to track the machinery of biological cells, down to the tiniest bits of DNA, a single "base pair" of nucleotides among the 3 billion of these chemical units in human genes. But the instrument could be useful well beyond biology, biochemistry and biophysics, perhaps in manufacturing. JILA is a partnership of the National ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., June 24, 2015 - Researchers at Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children's Hospital have completed the first clinical trial of a new treatment for children suffering from neuroblastoma. In a clinical trial led by Giselle Sholler, MD, pediatric oncologist at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital and the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC), DFMO, an investigational agent, showed minimal side effects with long-term survival of three patients. This is the first clinical study of an oral dosing form of DFMO in any pediatric population. ...

Scientists have at their disposal a way to explore the possible prevention of genetic diseases before birth. But should they? Currently, the most promising path forward involves editing the genes of human embryos, a procedure rife with controversy. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, parses the explosive issue. Britt E. Erickson, a senior editor at C&EN, reports that at least one team of scientists has already published a study on altering disease-related genes of human embryos. The experiment was ...

In the most severe form of male infertility, men do not make any measurable levels of sperm. This condition, called azoospermia, affects approximately 1 percent of the male population and is responsible for about a sixth of cases of male infertility. Oftentimes men with azoospermia don't know the underlying cause of their condition. But new research led by University of Pennsylvania scientists suggests that mutations in an X chromosome gene called TEX11 are responsible for a significant number of cases of infertility -- an estimated 1 percent of cases of non-obstructive ...

Complex magnetic structures are at the heart of promising new materials for devices in "spintronics", a field of research aiming at more energy efficient data storage and processing. A prominent example is the so-called spin valve, where the magnitude of the electrical current passing through a device is very sensitively dependent on its magnetic configuration. These configurations can be readily controlled by a magnetic field in artificial layer systems, resulting in the giant magnetoresistance effect (GMR), a discovery rewarded with the 2007 Noble price in physics to ...

College Park, Md. -- Extreme heat and precipitation events, which are expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change, are associated with increased risk of Salmonella infections, according to a study led by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The study is the first to provide empirical evidence that Salmonella infections related to extreme weather events are disproportionately impacting those living in the coastal areas of Maryland. "We found that extremely hot days and periods of extreme rainfall are contributing ...

When ecologists gather in Baltimore, Md., this August for the 100th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, special attention will fall on the local Chesapeake Bay watershed, with field trips and research presentations exploring its rich wildlife and social history. At symposia, poster exhibits, and site visits, ecologists will have opportunities to discuss the latest research and experiences working with stakeholders in the region to improve the health of the nation's largest estuary. Chesapeake Bay bears a heavy pollution burden from the growing metropolitan ...

PHILADELPHIA - Despite findings of previous studies and published guidelines, nearly two-thirds of patients with T4a larynx ("voice box") cancer are not receiving a total laryngectomy (surgical removal of the larynx), the recommended form of treatment, and as a result, have significantly worse survival rates versus those treated with a total laryngectomy, a new study published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics by experts at Penn Medicine found. Patients who underwent a laryngectomy, on average, lived nearly two years longer than those ...

From today (1 July 2015) The BMJ requires sharing of individual patient data for all clinical trials. This means that trials will be considered for publication only if the authors agree to make the relevant anonymised patient level data available on reasonable request. The BMJ is the first general medical journal to require data sharing for all trials, extending its initial policy on sharing data for trials of drugs or devices, which took effect in January 2013, says Elizabeth Loder, The BMJ's acting head of research. In an editorial to mark the launch of the new ...

The stress hormone cortisol strengthens memories of scary experiences. However, it is effective not only while the memory is being formed for the first time, but also later when people look back at an experience while the memory reconsolidates. This has been published by cognition psychologists from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in the journal "Neuropsychopharmacology". They suggest that the results might explain the persistence of strong emotional memories occurring in anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Memories of emotional experiences usually fade ...

Thin fibers play a tremendous role in many areas of our daily life, from the use of glass fibers in ultra-fast data transmission to textile fibers in our clothing. In order to enable special properties of these fibers, they are often coated with a thin liquid layer that is supposed to be stable and homogeneous. However, for the production of drinkable water, the exact opposite features are desired: there, one aims at harvesting water, which is transported along the fiber as a liquid film or as liquid droplets, from fog. Now, scientists have been able to reveal, by means ...

This news release is available in German. Observing time at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Paranal Mountain is a very precious commodity - and yet the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile spent an entire night with a high-resolution infrared camera pointed at a single object in the night sky. The data collected by the Naco optics instrument enabled an international team headed by ETH Zurich's Sascha Quanz to confirm its earlier hypothesis: that a young gas planet - presumed not unlike Jupiter in our own solar system - is orbiting the star designated HD 100546. At ...

This news release is available in German. A new bio-inspired zeolite catalyst, developed by an international team with researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM), Eindhoven University of Technology and University of Amsterdam, might pave the way to small scale 'gas-to-liquid' technologies converting natural gas to fuels and starting materials for the chemical industry. Investigating the mechanism of the selective oxidation of methane to methanol they identified a trinuclear copper-oxo-cluster as the active center inside the zeolite micropores. In ...

Being busy with acts of kindness can help people who suffer from social anxiety to mingle more easily. This is the opinion of Canadian researchers Jennifer Trew of Simon Fraser University and Lynn Alden of the University of British Columbia, in a study published in Springer's journal Motivation and Emotion. Sufferers from social anxiety are more than just a little shy. Dealings with others might make them feel so threatened or anxious that they often actively avoid socializing. Although this protects them from angst and possible embarrassment, they lose out on the support ...

More than one in ten complaints of sexual harassment at work are reported by men, a QUT study has found. According to the research, conducted by Professor Paula McDonald from the QUT Business School and Professor Sara Charlesworth from RMIT, women were accused of sexually harassing men in 5 per cent of cases and men accused other men in 11 per cent of cases. Workplace sexual harassment at the margins, published in the Work, Employment and Society journal, analysed sexual harassment complaints lodged with Australian equal opportunity commissions in the six months from ...

BARCELONA-LUGANO, 1 July 2015 - The SENRI trial has opened the window to evaluate NK1 antagonists for emesis prevention in patients taking oxaliplatin chemotherapy, antiemetics expert and ESMO spokesperson Fausto Roila said, putting into perspective the results of a Japanese study presented today at the ESMO 17th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2015 in Barcelona. Roila's comments came as the SENRI Trial results were presented including a new gender analysis (1),(2). He said: "Until now we said that NK1 antagonists have no role in the prevention of emesis in ...

BARCELONA-LUGANO, 1 July 2015 - Patients with the lowest body mass index (BMI) had the shortest overall survival in an analysis of bevacizumab studies in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) presented for the first time today at the ESMO 17th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2015 in Barcelona.(1) "There is good evidence that obesity increases the risk of getting colorectal cancer and that it increases the risk of colorectal cancer recurrence after curative therapy," said lead study author Dr Yousuf Zafar, associate professor of medicine at Duke Cancer Institute ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Although being overweight with a high body-mass index (BMI) has long been associated with a higher risk for colorectal cancer, thinner patients might not fare as well after treatment for advanced cancer, according to a new study from Duke Medicine. The study, which was presented today at the European Society for Medical Oncology World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer, found that patients with a low to healthy body weight lived an average of two-and-a-half months less than overweight and obese patients. The results surprised researchers, who expected ...

Lexington, Mass., July 1, 2015 - Substituting deuterium for certain hydrogen atoms in molecules has been shown to enhance the metabolic properties of a number of drugs and provides a promising approach to the discovery and development of innovative drug products. The deuterium chemistry approach has the potential to reduce the high failure rates of conventional drug development by building on the known pharmacology of existing compounds and leveraging their desirable therapeutic properties. Selective deuterium substitution as a means of ameliorating unwanted clinically ...

Working in cell cultures and mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that an experimental drug called fostamatinib combined with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel may overcome ovarian cancer cells' resistance to paclitaxel. Scientists elsewhere are already testing fostamatinib in people with lymphoma and idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura, an autoimmune disorder. Based on results of the current study described in a report online June 18 in the journal Cancer Cell, Johns Hopkins researchers say they are planning a phase I clinical trial to test the paclitaxel-fostamatinib ...

A team from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, along with collaborators from several Japanese institutions, have successfully produced pairs of spin-entangled electrons and demonstrated, for the first time, that these electrons remain entangled even when they are separated from one another on a chip. This research could contribute to the creation of futuristic quantum networks operating using quantum teleportation, which could allow information contained in quantum bits--qubits--to be shared between many elements on chip, a key requirement to scale up the power ...

St John's Wort can produce the same adverse reactions as antidepressants, and serious side effects can occur when the two are taken together, according to new University of Adelaide research. In a study published this month in the journal, Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology, researchers compared the pattern of spontaneous reported adverse drug reactions to St John's Wort, a herbal treatment for depression, and fluoxetine, a commonly prescribed antidepressant. They found the adverse reactions were the same for people who took St John's Wort as it was ...

A research in the North Caucasus, conducted by a group of Russian scientists over three years, has revealed an intermediate distribution of Caucasian populations of non-biting midges between Europe and Siberia. Their observations also proved some interesting morphological distinctions between the studied populations and the previously researched ones from Europe and Siberia. Their results have been published in the open-access journal Comparative Cytogenetics. The study on karyotypical and morphological peculiarities of Ch. bernensis is a part of the investigation of ...