A new species of short-necked marine reptile from the Triassic period has been discovered in China, according to a study published December 17, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Xiao-hong Chen from Wuhan Centre of China Geological Survey and colleagues. Hupehsuchia is a group of mysterious Triassic marine reptiles which have, so far, only been found in two counties in Hubei Province, China. The group is known by its modestly long neck, with nine to ten cervical vertebrae, but the authors of this study recently discovered a new species of Hupehsuchia that may ...

A network of nine reference sites off the Australian coast is providing the latest physical, chemical, and biological information to help scientists better understand Australia's coastal seas, according to a study published December 17, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Tim Lynch from CSIRO, Australia and colleagues. Sustained oceanic observations allow scientists to track changes in oceanography and ecosystems. To address this, the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) implemented a network of nine National Reference Stations (NRS). The network ...

Like human patients, mice with a form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy undergo progressive muscle degeneration and accumulate connective tissue as they age. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that the fault may lie at least partly in the stem cells that surround the muscle fibers. They've found that during the course of the disease, the stem cells become less able to make new muscle and instead begin to express genes involved in the formation of connective tissue. Excess connective tissue -- a condition called fibrosis -- can accumulate ...

Bird migration is an impressive phenomenon, but why birds often travel huge distances to and from their breeding grounds in the far North is still very unclear. Suggestions include that the birds profit from longer daylight hours, or that there are fewer predators. Researchers from the University of Groningen and the NIOO-KNAW Vogeltrekstation, the Dutch centre for bird migration and demographics, have discovered a new explanation. They investigated barnacle geese breeding on Spitsbergen and compared them with birds of the same species that did not migrate but stayed ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The best way to protect wild spinner dolphins in Hawaii while also maintaining the local tourism industry that depends on them is through a combination of federal regulations and community-based conservation measures, finds a new study from Duke University. Each year, hundreds of thousands of tourists to Hawaii pay to have up-close encounters with the animals, swimming with them in shallow bays the dolphins use as safe havens for daytime rest. But as the number of tours increases, so do the pressures they place on the resting dolphins. The Duke study ...

A new catalytic process is able to convert what was once considered biomass waste into lucrative chemical products that can be used in fragrances, flavorings or to create high-octane fuel for racecars and jets. A team of researchers from Purdue University's Center for Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels, or C3Bio, has developed a process that uses a chemical catalyst and heat to spur reactions that convert lignin into valuable chemical commodities. Lignin is a tough and highly complex molecule that gives the plant cell wall its rigid structure. Mahdi ...

A close look at the night sky reveals that stars don't like to be alone; instead, they congregate in clusters, in some cases containing as many as several million stars. Until recently, the oldest of these populous star clusters were considered well understood, with the stars in a single group having formed at different times, over periods of more than 300 million years. Yet new research published online today in the journal Nature suggests that the star formation in these clusters is more complex. Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of researchers at the ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 17, 2014--Scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have used advanced microscopy to carve out nanoscale designs on the surface of a new class of ionic polymer materials for the first time. The study provides new evidence that atomic force microscopy, or AFM, could be used to precisely fabricate materials needed for increasingly smaller devices. Polymerized ionic liquids have potential applications in technologies such as lithium batteries, transistors and solar cells because of their high ionic conductivity and unique ...

UCLA researchers have developed a lens-free microscope that can be used to detect the presence of cancer or other cell-level abnormalities with the same accuracy as larger and more expensive optical microscopes. The invention could lead to less expensive and more portable technology for performing common examinations of tissue, blood and other biomedical specimens. It may prove especially useful in remote areas and in cases where large numbers of samples need to be examined quickly. The microscope is the latest in a series of computational imaging and diagnostic devices ...

VIDEO: It's official -- our holiday lights are so bright we can see them from space. Thanks to the VIIRS instrument on the Suomi NPP satellite, a joint mission between NASA... Click here for more information. Even from space, holidays shine bright. With a new look at daily data from the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite, a NASA scientist and colleagues have identified how patterns in nighttime light intensity change during major holiday ...

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 11:50 p.m. EST on Dec. 16, 2014. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, ...

In the first real-world trial of the impact of patient-controlled access to electronic medical records, almost half of the patients who participated withheld clinically sensitive information in their medical records from some or all of their health care providers. This is the key finding of a new study by researchers from Clemson University, the Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine and Eskenazi Health published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Kelly Caine, assistant professor in Clemson's School of Computing, and colleagues at Clemson ...

A team of scientists, led by the University of Toronto's Barbara Sherwood Lollar, has mapped the location of hydrogen-rich waters found trapped kilometres beneath Earth's surface in rock fractures in Canada, South Africa and Scandinavia. Common in Precambrian Shield rocks - the oldest rocks on Earth - the ancient waters have a chemistry similar to that found near deep sea vents, suggesting these waters can support microbes living in isolation from the surface. The study, to be published in Nature on December 18, includes data from 19 different mine sites that were ...

Chemical modifications to DNA's packaging -- known as epigenetic changes -- can activate or repress genes involved in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and early brain development, according to a new study to be published in the journal Nature on Dec. 18. Biochemists from NYU Langone Medical Center found that these epigenetic changes in mice and laboratory experiments remove the blocking mechanism of a protein complex long known for gene suppression, and transitions the complex to a gene activating role instead. Researchers say their findings represent the first link ...

LA JOLLA, CA--December 17, 2014--Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have invented a powerful method for joining complex organic molecules that is extraordinarily robust and can be used to make pharmaceuticals, fabrics, dyes, plastics and other materials previously inaccessible to chemists. "We are rewriting the rules for how one thinks about the reactivity of basic organic building blocks, and in doing so we're allowing chemists to venture where none has gone before," said Phil S. Baran, the Darlene Shiley Chair in Chemistry at TSRI, whose laboratory reports ...

Johns Hopkins and University of Alberta researchers have identified a single protein as the root of painful and dangerous allergic reactions to a range of medications and other substances. If a new drug can be found that targets the problematic protein, they say, it could help smooth treatment for patients with conditions ranging from prostate cancer to diabetes to HIV. Their results appear in the journal Nature on Dec. 17. Previous studies traced reactions such as pain, itching and rashes at the injection sites of many drugs to part of the immune system known as mast ...

Researchers found 53 existing drugs that may keep the Ebola virus from entering human cells, a key step in the process of infection, according to a study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and published today in the Nature Press journal Emerging Microbes and Infections. Among the better known drug types shown to hinder infection by an Ebola virus model: several cancer drugs, antihistamines and antibiotics. Among the most effective at keeping the virus out of human cells were microtubule inhibitors ...

Researchers from Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City have identified a new "sliding scale" model used to rule out potentially deadly blood clots in the lungs, known as pulmonary embolisms, that is more accurate than current diagnostic methods. The new model, which factors in a patient's age, more accurately identifies a patient's risk of the often-deadly blood clots and can more easily rule out the need for additional, more invasive tests, helping to reduce unnecessary costs. The research is published in the medical journal, CHEST. Pulmonary embolism is ...

The engineered spring flood that brought water to previously dry reaches of the lower Colorado River and its delta resulted in greener vegetation, the germination of new vegetation along the river and a temporary rise in the water table, according to new results from the binational team of scientists studying the water's effects. The experimental pulse flow of water was the result of a U.S.-Mexico agreement called Minute 319. "The pulse flow worked," said Karl W. Flessa, co-chief scientist for the Minute 319 Science Team. "A small amount of water can have a big effect ...

New research helps explain a paradoxical effect of certain antidepressants--that they may actually worsen symptoms before helping patients feel better. The findings, highlighted in a paper publishing online December 17 in the Cell Press journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, may help investigators fix the problem as well as create new classes of drugs to treat depression. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are the most widely prescribed class of antidepressant drugs, and they work by increasing levels of a brain chemical called serotonin. While this boost ...

In an article to be published in the January issue of BioScience, two philosophers tackle one of the most divisive arguments in modern biology: the value of the theory of "kin selection." Kin selection is the idea that because genes influence behavior, and because an animal that helps its relatives helps to spread genes likely identical to its own, animals will evolve to favor kin. Researchers have spent decades testing this explanation for apparent animal altruism, but in recent years, critics, notably Martin Nowak of Harvard University and the famous naturalist and ...

(PHILADELPHIA) - Researchers look to understand the causes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), in the hope of finding new ways to treat the disease. A new study published online today (December 17th) in the Cell Press journal Neuron shows that a common gene mutation in ALS generates a deadly protein that may cause the damage in the brain that leads to ALS. About 5 percent of ALS patients carry an altered version of a gene called C9orf72, which in ALS patients contains hundreds of repeat sequences that otherwise are not present in normal individuals. Since the gene's ...

When faced with making choices, but lack sufficient evidence to guarantee success, our brain uses elapsed time as a proxy for task difficulty to calculate how confident we should be, a team of neuroscientists has found. Their findings, which appear in the journal Neuron, help untangle the different factors that contribute to the decision-making process. "In our daily lives, we make many decisions," says Roozbeh Kiani, an assistant professor in NYU's Center for Neural Science and one of the study's authors. "Sometimes the evidence afforded us is strong, enabling us to ...

More than 90 percent of cancer-related deaths are caused by the spread of cancer cells from their primary tumor site to other areas of the body. A new study has identified how one important gene helps cancer cells break free from the primary tumor. A gene normally involved in the regulation of embryonic development can trigger the transition of cells into more mobile types that can spread without regard for the normal biological controls that restrict metastasis, the new study shows. Analysis of downstream signaling pathways of this gene, called SNAIL, could be used ...

PITTSBURGH--A stream runs through it. A much nicer, healthier stream. Pittsburgh's Frick Park is home to Nine Mile Run, a stream that had been known as "Stink Creek." From 2003 to 2006, the City of Pittsburgh and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers poured $7.7 million into restoring 2.2 miles of the stream and tributaries into waterways approximating what they were prior to urban development. The project remains one of the largest urban-stream restorations undertaken in the United States. What can this restoration teach us as we continue to deal with streams affected ...