A larger brain brings better cognitive performance. And so it seems only logical that a larger brain would offer a higher survival potential. In the course of evolution, large brains should therefore win out over smaller ones. Previous tests of this hypothesis had relied on comparison studies looking at the intelligence and survival potential of species with large brains versus species with smaller brains. And species with larger brains do appear to have an advantage. But such studies are unable to show a causal relationship. Alexander Kotrschal, Sarah Zala, Séverine ...

Increasing public knowledge and understanding about energy issues is vital if improved energy-saving behaviours are to be encouraged among individuals and organisations, a study suggests. A survey conducted at Plymouth University indicated widespread misconceptions about energy which researchers said may be reducing the effectiveness of energy-saving behaviours. It also showed varying levels of motivation and engagement with energy issues, with respondents saying they were uncertain about their capacity to influence business and government on matters of environmental ...

An association between resting heart rate and diabetes suggests that heart rate measures could identify individuals with a higher future risk of diabetes, according to an international team of researchers. In a four-year study of 73,357 Chinese adults, researchers observed that faster heart rates were positively associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes. Researchers also found that faster heart rates were associated with impaired fasting glucose levels and a conversion from impaired fasting glucose levels to diabetes among the same population. "In this ...

In a special issue, The Anatomical Record ventures into the world of human mummified remains. In 26 articles, the anatomy of mummies is exquisitely detailed through cutting edge examination, while they are put in historical, archeological, and cultural context. Investigators even take on the thorny issue of ethics as it applies to human remains in general and to the specific case of mummy research. The eyes and tools of the 21st century meet the world of the past and allow one to think of mummies as more than just museum displays shrouded in mystery and fascination. ...

A new article publishing online today in the Quarterly Journal of Medicine has reported the first case showing an association between exposure to head injuries in rugby union players and an increased risk in neurodegenerative disease. Until now, the association between head injuries and neurodegenerative disease, specifically chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), has predominantly been made with boxers. However Dr Michael Farrell and colleagues have presented the first comprehensive case report of CTE in a former amateur rugby union player, who died six years after ...

Sophia Antipolis, 22 May 2015: Urgent diagnosis and treatment in acute heart failure has been emphasised for the first time in joint recommendations published today in European Heart Journal.1 The consensus paper is the result of a novel collaboration between the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), the European Society for Emergency Medicine and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in the USA. Professor Alexandre Mebazaa, lead author and HFA board member, said: "This is the first guidance to insist that acute heart failure ...

Blood pressure lowering drugs do not improve life expectancy among adults with diabetes and kidney disease, a new study of the global evidence published today in The Lancet reveals. However, the study, which brings together 157 studies involving more than 43,000 adults with diabetes, shows that angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin-receptor blocker (ARB) treatments, alone or in combination, are the most effective drug regimen for preventing end-stage kidney disease -- an important finding given that diabetes is now the leading cause of people ...

A study by researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London has shown that mood instability occurs in a wide range of mental disorders and is not exclusive to affective conditions such as depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety disorder. The research, published today in BMJ Open, also found that mood instability was associated with poorer clinical outcomes. Taken together, these findings suggest that clinicians should screen for mood instability across all common mental health disorders. Targeted interventions ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Smokers are four times more likely than non-smokers to become frequent visitors of emergency rooms. That is one of the findings uncovered by a preliminary study led by Jessica Castner, a University at Buffalo emergency room utilization researcher. The research - which sought to shed light on whether patients are replacing visits to their primary care physicians with trips to hospital ERs- also found that Americans with chronic diseases use both services equally and that, overall, medical care visits have soared in recent years. "There are a few super-users ...

Imagine someone hands you a smoothie and asks you to identify everything that went into it. You might be able to discern a hint of strawberry or the tang of yogurt. But overall it tastes like a blend of indiscernible ingredients. Now imagine that the smoothie is made of 20,000 ground-up cells from, say, the brain. You could run tests to determine what molecules are in the sample, which is what scientists do now. That would certainly give you useful information, but it wouldn't tell you which cells those molecules originally came from. It would provide only an average ...

Many people who live in sub-Saharan Africa develop a natural immunity to malaria, through repeated exposure to Plasmodium parasites. Even so, the disease kills close to half a million children per year, according to the World Health Organization. What factors can interfere with the development of immunity? Infectious disease researchers at Emory are calling attention to a trouble-maker whose effects may be underappreciated: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Their experiments with mice show that co-infection with a virus closely related to EBV can make a survivable malaria parasite ...

Normal skin contains an unexpectedly high number of cancer-associated mutations, according to a study published in Science. The findings illuminate the first steps cells take towards becoming a cancer and demonstrate the value of analysing normal tissue to learn more about the origins of the disease. The study revealed that each cell in normal facial skin carries many thousands of mutations, mainly caused by exposure to sunlight. In fact, around 25 per cent of skin cells in samples from people without cancer were found to carry at least one cancer-associated mutation. ...

Tropical rainforests have long been considered the Earth's lungs, sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thereby slowing down the increasing greenhouse effect and associated human-made climate change. Scientists in a global research project now show that the vast extensions of semi-arid landscapes occupying the transition zone between rainforest and desert dominate the ongoing increase in carbon sequestration by ecosystems globally, as well as large fluctuations between wet and dry years. This is a major rearrangement of planetary functions. ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Researchers at UC Davis have conducted a comprehensive study to determine whether pediatric telemedicine consultations with rural emergency departments save money compared to telephone consults. The answer is a resounding yes. While telemedicine systems are expensive to install and maintain, they more than pay their way, saving an average $4,662 per use. The study was published in the journal Medical Decision Making. "Our previous work showed that telemedicine was good for kids, families and providers, but we didn't really address the cost issue," ...

Lawrence Livermore researchers have determined that a tunnel bomb explosion by Syrian rebels was less than 60 tons as claimed by sources. Using seismic stations in Turkey, Livermore scientists Michael Pasyanos and Sean Ford created a method to determine source characteristics of near earth surface explosions. They found the above-ground tunnel bomb blast under the Wadi al-Deif Army Base near Aleppo last spring was likely not as large as originally estimated and was closer to 40 tons. Seismology has long been used to determine the source characteristics of underground ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, May 21, 2015 - A new study published by the team of Naguib Mechawar, Ph.D., a researcher at the Douglas Institute (CIUSSS de l'Ouest-de-l'île-de-Montréal) and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, suggests that the integration of new neurons in the adult brain is a phenomenon more generally compromised in the brains of depressed patients. This new work confirms that neurogenesis in the human olfactory bulb is a marginal phenomenon in adults. These findings shed light ...

Alexandria, VA - In the years following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, forest fires billowed plumes of contaminated smoke, carrying radioactive particles throughout Europe on the wind. Now, researchers fear that a shift to a hotter, drier climate in Eastern Europe could increase the frequency of these fires. Researchers from the University of South Carolina in Columbia used satellite imagery of fires in the 2000s and field measurements of radioisotope levels to model changes in the distribution of radiation over the region. The researchers found that fires likely ...

Researchers have developed a model to assess how dams affect the viability of sea-run fish species that need to pass dams as they use both fresh and marine waters during their lifetimes. NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) have partnered on this project to test how varying passage efficiency at dams related to survival rates for these species. Using a model of endangered Atlantic salmon in Maine's Penobscot River as a case study, NOAA researchers found that abundance, distribution and number of fish ...

Hamilton, ON (May 21, 2015) - Scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make adult sensory neurons from human patients simply by having them roll up their sleeve and providing a blood sample. Specifically, stem cell scientists at McMaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and itch perception. This means that how a person's nervous system cells react and respond to ...

One of the reasons pluripotent stem cells are so popular in medical research is that they can be differentiated into any cell type. However, typical differentiation protocols lead to a heterogeneous population from which the desired type must be purified. Normally, antibodies that react to surface receptors unique to the desired cell are used for this purpose. However, in many cases the purification levels remain poor and the cells can be damaged. New RNA technology produced at CiRA may avoid these problems. Professor Hirohide Saito at the Dept. of Reprogramming Science ...

Receptors carrying built-in decoys are the latest discovery in the evolutionary battle between plants and pathogens. The decoy domains within the receptor detect pathogens and raise the cell's alarm when there is an infection. Plants display component parts of their immune system on receptors to trick pathogens into binding with them, which then triggers defence mechanisms. The discovery comes from Professor Jonathan Jones' group at The Sainsbury Laboratory, published in the high-impact journal Cell with a companion paper on a similar discovery from the Deslandes group ...

Almost 90 per cent of men with advanced prostate cancer carry genetic mutations in their tumours that could be targeted by either existing or new cancer drugs, a landmark new study reveals. Scientists in the UK and the US have created a comprehensive map of the genetic mutations within lethal prostate cancers that have spread around the body, in a paper being hailed as the disease's 'Rosetta Stone'. Researchers say that doctors could now start testing for these 'clinically actionable' mutations and give patients with advanced prostate cancer existing drugs or drug combinations ...

May 21, 2015 - A University of Wyoming faculty member led a research team that discovered a certain type of soil bacteria can use their social behavior of outer membrane exchange (OME) to repair damaged cells and improve the fitness of the bacteria population as a whole. Daniel Wall, a UW associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, and others were able to show that damaged sustained by the outer membrane (OM) of a myxobacteria cell population was repaired by a healthy population using the process of OME. The research revealed that these social organisms ...

When Dolphin was a typhoon on May 16, NASA's CloudSat satellite completed a stunning eye overpass of Typhoon Dolphin in the West Pacific at 0412 UTC (12:12 a.m. EDT). By May 22, Dolphin's remnants were moving through the Northern Pacific. NASA's CloudSat satellite sends pulses of microwave energy through the clouds, and some of the energy in the pulses is reflected back to the spacecraft. The time delay between when the pulse is sent and when the reflected energy is received back at the spacecraft is mapped into a distance of the cloud from the surface of the Earth, and ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Last year, researchers at the University of Missouri published a study on genetic diversity in American black bears in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma and determined that conservation management is needed to maintain healthy populations in the region. Now, those scientists have expanded the study to include black bears throughout North America. They discovered that black bears in Alaska are more closely related to bears in the eastern regions of the U.S. and Canada than those located in western regions. Details from the study revealed ancient movement patterns ...