Twenty-five years ago this month, the countries that compose the United Nations reached a landmark agreement that laid the foundation for much-needed strengthening of children's rights and protections in nearly every country around the world. Today, the Convention on the Rights of the Child remains the only formal global effort to improve children's rights and the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Only three U.N. member nations have not ratified the treaty: Somalia, South Sudan and the United States. "The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a ...

Ebola GP protein covers the virus' surface and is shed from infected cells during infection. A study published on November 20th in PLOS Pathogens reports that shed GP can trigger massive dysregulation of the immune response and affect the permeability of blood vessels Ebola virus has seven genes. One of them, called GP, codes for two related proteins: a shorter secreted one and a longer one that spans the viral wall and sticks out of its surface. During virus infection, some of the surface GP is cut off by a human enzyme and is subsequently shed from infected cells. High ...

Researchers from the Montreal Neurological Institute have used a model inspired by patterns of epidemic disease spreading to map how misfolded proteins propagate within the brain. Proteins which fail to configure correctly (misfolded proteins) are associated with aging and several human neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's. In research published in this week's PLOS Computational Biology, Yasser Iturria Medina and colleagues analyze over 700 individual Amyloid-beta proteins imaging datasets to conclude that the propagation of these misfolded proteins, associated ...

An international team of researchers has shown that it may be possible to improve the effectiveness of the seasonal flu vaccine by 'pre-empting' the evolution of the influenza virus. In a study published today in the journal Science, the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, describe how an immunological phenomenon they refer to as a 'back boost' suggests that it may be better to pre-emptively vaccinate against likely future strains than to use a strain already circulating in the human population. Influenza is a notoriously difficult virus against which to ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Yellow fever is a disease that can result in symptoms ranging from fever to severe liver damage. Found in South America and sub-Saharan Africa, each year the disease results in 200,000 new cases and kills 30,000 people. About 900 million people are at risk of contracting the disease. Now a research team led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside has determined that the yellow fever virus, a hemorrhagic fever virus, replicates primarily in the liver. Therefore, other organ failures that often follow in people with the ...

During the development of mammals, the growth and organization of digits are orchestrated by Hox genes, which are activated very early in precise regions of the embryo. These "architect genes" are themselves regulated by a large piece of adjacent DNA. A study led by Denis Duboule, professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, reveals that this same DNA regulatory sequence also controls the architect genes during the development of the external genitals. The results published in Science magazine, indicate ...

If you are an active senior who wants to stay younger, keep on running. A new study involving the University of Colorado Boulder and Humboldt State University shows that senior citizens who run several times a week for exercise expend about the same amount of energy walking as a typical 20-year-old. But older people who walk for exercise rather than jog expend about the same amount of energy walking as older, sedentary adults, and expend up to 22 percent more energy walking than the 20-something crowd. The study, led by Humboldt State Professor Justus Ortega, was published ...

Animal teeth, bones and plant remains have helped researchers from Cambridge, China and America to pinpoint a date for what could be the earliest sustained human habitation at high altitude. Archaeological discoveries from the 'roof of the world' on the Tibetan Plateau indicate that from 3,600 years ago, crop growing and the raising of livestock was taking place year-round at hitherto unprecedented altitudes. The findings, published today in Science, demonstrate that across 53 archaeological sites spanning 800 miles, there is evidence of sustained farming and human ...

China's second great wall, a vast seawall covering more than half of the country's mainland coastline, is a foundation for financial gain - and also a dyke holding a swelling rush of ecological woes. A group of international sustainability scholars, including Jianguo "Jack" Liu, director of Michigan State University's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, in a paper published today in Science magazine, outline the sweeping downsides of one of China's efforts to fuel its booming economy, downsides that extend beyond China. China's coastal regions are only ...

The Himalaya features some of the most impressive gorges on Earth that have been formed by rivers. The geologic history of the famous Tsangpo Gorge, in the eastern Himalaya, now needs to be rewritten. A team of German, Chinese, and American geoscientists have namely discovered a canyon, filled with more than 500 m of sediments beneath the bed of the present-day Yarlung Tsangpo River upstream from the gorge. Using drill cores, the scientists were able to reconstruct the former valley floor of this river, which allowed them to reconstruct the geological history of the Tsangpo ...

Doctors have long been mystified as to why HIV-1 rapidly sickens some individuals, while in others the virus has difficulties gaining a foothold. Now, a study of genetic variation in HIV-1 and in the cells it infects reported by University of Minnesota researchers in this week's issue of PLOS Genetics has uncovered a chink in HIV-1's armor that may, at least in part, explain the puzzling difference -- and potentially open the door to new treatments. HIV-1 harms people by invading immune system cells known as T lymphocytes, hijacking their molecular machinery to make more ...

A team of researchers from Caltech and the China Earthquake Administration has discovered an ancient, deep canyon buried along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in south Tibet, north of the eastern end of the Himalayas. The geologists say that the ancient canyon--thousands of feet deep in places--effectively rules out a popular model used to explain how the massive and picturesque gorges of the Himalayas became so steep, so fast. "I was extremely surprised when my colleagues, Jing Liu-Zeng and Dirk Scherler, showed me the evidence for this canyon in southern Tibet," says Jean-Philippe ...

Bangkok (Thailand)- A recent study from the Thai-Myanmar border highlights the severe and previously under-reported adverse impact of readily treatable tropical rickettsial illnesses, notably scrub typhus and murine typhus, on pregnancy outcomes, finding that more than one third of affected pregnancies resulted either in stillbirth or premature and/or low birth weight babies. Conducted by Prof Rose McGready and Assoc. Prof Daniel Henry Paris from the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) in Mae Sot, Thailand, and the Mahidol Oxford Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok, affiliated ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 20, 2014) - A landmark study published today in the journal Science by an international group of scientists, led by the laboratory of Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, professor & vice chair of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of Kentucky, reports that HIV/AIDS drugs that have been used for the last 30 years could be repurposed to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), as well as other inflammatory disorders, because of a previously undiscovered intrinsic and inflammatory activity those drugs possess. AMD is a progressive ...

Scientists developed a new method which allows to estimate the magnetic field of a distant exoplanet, i.e., a planet, which is located outside the Solar system and orbits a different star. Moreover, they managed to estimate the value of the magnetic moment of the planet HD 209458b.The group of scientists including one of the researchers of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia) published their article in the Science magazine. In the two decades which passed since the discovery of the first planet outside the Solar system, astronomers have made a great progress ...

MADISON, Wis. -- As real as that daydream may seem, its path through your brain runs opposite reality. Aiming to discern discrete neural circuits, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have tracked electrical activity in the brains of people who alternately imagined scenes or watched videos. "A really important problem in brain research is understanding how different parts of the brain are functionally connected. What areas are interacting? What is the direction of communication?" says Barry Van Veen, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering. ...

MADISON, Wis. - The influenza virus, like all viruses, is a hijacker. It quietly slips its way inside cells, steals the machinery inside to make more copies of itself, and then -- having multiplied -- bursts out of the cell to find others to infect. Most drugs currently used to treat influenza are designed to attack the virus, to render it incapacitated. But influenza viruses are sneaky, capable of mutating to avoid destruction by the drug. In a comprehensive new study published today in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Yoshihiro ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Nov. 20, 2014 -- A potential path to identify imperfections and improve the quality of nanomaterials for use in next-generation solar cells has emerged from a collaboration of University of Oregon and industry researchers. To increase light-harvesting efficiency of solar cells beyond silicon's limit of about 29 percent, manufacturers have used layers of chemically synthesized semiconductor nanocrystals. Properties of quantum dots that are produced are manipulated by controlling the synthetic process and surface chemical structure. This process, however, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The majority of preschoolers may not be getting the amount of sleep they need each night, placing them at higher risk of being overweight or obese within a year, according to a new study. Published online by the journal Sleep Medicine, the study investigated links between mothers' employment status and their children's weight over time, exploring the impact of potential mediators, such as children's sleep and dietary habits, the amount of time they spent watching TV and family mealtime routines. "The only factor of the four that we investigated that ...

Washington, DC--Levels of testosterone and other naturally-occurring reproductive hormones play a limited role in driving menopausal women's interest in sex and sexual function, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. While testosterone is the main sex hormone in men, women also have small amounts of it. The ovaries naturally produce testosterone. Researchers set out to examine the role the hormone plays in sexual function as women go through menopause. "While levels of testosterone and other reproductive ...

Washington, DC--As many as one in five people with Type 2 diabetes do not see any improvement in blood sugar management when they engage in a supervised exercise regimen, according to a new scientific review published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. People develop Type 2 diabetes when their bodies become resistant to the hormone insulin, which carries sugar from the blood to cells. This leads to excess sugar in the bloodstream. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects about 40 percent of Americans will develop ...

Enzymes carry out fundamental biological processes such as photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation and respiration, with the help of clusters of metal atoms as "active" sites. But scientists lack basic information about their function because the states thought to be critical to their chemical abilities cannot be experimentally observed. Now, researchers at Princeton University have reported the first direct observation of the electronic states of iron-sulfur clusters, common to many enzyme active sites. Published on August 31 in the journal Nature Chemistry, the states were ...

LIVERMORE, California -- Using ocean observations and a large suite of climate models, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have found that long-term salinity changes have a stronger influence on regional sea level changes than previously thought. "By using long-term observed estimates of ocean salinity and temperature changes across the globe, and contrasting these with model simulations, we have uncovered the unexpectedly large influence of salinity changes on ocean basin-scale sea level patterns," said LLNL oceanographer Paul Durack, lead author of a paper ...

BANGALORE, INDIA (November 20, 2014) - Participation of non-scientists as volunteers in conservation can play a significant role in saving wildlife, finds a new scientific research led by Duke University, USA, in collaboration with Wildlife Conservation Society and Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bengaluru. The study has shown that citizen science projects greatly contribute to 'increased environmental awareness among the general public'. It also reported direct impacts on conservation including - shift in formal profession by volunteers to become conservationists, initiation ...

Moderate rainfall was occurring around the center of Tropical Storm Adjali before it dissipated, according to data from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM satellites. Adjali became the first named storm of the Southwest Indian Ocean 2014/2015 cyclone season when it formed on November 16, 2014. Adjali became a strong tropical storm the next day and just two days later started to dissipate. The GPM observatory captured data on Adjali's rainfall rates on Nov. 18. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument is similar to ...