DURHAM, N.C. -- There may be a scientific answer for why conservatives and liberals disagree so vehemently over the existence of issues like climate change and specific types of crime. A new study from Duke University finds that people will evaluate scientific evidence based on whether they view its policy implications as politically desirable. If they don't, then they tend to deny the problem even exists. "Logically, the proposed solution to a problem, such as an increase in government regulation or an extension of the free market, should not influence one's belief ...

Eight percent of your genome derives from retroviruses that inserted themselves into human sex cells millions of years ago. Right now the koala retrovirus (KoRV) is invading koala genomes, a process that can help us understand our own viral lineage and make decisions about managing this vulnerable species. In a recent study scientists from the University of Illinois discovered that 39 different KoRVs in a koala's genome were all endogenous, which means passed down to the koala from one parent or the other; one of the KoRVs was found in both parents. Koalas are the ...

It's a difficult career transition that can lead to more professional frustration and shorter tenure on the job for many of the newest generation of veterans employed with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) compared to their non-veteran co-workers. New research from the University of Cincinnati is helping VA analyze the process of reintegrating veterans into civilian careers and evaluate methods for easing that transition. That's good news for all veterans as the nation prepares to observe Veterans Day on Nov. 11. "This period of time within our labor force ...

The "food" sources that support Florida red tides are more diverse and complex than previously realized, according to five years' worth of research on red tide and nutrients published recently as an entire special edition of the scientific journal Harmful Algae. The multi-partner project was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ECOHAB program* (described below) and included 14 research papers from seven institutions. The research team studied four red tide blooms caused by the harmful algae species Karenia brevis in 2001, '07, '08 and '09, ...

Our genetic makeup influences whether we are fat or thin by shaping which types of microbes thrive in our body, according to a Cornell-led study published today in the journal Cell. By studying pairs of twins, researchers identified the Christensenellaceae bacterial family, which is highly heritable and more common in lean individuals. Moreover, a member of this class of bacteria, Christensenellaceae minuta, protected against weight gain when transplanted into mice. The findings pave the way for personalized probiotic therapies that are optimized to reduce the risk ...

Along with the pressures of habitat loss, poaching and depletion of prey species, a new threat to tiger populations in the wild has surfaced in the form of disease, specifically, canine distemper virus (CDV). According to a new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and its partners, CDV has the potential to be a significant driver in pushing the animals toward extinction. While CDV has recently been shown to lead to the deaths of individual tigers, its long-term impacts on tiger populations had never before been studied. The authors evaluated these impacts ...

NEW YORK, NY (November 6, 2014) --The most in-dept survey of its kind found that arm pain is common among supposedly healthy young baseball players and nearly half have been encouraged to keep playing despite arm pain. The findings suggest that more detailed and individualized screening is needed to prevent overuse injury in young ballplayers. The study, led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, was published this week in the online edition of the American Journal of Sports Medicine. "Both nationally and internationally, we're witnessing a troubling ...

In a paper published by PLOS ONE, researchers concluded that a national strategy must be implemented in order to compensate for environmental damage caused by development projects in Africa. Studying these issues and other serious ethical concerns, the research discovered that current offset programs - which are planned and designed on a project-by-project basis - fail to take into account the cumulative impacts of various conservations projects taking place in the same country or region. The scientists from the universities of California, Stirling and Kent alongside ...

This news release is available in German. All multicellular creatures are descended from single-celled organisms. The leap from unicellularity to multicellularity is possible only if the originally independent cells collaborate. So-called cheating cells that exploit the cooperation of others are considered a major obstacle. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, together with researchers from New Zealand and the USA, have observed in real time the evolution of simple self-reproducing groups of cells from previously ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Teens and young adults who get seriously injured in an assault are nearly twice as likely as their peers to end up back in the emergency room for a violent injury within the next two years, a new University of Michigan Injury Center study finds. The researchers call this repeating pattern of violent injury a reoccurring disease, but their landmark study also suggests potentially powerful opportunities to intervene in ways that could stop the cycle. The first six months after a young person seeks care for a violence-related injury is an especially ...

New Rochelle, NY, November 6, 2014--Lower-cost 3D printers for the consumer market offer only a limited selection of plastic materials, while industrial additive manufacturing (AM) machines can print parts made of high-performance metals. The application of a novel process called Selective Inhibition Sintering (SIS) in a consumer-priced metal AM machine is described in an article in 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing website until ...

Does synthetic biology hold the key to manned space exploration of Mars and the Moon? Berkeley Lab researchers have used synthetic biology to produce an inexpensive and reliable microbial-based alternative to the world's most effective anti-malaria drug, and to develop clean, green and sustainable alternatives to gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. In the future, synthetic biology could also be used to make manned space missions more practical. "Not only does synthetic biology promise to make the travel to extraterrestrial locations more practical and bearable, it could also ...

Berlin, Germany (November, 2014) - The dodo is among the most famous extinct creatures, and a poster child for human-caused extinction events. Despite its notoriety, and the fact that the species was alive during recorded human history, little is actually known about how this animal lived, looked, and behaved. A new study of the only known complete skeleton from a single bird takes advantage of modern 3-D laser scanning technology to open a new window into the life of this famous extinct bird. The study was presented at the 74th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate ...

Berlin, Germany (November, 2014) - Many large charismatic mammals went extinct at the end of the Ice Age (approx 11,000 years ago), including the Steppe bison, Bison priscus. A recent find in Eastern Siberia has uncovered one of these bison, literally, frozen in time. The most complete frozen mummy of the Steppe bison yet known, dated to 9,300 years before present, was recently uncovered in the Yana-Indigirka Lowland and a necropsy was performed to learn about how this animal lived and died at the end of the Ice Age. The Yukagir bison mummy, as it is named, has a complete ...

There is no doubt that pregnant and breastfeeding women try to do everything they can to ensure a healthy outcome for their baby, including eating a healthy, well-balanced diet that provides the necessary nutrients for fetal growth and development. In recent years, there has been significant debate about the consumption of fish among pregnant and breastfeeding women. In June, following a survey that found that the majority of pregnant women do not eat much fish and thus may have inadequate intake of certain omega 3 fatty acids, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The health benefits of over-the-counter curcumin supplements might not get past your gut, but new research shows that a modified formulation of the spice releases its anti-inflammatory goodness throughout the body. Curcumin is a naturally occurring compound found in the spice turmeric that has been used for centuries as an Ayurvedic medicine treatment for such ailments as allergies, diabetes and ulcers. Anecdotal and scientific evidence suggests curcumin promotes health because it lowers inflammation, but it is not absorbed well by the body. Most curcumin ...

BOSTON - (November 6, 2014) - Mary R. Loeken, Ph.D., Investigator in the Section on Islet Cell and Regenerative Biology at Joslin Diabetes Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, has discovered a molecular pathway responsible for neural tube defects in diabetic pregnancies. Her latest research findings in this pathway were published in the October issue of Diabetes. For 20 years, scientists have known of a gene involved in neural tube defects (such as spina bifida), but until now it was not known exactly what causes this gene to malfunctions ...

The modern sequencing techniques have shown that bats can carry a bacterial species previously been shown to cause deadly human infections in USA. When the research group of Arto Pulliainen at the Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Finland, analyzed an array of bat samples from Finland and UK, one class of identified bacteria turned out to be exceptionally significant. Multilocus sequence analyses of clonal bat Bartonella isolates demonstrated that bats carry Bartonella mayotimonensis. This species has previously been shown to cause deadly human infections ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- A Kansas State University psychological sciences professor is using twin studies to understand the nature versus nurture debate of the workplace: Do genetic factors or environmental factors influence employee proactivity? His answer: The interaction between the genetic and environmental factors determines why some employees are more proactive than others. "It's more like nature and nurture rather than nature versus nurture," said Wendong Li, assistant professor of psychological sciences in the College of Arts & Sciences. "It is the reciprocal relationship ...

For decades, scientists have been perfecting models of how contagions spread, but newly published research takes the first steps into building a model that includes the loop linking individual human behavior and the behavior of the epidemic itself. The first results of the highly complex modeling led by researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering were recently spotlighted as "brilliant research" by the American Physical Society. Eventually, the team hopes the model will more accurately predict who should be vaccinated and isolated first ...

By combining projections of climate change, emissions reductions and changes in land use across the USA, an international research team estimate that by 2050, cumulative exposure to ozone during the summer will be high enough to damage vegetation. Although the research findings - published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions - focus on the impact in the USA, they raise wider concerns for global air quality, according to lead researcher Dr Maria Val Martin, from the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering "Modelling future air quality is very complex, ...

The dreaded scratch or puncture test is the most common way of assessing allergic reactions to as many as 40 different substances at once. But because the test involves needles that prick multiple points along the skin's surface, it's a particularly high-stress examination for children -- and their understandably anxious parents. A new study by Tel Aviv University researchers provides the first quantitative analysis of the role of "medical clowns" in assuaging the anxiety and pain felt by children undergoing allergy tests. The research, published in Allergy, was conducted ...

Far too many "teachable moments" are lost in a doctor's office during which young adults with hypertension could have learned how to reduce their blood pressure. In fact, only one in every two hypertensive young Americans does in fact receive such advice and guidance from a healthcare provider within a year from being diagnosed, says Heather M. Johnson of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in the US. She led a study which examined how regularly such education is provided and documented by one of the ten largest physician practice groups in ...

A major new Series on health and ageing, published in The Lancet, warns that unless health systems find effective strategies to address the problems faced by an ageing world population, the growing burden of chronic disease will greatly affect the quality of life of older people. As people across the world live longer, soaring levels of chronic illness and diminished wellbeing are poised to become a major global public health challenge. Worldwide, life expectancy of older people continues to rise. By 2020, for the first time in history, the number of people aged 60 years ...

A car powered by its own body panels could soon be driving on our roads after a breakthrough in nanotechnology research by a QUT team. Researchers have developed lightweight "supercapacitors" that can be combined with regular batteries to dramatically boost the power of an electric car. The discovery was made by Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Jinzhang Liu, Professor Nunzio Motta and PhD researcher Marco Notarianni, from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty - Institute for Future Environments, and PhD researcher Francesca Mirri and Professor Matteo Pasquali, from Rice ...