TORONTO, April 9, 2015: Salt used for winter road maintenance in Canada could wipe out water flea populations that keep our lakes clear of algae and feed the fish, a recent York University study has revealed. "These water fleas are like little living lawnmowers in our lakes. They 'graze' the entire volume of lakes many times during the summer, passing what they've eaten up the food chain to fish," explains Professor Norman Yan, to stress the importance of the water flea's role in the ecosystem. The study, conducted at Yan's lab in the Department of Biology, Faculty of ...

KU Leuven researchers have zeroed in on what makes cancer cells in melanoma so aggressive. They also succeeded in taming the effect in cell cultures. Melanoma, a type of skin cancer, is notoriously quick to metastasize and responds poorly to existing cancer treatments. In their study, published in Nature Communications, the researchers report a significant step forward in the characterization and potential treatment of melanoma. Human DNA contains genetic information that makes our cells functional entities within a larger whole. The stream of information from DNA to ...

Collisions with birds are one of the most common hazards to aircraft, causing $700 million in damage annually in the U.S. A study published this week in The Condor: Ornithological Applications may have important implications for reducing bird strikes through the customization of aircraft and runway lights to birds' visual systems. Megan Doppler and Esteban Fernández-Juricic of Purdue University and Bradley Blackwell and Travis DeVault of the National Wildlife Research Center's Ohio Field Station conducted experiments involving captive cowbirds and remote-controlled ...

Cincinnati, OH, April 9, 2015 -- Melanoma is an aggressive form of skin cancer that has been increasing in incidence in adults over the past 40 years. Although pediatric melanoma is rare (5-6 children per million), most studies indicate that incidence has been increasing. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers found that the incidence of pediatric melanoma in the United States actually has decreased from 2004-2010. Laura B. Campbell, MD, and colleagues from Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals (UH) Case ...

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say that levels of radon in Pennsylvania homes - where 42 percent of readings surpass what the U.S. government considers safe - have been on the rise since 2004, around the time that the fracking industry began drilling natural gas wells in the state. The researchers, publishing online April 9 in Environmental Health Perspectives, also found that buildings located in the counties where natural gas is most actively being extracted out of Marcellus shale have in the past decade seen significantly higher readings ...

A leading gene candidate that has been the target of breast cancer drug development may not be as promising as initially thought, according to research published in open access journal Genome Medicine. Mutation in the gene PIK3CA is the second most prevalent gene mutation in breast cancer and is found in 20% of all breast cancers. This has led people to think these changes may be driving breast cancer. Yet these mutations are also known to be present in neoplastic lesions -pre-cancerous growths many of which are thought to be benign, that have not invaded the surrounding ...

EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 8-APR-2015 19:00 ET (8-APR-2015 23:00 GMT) A test for a wide range of genetic risk factors could improve doctors' ability to work out which women are at increased risk of developing breast cancer, a major study of more than 65,000 women has shown. Improving the accuracy of risk analysis using genetic screening could guide breast cancer prevention in several ways - for instance by offering high-risk women increased monitoring, personalised advice and preventative therapies. The research, a collaboration of hundreds of research institutions led ...

A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have unravelled one of the mysteries of electromagnetism, which could enable the design of antennas small enough to be integrated into an electronic chip. These ultra-small antennas - the so-called 'last frontier' of semiconductor design - would be a massive leap forward for wireless communications. In new results published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers have proposed that electromagnetic waves are generated not only from the acceleration of electrons, but also from a phenomenon known as ...

New research from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with Oxford University, UK, shows that close relatives of men convicted of sexual offences commit similar offences themselves more frequently than comparison subjects. This is due to genetic factors rather than shared family environment. The study includes all men convicted of sex crime in Sweden during 37 years. "Importantly, this does not imply that sons or brothers of sex offenders inevitably become offenders too", says Niklas Langstrom, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet ...

The expansion of food banks across the United Kingdom is associated with cuts in spending on local services, welfare benefits and higher unemployment rates, conclude researchers in The BMJ this week. In collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Rachel Loopstra and David Stuckler at the Department of Sociology at Oxford University and colleagues say action is needed "on the root social and economic factors that trigger reliance on food banks." The number of local authorities with food banks operated by the Trussell Trust, a non-governmental ...

Accurately predicting the probability of a live birth after in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment is important for both those undergoing the treatment and their clinicians. Findings from a comparison study that analysed the accuracy of the two most widely-used prediction models are published today [08 April] in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers at the universities of Bristol and Glasgow compared how well the Templeton method and IVFpredict -- two personalised prediction tools that help couples calculate their chance of a successful birth with IVF treatment - worked ...

MINNEAPOLIS - People who participate in arts and craft activities and who socialize in middle and old age may delay the development in very old age of the thinking and memory problems that often lead to dementia, according to a new study published in the April 8, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. People age 85 and older make up the fastest growing age group in the United States and worldwide. "As millions of older US adults are reaching the age where they may experience these memory and thinking problem ...

Passive smoking isn't only something that people have to cope with, but plants too. This is because some plants are actually able to take up nicotine from cigarette smoke, while others that grow in contaminated soil absorb it via the roots as well. This might explain why high concentrations of nicotine are often found in spices, herbal teas and medicinal plants, despite the fact that this alkaloid is no longer permitted in insecticides. These findings¹,² by Dirk Selmar and colleagues at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany, are published in Springer's ...

BOSTON - Patients hospitalized with advanced cirrhosis, a chronic and degenerative disease of the liver, are at increased risk of death. The tools currently used to assess that risk are limited in predicting which patients will need a liver transplant and which will be healthy enough to survive transplantation. A new study from the Liver Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) suggests that standard assessments that nurses already use to care for patients can be mined for data that significantly improve the ability to predict survival following transplantation ...

Accurately predicting the probability of a live birth after in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment is important for both those undergoing the treatment and their clinicians. Findings from a comparison study that analysed the accuracy of the two most widely-used prediction models are published today [08 April] in the journal PLOS ONE. Researchers at the universities of Bristol and Glasgow compared how well the Templeton method and IVFpredict -- two personalised prediction tools that help couples calculate their chance of a successful birth with IVF treatment - worked ...

What helps children who have just met form a connection? A new study shows that a simple game played together in sync on a computer led 8-year-olds to report a greater sense of similarity and closeness immediately after the activity. Children who played the same game but not in a synchronous way did not report the same increase in connection. The findings, published April 8 by PLOS ONE, give an example of how a physical activity performed in unison helps children feel more positively toward each other and could perhaps increase their empathy. "Synchrony is like a ...

The first Northern European agriculturalists used the same ornamental beads for centuries after the introduction of farming, which may indicate their resistance to the spread of farming, according to a study published April 8, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Solange Rigaud from New York University and colleagues. Farming and herding were introduced 8000 years ago in Europe by populations from the Near East. Unfortunately, interactions, including cultural exchanges, between agricultural and indigenous foraging societies during this transition are poorly documented. ...

DURHAM, N.C. - A growing body of evidence in the medical community holds that greater diversity of bacteria and even worms in the digestive tract offers protection against a variety of allergic and autoimmune problems. Germs from healthy people can be used to heal people with digestive disorders and other conditions caused by the loss of their own germs, and worms that live in the gut, called helminths, have shown success in quelling inflammatory diseases. With this in mind, researches at Duke Medicine hypothesized that enhancing biodiversity in laboratory rats, including ...

An over-the-counter drug indicated to treat allergy symptoms limited hepatitis C virus activity in infected mice, according to a National Institutes of Health study. The results suggest that the drug, chlorcyclizine HCl (CCZ), potentially could be used to treat the virus in people. Results were published April 8 in Science Translational Medicine. The hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes liver inflammation and often leads to serious complications such as cirrhosis. Early diagnosis and treatment of HCV can prevent liver damage. Drugs are available to treat HCV, but costs can ...

Male offspring appear to benefit more than females from the positive effects of exercise during pregnancy, an animal study by UNSW medical researchers has found. The study in rats also found mothers who exercised moderately while pregnant reduced their offspring's body weight, insulin and blood glucose levels, potentially lessening their risk of developing metabolic disorders such type-2 diabetes later in life. The findings were published today in the journal PLOS ONE. The UNSW team led by Professor Margaret Morris, Head of Pharmacology from the School of Medical ...

Given the alarming rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the long lead-in time for developing novel drugs, the discovery of new ways to use the antibiotics already available and approved for use in humans is paramount. It is generally believed that to eliminate a bacterial infection before the onset of drug resistance one must treat with large doses of antibiotics, but recent research has indicated that this type of treatment might actually be driving the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens. New research publishing April 8th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology ...

Pioneering new research has unlocked a new technique to help combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, that cause debilitating and often life-threatening human illness. Researchers from the University of Exeter has shown that the use of 'sequential treatments' - using alternating doses of antibiotics - might offer effective treatment against bacterial infection. Crucially, the research also demonstrates this technique for administering treatment also reduces the risk of the bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics, and so maintaining the long-term effectiveness ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A new approach to analyzing baseball-pitching biomechanics may one day give players more personalized feedback and help prevent elbow injuries. In a computer simulation study of baseball pitching, Northwestern University biomedical engineers found that the strength of the elbow muscles of a baseball pitcher likely play a bigger role in injury risk and prevention than previously thought. The motion analysis approach currently used in the baseball industry to provide athletes with injury-risk feedback is not sophisticated enough to estimate what an ...

WELLESLEY, Mass. - A new study by Heather Mattila, a leading honey bee ecologist and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Wellesley College, published on April 8 in PLOS ONE, reveals that inadequate access to pollen during larval development has lifelong consequences for honey bees, leading not only to smaller workers and shorter lifespans, but also to impaired performance and productivity later in life. For the first time, this study demonstrates a crucial link between poor nutrition at a young age, and foraging and waggle dancing, the two most important activities ...

In early childhood, the neurons inside children's developing brains form connections between various regions of brain "real estate." As described in a paper published last week in the journal Biological Psychiatry, cognitive neuroscientists at San Diego State University found that in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder, the connections between the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum appear to be overdeveloped in sensorimotor regions of the brain. This overdevelopment appears to muscle in on brain "real estate" that in typically developing children is more ...