A species of ant is thriving in habitats created by thousands of acres of coniferous forest planted in a UK National Park in the last 60 years, according to new research by scientists from the Department of Biology at the University of York and Forest Research, the Forestry Commission's research agency. The success of the northern hairy wood ant (Formica lugubris) in colonising plantations of largely non-native coniferous species in the North York Moors National Park supports recent suggestions that non-native plantations can have positive influences on forest-dependent ...

Ottawa - September 8, 2015 - Researchers from the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI), together with the teams of Dr. Martin Farrell at Oxford University, and Dr. Sekar Kathiresan at the Broad Institute, have found the answer to an ongoing debate in the cardiovascular scientific world. Dr. Ruth McPherson and Dr. Majid Nikpay, researchers at the UOHI's Ruddy Canadian Cardiovascular Genetics Centre, report that the genetic basis of heart disease is largely derived from the cumulative effect of multiple common genetic variants, rather than from a few rare variants ...

Making a plan can be the difference in overcoming a difficult childhood, while just thinking about those difficulties can drag down the child. A set of four new studies from researchers at USC and Southwest University in China suggest, contrary to prior belief, children in difficult situations need to do more than dream of a happier and successful future self: They need a strategy for becoming that person. Two of the studies found eighth graders performed better in school if they had strategies for becoming their future selves, as well as several options for becoming ...

PITTSBURGH--How did the elephant get its trunk? Or the turtle its shell? How, in general, did the seemingly infinite diversity of complex animal forms on our planet arise? The scientific pursuit of how such "evolutionary novelties" come about is one of the big mysteries that biologists are trying to tease apart. The University of Pittsburgh's Mark Rebeiz and colleagues provide some answers in a paper published today in the journal Developmental Cell. Even in the most complex organisms, the genetic repertoire is limited. If creatures don't evolve by acquiring new genes, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Teenagers are irrational and make bad decisions. Or do they? A new Duke study finds that adolescents ages 10 to 16 can be more analytical in their economic choices than many slightly older young adults. Published online in the October-December issue of Cognitive Development, the study suggests not only that society should give adolescents more credit for rationality but also that parents should help children hone their cost-benefit analysis skills in making real-life decisions. "The new results point to the idea that we should not think of adolescents ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Low-risk cancers that do not have any symptoms and presumably will not cause problems in the future are responsible for the rapid increase in the number of new cases of thyroid cancer diagnosed over the past decade, according to a Mayo Clinic study published in the journal Thyroid. According to the study authors, nearly one-third of these recent cases were diagnosed when clinicians used high-tech imaging even when no symptoms of thyroid disease were present. "We are spotting more cancers, but they are cancers that are not likely to cause harm," says ...

This news release is available in French. Chemical substances that are safe for humans when taken in isolation can become harmful when they are combined. Three research teams bringing together researchers from Inserm and CNRS in Montpellier have elucidated in vitro a molecular mechanism that could contribute to the phenomenon known as the "cocktail effect." This study is published in the journal Nature Communications. Every day we are exposed to many exogenous compounds such as environmental pollutants, drugs or substances in our diet. Some of these molecules, known ...

Got rope? Then try this experiment: Cross both ends, left over right, then bring the left end under and out, as if tying a pair of shoelaces. If you repeat this sequence, you get what's called a "granny" knot. If, instead, you cross both ends again, this time right over left, you've created a sturdier "reef" knot. The configuration, or "topology," of a knot determines its stiffness. For example, a granny knot is much easier to undo, as its configuration of twists creates weaker forces within the knot, compared with a reef knot. For centuries, sailors have observed such ...

WORCESTER, MA -- Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School are the first to show that it's possible to reverse the behavior of an animal by flipping a switch in neuronal communication. The research, published in PLOS Biology, provides a new approach for studying the neural circuits that govern behavior and has important implications for how scientists think about neural connectomes. New technologies have fueled the quest to map all the neural connections in the brain to understand how these networks processes information and control behavior. The human ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 7, 2015 - If you are in a special relationship with another person, thank grandma - not just yours, but all grandmothers since humans evolved. University of Utah anthropologist Kristen Hawkes is known for the "grandmother hypothesis," which credits prehistoric grandmothering for our long human lifespan. Now, Hawkes has used computer simulations to link grandmothering and longevity to a surplus of older fertile men and, in turn, to the male tendency to guard a female mate from the competition and form a "pair bond" with her instead of mating with ...

Physicists from the Department of Nanophotonics and Metamaterials at ITMO University have experimentally demonstrated the feasibility of designing an optical analog of a transistor based on a single silicon nanoparticle. Because transistors are some of the most fundamental components of computing circuits, the results of the study have crucial importance for the development of optical computers, where transistors must be very small and ultrafast at the same time. The study was published in the scientific journal Nano Letters. The performance of modern computers, which ...

Developing transparent or semitransparent solar cells with high efficiency and low cost to replace the existing opaque and expensive silicon-based solar panels has become increasingly important due to the increasing demands of the building integrated photovoltaics (BIPVs) systems. The Department of Applied Physics of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has successfully developed efficient and low-cost semitransparent perovskite solar cells with graphene electrodes. The power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of this novel invention are around 12% when they are illuminated ...

Calculation with electron spins in a quantum computer assumes that the spin states last for a sufficient period of time. Physicists at the University of Basel and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute have now demonstrated that electron exchange in quantum dots fundamentally limits the stability of this information. Control of this exchange process paves the way for further progress in the coherence of the fragile quantum states. The report from the Basel-based researchers appears in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. The basic idea of a quantum computer is to ...

DENVER, Colo. -- The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) today issued a new statement on Tobacco Control and Smoking Cessation at the 16th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Denver. The statement calls for higher taxes on tobacco products, comprehensive advertising and promotion bans of all tobacco products and product regulation including pack warnings. "Tax policies that increased the cost of cigarettes have played a prominent role in the reduction of cigarette smoking," said Dr. Kenneth Michael Cummings, Professor, Hollings Cancer ...

Scientists studying funnel-web spiders at Booderee National Park near Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast have found a large example of an unexpected funnel-web species. The scientists believe the 50-millimetre spider is a species of the tree-dwelling genus Hadronyche, not the ground-dwelling genus Atrax, which includes the Sydney funnel-web, the only species reported in the Park's records. "It's remarkable that we have found this other species in Booderee National Park," said Dr Thomas Wallenius, from The Australian National University (ANU). "It shows ...

Graphene, the ultra-thin, ultra-strong material made from a single layer of carbon atoms, just got a little more extreme. University of British Columbia (UBC) physicists have been able to create the first ever superconducting graphene sample by coating it with lithium atoms. Although superconductivity has already been observed in intercalated bulk graphite--three-dimensional crystals layered with alkali metal atoms, based on the graphite used in pencils--inducing superconductivity in single-layer graphene has until now eluded scientists. "This first experimental realization ...

Social network Flickr and citizen science website BugGuide have helped scientists to expand the known range of a rarely collected parasitic woodwasp, native to the eastern United States. Partially thanks to the two online photograph platforms, now the species' distribution now stretches hundreds of miles west of previous records. Previously known from only 50 specimens mainly from the Northeast, now the species was discovered in the Ozark Mountains by researchers from the University of Arkansas. Their study is published it in the open access journal Biodiversity Data Journal. Spurred ...

[Basel, Switzerland - 8 September 2015] The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) has announced today at the 9th European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health (ECTMIH) in Basel, Switzerland, the successful completion of Phase I human clinical trials for SCYX-7158 (AN5568), the first oral drug candidate specifically developed from the earliest drug discovery stage to combat human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, a deadly parasitic disease transmitted by the tsetse fly. The Phase I study, conducted in France, assessed the safety, ...

Edible dormice (Glis glis) spend about eight months on average in hibernation. Wildlife biologists from the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology of the Vetmeduni Vienna have shown for the first time that these animals can hibernate for up to 11.4 months. "This may be a world record," says Claudia Bieber, co-author of the study. "Dormice in our climate zone don't just spend the winter months underground, they sometimes begin hibernating in summer." The animals do not hibernate for so long every year, but only in years when beech trees produce few beechnuts. Successful ...

In the new study 'Building trust: Heart rate synchrony and arousal during joint action increased by public goods game' (Journal of Physiology and Behavior) PhD and assistant professor Panagiotis Mitkidis and colleagues from the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University studied the link between heart rate and trust. They had 37 pairs of participants do a cooperative task involving building LEGO cars. The control group only did the LEGO task, while a second group played an investment game in between the building sessions. The game, known as the 'Public Goods Game', had ...

Select patients age 90 years and older with aortic stenosis (AS) can benefit from a relatively new, minimally invasive surgery for aortic valve replacement, according to an article in the September 2015 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Both transfemoral and transapical approaches to TAVR appear to be safe and effective for treatment of aortic stenosis in select patients age 90 years and older. By 6 months post-surgery, most quality-of-life measures had stabilized at a level considerably better than baseline, meaning patients quality of life was ...

Lueneburg. A recent study on the psychology of trademarks shows that they are perceived by the same psychological mechanisms as those, which enable the recognition of faces. The survey, whose result is particularly interesting for the advertising industry and brand management, originated at the Institute for Experimental Business Psychology at Leuphana University of Lueneburg. For their investigation, Leuphana researchers Rainer Hoeger and Anne Lange compared the reactions of viewers to 16 well-known brands, such as Coca Cola, Rolex, Porsche or Apple and 18 computer-generated ...

Trained volunteers are as good as professional astronomers at finding jets shooting from massive black holes and matching them to their host galaxies, research suggests. Scientists working on citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo developed an online tutorial to teach volunteers how to spot black holes and other objects that emit large amounts of energy through radio waves. Through the project, volunteers are given telescope images taken in both the radio and infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum and asked to compare the pictures and match the "radio source" ...

A rare, deadly form of skin cancer known as desmoplasmic melanoma (DM) may possess the highest burden of gene mutations of any cancer, suggesting that immunotherapy may be a promising approach for treatment, according to an international team led by UC San Francisco scientists. One of these mutations, never before observed in any cancer, may shield nascent DM tumors from destruction by the immune system and allow further mutations to develop. "The focus of our lab has been to show that there's not just one 'melanoma' but many different types," said senior author Boris ...

In the course of billions of years continents break up, drift apart, and are pushed back together again. The cores of continents are, however, geologically extremely stable and have survived up to 3.8 billions of years. These cores that are called cratons are the oldest known geological features of our planet. It was assumed that the cratons are stable because of their especially solid structure due to relatively low temperatures compared to the surrounding mantle. A team of German-American scientists now discovered that these cratons that were assumed to be "as solid as ...