LAWRENCE — Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey. Grumpy Cat. "Peanut," the Ugliest Dog in the World. These might be a sampling of the most familiar animals to millions of users of social networking sites like Facebook. But one doctoral student in geography at the University of Kansas recognizes social networking sites as a potential boon for scientifically documenting Earth's biodiversity, particularly in developing nations. In fact, for this idea, Vijay Barve was just honored with a Young Researchers Award from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, an international ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--The boom in oil and gas produced through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is seen as a boon for meeting U.S. energy needs. But one byproduct of the process is millions of gallons of water that's much saltier than seawater, after leaching salts from rocks deep below the surface. Now researchers at MIT and in Saudi Arabia say they have found an economical solution for removing the salt from this water. The new analysis appears this week in the journal Applied Energy, in a paper co-authored by MIT professor John Lienhard, postdoc Ronan McGovern, and four ...

This news release is available in German. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), well-known from its use in hospitals, can typically resolve details of up to one tenth of a millimetre, for example in cross-sectional images of the human body. Together with colleagues at the University of Leipzig, researchers of ETH Zurich are working on massively increasing the resolution of the technique, with the goal of eventually imaging at the level of single molecules – demanding an over one million times finer resolution. By detecting the signal from a single hydrogen ...

(Austin, Texas) October 21, 2014 – The largest study to date of mortality trends in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) shows that the rate of mortality dropped significantly over a 16-year period. Advances in critical care medicine are seen as a direct cause of the decline. The study abstract was released today in an online supplement of the of the journal CHEST and will be presented at CHEST 2014, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Austin, Texas held October 25-30. Researchers at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical ...

(Austin, Texas) October 21, 2014 – Patients who use a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device to treat obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) often believe that it makes them less sexually attractive, according to researchers at Rosalind Franklin University. A new study abstract released today in an online supplement of the journal CHEST, to be presented at CHEST 2014, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Austin, Texas, shows that they do not need to worry. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is common in sleep apnea patients, but studies have ...

Alpine goats appear to be shrinking in size as they react to changes in climate, according to new research from Durham University. The researchers studied the impacts of changes in temperature on the body size of Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, over the past 30 years. To their surprise, they discovered that young Chamois now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s. In recent years, decreases in body size have been identified in a variety of animal species, and have frequently been linked to the changing climate. However, ...

(Austin, Texas) October 21, 2014 – A new study shows that patients with stage I to stage III non-small cell lung cancer have different metabolite profiles in their blood than those of patients who are at risk but do not have lung cancer. The study abstract was released today in an online supplement of the journal CHEST and will be presented at CHEST 2014, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians in Austin, Texas, on October 29. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic studied the blood serum of 284 subjects, 48% of whom were female with a mean age of ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2014 — It's National Chemistry Week, and this year's theme is the sweetest of all: candy. Whether it's ice cream, candy bars, pudding or cake, we love our sweets. But why do those treats actually taste sweet? Whether they're made with sugar or artificial sweeteners, it all comes down to chemistry. Find out more here: http://youtu.be/FaBFyEa8-eI. Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. INFORMATION:The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization ...

The way in which male moths locate females flying hundreds of meters away has long been a mystery to scientists. Researchers know the moths use pheromones to locate their mates. Yet when these chemical odors are widely dispersed in a windy, turbulent atmosphere, the insects still manage to fly in the right direction over hundreds of meters with only random puffs of their mates' pheromones spaced tens of seconds apart to guide them. "The male moths are flying toward females integrating all of this information along the way and somehow getting to them," said Massimo Vergassola, ...

An international team of physicists has measured a subtle characteristic in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation that will allow them to map the large-scale structure of the universe, determine the masses of neutrinos and perhaps uncover some of the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. In a paper published this week in the Astrophysical Journal, the POLARBEAR consortium, led by University of California, Berkeley, physicist Adrian Lee, describes the first successful isolation of a "B-mode" produced by gravitational lensing in the polarization ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Children who show poor decision-making skills at age 10 or 11 may be more likely to experience interpersonal and behavioral difficulties that have the potential to lead to high-risk health behavior in their teen years, according to a new study from Oregon State University psychology professor. "These findings suggest that less-refined decision skills early in life could potentially be a harbinger for problem behavior in the future," said Joshua Weller, an assistant professor in the School of Psychological Science in OSU's College of Liberal Arts. However, ...

Boulder, CO, USA — The last ten years have been a remarkable time for great earthquakes. Since December 2004 there have been no less than 18 quakes of Mw8.0 or greater – a rate of more than twice that seen from 1900 to mid-2004. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and massive damage has resulted from these great earthquakes. But as devastating as such events can be, these recent great quakes have come with a silver lining: They coincide with unprecedented advances in technological and scientific capacity for learning from them. "We previously had ...

Even though they are not hungry, children as young as three will find high-energy treats too tempting to refuse, new QUT research has found. In a study of three and four year olds, 100 per cent of children opted for a sweet or savory snack despite eating a filling healthy lunch only 15 minutes prior. Nutrition researcher Holly Harris, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said the results highlighted the health risks for children frequently confronted with an abundance of energy-dense, high-calorie foods. Ms Harris's study, published in the journal ...

Recreational fishermen prize large trophy fish. Commercial fishing gear targets big fish. After all, larger fish feed the egos of humans as well as their bellies. A new compilation of research from around the world now shows that big, old, fat, fertile, female fish – known as BOFFFFs to scientists – are essential for ensuring that fishery stocks remain sustainable. "Information on many different kinds of freshwater and marine fish tell the same story," says lead author Dr. Mark Hixon of the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. "The loss of big fish decreases ...

You are what you eat, unless you're not quite sure what you ate. A new paper by Jinan Banna and Marie Kainoa Fialkowski of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources and Marilyn Townsend of the University of California, Davis' College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences takes a critical look at how faulty self-reporting of the food we eat can lead to incorrect conclusions about whether we are meeting dietary recommendations for certain essential nutrients. Banna's study is the first to examine how accounting for the ...

A new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) identifies a new signaling pathway that contributes to the development and progression of inflammatory bone erosion, which occurs in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Rheumatoid arthritis is a systemic inflammatory autoimmune disease that affects millions of adults worldwide. Bone erosion in joints is a major cause of disability in RA patients. The study, titled "RBP-J imposes a requirement for ITAM-mediated costimulation of osteoclastogenesis," was published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation ...

Philadelphia, PA (October 21, 2014) — Binge drinking in early adulthood is associated with an increased likelihood of high blood pressure in males, while low to moderate alcohol use in early adulthood is associated with a decreased likelihood of hypertension in females. The findings come from a study that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2014 November 11¬–16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. While studies have found that drinking alcohol can raise blood pressure in adults, little is known about the links between alcohol use ...

When we talk about global carbon fixation –"pumping" carbon out of the atmosphere and fixing it into organic molecules by photosynthesis – proper measurement is key to understanding this process. By some estimates, almost half of the world's organic carbon is fixed by marine organisms called phytoplankton – single-celled photosynthetic organisms that account for less than one percent of the total photosynthetic biomass on Earth. Dr. Assaf Vardi, a marine microbiologist of the Weizmann Institute's Plant Sciences Department, and Prof. Ilan Koren, a cloud ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed new software that estimates how much farther electric vehicles can drive before needing to recharge. The new technique requires drivers to plug in their destination and automatically pulls in data on a host of variables to predict energy use for the vehicle. "Electric cars already have range-estimation software, but we believe our approach is more accurate," says Dr. Habiballah Rahimi-Eichi, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work. "Existing technologies estimate remaining ...

Ordinary over the counter painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs purchased from pharmacies may also be effective in the treatment of people suffering of depression. This is shown by the largest ever meta-analysis that has just been published by a research group from Aarhus University in the American scientific journal JAMA Psychiatry. The meta-analysis is based on 14 international studies with a total 6,262 patients who either suffered from depression or had individual symptoms of depression. Up to 15 per cent of the Danish population can expect to suffer from depression ...

PHILADELPHIA – (Oct. 21, 2014) – A team of scientists, led by researchers at The Wistar Institute, has identified a possible explanation for why middle-aged adults were hit especially hard by the H1N1 influenza virus during the 2013-2014 influenza season. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer evidence that a new mutation in H1N1 viruses potentially led to more disease in these individuals. Their study suggests that the surveillance community may need to change how they choose viral strains that go into seasonal ...

HUNTSVILLE, TX (10/21/14) -- One out of every five female students experience stalking victimization during their college career, but many of those cases are not reported to police, according to a study by the Crime Victims' Institute (CVI) at Sam Houston State University. The rate of stalking on college campuses is higher than those experienced by the general public, according to research. Many of the victims fail to report the incidents because they feel the situation was too minor, feared revenge, saw it as a private or personal matter, or thought police would not ...

Russian scientists have developed a theoretical model of quantum memory for light, adapting the concept of a hologram to a quantum system. These findings from Anton Vetlugin and Ivan Sokolov from St. Petersburg State University in Russia are published in a study in EPJD. The authors demonstrate for the first time that it is theoretically possible to retrieve, on demand, a given portion of the stored quantised light signal of a holographic image – set in a given direction in a given position in time sequence. This is done by shaping the control field both in space ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Researchers have created a cellular probe that combines a tarantula toxin with a fluorescent compound to help scientists observe electrical activity in neurons and other cells. The probe binds to a voltage-activated potassium ion channel subtype, lighting up when the channel is turned off and dimming when it is activated. This is the first time researchers have been able to visually observe these electrical signaling proteins turn on without genetic modification. These visualization tools are prototypes of probes that could some day help ...

Some people suffer incipient dementia as they get older. To make up for this loss, the brain's cognitive reserve is put to the test. Researchers from the University of Santiago de Compostela have studied what factors can help to improve this ability and they conclude that having a higher level of vocabulary is one such factor. 'Cognitive reserve' is the name given to the brain's capacity to compensate for the loss of its functions. This reserve cannot be measured directly; rather, it is calculated through indicators believed to increase this capacity. A research project ...