Since World War II, more than 45 international human-rights treaties have been signed by many of the world's roughly 200 countries. But why do some states sign such accords, especially if they lack a strong human-rights commitment in the first place? One prominent idea holds that treaty-ratifying countries are essentially bought off: They agree to lend support to the human-rights movement in exchange for material good, such as foreign aid or more trade. However, a new study co-authored by an MIT political scientist finds that not to be the case; the actions of states, ...

This news release is available in German. What started out as a mathematical oddity, has now become a new kind of laser technology. Two years ago, physicists at TU Wien predicted a paradoxical laser effect: Under certain conditions, a laser can be switched on not by supplying it with more energy, but by taking energy away from the laser. First experimental signatures of this effect were recently reported at TU Wien. In collaboration with colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, USA and at Riken, Japan the researchers have now succeeded in transferring the paradoxical ...

Amsterdam, NL, October 20, 2014 – White Canes provide low-tech assistance to the visually impaired, but some blind people object to their use because they are cumbersome, fail to detect elevated obstacles, or require long training periods to master. Electronic travel aids (ETAs) have the potential to improve navigation for the blind, but early versions had disadvantages that limited widespread adoption. A new ETA, the "EyeCane," developed by a team of researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, expands the world of its users, allowing them to better estimate ...

Climate change predictions for the Middle East, like other arid regions of the world, are alarming. In an area known for its water scarcity, rainfall is expected to decrease even further in the near future, spelling disaster for the functioning of unique ecosystems — hotspots of biodiversity and rich genetic fodder for essential crops. To test these dire predictions, Prof. Marcelo Sternberg of the Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants at Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Life Sciences, together with ecologists from the University of Tübingen ...

Older people from Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in England fear changes in cultural attitudes will leave them without the family care they expect to rely on in their twilight years, a new study has found. The research, undertaken at Brunel University London, reports that elderly people in these communities expect their children and wider family will look after them in old age and are traditionally unlikely to take-up state social services. However, those surveyed also expressed uncertainty over whether changes in cultural attitudes and geographical factors ...

Members of today's younger Net Generation aren't more tech savvy than their teachers just because they were born into a world full of computers. In fact, if it weren't for the coaxing and support of their educators, many students would never use their electronic devices for more than playing games or listening to music. So says Shiang-Kwei Wang of the New York Institute of Technology in the US, who led a study on how middle school science teachers and their students use technology inside and outside the classroom. The findings¹ appear in the journal Educational Technology ...

ANN ARBOR—In a design that mimics a hard-to-duplicate texture of starfish shells, University of Michigan engineers have made rounded crystals that have no facets. "We call them nanolobes. They look like little hot air balloons that are rising from the surface," said Olga Shalev, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering who worked on the project. Both the nanolobes' shape and the way they're made have promising applications, the researchers say. The geometry could potentially be useful to guide light in advanced LEDs, solar cells and nonreflective ...

Researchers at Griffith University's Institute for Glycomics have moved a step closer to identifying a treatment for the dreaded Human parainfluenza virus (hPIV). These highly-infectious viruses are the leading cause of upper and lower respiratory tract disease in young children, including Croup, responsible for thousands of hospitalisations in the developed world, and hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in developing countries. Institute Director Professor Mark von Itzstein said his Group's research findings published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications ...

CHICAGO --- During the 2012-2013 school year, 38 Chicago Public School (CPS) students and staff were given emergency medication for potentially life-threatening allergic reactions. This finding is detailed in a new Northwestern Medicine® report in partnership with CPS. Following national and local legislation, CPS was the first large, urban school district in the nation to develop and implement an initiative to supply all public and charter schools in Chicago with epinephrine auto-injectors (EAIs) -- medical devices used to treat acute allergic reactions. The impact ...

Will that be a pizza for you or will you go for a salad? Choosing what you eat is not simply a matter of taste, conclude scientists in a new study at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University and the McGill University Health Centre. As you glance over a menu or peruse the shelves in a supermarket, your brain is making decisions based more on a food's caloric content. The study, published in Psychological Science, is based on brain scans of healthy participants who were asked to examine pictures of various foods. Participants rated which foods ...

A newly described tarantula species from Western Brazilian Amazonia was named Bumba lennoni in honor of John Lennon, a founder member of the legendary band the Beatles. The new species is part of the tarantula family Theraphosidae which comprises the largest spider species in the world. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The name of the new species came across when the authors of the study Fernando Pérez-Miles, from the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and Alexandre Bonaldo and Laura Miglio, both from the Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, ...

As you glance over a menu or peruse the shelves in a supermarket, you may be thinking about how each food will taste and whether it's nutritious, or you may be trying to decide what you're in the mood for. A new neuroimaging study suggests that while you're thinking all these things, an internal calorie counter of sorts is also evaluating each food based on its caloric density. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Earlier studies found that children and adults tend to choose high-calorie food," ...

This news release is available in German. Leipzig. Artificial light increases foraging time in blackbirds. Birds in city centres are active not just considerably earlier, but also for longer than their relatives in darker parts of the city. That is the result of a study of around 200 blackbirds in Leipzig, which was carried out in the framework of the "Loss of the Night" research project. The study showed that artificial light has a considerable influence on the activity times of blackbirds in the city and therefore on their natural cycles, according to scientists of ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 20, 2014—Interleukin-27 (IL-27), a member of the interleukin family of cytokines that help regulate the immune system, has a mainly anti-inflammatory role in the body, and its dysfunction has been implicated in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn's disease. More recently, IL-27's proinflammatory activity and role in chronic inflammatory diseases is becoming increasingly clear, and a new Review article that explores the potential to target a range of diseases that share common IL-27-activated mechanisms is presented in ...

CHICAGO – Oct. 18, 2014 – A smartphone-based tool may be an effective alternative to traditional ophthalmic imaging equipment in evaluating and grading severity of a diabetic eye disease, according to a study released today at AAO 2014, the American Academy of Ophthalmology's 118th annual meeting. The results of the research indicate the lower-cost method could be useful for bringing the service to patients in isolated or underserved communities. Approximately 7.7 million Americans have diabetic retinopathy, which is caused by elevated blood glucose (sugar) ...

Boulder, CO, USA — Naturally occurring asbestos minerals may be more widespread than previously thought, with newly discovered sources now identified within the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The asbestos-rich areas are in locations not previously considered to be at risk, according to new report that will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA) in Vancouver, Canada, on Sunday, 20 October. "These minerals were found where one wouldn't expect or think to look," said Rodney Metcalf, associate professor of geology at the University ...

Berlin, 20 October 2014 Fear of bright daylight is associated with panic disorder, according to new presented at the ECNP congress in Berlin. Panic disorder is where a person has recurring and regular panic attacks. In the UK, it affects about two in 100 people, and it's about twice as common in women as it is in men1. Previous studies have shown that there is a strong seasonal component in panic disorder, but this is the first study to look specifically at panic disorder patients' reactions to light. A group of researchers from the University of Siena (Italy) compared ...

Berlin, 20 October 2014 Up to half of patients who suffer from depression (Major Depressive Disorder, or MDD) do not respond to treatment with SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors). Now a group of Dutch researchers have carried out a study which shows that increasing fatty fish intake appears to increase the response rate in patients who do not respond to antidepressants. This work is being presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology congress in Berlin. According to lead researcher, Roel Mocking (Amsterdam): "We were looking for biological ...

Berlin, 20 October 2014 A new study shows that some anti-inflammatory medicines, such as aspirin, estrogen, and Fluimucil, can improve the efficacy of existing schizophrenia treatments. This work is being presented at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology conference in Berlin. For some time, doctors have believed that helping the immune system may benefit the treatment of schizophrenia, but until now there has been no conclusive evidence that this would be effective. Now a group of researchers at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands has carried out ...

CHICAGO – Oct. 19, 2014 – The results of the largest retrospective study of multiple sclerosis (MS) in uveitis patients has revealed that nearly 60 percent of patients with both diseases were diagnosed with each within a five-year span. The study is being presented today at AAO 2014, the 118th annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. While it has long been known that there is an association between the eye condition and MS, this is the first study to provide a detailed description of the relative onset of uveitis and MS and to calculate the ...

After conducting an investigation about the current state of the operation of medium voltage distribution grids and the integration of distributed generation (DG) of renewable resources across China, scientists at the Key Laboratory of Smart Grid, under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, at Tianjin University in the east coast city of Tianjin, set out an array of R&D opportunities to modernize these grids. Researchers Yu Yixin, Zeng Yuan, Liu Hong and Sun Bing state in a recent paper published on the Beijing-based journal SCIENCE CHINA Technological Sciences that ...

The excessive activity of repair cells in the early stages of tissue recovery sets the stage for fibrosis by priming the activation of an important growth factor, according to a study in The Journal of Cell Biology. Myofibroblasts are highly contractile cells that repair damaged tissues by replacing and reorganizing the extracellular matrix (ECM), the meshwork that fills the space around cells, in order to draw a wound closed. When myofibroblasts are not properly regulated, however, they continue to act on healed tissues and produce excessive amounts of ECM. Excessive ...

Crystallographic defects or irregularities (known as dislocations) are often found within crystalline materials. Two main types of dislocation exist: edge and screw type. However, dislocations found in real materials tend to be a mix of these two types, resulting in a complex atomic arrangement not found in bulk crystals. The study of these dislocations in semiconductors is probably as old as the science of semiconductors itself, and the technological importance of dislocations can hardly be overstated. From their roles in the way crystals form to their effects on a material's ...

Infection with herpes simplex virus increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, claim this in two studies in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia. "Our results clearly show that there is a link between infections of herpes simplex virus and the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. This also means that we have new opportunities to develop treatment forms to stop the disease," says Hugo Lövheim, associate professor at the Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Geriatric Medicine, Umeå University, who is ...

A study by researchers of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich shows that infants fed on fresh rather than UHT cow's milk are less prone to infection. The authors recommend the use of alternative processing methods to preserve the protectants found in the natural product. A pan-European study, led by Professor Erika von Mutius, Professor of Pediatric Allergology at LMU and Head of the Asthma and Allergy Department at Dr. von Hauner's Children's Hospital, reports that fresh cow's milk protects young children from respiratory infections, febrile illness and inflammation ...