Simultaneously using mobile phones, laptops and other media devices could be changing the structure of our brains, according to new University of Sussex research. A study published today (24 September) reveals that people who frequently use several media devices at the same time have lower grey-matter density in one particular region of the brain compared to those who use just one device occasionally. The research supports earlier studies showing connections between high media-multitasking activity and poor attention in the face of distractions, along with emotional ...

The perception that Colorado's Front Range wildfires are becoming increasingly severe does not hold much water scientifically, according to a massive new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder and Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. The study authors, who looked at 1.3 million acres of ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forest from Teller County west of Colorado Springs through Larimer County west and north of Fort Collins, reconstructed the timing and severity of past fires using fire-scarred trees and tree-ring data going back to the 1600s. Only 16 percent ...

(Edmonton) A newly discovered armoured dinosaur from New Mexico has close ties to the dinosaurs of Alberta, say University of Alberta paleontologists involved in the research. From 76 to 66 million years ago, Alberta was home to at least five species of ankylosaurid dinosaurs, the group that includes club-tailed giants like Ankylosaurus. But fewer ankylosaurids are known from the southern parts of North America. The new species, Ziapelta sanjuanensis, was discovered in 2011 in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness area of New Mexico by a team from the New Mexico Museum of Natural ...

Ottawa, Canada – September 24, 2014 – Ovarian cancer is the most deadly gynecological cancer, claiming the lives of more than 50% of women who are diagnosed with the disease. A study involving Ottawa and Taiwan researchers, published today in the influential Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides new insight into why ovarian cancer is often resistant to chemotherapy, as well as a potential way to improve its diagnosis and treatment. It is estimated that 2,700 Canadian women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014 and that 1,750 Canadian ...

A Simon Fraser University-led team behind a new discovery has "…had the vision to go, like Star Trek, where no one has gone before: to a steep and violent bedrock canyon, with surprising results." That comment comes from a reviewer about a truly groundbreaking study just published in the journal Nature. Scientists studying river flow in bedrock canyons for the first time have discovered that previous conceptions of flow and incision in bedrock-rivers are wrong. SFU geography professor Jeremy Venditti led the team of SFU, University of Ottawa and University of British ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Cancer, while always dangerous, truly becomes life-threatening when cancer cells begin to spread to different areas throughout the body. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered that a molecule used as a communication system by bacteria can be manipulated to prevent cancer cells from spreading. Senthil Kumar, an assistant research professor and assistant director of the Comparative Oncology and Epigenetics Laboratory at the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, says this communication system can be used to "tell" cancer cells how to act, ...

As more gardeners and farmers add ground charcoal, or biochar, to soil to both boost crop yields and counter global climate change, a new study by researchers at Rice University and Colorado College could help settle the debate about one of biochar's biggest benefits -- the seemingly contradictory ability to make clay soils drain faster and sandy soils drain slower. The study, available online this week in the journal PLOS ONE, offers the first detailed explanation for the hydrological mystery. "Understanding the controls on water movement through biochar-amended soils ...

Tropical Depression Fung-Wong looked more like a cold front on infrared satellite imagery from NASA than it did a low pressure area with a circulation. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Depression Fung-Wong on Sept. 23 at 12:23 a.m. EDT. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that flies aboard Aqua gathered infrared temperature data on the storm's clouds. The data was false-colored at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California and showed that the storm resembled a frontal system more than a depression. The center of circulation was southwest ...

Retinoblastoma is a childhood retinal tumor usually affecting children one to two years of age. Although rare, it is the most common malignant tumor of the eye in children. Left untreated, retinoblastoma can be fatal or result in blindness. It has also played a special role in understanding cancer, because retinoblastomas have been found to develop in response to the mutation of a single gene – the RB1 gene—demonstrating that some cells are only a step away from developing into a life-threatening malignancy. David E. Cobrinik, MD, PhD, of The Vision Center at Children's ...

Astronomers have found water vapor in the atmosphere of a planet about four times bigger than Earth, in the constellation Cygnus about 124 light years - or nearly 729 trillion miles - from our home planet. In the quest to learn about planets beyond our solar system, this discovery marks the smallest planet for which scientists have been able to identify some chemical components of its atmosphere. The researchers' findings were published Sept. 25, 2014 in the journal Nature. The team was led by University of Maryland Astronomy Professor Drake Deming, an expert in the study ...

Public support for effective road safety laws, already solid, can be strengthened by a single number: a statistic that quantifies the traffic-related injury risks associated with a given law, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study, published in the September issue of Accident Analysis & Prevention, surveyed 2,397 adults nationwide about their attitudes toward four types of road-safety laws —mandatory ignition interlock installation for people convicted of driving ...

A new University of Iowa study further supports an inescapable message: caregivers have a profound influence—good or bad—on the emotional state of individuals with Alzheimer's disease. Patients may not remember a recent visit by a loved one or having been neglected by staff at a nursing home, but those actions can have a lasting impact on how they feel. The findings of this study are published in the September 2014 issue of the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, and can be viewed online for free here. UI researchers showed individuals with Alzheimer's disease ...

Astronomers using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Kepler Space Telescope have discovered clear skies and steamy water vapour on a planet outside our Solar System. The planet, known as HAT-P-11b, is about the size of Neptune, making it the smallest exoplanet ever on which water vapour has been detected. The results will appear in the online version of the journal Nature on 24 September 2014. The discovery is a milestone on the road to eventually finding molecules in the atmospheres of smaller, rocky planets more akin ...

A team of researchers, led by Miho N. Ishigaki, at the Kavli IPMU, The University of Tokyo, pointed out that the elemental abundance of the most iron-poor star can be explained by elements ejected from supernova explosions of the universe's first stars. Their theoretical study revealed that massive stars, which are several tens of times more immense than the Sun, were present among the first stars. The presence of these massive stars has great implications on the theory of star formation in the absence of heavy elements. Iron-poor stars provide insight about the very ...

CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA (September 24, 2014) — The challenge and excitement of catching a large fish makes shark fishing very appealing for recreational anglers. However, many species of sharks have experienced population declines due to commercial overfishing. Although generally overlooked by conservation advocates, catch and release shark fishing can provide a strong economic incentive to protect sharks, benefiting both ecotourism businesses and shark conservation. Florida is one of the largest recreational shark fishing markets in the world. However, Florida's recreational ...

Miami, Fla. (September, 24, 2014)—Two decades after its initiation, the University of Miami (UM) Linda Ray Intervention Program for substance-exposed babies and toddlers demonstrates long-term success. The program is designed to help children from birth to three years of age who are developmentally delayed, prenatally exposed to drugs and often with the additional risk of maltreatment, ultimately achieve their developmental milestones and be ready to enter kindergarten ready to learn. The program started in 1993 as an innovative partnership between the UM Linda Ray Intervention ...

DENVER – There were only modest acute changes in cardiac biomarkers and electrocardiograms and there were no clinically significant cardiac events in patients with high-dose radiation exposure to the heart following thoracic radiation therapy (RT) and short-term follow-up. Radiation therapy is standard of care for some patients with thoracic malignancies such as lung cancer, esophageal cancer, thymoma, or malignant mesothelioma. Radiation exposure to the heart is avoided when possible but even with advanced radiation therapy techniques there are instances when high radiation ...

Indian scientists are significantly more religious than United Kingdom scientists, according to the first cross-national study of religion and spirituality among scientists. The U.K. and India results from Religion Among Scientists in International Context (RASIC) study were presented at the Policies and Perspectives: Implications From the Religion Among Scientists in International Context Study conference held today in London. The conference was sponsored by the Religion and Public Life Program and the Baker Institute for Public Policy. The U.K. results were also presented ...

Texting while driving with Google Glass is clearly a distraction, a new University of Central Florida study has concluded -- but there is a twist. In the study, texting Glass users outperformed smartphone users when regaining control of their vehicles after a traffic incident. "Texting with either a smartphone or Glass will cause distraction and should be avoided while driving" said UCF researcher Ben Sawyer. "Glass did help drivers in our study recover more quickly than those texting on a smartphone. We hope that Glass points the way to technology that can help deliver ...

DENVER – The average cost to screen high-risk individuals for developing lung cancer with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) plus the average cost of curative intent treatment, like surgery, is lower than the average cost to treat advanced stage lung cancer, which quite rarely results in a cure. The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) has previously shown that LDCT screening of people at high-risk for lung cancer reduces lung cancer mortality by 20%, thus many organizations including the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) have recommend LDCT ...

ATLANTA—Customers care more about their past experiences with service firms when the economy is doing well, according to a research team from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. The researchers found it is more important for service firms to focus their resources and efforts on improving customer experience when economic times are good, as opposed to when the economy is down. This new finding contradicts previous beliefs that firms should increase their efforts to improve customer experience during difficult economic times to hold on ...

WASHINGTON – Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Materials Science and Technology Division have developed a novel one-step process using, for the first time in these types of syntheses, potassium superoxide (KO2) to rapidly form oxide nanoparticles from simple salt solutions in water. "Typically, the synthesis of oxide nanoparticles involves the slow reaction of a weak oxidizing agent, such as hydrogen peroxide, with dilute solutions of metal salts or complexes in both aqueous and non-aqueous solvent systems," said Dr. Thomas Sutto, NRL research chemist. ...

Washington, D.C.—New modeling studies from Carnegie's Alan Boss demonstrate that most of the stars we see were formed when unstable clusters of newly formed protostars broke up. These protostars are born out of rotating clouds of dust and gas, which act as nurseries for star formation. Rare clusters of multiple protostars remain stable and mature into multi-star systems. The unstable ones will eject stars until they achieve stability and end up as single or binary stars. The work is published in The Astrophysical Journal. About two-thirds of all stars within 81 light ...

Over 92,960 acres have been burned by the King Fire since it began on September 13, 2014. The fire is currently 38% contained, and the cause of the fire is arson. Over 7,600 personnel are battling this fire. With the southwest winds there is a potential for extreme fire behavior if the winds, fuels, and topography come into alignment. There is the possibility for single and group tree torching, upslope crown runs, and spotting up to 1/2 mile. The highest probability is on the northwest portion of the fire. A Red Flag warning remains in effect for this fire. A Red ...

DETROIT – Pain can make it difficult for some patients to get a good night's rest while recovering in the hospital following certain surgical procedures, often resulting in longer hospital stays, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The study shows patients who reported poor sleep while in the hospital following total hip replacement or knee replacement surgery had higher pain scores. "Our results show that increased pain scores result in deceased sleep duration," says study lead author Anya Miller, M.D., with the Department of Otolaryngology-Head ...