The most ambitious genetic study ever undertaken on bird evolution has found that almost all modern birds diversified after the dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago. "The popular view until now has been that the extraordinary diversity of birds began during the dinosaur age but we found little support for this," said Associate Professor Simon Ho, from the University of Sydney who led a major component of the research looking at evolutionary timescale. An international collaboration of scientists worked for four years to sequence, assemble and compare the ...

People with a high level of education who complain about memory lapses have a higher risk for stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. "Studies have shown how stroke causes memory complaints," said Arfan Ikram, M.D., associate professor of neuroepidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. "Given the shared underlying vascular pathology, we posed the reverse question: 'Do memory complaints indicate an increased risk of strokes?'" As part of the Rotterdam Study (1990-93 and 2000-01), 9,152 participants 55 ...

Children with public insurance waited longer after initial evaluation for sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) to undergo polysomnography (PSG, the gold standard diagnostic test) and also waited longer after PSG to have surgery to treat the condition with adenotonsillectomy (AT) compared with children who were privately insured, according to a report published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. Low socioeconomic status (SES) is a barrier to quality care and improved health outcomes. SDB is a spectrum of sleep disruption that ranges from snoring to obstructive ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - It's well known that chemotherapy helps fight cancer. It's also known that it wreaks havoc on normal, healthy cells. Michigan State University scientists are closer to discovering a possible way to boost healthy cell production in cancer patients as they receive chemotherapy. By adding thymine - a natural building block found in DNA - into normal cells, they found it stimulated gene production and caused them to multiply. The study can be found online in the journal Molecular Cell. "In most cases, cancer patients who receive chemotherapy lose ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Frederick Crane was a researcher under David E. Green in the mid-1950s, during the early days of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Institute, when he made his defining discovery. The lab group was on a mission to determine, bit by bit, how mitochondria -- the power plants of cells -- generate the energy required to sustain life. What Crane found, a compound called coenzyme Q, was a missing piece of the puzzle and became a major part of the legacy of mitochondrial research at UW-Madison. But it was no accident. "It was the result of a long ...

Montréal, December 11, 2014 - Researchers in Montréal led by Jacques Drouin, D.Sc., uncovered a mechanism regulating dopamine levels in the brain by working on a mouse model of late onset Parkinson's disease. The study, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Rory A. Fisher from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, is published online today by the scientific journal PLoS Genetics. Using gene expression profiling, a method to measure the activity of thousands of genes, researchers investigated dopaminergic neurons in ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new method that creates large-area patterns of three-dimensional nanoshapes from metal sheets represents a potential manufacturing system to inexpensively mass produce innovations such as "plasmonic metamaterials" for advanced technologies. The metamaterials have engineered surfaces that contain features, patterns or elements on the scale of nanometers that enable unprecedented control of light and could bring innovations such as high-speed electronics, advanced sensors and solar cells. The new method, called laser shock imprinting, creates shapes ...

A new study led by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine finds that the brains of obese children literally light up differently when tasting sugar. Published online in International Journal of Obesity, the study does not show a causal relationship between sugar hypersensitivity and overeating but it does support the idea that the growing number of America's obese youth may have a heightened psychological reward response to food. This elevated sense of "food reward" - which involves being motivated by food and deriving a good feeling ...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A large international group of scientists, including an Oregon Health & Science University neuroscientist, is publishing this week the results of a first-ever look at the genome of dozens of common birds. The scientists' research tells the story of how modern birds evolved after the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs and almost everything else on Earth 66 million years ago, and gives new details on how birds came to have feathers, flight and song. The consortium of more than 200 scientists is publishing its findings nearly simultaneously this week ...

A team of researchers led by North Carolina State University has found that stacking materials that are only one atom thick can create semiconductor junctions that transfer charge efficiently, regardless of whether the crystalline structure of the materials is mismatched - lowering the manufacturing cost for a wide variety of semiconductor devices such as solar cells, lasers and LEDs. "This work demonstrates that by stacking multiple two-dimensional (2-D) materials in random ways we can create semiconductor junctions that are as functional as those with perfect alignment" ...

Agricultural decisions made by our ancestors more than 10,000 years ago could hold the key to food security in the future, according to new research by the University of Sheffield. Scientists, looking at why the first arable farmers chose to domesticate some cereal crops and not others, studied those that originated in the Fertile Crescent, an arc of land in western Asia from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. They grew wild versions of what are now staple foods like wheat and barley along with other grasses from the region to identify the traits that make some ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Nature abhors a vacuum, which may explain the findings of a new study showing that bird evolution exploded 65 million years ago when nearly everything else on earth -- dinosaurs included -- died out. The study is part of an ambitious project, published in today's issue of the journal Science, in which hundreds of scientists worldwide have decoded the avian genome. Edward Braun, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Florida and the UF Genetics Institute, is one of the key scientists who took part in this multi-year project that used nine ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- With more and more rainforest giving way to pasture and grazing land every year, the practice of cattle ranching in the Amazon has serious implications on a global scale. At the same time, however, it provides a degree of socioeconomic flexibility for Amazonian smallholders who simply can't survive on what the forest or agriculture provide. In a paper published in the current issue of the journal Human Organization, UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Jeffrey Hoelle takes a look at the rise of cattle ranching in the Brazilian state of Acre and the ...

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) may have detected the dusty hallmarks of an entire family of Pluto-size objects swarming around an adolescent version of our own Sun. By making detailed observations of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the star known as HD 107146, the astronomers detected an unexpected increase in the concentration of millimeter-size dust grains in the disk's outer reaches. This surprising increase, which begins remarkably far -- about 13 billion kilometers -- from the host star, may be the result of Pluto-size ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - If dieting is on your New Year agenda, it might pay to be mindful of a study suggesting there is little hard evidence that mindfulness leads to weight loss. Ohio State University researchers reviewed 19 previous studies on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based programs for weight loss. Thirteen of the studies documented weight loss among participants who practiced mindfulness, but all lacked either a measure of the change in mindfulness or a statistical analysis of the relationship between being mindful and dropping pounds. In many cases, the studies ...

BOSTON (December 11, 2014) -- A new study from epidemiologists at Tufts University School of Medicine helps to identify communities with the greatest public health need in Massachusetts for resources relating to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. The study, published today in PLOS ONE, used geospatial techniques to identify hotspots for deaths related to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. The findings show large disparities in death rates exist across race and ethnicity in Massachusetts. The HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C epidemics are challenging public health officials and clinicians in the ...

BALTIMORE, December 11, 2014 - Insilico Medicine along with scientists from Vision Genomics and Howard University shed light on AMD disease, introducing the opportunity for eventual diagnostic and treatment options. The scientific collaboration between Vision Genomics, Inc., Howard University, and Insilico Medicine, Inc., has revealed encouraging insight on the AMD disease using an interactome analysis approach. Resources such as publicly available gene expression data, Insilico Medicine's original algorithm OncoFinderTM, and AMD MedicineTM from Vision Genomics allowed ...

How much protection the annual flu shot provides depends on how well the vaccine (which is designed based on a "best guess" for next season's flu strain) matches the actually circulating virus. However, it also depends on the strength of the immune response elicited by the vaccine. A study published on December 11th in PLOS Pathogens reports that genetic variants in a gene called IL-28B influence influenza vaccine responses. Adrian Egli, from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues started with blood samples from organ transplant patients. Such patients are ...

New circulating metabolites might allow early diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. A team of scientists from Uppsala University, Karolinska Institutet and Colorado State University have identified novel lipid-derived molecules associated with future coronary heart disease events. The study published in the journal PLOS Genetics has examined the metabolic profile of blood samples from more than 3,600 individuals that have been followed-up for up to 10 years. Professor Erik Ingelsson and graduate student Andrea Ganna have used novel biochemical and bioinformatics approaches ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- An international effort involving more than 100 researchers, nine supercomputers and about 400 years of CPU time has yielded the most reliable avian tree of life yet produced, researchers report in the journal Science. The tree reflects the evolutionary relationships of 48 species of birds. The paper describing the bird family tree is one of eight articles on avian evolution published together in Science. The overall endeavor was coordinated by Erich Jarvis of Duke University; M. Thomas P. Gilbert of the Natural History Museum of Denmark; and Guojie ...

Crocodiles are the closest living relatives of the birds, sharing a common ancestor that lived around 240 million years ago and also gave rise to the dinosaurs. A new study of crocodilian genomes led by scientists at UC Santa Cruz reveals an exceptionally slow rate of genome evolution in the crocodilians (a group that includes crocodiles, caimans, alligators, and gharials). The UC Santa Cruz team used the crocodilian genomes, combined with newly published bird genomes, to reconstruct a partial genome of the common ancestor of crocodiles, birds, and dinosaurs. The study, ...

Conventional wisdom holds that changing the views of voters on divisive issues is difficult if not impossible -- and that when change does occur, it is almost always temporary. But Michael LaCour, a UCLA doctoral candidate in political science, and Donald Green, a Columbia University political science professor, have demonstrated that a single conversation can go a long way toward building lasting support for a controversial social issue. In addition -- nearly as surprisingly -- the effect tends to spill over to friends and family members. The key is putting voters ...

A new computational technique developed at The University of Texas at Austin has enabled an international consortium to produce an avian tree of life that points to the origins of various bird species. A graduate student at the university is a leading author on papers describing the new technique and sharing the consortium's findings about bird evolution in the journal Science. The results of the four-year effort -- which relied in part on supercomputers at the university's Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) -- shed light on the timing of a "big bang" in bird evolution, ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - The absence of teeth or "edentulism" has evolved on multiple occasions within vertebrates including birds, turtles, and a few groups of mammals such as anteaters, baleen whales and pangolins. Where early birds are concerned, the fossil record is fragmentary. A question that has intrigued biologists is: Based on this fossil record, were teeth lost in the common ancestor of all living birds or convergently in two or more independent lineages of birds? A research team led by biologists at the University of California, Riverside and Montclair State University, ...

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 11, 2014-- It's possible to lastingly persuade conservative voters to support a controversial issue like marriage for same-sex couples--and at a greatly accelerated rate compared to their neighbors--according to groundbreaking data published in this week's issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science. The 12-month study also shows how the Los Angeles LGBT Center's voter persuasion methods reduced anti-gay prejudice and may have the potential to reduce other forms of prejudice. The independent researchers who led the study, prominent Columbia University ...