ITHACA, N.Y. - Ask a plant researcher how the sex of a cucumber plant is determined and the person will tell you, "It's complicated." Depending on a complex mix of genetic and environmental factors, cucumbers can be seven different sexes. Some high-yield cucumber varieties produce only female flowers, and a new study identifies the gene duplication that causes this unusual trait. The study, led by Zhangjun Fei of the Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University, and Sanwen Huang of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, in Beijing, appeared recently in The Plant ...

Chicago - June 4, 2015 - It may be better for patients to resume taking their blood pressure medication sooner after surgery than previously thought. A new study published in the Online First edition of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), found resuming angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), common medications used to treat high blood pressure, within two days after surgery decreased death rates in the first month following surgery. "Sometimes doctors briefly stop ARB medications around the time of ...

A 333-million year old broken bone is causing fossil scientists to reconsider the evolution of land-dwelling vertebrate animals, says a team of palaeontologists, including QUT evolutionary biologist Dr Matthew Phillips, and colleagues at Monash University and Queensland Museum. Analysis of a fractured and partially healed radius (front-leg bone) from Ossinodus pueri, a large, primitive, four-legged (tetrapod), salamander-like animal, found in Queensland, pushes back the date for the origin of demonstrably terrestrial vertebrates by two million years, said Dr Phillips, ...

Research by Catherine Klein, an undergraduate in Bristol's School of Earth Sciences, shows that fossils from the previously unstudied Woodleaze Quarry belong to a new species of the 'Gloucester lizard' Clevosaurus (named in 1939 after Clevum, the Latin name for Gloucester). In the Late Triassic, the hills of the South West of the UK formed an archipelago that was inhabited by small dinosaurs and relatives of the Tuatara, a living fossil from New Zealand. The limestone quarries of the region have many caves or fissures containing sediments filled with the bones of abundant ...

New research has revealed that parasitic 'vampire' plants that attach onto and derive nutrients from another living plant may benefit the abundance and diversity of surrounding vegetation and animal life. By altering the densities of the hemiparasite (a parasitic plant that also photosynthesises) Rhinanthus minor, in the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve in Sussex, ecologists from the Universities of York, Sussex and Lincoln were able to assess the impacts of the 'vampire' plants on the biodiversity of a species-rich semi-natural grassland. The scientists compared ...

NORTH GRAFTON, Mass. (June 4, 2015)--Birds, like people, can suffer from conditions where a blood transfusion is a necessary life-saving measure. But in many instances, unless an avian donor is readily available, accessing blood is impossible because of the challenges associated with storing the species' red blood cells. New research published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research has found that a substance called dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) shows promise as a potential cryopreservant for freezing avian blood. "Birds are susceptible to various causes of blood ...

In many animal species, the chromosomes differ between the sexes. The male has a Y chromosome. In some animals, however, for example birds, it is the other way round. In birds, the females have their own sex chromosome, the W chromosome. For the first, researchers in Uppsala have mapped the genetic structure and evolution of the W chromosome. Every individual of a species has the same sorts of chromosomes, with one exception. In many species, the way the sexes differ is that males have their own sex chromosome, the Y chromosome. This contains genes which result in the ...

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Toys, appliances, and even a sofa and coffee table can impact the way or when a baby first crawls, walks or achieves other growth milestones, but a new UT Arlington study finds that many parents are unaware of the significant role household items play in their infant's motor skill development. Priscila Caçola, an assistant professor of kinesiology in the UT Arlington College of Nursing and Health Innovation, co-developed a simple questionnaire for caregivers of infants aged 3 to 18 months that she says can aid in the evaluation of toys and other ...

From AGU's blogs: Flooding, erosion risks rise as Gulf of Mexico waves loom larger Waves in the northern Gulf of Mexico are higher than they were 30 years ago, contributing to a greater risk of coastal erosion and flooding in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. From Eos.org: Building Sandbars in the Grand Canyon Annual controlled floods from one of America's largest dams are rebuilding the sandbars of the iconic Colorado River, according to a new article by U.S. Geological Survey scientists in Eos. ...

Sharp images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope confirm that three supernovae discovered several years ago exploded in the dark emptiness of intergalactic space, having been flung from their home galaxies millions or billions of years earlier. Most supernovae are found inside galaxies containing hundreds of billions of stars, one of which might explode per century per galaxy. These lonely supernovae, however, were found between galaxies in three large clusters of several thousand galaxies each. The stars' nearest neighbors were probably 300 light years away, nearly ...

AURORA, Colo. June 3 -- As America's obesity epidemic continues to grow, a new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus shows that a low-cost, non-profit weight loss program offers the kind of long-term results that often elude dieters. 'We know that people lose weight and then gain it back,' said study author Nia S. Mitchell, M.D., MPH, a researcher with the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center at CU Anschutz. 'In this case, we found that people who renewed their annual membership in the program lost a ...

One of the most widely used tools in epigenetics research - the study of how DNA packaging affects gene expression - is chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), a technique that allows researchers to examine interactions between specific proteins and genomic regions. However, ChIP is a relative measurement, and has significant limitations that can lead to errors, poor reproducibility and an inability to be compared between experiments. To address these issues, scientists from the University of Chicago have developed a new technique that calibrates ChIP experiments with an ...

About one-third of patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) will develop delirium, a condition that lengthens hospital stays and substantially increases one's risk of dying in the hospital, according to a new study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers appearing in the British Medical Journal. "Every patient who develops delirium will on average remain in the hospital at least one day longer," says one of the study's authors, Robert Stevens, M.D., a specialist in critical care and an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. ...

[EMBARGOED UNTIL THURSDAY, JUNE 4] Although treatment advances have dramatically reduced deaths from opportunistic infections related to AIDS, a new study drawing on 30 years of data from more than 20,000 patients in San Francisco suggests there is still ample room to improve. About a third--35 percent--of AIDS patients diagnosed with their first opportunistic infection from 1997 to 2012 in that city died within five years, according to the study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. "While recent research suggests that many opportunistic infections in the ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 4, 2015 - Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often picky eaters, which can lead parents to suspect that their children might not be getting adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals. This sometimes leads parents of children with ASD to try nutritional supplements and dietary regimens such as gluten-free and casein-free (GFCF) diets without professional supervision. In the largest study of its kind, published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, researchers report that these well-intentioned efforts can result in ...

In a new study, scientists have gathered all available NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope data on the four outer moons of Pluto to analyse the system in more depth than ever before. The observations show that at least two of Pluto's moons are not neatly rotating on their axes but are in chaotic rotation while orbiting around Pluto and its companion Charon. The study also hints that one of the moons has a mysterious jet-black colouring. These surprising results appear in the 4 June issue of the journal Nature. Almost every moon in the Solar System, including our moon, rotates ...

SALT LAKE CITY, June 4, 2015 - At times during the past 10,000 years, cottontails and hares reproduced like rabbits and their numbers surged when the El Niño weather pattern drenched the Pacific Coast with rain, according to a University of Utah analysis of 3,463 bunny bones. The study of ancient rabbit populations at a Baja California site may help scientists better understand how mammals that range from the coast to the interior will respond to climate change, says anthropology doctoral student Isaac Hart. He is first author of the study to be published in the ...

A rare and elusive rabbit has been found, held and photographed by a researcher from the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Annamite Striped rabbit, found in the forests of Laos and Vietnam, was first documented by rabbit expert Dr Diana Bell and colleagues from UEA's School of Biological Sciences in the journal Nature in 1999. It has rarely been seen since. Researcher Sarah Woodfin, who is studying for a Masters in Applied Ecology and Conservation at UEA, set out on a three-month expedition to track the recently-discovered rabbit and study its habitat. But she ...

Many aquatic species have a reputation for negligent parenting. Having cast their gametes to the currents, they abandon their offspring to their fate. However, hands-on parenting is taken to a whole new dimension in the Syngnathidae fish family. Instead of leaving the responsibility to the females, seahorse and pipefish males take the pledge to care for their young even before the eggs are fertilized. The females depart soon after placing their eggs directly into the male's brood pouch, leaving the soon-to-be fathers to incubate the developing embryos. Ines Braga Goncalves ...

Cancer has overtaken cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and stroke, as the UK's No 1 killer--but only among men, reveals research published online in the journal Heart. Cardiovascular disease is still the most common cause of death among women, and kills more young women than breast cancer, the figures show. The researchers used the latest nationally available data (2012-13) for each of the four UK countries and the Cardiovascular Disease Statistics 2014 report compiled for the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to quantify the prevalence of cardiovascular ...

Researchers have developed a score that predicts an individual's risk of dying within 5 years for people aged between 40 and 70 years old in the UK, according to new research published in The Lancet. The score, which uses measures that can be obtained by simple questionnaires without any need for physical examination, such as self-rated health and usual walking speed, could be used by individuals to improve awareness of their health status, and by doctors to identify high-risk individuals for further treatment, say the authors. Individuals can calculate their personalised ...

Women aged 50-69 years who attend mammography screening reduce their risk of dying from breast cancer by 40 per cent compared to women who are not screened - according to a major international review of the latest evidence on breast cancer screening. Overall, women who are invited to attend mammography screening have a 23 per cent risk reduction in breast cancer death (owing to some attending and some not), compared with women not invited by routine screening programmes. In the UK, this relative risk translates to around eight deaths prevented per 1,000 women regularly ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Day in and day out, for years on end, millions of people with diabetes prick their fingers to test their blood sugar level. And many may wonder if all the careful eating, exercise and medication it takes to keep those levels under control is really worth it. A major new study should encourage them to keep going for the long haul, to protect their hearts from diabetes-related damage. But it should also prompt them to work with their doctors on other ways to reduce their cardiovascular risk. The key finding: that keeping blood sugar levels under good ...

Boston, MA - A new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that death rates among people over 65 are higher in zip codes with more fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) than in those with lower levels of PM2.5. It is the first study to examine the effect of soot particles in the air in the entire population of a region, including rural areas. The harmful effects from the particles were observed even in areas where concentrations were less than a third of the current standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "Most of the ...

Operation IceBridge wrapped up its seventh Arctic deployment on May 21, when NASA's C-130 research aircraft with the mission's researchers and instruments on board departed Thule Air Base in Greenland and headed to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. This Arctic field season, IceBridge, NASA's twice-yearly airborne survey of polar ice, carried out 33 eight-hour flights during ten weeks, collecting data over sea and land ice regions that have been evolving rapidly over the last decades. The mission also conducted over a dozen international research collaborations ...