The temperature of the seawater around Antarctica is rising according to new research from the University of East Anglia. New research published today in the journal Science shows how shallow shelf seas of West Antarctica have warmed over the last 50 years. The international research team say that this has accelerated the melting and sliding of glaciers in the area, and that there is no indication that this trend will reverse. It also reveals that other Antarctic areas, which have not yet started to melt, could experience melting for the first time with consequences ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Scientists may have solved a long-standing enigma known as the African Humid Period - an intense increase in cumulative rainfall in parts of Africa that began after a long dry spell following the end of the last ice age and lasting nearly 10,000 years. In a new study published this week in Science, an international research team linked the increase in rainfall in two regions of Africa thousands of years ago to an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. The ...

A long-held assumption about the Earth is discussed in today's edition of Science, as Don L. Anderson, an emeritus professor with the Seismological Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, and Scott King, a professor of geophysics in the College of Science at Virginia Tech, look at how a layer beneath the Earth's crust may be responsible for volcanic eruptions. The discovery challenges conventional thought that volcanoes are caused when plates that make up the planet's crust shift and release heat. Instead of coming from deep within the interior of the ...

VIDEO: Vanderbilt biologist Kenneth Catania describes his discovery that the electroshock system used by the electric eel to detect and immobilize prey is uncannily similar to the Taser. Click here for more information. The electric eel - the scaleless Amazonian fish that can deliver an electrical jolt strong enough to knock down a full-grown horse - possesses an electroshock system uncannily similar to a Taser. That is the conclusion of a nine-month study of the way in which ...

The "survival of the fittest" principle applies to cells in a tissue - rapidly growing and dividing cells are the fit ones. A relatively less fit cell, even if healthy and viable, will be eliminated by its more fit neighbors. Importantly, this selection mechanism is only activated when cells with varying levels of fitness are present in the same tissue. If a tissue only consists of less fit cells, then no so-called cell competition occurs. Molecular biologists from the University of Zurich and Columbia University are the first researchers to demonstrate in a study published ...

Since 2010, detections of Asian Carp environmental DNA or "eDNA" have warned scientists, policymakers, and the public that these high-flying invaders are knocking on the Great Lakes' door. Scientists capture tiny DNA-containing bits from water and use genetic analysis to determine if any Asian Carp DNA is present. New research published by Notre Dame scientists shows that the tools currently used for Asian Carp eDNA monitoring often fail to detect the fish. By comparison, the new eDNA methods described in this study capture and detect Asian Carp eDNA more effectively. The ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Among the billions and billions of stars in the sky, where should astronomers look for infant Earths where life might develop? New research from Cornell University's Institute for Pale Blue Dots shows where - and when - infant Earths are most likely to be found. The paper by research associate Ramses M. Ramirez and director Lisa Kaltenegger, "The Habitable Zones of Pre-Main-Sequence Stars" will be published in the Jan. 1, 2015, issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. Images and study: https://cornell.box.com/infantearths "The search for new, habitable ...

For nearly 40 years, one of the cornerstones of the study of adaptation has been the examination of "whole-organism performance capacities"--essentially, measures of the dynamic things animals do: how fast they can run; how hard they can bite; how far, fast, and high they can jump; and so on. Together, these functional attributes determine the performance of a species' ecology: the types of food one can eat; the ability to capture or locate prey; the ability to avoid predation; the ability of males to intimidate or, in some cases, prevent rival males from invading a territory; ...

Insects can transmit viral diseases to humans. Therefore, understanding how insects cope with viral infection, and what immune mechanisms are triggered, can be important to stop diseases transmission. In a study published in this week's issue of the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens*, researchers from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC; Portugal) now show that the entry route of the virus changes how the insect host responds to it. Using the fruit flies as a model of study, they discovered an immune mechanism that is specifically effective when flies are infected ...

BOULDER - New research demonstrates for the first time that an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations thousands of years ago was a key factor in causing substantially more rainfall in two major regions of Africa. The finding provides new evidence that the current increase in greenhouse gases will have an important impact on Africa's future climate. The study, led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is being published this week in Science. "The future impact of greenhouse gases on rainfall in Africa is a critical socioeconomic issue," said NCAR ...

WASHINGTON - Children in emergency departments can safely be treated for pain from limb injuries using intranasal ketamine, a drug more typically used for sedation, according to the results of the first randomized, controlled trial comparing intranasal analgesics in children in the emergency department. The study was published online last month in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("The PICHFORK (Pain in Children Fentanyl OR Ketamine) Trial: A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Intranasal Ketamine and Fentanyl for the Relief of Moderate to Severe Pain in Children with Limb ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Micheal L. Dent, a University at Buffalo psychologist, listens to what is inaudible to others. And what she's hearing might one day help us better understand human hearing loss. Dent studies ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) in mice. These sounds are above the human ear's upper limit, but they can be recorded and played back using specialized equipment that has allowed Dent to capture an impressive repertoire that when graphically represented shows a variety of sweeps, arcs, dips and curves. The tempo and intensity of these vocalizations change, as does ...

TORONTO, Dec. 4, 2014 - Results from an ongoing survey conducted by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) show that 2.2 per cent of adults --or over 230,000 people in Ontario, Canada -- seriously contemplated suicide in the last year. The 2013 edition of the CAMH Monitor, released today, included questions about suicidal ideation for the first time in the survey's history. "Suicide is a major public health issue, and these data confirm that large numbers of Ontario adults report having suicidal thoughts," said Dr. Hayley Hamilton, CAMH scientist and co-principal ...

AMHERST, Mass. - A new study led by biologist R. Thomas Zoeller of the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides "the strongest evidence to date" that endocrine disrupting chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) found in flame retardant cloth, paint, adhesives and electrical transformers, can interfere with thyroid hormone action in pregnant women and may travel across the placenta to affect the fetus. Results appeared in an early online edition and in the December print edition of the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA -- Those formerly silent walls can "talk" now: Researchers have demonstrated a simple optical technique by which audio information can be extracted from high-speed video recordings. The method uses an image-matching process based on vibration from sound waves, and is reported in an article appearing in the November issue of the journal Optical Engineering, published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. "One of the intriguing aspects of the paper is the ability to recover spoken words from a video of objects in the room," ...

In what is believed to be the first interview-style qualitative study of its kind among health care providers in the trenches, a team led by a Johns Hopkins geriatrician has further documented barriers to better care of older adults as they are transferred from hospital to rehabilitation center to home, and too often back again. Using comments and concerns drawn from in-depth interviews of 18 physicians and two home health care agency administrators -- all experienced in trying to coordinate care of older adults -- the researchers created a framework for evaluating what ...

VIDEO: A bat lands on the rewarded object in complete darkness (movie taken in IR). The movie shows that the bat has a general knowledge of the location of the object,... Click here for more information. In a discovery that overturns conventional wisdom about bats, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 4 have found that Old World fruit bats--long classified as "non-echolocating"--actually do use a rudimentary form of echolocation. Perhaps ...

A new study shows that increasing sugar in the diet of male fruit flies for just 1 or 2 days before mating can cause obesity in their offspring through alterations that affect gene expression in the embryo. There is also evidence that a similar system regulates obesity susceptibility in mice and humans. The research, which is published online December 4 in the Cell Press journal Cell, provides insights into how certain metabolic traits are inherited and may help investigators determine whether they can be altered. Research has shown that various factors that are passed ...

New Caledonian crows--well known for their impressive stick-wielding abilities--show preferences when it comes to holding their tools on the left or the right sides of their beaks, in much the same way that people are left- or right-handed. Now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 4 suggest that those bill preferences allow each bird to keep the tip of its tool in view of the eye on the opposite side of its head. Crows aren't so much left- or right-beaked as they are left- or right-eyed. "If you were holding a brush in your mouth ...

Blood cancers are more common in men than in women, but it has not been clear why this is the case. A study published by Cell Press December 4th in Cell Stem Cell provides an explanation, revealing that female sex hormones called estrogens regulate the survival, proliferation, and self-renewal of stem cells that give rise to blood cancers. Moreover, findings in mice with blood neoplasms--the excessive production of certain blood cells--suggest that a drug called tamoxifen, which targets estrogen receptors and is approved for the treatment of breast cancer, may also be a ...

In a breakthrough study to be published on the December 4th issue of the prestigious scientific journal Cell, a research team led by Miguel Soares at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC; Portugal) discovered that specific bacterial components in the human gut microbiota can trigger a natural defense mechanism that is highly protective against malaria transmission. Over the past few years, the scientific community became aware that humans live under a continuous symbiotic relationship with a vast community of bacteria and other microbes that reside in the gut. ...

This discovery has a potential application in the treatment of certain blood disorders for which there is currently no cure. The study was led by Dr. Simón Méndez-Ferrer of the CNIC, working in partnership with the laboratories of Doctors Jürg Schwaller and Radek Skoda of the University Hospital in Basel (Switzerland). The study's authors have demonstrated in mice that tamoxifen, a drug already approved and widely used for the treatment of breast cancer, blocks the symptoms and the progression of a specific group of blood disorders known as myeloproliferative ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- In a study in the journal Neuron, scientists describe a new high data-rate, low-power wireless brain sensor. The technology is designed to enable neuroscience research that cannot be accomplished with current sensors that tether subjects with cabled connections. Experiments in the paper confirm that new capability. The results show that the technology transmitted rich, neuroscientifically meaningful signals from animal models as they slept and woke or exercised. "We view this as a platform device for tapping into the richness of ...

The bacterium Salmonella Typhi causes typhoid fever in humans, but leaves other mammals unaffected. Researchers at University of California, San Diego and Yale University Schools of Medicine now offer one explanation -- CMAH, an enzyme that humans lack. Without this enzyme, a toxin deployed by the bacteria is much better able to bind and enter human cells, making us sick. The study is published in the Dec. 4 issue of Cell. In most mammals (including our closest evolutionary cousins, the great apes), the CMAH enzyme reconfigures the sugar molecules found on these animals' ...

The link between obesity and cardiovascular diseases is well acknowledged. Being obese or overweight is a major risk factor for the development of elevated blood pressure, and cardiovascular diseases. But it has net been known how obesity increases the risk of high blood pressure, making it difficult to develop evidence based therapies for obesity, hypertension and heart disease. In a ground-breaking study, published today in the prestigious journal, Cell (embargo midday EST), researchers from Monash University in Australia, Warwick, Cambridge in the UK and several American ...