A prospective "green revolution" in Africa could boost land use and carbon emissions globally, according to a study co-authored by a University of British Columbia researcher. The term "green revolution" typically describes the use of agricultural innovations – such as the development of new seeds – to increase yields, particularly in developing countries. Past green revolutions in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East have spared land and carbon dioxide emissions. However, in an increasingly globalized economy, an African green revolution could lead to opposite outcomes, ...

From AGU's blogs: Global food trade may not meet all future demand, new study indicates As the world population continues to grow, by about 1 billion people every 12 to 14 years since the 1960s, the global food supply may not meet escalating demand – particularly for agriculturally poor countries in arid to semi-arid regions, such as Africa's Sahel, that already depend on imports for much of their food supply, according to a new study published online in the American Geophysical Union journal, Earth's Future. From this week's Eos: Next-Generation Forecasting of High-Impact ...

West Orange, NJ. September 9, 2014. Kessler Foundation scientists have shown that working memory may be an underlying mechanism of cognitive reserve in multiple sclerosis (MS). This finding informs the relationships between working memory, intellectual enrichment (the proxy measure for cognitive reserve) and long-term memory in this population. "Working memory mediates the relationship between intellectual enrichment and long-term memory in multiple sclerosis: An exploratory analysis of cognitive reserve" (doi: 10.1017/S1355617714000630) was published online ahead of ...

As the amount of time employees spend at their desks increases, so does musculoskeletal discomfort and other health issues associated with the office environment. Although office ergonomics training programs have been shown to improve employee well-being and productivity, in many cases training occurs only after complaints are logged. New research to be presented at the HFES 2014 Annual Meeting in Chicago demonstrates that a comprehensive and proactive workplace ergonomics program can help to prevent discomfort and injury. Alan Hedge, coauthor of "Proactive Office Ergonomics ...

University of Cincinnati geography researchers have developed a large-scale mapping technique to track a variety of demographic data across the United States, including researching populations based on gender, race and economic diversity. Details on the technique behind the new, high resolution, grid-based map of U.S. demographics developed by Anna Dmowska, a postdoctoral fellow for UC's Space Informatics Lab, and Tomasz Stepinski, the Thomas Jefferson Chair Professor of Space Exploration at UC, are published in this month's issue of Applied Geography. The map can also ...

People who are in control of their gambling habits play for fun and like the idea of possibly winning big. They set limits on how much money and time they can spend, and they are likely to gamble on the internet. But gambling is just one of several leisure activities these players undertake. In contrast, gambling is a form of escapism for problem players and often their only social activity, say Richard Wood of GamRes Ltd. in Canada, and Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University in the UK. The results appear in Springer's Journal of Gambling Studies. Their study is ...

September 9, 2014 -- Male shoppers in search of emergency contraception do not always have an easy time making these purchases and may be turned away at their local pharmacies. A "mystery shopper" survey conducted in New York City by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Medical Center showed that males had a 20 percent likelihood of not being able to purchase emergency contraception. Nearly three-quarters of the pharmacies in the study created barriers for the males to get the contraception. This is the first research ...

Experiencing discrimination because of their race or health condition can influence just how much trust people put into the health profession. In fact, having these experiences was associated with a 53-percent increase in the chances that someone suffering from sickle cell disease will not follow their doctors' orders, says Carlton Haywood Jr. of the Berman Institute of Bioethics and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US. Haywood led a study appearing in The Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer, into the experiences of how patients who suffer ...

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released a long-anticipated update to the source-of-record for cetane number data. This information is vital to the development of new, energy-efficient, low-carbon fuels and compatible engines. Researchers, as well as members of the engine, vehicle, and fuel industries, rely on these numbers to target compounds for development of new fuels capable of greater energy efficiency, cleaner emissions, and maximum performance in diesel engines. A cetane number is a relative ranking of fuels based on the ...

One of the goals of genome sequencing is to identify genetic mutations associated with increased susceptibility to disease. Yet by and large these discoveries have been made in people of European or Asian ancestry, resulting in an incomplete picture of global genetic variation in disease vulnerability. In a new study published in the journal BMC Medical Genomics, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have addressed this omission. Their investigation identified more than 30 previously undescribed mutations in important regulatory molecules called microRNAs. Many ...

NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Fengshen as it continued moving away from the east coast of Japan. Satellite imagery showed that the storm resembled a frontal system more than a tropical storm because it appeared stretched from southwest to northeast NASA's Terra satellite flew over Tropical Storm Fengshen on Sept. 9 at 1:05 UTC (Sept. 8 at 9:05 p.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument captured an image of the massive storm. The MODIS image showed that the bulk of Fenghsen's clouds were north and northeast ...

The effort to develop therapeutics and a vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus disease (EVD) requires a complex understanding of the microorganism and its relationship within the host, especially the immune response. Adding to the challenge, EVD can be caused by any one of five known species within the genus Ebolavirus (EBOV), in the Filovirus family. Now, researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (La Jolla Institute) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego are assisting the scientific community ...

Researchers at Princeton University have begun crystallizing light as part of an effort to answer fundamental questions about the physics of matter. The researchers are not shining light through crystal – they are transforming light into crystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place. "It's something that we have never seen before," said Andrew Houck, an associate professor of electrical engineering and one ...

An evolutionary analysis of public health data during a major disease outbreak, such as bird flu, E. coli contamination of food or the current Ebola outbreak could help the emergency services plan their response and contain the disease more effectively. Details are reported in the International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications. Dehai Liu of the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, in Dalian, Liaoning, China, and colleagues have used evolutionary game theory to examine the data associated with a major public health event - the emergence of a new ...

This news release is available in German. It could be difficult for the NSA to hack encrypted messages in the future – at least if a technology being investigated by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen and the University Erlangen-Nürnberg will be successful: quantum cryptography. The physicists are now laying the foundation to make this technique, which can already be used for the generation of secret keys, available for a wider range of applications. They are the first scientists to send a pulse of bright light in a particularly ...

VIDEO: A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds... Click here for more information. Washington, D.C.—A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist on our own gas giant planets--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--but ...

Storms have been the major cause of the huge fires that California has been battling in its northern regions. A lightning strike from a storm on August 12, 2014 started the fires in the Happy Camp Complex. There are currently 99,200 acres affected and the fire complex is at 30% containment. At around 4pm PDT on September 08, the smoke inversion lifted and fire behavior significantly increased on the south and southeast sides of the fire with spotting distances of up to a mile. Multiple spot fires occurred across the Scott River from Swanson Gulch and McGuffy Creek. ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Contrary to popular opinion, unruly students are not driving out teachers in droves from America's urban school districts. Instead, teachers are quitting due to frustration with standardized testing, declining pay and benefits and lack of voice in what they teach. So finds a Michigan State University education scholar – and former high school teacher – in her latest research on teacher turnover, which costs the nation an estimated $2.2 billion a year. Alyssa Hadley Dunn, assistant professor of teacher education, conducted in-depth interviews ...

Fairfax, Va., September 9, 2014—Radiation therapy with concurrent paclitaxel chemotherapy following surgery is an effective treatment for patients with high-risk endometrial cancer, according to a study published in the September 1, 2014 edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology ● Biology ● Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Endometrial cancer is the most common gynecologic malignancy. Patients with early-stage disease are typically treated with surgery alone; however, ...

The number of Americans needing long-term care — also called long-term services and supports (LTSS) — is projected to more than double to 27 million by 2050. Approximately 70 percent of people over the age of 65 will rely on some form of LTSS for an average of three years. The latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR) lays down a policy prescription for a sustainable system of LTSS in the U.S., using the Federal Commission on Long-Term Care's 2013 final report as its foundation. With support from The SCAN Foundation, the issue presents nine articles under ...

This news release is available in German. The research team of Annette Rompel from the Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, University of Vienna explore the mechanisms behind the "browning reaction" during the spoilage of mushrooms. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the enzyme responsible is already formed prior to fungal spoiling. The detailed study is published online in the well renowned journals, Phytochemistry and Acta Crystallographica. Understanding the mechanism of enzyme tyrosinase pigmentation is currently of both medical as well as technological ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 9, 2014 – Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is a devastating gastrointestinal illness affecting up to 10% of premature infants, with a 30% mortality rate, and formula feeding has been identified as a risk factor for NEC. A study published in The American Journal of Pathology found that growth factors present in human breast milk, but not in formula, may explain the protection against intestinal damage. Further, supplementing the diet of newborn NEC-affected rodents with these growth factors promotes epithelial cell survival. "NEC is a highly ...

Many people are unaware that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's mandated nutrition labels are based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, but a simple weekly text message reminder can greatly improve that awareness, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While not an outright recommendation, the 2,000-calorie benchmark is what the FDA considers a reasonable daily calorie intake for many adults. More importantly, nutrition labels on food products sold in the U.S. are based on it. The key to translating nutrition labels and ...

This news release is available in German. Leipzig. In tropical rainforests, most young trees grow spatially independent from their parent trees. This means that it is not possible to predict where seedlings will take root, and less specialised species therefore have an advantage even in the species-rich rainforests of the tropics. This is the finding of a study, conducted by researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the University of California and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the results of which were published recently in ...

People with asthma often have a hard time dealing with respiratory viruses such as the flu or the common cold, and researchers have struggled to explain why. In a new study that compared people with and without asthma, the answer is becoming clearer. The researchers found no difference in the key immune response to viruses in the lungs and breathing passages. The work, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, suggests that a fundamental antiviral defense mechanism is intact in asthma. This means that another aspect of the immune system must explain the ...