LOS ANGELES (May 11, 2015) - The new 9-valent human papillomavirus vaccine, can potentially prevent 80 percent of cervical cancers in the United States, if given to all 11- or 12-year-old children before they are exposed to the virus. In addition to protecting against 80 percent of cervical cancers, the new 9-Valent human papillomavirus vaccine, which includes seven cancer causing HPV-types - 16,18,31,33,45,52 and 58 - has the potential to protect against nearly 19,000 other cancers diagnosed in the United States, including anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers. This ...

HECTOR, N.Y. (May 11, 2015): Research by the U.S. Forest Service at the Finger Lakes National Forest (FLNF) is exploring whether native trees can restore a degraded stream corridor and whether degraded stream corridors can help one of those native trees -- the American elm -- stage a comeback. "Forest Service research is a vital part of keeping our rural and urban forests healthy, sustainable and more resilient to disturbances now and for future generations," said Michael T. Rains, Director of the Forest Service's Northern Research Station and the Forest Products Laboratory. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University scientists have discovered a previously unknown dual mechanism that slows peat decay and may help reduce carbon dioxide emissions from peatlands during times of drought. "This discovery could hold the key to helping us find a way to significantly reduce the risk that increased drought and global warming will change Earth's peatlands from carbon sinks into carbon sources, as many scientists have feared," said Curtis J. Richardson, director of the Duke University Wetland Center and professor of resource ecology at Duke's Nicholas School ...

Fifty miles out to sea from San Diego, in the middle of April, under a perfectly clear blue sky, NOAA Fisheries scientists Tomo Eguchi and Jeff Seminoff leaned over the side of a rubber inflatable boat and lowered a juvenile loggerhead sea turtle into the water. That turtle was a trailblazer -- the first of its kind ever released off the West Coast of the United States with a satellite transmitter attached. Once he was in the water, the little guy -- "he's about the size of a dinner plate," Seminoff said -- paddled away to begin a long journey. He's been beaming back ...

Going to the dentist might have just gotten a little less scary for the estimated 1 in 68 U.S. children with autism spectrum disorder as well as children with dental anxiety, thanks to new research from USC. In an article published on May 1 by the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, researchers from USC and Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) examined the feasibility of adapting dental environments to be more calming for children with autism spectrum disorder. "The regular dental environment can be quite frightening for children with autism who, not knowing ...

PITTSBURGH, May 11, 2015 - A computer simulation, or "in silico" model, of the body's inflammatory response to traumatic injury accurately replicated known individual outcomes and predicted population results counter to expectations, according to a study recently published in Science Translational Medicine by a University of Pittsburgh research team. Traumatic injury is a major health care problem worldwide. Trauma induces acute inflammation in the body with the recruitment of many kinds of cells and molecular factors that are crucial for tissue survival, explained senior ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Over nearly 15 years spent studying ticks, Indiana University's Keith Clay has found southern Indiana to be an oasis free from Lyme disease, the condition most associated with these arachnids that are the second most common parasitic disease vector on Earth. He has also seen signs that this low-risk environment is changing, both in Indiana and in other regions of the U.S. A Distinguished Professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Biology, Clay has received support for his research on ticks from over $2.7 million ...

Around 55 million years ago, an abrupt global warming event triggered a highly corrosive deep-water current through the North Atlantic Ocean. The current's origin puzzled scientists for a decade, but an international team of researchers has now discovered how it formed and the findings may have implications for the carbon dioxide emission sensitivity of today's climate. The researchers explored the acidification of the ocean that occurred during a period known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when the Earth warmed 9 degree Fahrenheit in response to a ...

On Sunday, May 10, 2015, Super Typhoon Noul (designated Dodong in the Philippines) made landfall in Santa Ana, a coastal town in Cagayan on the northeastern tip of the Philippine Islands. Close to 2,500 residents evacuated as the storm crossed over, and as of today no major damage or injuries have been reported. Trees were downed by the high winds and power outages occurred during the storm. Noul is expected to weaken now that it has made land, and to move faster as it rides strong surrounding winds. It is forecast to completely leave the Philippines by Tuesday morning ...

This was no Mother's Day gift to South Carolina as Ana made landfall on Sunday. Just before 6 am, Ana made landfall north of Myrtle Beach, SC with sustained winds of 45 mph, lower than the 50 mph winds it was packing as a tropical storm over the Atlantic. After making landfall, Ana transitioned to a tropical depression and is currently moving northward through North Carolina and will continue its trek northward. Heavy rain and storm surges are expected in the storm's wake. Storms of this size will create dangerous rip currents so beachgoers should be wary of Ana as ...

The MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite captured this image of Tropical Storm Dolphin riding roughshod over the Federated States of Micronesia. Dolphin strengthened to tropical storm status between Bulletin 272 and 273 (1620 GMT and 2200 GMT) of the Joint Typhoon Weather Center on May 09, 2015. The AIRS instrument on Aqua captured the images below of Dolphin between 10:59 pm EDT on May 9 and 11:00 am May 10 (02:59 UTC/15:17 UTC). Dolphin is currently located (as of 5:00am EDT/0900 GMT) 464 miles ENE of Chuuk moving northwest at 9 knots (10 mph). It is expected ...

New York, NY - The United States has a serious shortage of organs for transplants, resulting in unnecessary deaths every day. However, a fairly simple and ethical change in policy would greatly expand the nation's organ pool while respecting autonomy, choice, and vulnerability of a deceased's family or authorized caregiver, according to medical ethicists and an emergency physician at NYU Langone Medical Center. The authors share their views in a new article in the May 11 online edition of the Journal of American Medical Association's "Viewpoint" section. "The U.S. ...

Hepatitis B stimulates processes that deprive the body's immune cells of key nutrients that they need to function, finds new UCL-led research funded by the Medical Research Council and Wellcome Trust. The work helps to explain why the immune system cannot control hepatitis B virus infection once it becomes established in the liver, and offers a target for potential curative treatments down the line. The research also offers insights into controlling the immune system, which could be useful for organ transplantation and treating auto-immune diseases. Worldwide 240 million ...

A new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that, when looking at the production site alone, growing biofuel crops can have a significant impact on climate depending on location and crop type. The study is the first geographically explicit life cycle assessment to consider the full range of greenhouse gases emissions from vegetation and soil carbon stock to nitrogen fertilizer emissions in all locations in the world. In the last couple of years, research has begun to raise questions about the sustainability of biofuels. Life cycle assessments--a method ...

CAMBRIDGE, MD (May 11, 2015)--A recent study of harmful algal blooms in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science show a marked increase in these ecosystem-disrupting events in the past 20 years that are being fed by excess nitrogen runoff from the watershed. While algal blooms have long been of concern, this study is the first to document their increased frequency in the Bay and is a warning that more work is needed to reduce nutrient pollution entering the Bay's waters. The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries ...

University of Melbourne animal welfare researcher Dr Jean-Loup Rault says the prospect of robopets and virtual pets is not as far-fetched as we may think. His paper in the latest edition of Frontiers in Veterinary Science argues pets will soon become a luxury in an overpopulated world and the future may lie in chips and circuits that mimic the real thing. "It might sound surreal for us to have robotic or virtual pets, but it could be totally normal for the next generation," Dr Rault said. "It's not a question of centuries from now. If 10 billion human beings live ...

ATLANTA--Confirming what many parents already know, researchers at Georgia State University and the University of Washington have discovered that toddlers, especially those with siblings, understand how the sounds they make affect people around them. The findings are published in the Journal of Cognition and Development. There has been limited research on what children understand about what others hear, with previous studies focusing only on whether a sound could be heard. This study takes a new approach to learning what children understand about sound by introducing ...

ANN ARBOR--Climate helps drive the erosion process that exposes economically valuable copper deposits and shapes the pattern of their global distribution, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Idaho and the University of Michigan. Nearly three-quarters of the world's copper production comes from large deposits that form about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the Earth's surface, known as porphyry copper deposits. Over the course of millions to tens of millions of years, they are exposed by erosion and can then be mined. Brian Yanites of the ...

In a sobering finding for global health authorities and governments around the world, a group of leading epidemiologists say two in three deaths globally -- or 40 million people -- go unreported. And one in three births -- another 40 million people -- go unregistered. University of Melbourne Laureate Professor Alan Lopez, one of The Lancet series lead authors, has been leading a global campaign to improve how countries capture civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS). The four-paper Lancet series promote the case to change CRVS systems to collect more reliable ...

A new study links a father's age at birth to the risk that his child will develop blood and immune system cancers as an adult, particularly for only children. The study, which appears in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found no association between having an older mother and these cancers. The proportion of parents who delay having children until age 35 or older continues to increase, but the long-term health consequences for these children are still emerging. Studies suggest higher risk of several conditions including several childhood and adult-onset cancers in ...

DURHAM, N.H. -- The underlying physical process that creates striking "breaking wave" cloud patterns in our atmosphere also frequently opens the gates to high-energy solar wind plasma that perturbs Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere, which protects us from cosmic radiation. The discovery was made by two University of New Hampshire space physicists, who published their findings in the online journal Nature Communications Monday, May 11, 2015. The phenomenon involves ultra low-frequency Kelvin-Helmholtz waves, which are ubiquitous throughout the universe and create ...

The soft signs of compulsive gambling -- high energy levels, unreasonable expectations, extreme competitiveness, distorted optimism and above-average IQs -- are often the very traits that characterize competing athletes. However, precious little research is available on the prevalence of gambling among athletes and the relevant warning signs. A new Tel Aviv University study published in The American Journal of Addictions indicates that high-schoolers involved in competitive sports are at an elevated risk of gambling. According to the research, led by Dr. Belle Gavriel-Fried ...

Whether it's being outbid at the last second in an online auction or missing the winning lottery number by one digit, we often come so close to something we can "almost taste it" only to lose out in the end. These "near wins" may actually boost our motivation to achieve other wins, leading us to pursue totally unrelated rewards, according to new research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Our research suggests that at least in some cases, losing has positive power. While we often think of motivation as being targeted to ...

Irvine, Calif., May 11, 2015 - Driving down a dimly lit road at midnight can tax even those with 20/20 vision, but according to a recent UC Irvine study, the brain processes the experience no differently than if it were noon. The same study also reveals how quickly the brain adapts to vision loss, contradicting earlier research and opening the door to novel treatments. The findings, which appear in the April 21 edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are significant for those who have suffered retinal damage or disease, said cognitive scientist Alyssa ...

The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has allowed trees across Europe to use their available water resources more efficiently, new research has shown. Over the course of the 20th century, the so-called water use efficiency has risen nearly 20% from the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. These results, produced by an international research team, including experts from the University of Exeter, are reported in leading scientific journal Nature Climate Change. Trees take up carbon dioxide from the air through tiny pores on their leaves called stomata and ...