Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University in Australia have found a way to predict illegal fishing activities to help authorities better protect marine reserves. Marine reserves are the most common strategy used to protect and maintain marine ecosystems around the world. The International Convention of Biological Diversity aims to have 10 per cent of the world's marine areas protected by 2020. Many countries are contributing to this target by protecting remote, offshore areas. For example, the United ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- This week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine features an article that highlights an unprecedented analysis of the nation's childhood head injuries. The study, authored by physicians at UC Davis School of Medicine and Washington University School of Medicine, analyzed more than 43,000 children who were evaluated for head trauma at 25 emergency departments around the United States. In the accompanying supplements, detailed information about these children, their presentations and results will be useful to doctors and helpful to policy makers ...

BOSTON, MA - Sleep disorders are independent risk factors for heart attacks and motor vehicle crashes, which are the two leading causes of death for firefighters in the United States. In a national sample of almost 7,000 firefighters, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) examined the prevalence of common sleep disorders and their association with adverse health and safety outcomes and found that sleep disorders are highly prevalent, and associated with substantially increased risk of motor vehicle crashes and cardio-metabolic diseases among firefighters. Findings ...

VIDEO: NC State researchers have developed a new way to transfer thin semiconductor films, which are only one atom thick, onto arbitrary substrates, paving the way for flexible computing or photonic... Click here for more information. Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new way to transfer thin semiconductor films, which are only one atom thick, onto arbitrary substrates, paving the way for flexible computing or photonic devices. The technique ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - In six out of 10 cases, ovarian cancer is diagnosed when the disease is advanced and five-year survival is only 27 percent. A new study suggests that a cancer-killing virus combined with a chemotherapy drug might safely and effectively treat advanced or recurrent forms of the disease. Researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), led the cell and animal study. Reporting in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, the researchers showed that ...

Some people experience cold not only as feeling cold, but actually as a painful sensation. This applies even to fairly mild temperatures - anything below 20°C. A group of researchers from Lund University in Sweden have now identified the mechanism in the body that creates this connection between cold and pain. It turns out that it is the same receptor that reacts to the pungent substances in mustard and garlic. Professor of Pharmacology Peter Zygmunt and Professor of Clinical Pharmacology Edward Högestätt have long conducted research on pain and the connection ...

For several years the Danish health service has been moving towards increased centralisation and specialisation in large hospital departments based on the thesis that this provides better results for patients. A new study involving more than 12,000 Danish patients with hip fractures presents a different picture, however: "Our study shows that the mortality rate for this group of patients is lower in the smaller hospital departments compared to the larger departments. We can also see that the length of stay in hospital is shorter and the quality of care is generally better, ...

Stanford, CA--Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert energy from the sunlight into chemical energy in the form of sugars. These sugars are used by plants to grow and function, as well as food for animals and humans that eat them. Plants grow in environments where the availability of light fluctuates quickly and drastically, for example from the shade of clouds passing overhead or of leaves on overhanging trees blowing in the wind. Plants thus have to rapidly adjust photosynthesis to maximize energy capture while preventing excess energy from causing damage. ...

Researchers from Denmark and the U.S. report that babies of women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or pre-clinical RA--the period prior to symptoms--are 1.5 times more likely to be born prematurely in Denmark. Findings published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), indicate that body measurements of the baby at birth were only slightly lower in children exposed to maternal or preclinical RA compared to those with no exposure to the disease. Paternal RA was not found to impact fetal growth or preterm birth risk. Roughly one ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 13, 2014 - A University of Utah study of two African tribes found evidence that men evolved better navigation ability than women because men with better spatial skills - the ability to mentally manipulate objects - can roam farther and have children with more mates. By testing and interviewing dozens of members of the Twe and Tjimba tribes in northwest Namibia, the anthropologists showed that men who did better on a spatial task not only traveled farther than other men but also had children with more women, according to the study published this week ...

New research indicates that the embryos of women who are overweight or obese at the time they conceive display distinct differences in early development compared to embryos from women of a healthy weight. The results of the study, published today in the journal Human Reproduction, provide strong evidence for a direct link between what mothers eat and the ability of their fertilised eggs to divide and grow. The researchers claim this could potentially have long-term health implications for any children born from these embryos. The four key findings of the study, which ...

Just as soldiers on sentry duty constantly adjust their behaviour to match the current threat level, dwarf mongoose sentinels exhibit flexible decision-making in relation to predation risk, new research from the University of Bristol has shown. Biologists Julie Kern and Dr Andy Radford found that decisions about when to go on duty, what position to adopt and how long to remain on post were all affected by information about the likelihood of danger. Sentinels altered their behaviour depending on both environmental conditions, such as wind speed and social signals, such ...

Human communication has long been associated with an unlikely companion, the homing pigeon; but how these pigeons find their way home is still largely a mystery. 'There is widespread agreement that pigeons are able to determine and maintain flight (compass) directions based on solar and magnetic cues,' says Hans-Peter Lipp from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Kwazulu-Natal University, South Africa. However, another piece of the puzzle - how the bird determines its position, known as the map sense - was unclear. Dissatisfied with the current theories - that pigeons ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 12, 2014 -- Porcelain crabs can adapt to a warming climate but will not have energy for much else beyond basic survival, according to new research published today from San Francisco State University. The findings have grim long-term implications for intertidal zone crabs as well as the myriad species that depend on them, and could be an indicator of how other intertidal organisms may respond to a rapidly changing climate. The study is detailed in an article published in the Journal of Experimental Biology and is the first to explore intertidal zone ...

(TORONTO, Canada - Nov. 13, 2014) - Prostate cancer researchers have developed a genetic test to identify which men are at highest risk for their prostate cancer to come back after localized treatment with surgery or radiotherapy. The findings are published online today in Lancet Oncology. Study co-leads Dr. Robert Bristow, a clinician-scientist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and Dr. Paul Boutros, an investigator at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, report that the gene test provides a much-needed quick and accurate tool to determine with greater precision ...

Rare mutations that shut down a single gene are linked to lower cholesterol levels and a 50 percent reduction in the risk of heart attack, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Broad Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, and other institutions. The gene, called NPC1L1, is of interest because it is the target of the drug ezetimibe, often prescribed to lower cholesterol. The study appears Nov. 12 in The New England Journal of Medicine. Everyone inherits two copies of most genes -- one copy ...

A study in which more than 43,000 children were evaluated for head trauma offers an unprecedented picture of how children most frequently suffer head injuries, report physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine. The findings also indicate how often such incidents result in significant brain injuries, computerized tomography (CT) scans to assess head injuries, and neurosurgery to treat them. In children ages 12 and younger, falls were the most common cause of head injuries. In children ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 12, 2014 - Critical care is defined by life-threatening conditions, which require close evaluation, monitoring, and treatment by appropriately trained health professionals. Cardiovascular care bears these same requirements. In fact, cardiovascular disease will soon surpass even human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the leading cause of mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the latest issue of Global Heart, researchers discuss the challenges of delivering critical care in resource-limited countries. According to Guest Editors Vanessa Kerry, MD, ...

What time is it? The answer, no matter what your initial reference may be -- a wristwatch, a smartphone, or an alarm clock -- will always trace back to the atomic clock. The international standard for time is set by atomic clocks -- room-sized apparatuses that keep time by measuring the natural vibration of atoms in a vacuum. The frequency of atomic vibrations determines the length of one second -- information that is beamed up to GPS satellites, which stream the data to ground receivers all over the world, synchronizing cellular and cable networks, power grids, and ...

(Santa Barbara, California) -- The world is gaining weight and becoming less healthy, and global dietary choices are harming the environment. Those are among the findings of a paper co-authored by David Tilman, a professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and Michael Clark, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, where Tilman also is a professor. In "Global Diets Link Environmental Sustainability and Human Health," published today in the journal Nature, the researchers find that rising incomes and urbanization around the world are ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Taking vitamin B12 and folic acid supplements may not reduce the risk of memory and thinking problems after all, according to a new study published in the November 12, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study is one of the largest to date to test long-term use of supplements and thinking and memory skills. The study involved people with high blood levels of homocysteine, an amino acid. High levels of homocysteine have been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer's disease. "Since homocysteine ...

A protein that may partly explain why human brains are larger than those of other animals has been identified by scientists from two stem-cell labs at UC San Francisco, in research published in the November 13, 2014 issue of Nature. Key experiments by the UCSF researchers revealed that the protein, called PDGFD, is made in growing brains of humans, but not in mice, and appears necessary for normal proliferation of human brain stem cells growing in a lab dish. The scientists made their discovery as part of research in which they identified genes that are activated to ...

U.S. Army soldiers hospitalized with a psychiatric disorder have a significantly elevated suicide risk in the year following discharge from the hospital, according to research from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS). The yearly suicide rate for this group, 263.9 per 100,000 soldiers, was far higher than the rate of 18.5 suicides per 100,000 in the Regular Army for the same study period, the study found. The researchers looked at data from the 12 months following a hospital discharge for more than 40,000 anonymous, Regular Army ...

It has long been known that patients recently discharged from psychiatric hospitalizations have a significantly elevated suicide risk. However, the rarity of suicide even in this high-risk segment of the population makes it impractical to justify providing intensive post-hospital suicide prevention programs to all recently discharged patients. Targeted programs for patients at especially high suicide risk would be more feasible, but it is difficult for clinicians to predict with good accuracy which patients are at high risk for suicide. A new report published online today ...

Nearly a quarter of all patients who underwent initial breast conservation surgery (BCS) for breast cancer had a subsequent surgical intervention, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. Completely removing breast cancer is seen as the best way to reduce recurrence and improve survival. A lack of consensus on an adequate margin width has led to variable rates of reexcision and, as a result, patients undergo repeat or additional surgeries, according to background information provided in the study. Lee G. Wilke, M.D., of the University of Wisconsin School ...