A new paper by Zhi Da, Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame, find that residential electricity usage can track household production in real time and helps to price assets. "The importance of household production in economics has been recognized by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker back in 1960s but measuring what household produces at home has been an empirical challenge," Da said." For example, it has been a puzzle why certain industries such as consumer product, food, and clothing earn higher average returns than others such as steel ...

A new study from Princeton University sheds light on the handing over of genetic control from mother to offspring early in development. Learning how organisms manage this transition could help researchers understand larger questions about how embryos regulate cell division and differentiation into new types of cells. The study, published in the March 12 issue of the journal Cell, provides new insight into the mechanism for this genetic hand-off, which happens within hours of fertilization, when the newly fertilized egg is called a zygote. "At the beginning, everything ...

Irvine, Calif., March 20, 2015 - A controversial decision in 2011 to blow up Mississippi River levees reduced the risk of flooding in a city upstream, lowering the height of the rain-swollen river just before it reached its peak, according to a newly published computer modeling analysis led by UC Irvine scientists. The work focused on a Missouri agricultural area called the New Madrid Floodway that was inundated when the levees were detonated. The researchers found that the region would have flooded anyway if the river had been allowed to overtop the levee banks. And ...

Banning sodas from school vending machines, building walking paths and playgrounds, adding supermarkets to food deserts and requiring nutritional labels on restaurant menus: Such changes to the environments where people live and work are among the growing number of solutions that have been proposed and attempted in efforts to stem the rising obesity epidemic with viable, population-based solutions. But which of these changes actually make an impact? To answer that question, many public health researchers take advantage of "natural experiments"--looking at people's calorie ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. - Scientists from Montana State University and Sweden have discovered an antioxidant system that helps sustain the liver when other systems are missing or compromised. Like a generator kicking in when the power fails or an understudy taking the stage when a lead actor is sick, the newly found system steps up during a crisis. It's fueled by methionine, an amino acid that can't be manufactured in the body and doesn't come from herbal teas or supplements. People get it only by eating protein. "This is an important finding," said Ed Schmidt, a professor in ...

BOSTON (March 20, 2015) - A study reported in this week's Science Translational Medicine found that qualified investigators are more likely to respond to opportunities for clinical trials if they are contacted by an institution-specific point person, or navigator. Jonathan M. Davis, MD, Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Director of Regulatory Affairs and Chief of Newborn Medicine at Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center and a multi-institution team of child health researchers instituted the Point-Person Project, a pilot study that ...

URBANA, Ill. - Distillers dried grains with solubles, or DDGS, are increasingly common in swine diets in the United States. In recent years, different types of DDGS have come on the market. "Ethanol plants use different procedures to produce DDGS, which results in different end products," said Hans H. Stein, a professor of animal sciences at University of Illinois. "To produce conventional DDGS, the corn is cooked to gelatinize starch prior to fermentation. However, uncooked DDGS can also be used if specific enzymes are used to pre-digest the starch prior to fermentation. ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - March 20, 2015 - Medicine obviously can't do much good if it sits on a pharmacy shelf. Yet more than one-quarter of the acne patients surveyed by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers didn't get medications prescribed by their dermatologists. Among the 143 acne patients who participated in the study, 27 percent failed to obtain all of their medications, including both prescription drugs and over-the-counter products. Those who were prescribed two medications had the highest rate of primary non-adherence - not getting a medication or not using ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 20, 2015 - A new study provides the first evidence that the mediator complex subunit 15 (MED15) may play a crucial role in the pathophysiology of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). MED15 overexpression was found to be associated with higher mortality rates in HNSCC patients with cancer recurrence, particularly in oral cavity/oropharyngeal tumors, according to the study published in The American Journal of Pathology. MED15 overexpression was also associated with heavy alcohol consumption, which is an HNSCC risk factor. HNSCC is the sixth ...

Researchers at the University of Rochester and their collaborators have developed a way to transfer 2.05 bits per photon by using "twisted light." This remarkable achievement is possible because the researchers used the orbital angular momentum of the photons to encode information, rather than the more commonly used polarization of light. The new approach doubles the 1 bit per photon that is possible with current systems that rely on light polarization and could help increase the efficiency of quantum cryptography systems. Quantum cryptography promises more secure communications. ...

FORT LAUDERDALE-DAVIE, Fla. - Tigers - they are some of nature's most beautiful, deadly and endangered species. In fact, living tigers are severely endangered in fragmented geographic areas across Asia - some reports show their numbers as low as 3,000 wild individuals. While there are efforts to help protect these magnificent creatures, more was needed in terms of research into the genetics of tigers. Nova Southeastern University researcher Stephen O'Brien was part of a team of research scientists from China, the United Kingdom, Israel, Russia and Qatar that looked at ...

A new study in Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), finds that most firms do not use the skimming or penetration strategies that deliberately overprice or underprice new products. Skimming or Penetration? Strategic Dynamic Pricing for New Products appears in the Articles in Advance Section of Marketing Science. The research was conducted by Martin Spann, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich; Marc Fischer, University of Cologne and University of Technology, Sydney; and Gerard J. Tellis, Marshall School ...

Measuring the concentration of leukemia cells in patient bone marrow during the first 46 days of chemotherapy should help boost survival of young leukemia patients by better matching patients with the right intensity of chemotherapy. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators led the research, which appears in the March 20 edition of the journal Lancet Oncology. The findings stem from a study of 498 children and adolescents with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) enrolled in a St. Jude-led protocol between 2000 and 2007. The clinical trial was the first to use ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas -- Kansas State University scientists have released findings of a complex, two-year study of the genomic diversity of wheat that creates an important foundation for future improvements in wheat around the world. Their work has produced the first haplotype map of wheat that provides detailed description of genetic differences in a worldwide sample of wheat lines. In genetics, a haplotype map is a powerful tool for transferring sequence-level variation to multiple gene mapping projects. "All of these new, genomic-based strategies of breeding promise ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Recycling plastic works; additives to biodegrade plastic do not. A new study from Michigan State University shows that several additives that claim to break down polyethylene (i.e., plastic bags) and polyethylene terephthalate (i.e., soda bottles) simply don't work in common disposal situations such as landfills or composting. "Making improper or unsubstantiated claims can produce consumer backlash, fill the environment with unwanted polymer debris and expose companies to legal penalties," said Susan Selke, co-author of the study and MSU packaging ...

The March 2015 issue of Language, the flagship scholarly journal of the Linguistic Society of America, is now available online: https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/language/toc/lan.91.1.html Highlights of the March issue include a paper on the origins of Indo-European languages which has already been the subject of significant interest, as well as the inaugural article of Language's new online section for "Phonological Analysis". "Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis", by Will Chang, Chundra Cathcart, David Hall and Andrew ...

A plant scientist from The Australian National University (ANU) has called for the United Nations to guarantee free and open access to plant DNA sequences to enable scientists to continue work to sustainably intensify world food production. Dr Norman Warthmann, a plant geneticist at the ANU Research School of Biology, has lodged a submission with the UN, which is currently considering issues to include in its 2015 Global Sustainable Development Report. Food security depends on an acceleration in plant breeding, which could be threatened by private companies restricting ...

The first blood test for osteoarthritis could soon be developed, thanks to research by the University of Warwick. The research findings could potentially lead to patients being tested for osteoarthritis and diagnosed several years before the onset of physical symptoms. Conducted by the University's Medical School, the research identified a biomarker linked to both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. Whilst there are established tests for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the newly identified biomarker could lead to one which can diagnose both rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis ...

Sipuleucel-T (trade name Provenge) has been approved since September 2014 for men with metastatic prostate cancer who have few or no symptoms and do not yet require chemotherapy. In the dossier assessment conducted by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) in January 2015, no added benefit could be derived for sipuleucel-T. In an addendum, the Institute now examined information subsequently submitted by the manufacturer in the commenting procedure: According to the findings, there is an indication of added benefit; however, the extent is ...

Adapting to climate change could have profound environmental repercussions, according to a new study from the University of East Anglia. Research in Nature Climate Change reveals that adaptation measures have the potential to generate further pressures and threats for both local and global ecosystems. Lead researcher Dr Carlo Fezzi, from UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "Climate change is a just a little bit more complicated than we previously thought. We need to take into account not only the direct impact of climate change, but also how people will respond ...

Scientists should reduce antibiotic use in lab experiments - according to a researcher at the University of East Anglia. Microbiology, molecular biology and genetic research such as the Human Genome Project use antibiotics in experiments. But it all adds to the global problem of antibiotic resistance according to Dr Laura Bowater, from UEA's Norwich Medical School. A new article published today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy highlights the problem. Dr Bowater said: "The discovery of antibiotics was heralded as a magic bullet for modern medicine. Using ...

This news release is available in French. In 1971 there were 139,000 Canadians aged 85 and over. By 2013 their numbers had risen to 702,000. The Oldest Old as they have become known today represent 2% of the total Canadian population. "They are a demographic reality which has to be taken into account in formulating public policy", according to Jacques Légaré, a demographer at the University of Montreal, who is presenting a report on this phenomenon this week to more than a hundred experts meeting at the Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge ...

Suspending kids from school for using marijuana is likely to lead to more -- not less -- pot use among their classmates, a new study finds. Counseling was found to be a much more effective means of combating marijuana use. And while enforcement of anti-drug policies is a key factor in whether teens use marijuana, the way schools respond to policy violators matters greatly. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington and in Australia, compared drug policies at schools in Washington state and Victoria, Australia, to determine how they impacted ...

Deadly familial stomach and lobular breast cancers could be successfully treated at their earliest stages, or even prevented, by existing drugs that have been newly identified by cancer genetics researchers at New Zealand's University of Otago. The researchers, led by Professor Parry Guilford, show for the first time that the key genetic mutation underlying the devastating conditions also opens them to attack through drug therapies targeting other cellular mechanisms. There is currently no treatment for this kind of gastric cancer other than surgical removal of the ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- If every new car made in the United States had a built-in blood alcohol level tester that prevented impaired drivers from driving the vehicle, how many lives could be saved, injuries prevented, and injury-related dollars left unspent? Researchers at the University of Michigan Injury Center and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute studied the impact of installing these alcohol ignition interlock devices in all newly purchased vehicles over a 15-year period; their estimates of injury prevention and cost savings are significant. They ...