Many factors, both genetic and environmental, have been blamed for increasing the risk of a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Some, such as a family history of schizophrenia, are widely accepted. Others, such as infection with Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite transmitted by soil, undercooked meat and cat feces, are still viewed with skepticism. A new study by Gary Smith, professor of population biology and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, used epidemiological modeling methods to determine the proportion of schizophrenia cases that ...

Some of the same chemical reactions that occur in the atmosphere as a result of smog and ozone are actually taking place in your house while you are cleaning. A researcher in Drexel's College of Engineering is taking a closer look at these reactions, which involve an organic compound -called limonene- that provides the pleasant smell of cleaning products and air fresheners. His research will help to determine what byproducts these sweet-smelling compounds are adding to the air while we are using them to remove germs and odors. Secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) are microscopic ...

By remotely "combing" the atmosphere with a custom laser-based instrument, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have developed a new technique that can accurately measure—over a sizeable distance—amounts of several of the major "greenhouse" gases implicated in climate change. The technique potentially could be used in several ways to support research on atmospheric greenhouse gases. It can provide accurate data to support ...

The way a person's brain responds to a single disgusting image is enough to reliably predict whether he or she identifies politically as liberal or conservative. As we approach Election Day, the researchers say that the findings reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 30 come as a reminder of something we all know but probably don't always do: "Think, don't just react." P. Read Montague of Virginia Tech says he was initially inspired by evidence showing that an individual's political affiliation is almost as heritable as height. Montague and his ...

Cancer suffers who lose their hair as a consequence of chemotherapy will benefit from a major research project that will improve the scalp cooling technology that prevents hair loss. The research is being now underway and is being pioneered by global scalp cooling manufacturing company, Paxman Coolers, of Fenay Bridge, Huddersfield, in conjunction with the biology department of the University of Huddersfield. The research will be led by key researcher Omar Hussain, who has a background in the pharmacology of cancer treatment, which he will use towards his PhD. Omar ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have validated an EEG test to study and treat schizophrenia. The findings, published in two separate studies, offer a clinical test that could be used to help diagnose persons at risk for developing mental illness later in life, as well as an approach for measuring the efficacies of different treatment options. One of the studies, reported online Oct. 23 in Schizophrenia Research, shows that schizophrenia patients don't register subtle changes in reoccurring sounds as well as others and that this deficit ...

Increasingly, cancer care respects the fact that a patient's body is only part of the system that requires treatment. Over a third of cancer patients experience psychosocial distress – the mental health consequences of their conditions. And, increasingly, care providers are exploring phone- and internet-based interventions to help cancer patients navigate mental health challenges. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Psycho-Oncology asks an important question: after decades of use and study, can we definitely show that remote ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2014—Scientists and science fiction writers alike have dreamt of aircrafts that are propelled by beams of light rather than conventional fuels. Now, a new method for improving the thrust generated by such laser-propulsion systems may bring them one step closer to practical use. The method, developed by physicists Yuri Rezunkov of the Institute of Optoelectronic Instrument Engineering, Russia and Alexander Schmidt of the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia is described today in The Optical Society's (OSA) journal Applied ...

Your next pair of spandex pants could be made out of corn — or, more precisely, from dextrose derived from corn. This option is part of a new wave, albeit a small one, of consumer goods that are being produced from plants rather than petroleum-based materials. But a complete transition to a biobased economy won't be easy, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Melody M. Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that a range of companies, from start-up firms to industrial giants, have ...

Researching the safety of nanoparticles is all the rage. Thousands of scientists worldwide are conducting research on the topic, examining the question of whether titanium dioxide nanoparticles from sun creams can get through the skin and into the body, whether carbon nanotubes from electronic products are as hazardous for the lungs as asbestos used to be or whether nanoparticles in food can get into the blood via the intestinal flora, for instance. Public interest is great, research funds are flowing – and the number of scientific projects is skyrocketing: between ...

New Rochelle, October 29, 2014 –Cities around the world are increasingly making urban data freely available to the public. But is the content or structure of these vast data sets easy to access and of value? A new study of more than 9,000 data sets from 20 cities presents encouraging results on the quality and volume of the available data and describes the challenges and benefits of analyzing and integrating these expanding data sets, as described in an article in Big Data, the highly innovative, peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The Open ...

This news release is available in French. Everyone knows that exercise makes you feel more mentally alert at any age. But do you need to follow a specific training program to improve your cognitive function? Science has shown that the important thing is to just get moving. It's that simple. In fact, this was the finding of a study conducted at the Institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (IUGM), an institution affiliated with Université de Montréal, by Dr. Nicolas Berryman, PhD, Exercise Physiologist, under the supervision of Dr. Louis Bherer, ...

This news release is available in German. Meiosis is not like another: Gabriela Cabral and Peter Schlögelhofer at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna dived into the process of meiosis in specific plant species and revealed that these plants display an inversion of the standard meiotic phases. The researchers describe the detailed mechanisms in the scientific journal Nature Communications. Meiosis is the two-step series of cell divisions that make sexual reproduction and genetic diversity possible.The ...

One kind of stem cell, those referred to as 'facultative', form part—together with other cells—of tissues and organs. There is apparently nothing that differentiates these cells from the others. However, they have a very special characteristic, namely they retain the capacity to become stem cells again. This phenomenon is something that happens in the liver, an organ that hosts cells that stimulate tissue growth, thus allowing the regeneration of the organ in the case of a transplant. Knowledge of the underlying mechanism that allows these cells to retain this ...

If the surroundings are designed to be sufficiently stimulating, even a simple computer screen is enough to generate an intense cinematic experience. After observing some 300 study subjects, researchers at the Institute of Psychology of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany concluded that the angle of viewing does not play a vital role in the cinematic experience, thus disproving various hypotheses. According to the results of their study, the presence of so-called contextual visual cues plays a greater role in actually drawing viewers into a movie. When ...

In a darkened, hangar-like space inside MIT's Building 41, a small, Roomba-like robot is trying to make up its mind. Standing in its path is an obstacle — a human pedestrian who's pacing back and forth. To get to the other side of the room, the robot has to first determine where the pedestrian is, then choose the optimal route to avoid a close encounter. As the robot considers its options, its "thoughts" are projected on the ground: A large pink dot appears to follow the pedestrian — a symbol of the robot's perception of the pedestrian's position in space. ...

Walking workstations can improve not only physical, but also mental health during the workday, a new study released this week found. The research was conducted by faculty and student researchers from the Department of Psychology in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). With growing concerns regarding obesity in the United States, Michael Sliter, assistant professor of psychology, hopes the study encourages employers to examine methods to assist workers in in healthy living. "We found that the walking workstations, regardless ...

An innovative workflow reveals new research potential of the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD). A recently published article in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) used specimen records downloaded from BOLD in tabular format and imported these into a human-readable text developed in manuscript within the Pensoft Writting Tool (PWT). Data were used to study the species distributions of ten Nearctic species of braconid wasps from the Microgastrinae subfamily. BOLD is originally designed to support the generation and application of DNA barcode data. However, the repository ...

The control of modern infrastructure such as intelligent power grids needs lots of computing capacity. Scientists of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg have developed an algorithm that might revolutionise these processes. With their new software the SnT researchers are able to forego the use of considerable amounts of computing capacity, enabling what they call micro mining. Their achievements, which the team headed by Prof. Yves Le Traon published in the International Conference on Software Engineering ...

The Caribbean has the second highest global human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence in the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, with HIV/AIDS as leading cause of death among people aged 20–59 years within the region. Particularly hard-hit are the Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti, on the island of Hispaniola, accounting for approximately 70% of all people living with HIV in the Caribbean region. Insufficient attention has been paid to the intersection of drugs and tourism as contributing factors for the region's elevated HIV/AIDS risk. Caribbean studies ...

The first study to examine prenatal exposure to the phthalate DiNP finds it is associated with a shorter anogenital distance (AGD) in Swedish boys at the age of 21 months. These findings raise concern since animal research has linked DiNP exposure to a shorter AGD, and studies on humans have related shorter AGD to male genital birth defects as well as impaired reproductive function in adult males, and the levels of DiNP metabolites in humans are increasing globally. Background Phthalates are used as plasticizers in soft polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and found in a large ...

More than 110,000 individual deaths and their causes across 13 countries, including Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Bangladesh and Vietnam, are contained in the new INDEPTH dataset. The data, collected by hundreds of researchers over two decades, are the first meaningful community-based information about cause of death in countries where individual deaths are not recorded automatically by national governments. The INDEPTH cause of death findings are published in a special issue of the journal Global Health Action, which is fully open access. There are six multisite papers ...

Chicago, October 29, 2014 – Aortic valve replacement (AVR) can safely be used to treat severe aortic stenosis in patients age 90 years and older and is associated with a low risk of operative stroke and mortality, according to a study in the November 2014 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Aortic valve replacement appears to be safe and effective for patients over age 90 years with severe aortic stenosis. Four out of five (81.3%) patients were alive 1 year following AVR. TAVR had similar rates of morbidity and mortality as traditional surgical ...

Bethesda, MD (Oct. 29, 2014) — Fecal immunochemical tests (FIT) may be as effective as colonoscopies when it comes to detecting colorectal cancer among first-degree relatives of patients with colorectal cancer, according to a new study in Gastroenterology1, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "In our study, repeat FIT screening detected all colorectal cancers in asymptomatic first-degree relatives of patients with colorectal cancer," said lead study authors Enrique Quintero, MD, PhD, and Marta Carrillo, MD, from Hospital Universitario ...

In its latest Emerging Cyber Threats Report, Georgia Tech warns about loss of privacy; abuse of trust between users and machines; attacks against the mobile ecosystem; rogue insiders; and the increasing involvement of cyberspace in nation-state conflicts. Such topics are discussed at length in the annual report, which is published by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). The report will be released this week at the 12th Georgia Tech Cyber Security Summit (GT CSS), which has become the Atlanta IT community's ...