CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- In almost all successful advertising campaigns, an appeal to emotion sparks a call-to-action that motivates viewers to become consumers. But according to research from a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert who studies consumer information-processing and memory, emotionally arousing advertisements may not always help improve consumers' immediate memory. A new paper co-written by Hayden Noel, a clinical associate professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business at Illinois, finds that an ad's emotional arousal can have a negative effect on immediate ...

Using stem cells to regenerate parts of the skull, scientists corrected skull shape and reversed learning and memory deficits in young mice with craniosynostosis, a condition estimated to affect 1 in every 2,500 infants born in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The only current therapy is complex surgery within the first year of life, but skull defects often return afterward. The study, supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), could pave the way for more effective and less invasive therapies for children with craniosynostosis. ...

Humans feeding leftover lean meat to wolves during harsh winters may have had a role in the early domestication of dogs, towards the end of the last ice age (14,000 to 29,000 years ago), according to a study published in Scientific Reports. Maria Lahtinen and colleagues used simple energy content calculations to estimate how much energy would have been left over by humans from the meat of species they may have hunted 14,000 to 29,000 years that were also typical wolf prey species, such as horses, moose and deer. The authors hypothesized that if wolves and humans had hunted the same animals during harsh winters, humans would have killed wolves to reduce competition rather than domesticate them. With the exception of Mustelids such as weasels, ...

"Nature red in tooth and claw" - The battle to survive is fought down to the level of our genes. Toxin-antidote elements are gene pairs that spread in populations by killing non-carriers. Now, research by the Burga lab at IMBA and the Kruglyak lab at the University of California, Los Angeles shows that these elements are more common in nature than first thought and have evolved a wide range of mechanisms to force their inheritance and propagate in populations - a parasite within the genome. Originally described in the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, toxin-antidote elements consist of two linked genes, a toxin and its antidote. While the toxin is loaded into eggs by mothers, only embryos that inherit the element express the antidote. Thus, the ...

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has released a new action agenda for a diverse genomics workforce. This ambitious set of goals, objectives, and implementation strategies details NHGRI's plans for enhancing the diversity of the genomics workforce by 2030. "To reach its full potential, the field of genomics requires a workforce that better reflects the diversity of the U.S. population," NHGRI Director Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D., said. "Fostering an appropriately diverse genomics workforce of the future requires an immediate and substantial commitment ...

Noncognitive skills and cognitive abilities are both important contributors to educational attainment -- the number of years of formal schooling that a person completes -- and lead to success across the life course, according to a new study from an international team led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the University of Texas at Austin, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The research provides evidence for the idea that inheriting genes that affect things other than cognitive ability are important for understanding differences in people's life outcomes. Until now there had been questions about what these noncognitive skills are and how much they really matter for life outcomes. The new findings are published ...

What The Study Did: Under a range of assumptions of presymptomatic transmission and transmission from individuals with infection who never develop symptoms, the model presented here estimated that more than half of transmission comes from asymptomatic individuals. Author: Jay C. Butler, M.D., of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.35057) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and ...

What The Study Did: Population data from Denmark were used to examine whether age at exposure to negative experiences in childhood and adolescence (parents' unemployment, incarceration, mental disorders, death and divorce, and the child's foster care experiences) was associated with outcomes in early adulthood. Author: Signe Hald Andersen, Ph.D., of the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit in Copenhagen, Denmark, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.32769) Editor's Note: The article includes funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, ...

What The Study Did: To adapt to broader public health initiatives around COVID-19, researchers developed a drive-through intraocular pressure (IOP) screening clinic to minimize COVID-19 exposure for patients and clinicians by measuring eye pressure in the unconventional setting of a clinic parking lot. Authors: Miel Sundararajan, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.6073) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article ...

What The Study Did: Researchers compared changes in preoperative aided speech recognition with postoperative speech recognition among individuals who received cochlear implants. Authors: Theodore R. McRackan, M.D., M.S.C.R., of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/  (doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2020.5094) Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please ...

What The Study Did: The outcomes of a cancer center-wide virtual care program launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were examined in this study. Authors: Alejandro Berlin, M.D., M.Sc., of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2020.6982) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict ...

What The Study Did:This cross-sectional study maps a coronavirus research question to illustrate the overlap and shortcomings of the evidence syntheses in this area. Author: Giordano Pérez-Gaxiola, M.D., M.Sc., of Sinaloa Pediatric Hospital's Cochrane Associate Centre in Culiacan, Mexico, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.32769) Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support. INFORMATION: Media advisory: ...

(New York, NY - January 6, 2021) - Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified three major molecular subtypes of Alzheimer's disease (AD) using data from RNA sequencing. The study advances our understanding of the mechanisms of AD and could pave the way for developing novel, personalized therapeutics. The work was funded by the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and published in Science Advances on January 6, 2021. RNA is a genetic molecule similar to DNA that encodes the instructions for making proteins. RNA sequencing is a technology that reveals the presence and quantity of RNA in a biological sample such as a brain slice. Alzheimer's ...

Sex chromosomes are presumed to originate from a pair of identical ancestral chromosomes by acquiring a male- or a female-determining gene on one chromosome. To prevent the sex-determining gene from appearing in the opposite sex, recombination is suppressed on sex chromosomes. This leads to the degeneration of Y chromosome (or the W chromosome in case of birds) and the morphological difference of sex chromosomes between sexes. For example, the human Y chromosome bears only less than 50 genes, while the human X chromosome still maintains over 1500 genes from the autosomal ancestor. This process occurred independently in birds, in ...

Femtosecond hard X-ray pulses are an important tool for unraveling structure changes of condensed matter on atomic length and time scales. A novel laser-driven X-ray source provides femtosecond copper Kα pulses at a 1 kHz repetition rate with an unprecedented flux of some 10^12 X-ray photons per second. Elementary processes in physics, chemistry, and biology are connected with changes of the atomic or molecular structure on a femtosecond time scale (1 femtosecond (fs) = 10^-15 seconds). Ultrafast X-ray methods hold strong potential for following structure changes in space and time and generate 'movies' of the motions of electrons, atoms and molecules. This perspective has ...

The Covid-19 pandemic is impacting people's mental health. But what helps and hinders people in getting through a lockdown? A new study led by researchers at the University of Basel addressed this question using data from 78 countries across the world. The results hint at the pivots and hinges on which the individual's psyche rests in the pandemic. At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, little was known about the impact of population-wide governmental lockdowns. What was known was taken from restricted quarantines of small groups of people. "On the one hand, such drastic changes to daily routines can be detrimental to mental health," explains Professor ...

People view the wolf as either a threatening predator or a sign of a healthy natural habitat. Many proponents of nature and animal conservation welcome the spread of wolf populations in Germany. By contrast, farmers who graze herds directly impacted by the wolves' return are more critical. The team of Nicolas Schoof, Prof. Dr. Albert Reif of the Chair of Site Classification and Vegetation Science at the University of Freiburg, and Prof. Dr. Eckhard Jedicke of the Competence Center Cultural Landscape and the Department of Landscape Planning and Nature Conservation of Hochschule Geisenheim University has assessed the existing legal situation. On the basis of a range of environmental data they have determined the conflicts and drawn up possible solutions. In an article in ...

Northeastern Asia has a complex history of migrations and plague outbursts. That is the essence of an international archaeogenetic study published in Science Advances and lead from the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University. Genomic data from archaeological remains from 40 individuals excavated in northeastern Asia were explored in the study. "It is striking that we find everything here, continuity as well as recurrent migrations and also disease-related bacteria", says Anders Götherström, professor at the Center for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University and one of the Principal investigators of the study. The ...

Sleep is ubiquitous in animals and humans and vital for healthy functioning. Thus, sleep after training improves performance on various tasks in comparison to equal periods of active wakefulness. However, it has been unclear so far whether this is due to an active refinement of neural connections or merely due to the absence of novel input during sleep. Now researchers at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg have succeeded in showing that sleep is more than rest for improving performance. The findings, which were published in the journal SLEEP on January 6, 2021, provide important information for planning periods of intensive ...

January 7, 2021 (BRAMPTON - HAMILTON) -- When dealing with a life-limiting illness, palliative care can improve the quality of life for patients and families. However, for many people, the fear of "end of life" care prevents them from exploring it. A recent study from William Osler Health System (Osler) and McMaster University examined awareness of palliative care in the South Asian community and found that culture plays a critical role in the perception of palliative care. This perception, in turn, affects whether or not patients will be open to receiving it. Funded by a McMaster University, Department ...

TORONTO, January 7, 2021- What feels like up may actually be some other direction depending on how our brains process our orientation, according to psychology researchers at York University's Faculty of Health. In a new study published in PLoS One, researchers at York University's Centre for Vision Research found that an individual's interpretation of the direction of gravity can be altered by how their brain responds to visual information. Laurence Harris, a professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health and Meaghan McManus, a graduate student in his lab, found, using virtual reality, that people differ ...

DALLAS - Jan. 7, 2020 - A protein that wreaks havoc in the nerves and heart when it clumps together can prevent the formation of toxic protein clumps associated with Alzheimer's disease, a new study led by a UT Southwestern researcher shows. The findings, published recently in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could lead to new treatments for this brain-ravaging condition, which currently has no truly effective therapies and no cure. Researchers have long known that sticky plaques of a protein known as amyloid beta are a hallmark of Alzheimer's and are toxic to brain cells. As early as the mid-1990s, other proteins were discovered in these plaques as well. One of these, a protein known as transthyretin (TTR), ...

Brazilian researchers have managed to decipher the structure of a protein found in parasites that cause neglected tropical diseases, paving the way to the development of novel medications. Thanks to the discovery it will be possible to seek more potent molecules capable of destroying the pathogens directly, with fewer adverse side-effects for patients. The study detailed the structural characteristics of the protein deoxyhypusine synthase (DHS), found in Brugia malayi, one of the mosquito-borne parasites that cause elephantiasis, and in Leishmania major, the protozoan that causes cutaneous leishmaniasis. Elephantiasis, also known as lymphatic filariasis, is an infection of the lymph system that can lead to swelling of the legs, arms, and genitalia. It may also harden and ...

HOUSTON - (Jan. 7, 2021) - Proteogenomic analysis may offer new insight into matching cancer patients with an effective therapy for their particular cancer. A new study identifies three molecular subtypes in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) that could be used to better determine appropriate treatment. The research led by Baylor College of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University and the National Cancer Institute's Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) is published in the journal Cancer Cell. Researchers profiled proteins, phosphosites and signaling ...

TROY, N.Y. -- In a money-saving revelation for organizations inclined to invest in specialized information technology to support the process of idea generation, new research suggests that even non-specialized, everyday organizational IT can encourage employees' creativity. Recently published in the journal Information and Organization, these findings from Dorit Nevo, an associate professor in the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, show standard IT can be used for innovation. Furthermore, this is much more likely to happen when the technology is in the hands of employees who are motivated to master technology, understand their role in the organization, ...