Scientists studying funnel-web spiders at Booderee National Park near Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast have found a large example of an unexpected funnel-web species. The scientists believe the 50-millimetre spider is a species of the tree-dwelling genus Hadronyche, not the ground-dwelling genus Atrax, which includes the Sydney funnel-web, the only species reported in the Park's records. "It's remarkable that we have found this other species in Booderee National Park," said Dr Thomas Wallenius, from The Australian National University (ANU). "It shows ...

Graphene, the ultra-thin, ultra-strong material made from a single layer of carbon atoms, just got a little more extreme. University of British Columbia (UBC) physicists have been able to create the first ever superconducting graphene sample by coating it with lithium atoms. Although superconductivity has already been observed in intercalated bulk graphite--three-dimensional crystals layered with alkali metal atoms, based on the graphite used in pencils--inducing superconductivity in single-layer graphene has until now eluded scientists. "This first experimental realization ...

Social network Flickr and citizen science website BugGuide have helped scientists to expand the known range of a rarely collected parasitic woodwasp, native to the eastern United States. Partially thanks to the two online photograph platforms, now the species' distribution now stretches hundreds of miles west of previous records. Previously known from only 50 specimens mainly from the Northeast, now the species was discovered in the Ozark Mountains by researchers from the University of Arkansas. Their study is published it in the open access journal Biodiversity Data Journal. Spurred ...

[Basel, Switzerland - 8 September 2015] The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) has announced today at the 9th European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health (ECTMIH) in Basel, Switzerland, the successful completion of Phase I human clinical trials for SCYX-7158 (AN5568), the first oral drug candidate specifically developed from the earliest drug discovery stage to combat human African trypanosomiasis, or sleeping sickness, a deadly parasitic disease transmitted by the tsetse fly. The Phase I study, conducted in France, assessed the safety, ...

Edible dormice (Glis glis) spend about eight months on average in hibernation. Wildlife biologists from the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology of the Vetmeduni Vienna have shown for the first time that these animals can hibernate for up to 11.4 months. "This may be a world record," says Claudia Bieber, co-author of the study. "Dormice in our climate zone don't just spend the winter months underground, they sometimes begin hibernating in summer." The animals do not hibernate for so long every year, but only in years when beech trees produce few beechnuts. Successful ...

In the new study 'Building trust: Heart rate synchrony and arousal during joint action increased by public goods game' (Journal of Physiology and Behavior) PhD and assistant professor Panagiotis Mitkidis and colleagues from the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University studied the link between heart rate and trust. They had 37 pairs of participants do a cooperative task involving building LEGO cars. The control group only did the LEGO task, while a second group played an investment game in between the building sessions. The game, known as the 'Public Goods Game', had ...

Select patients age 90 years and older with aortic stenosis (AS) can benefit from a relatively new, minimally invasive surgery for aortic valve replacement, according to an article in the September 2015 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Both transfemoral and transapical approaches to TAVR appear to be safe and effective for treatment of aortic stenosis in select patients age 90 years and older. By 6 months post-surgery, most quality-of-life measures had stabilized at a level considerably better than baseline, meaning patients quality of life was ...

Lueneburg. A recent study on the psychology of trademarks shows that they are perceived by the same psychological mechanisms as those, which enable the recognition of faces. The survey, whose result is particularly interesting for the advertising industry and brand management, originated at the Institute for Experimental Business Psychology at Leuphana University of Lueneburg. For their investigation, Leuphana researchers Rainer Hoeger and Anne Lange compared the reactions of viewers to 16 well-known brands, such as Coca Cola, Rolex, Porsche or Apple and 18 computer-generated ...

Trained volunteers are as good as professional astronomers at finding jets shooting from massive black holes and matching them to their host galaxies, research suggests. Scientists working on citizen science project Radio Galaxy Zoo developed an online tutorial to teach volunteers how to spot black holes and other objects that emit large amounts of energy through radio waves. Through the project, volunteers are given telescope images taken in both the radio and infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum and asked to compare the pictures and match the "radio source" ...

A rare, deadly form of skin cancer known as desmoplasmic melanoma (DM) may possess the highest burden of gene mutations of any cancer, suggesting that immunotherapy may be a promising approach for treatment, according to an international team led by UC San Francisco scientists. One of these mutations, never before observed in any cancer, may shield nascent DM tumors from destruction by the immune system and allow further mutations to develop. "The focus of our lab has been to show that there's not just one 'melanoma' but many different types," said senior author Boris ...

In the course of billions of years continents break up, drift apart, and are pushed back together again. The cores of continents are, however, geologically extremely stable and have survived up to 3.8 billions of years. These cores that are called cratons are the oldest known geological features of our planet. It was assumed that the cratons are stable because of their especially solid structure due to relatively low temperatures compared to the surrounding mantle. A team of German-American scientists now discovered that these cratons that were assumed to be "as solid as ...

A novel research tool developed by researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London has identified a link between the negative symptoms experienced by people with schizophrenia and adverse clinical outcomes. Negative symptoms can include poor motivation, poor eye contact and a reduction in speech and activity. As a result, people with schizophrenia often appear emotionless, flat and apathetic. These contrast with positive symptoms - psychotic behaviours not seen in healthy people, such as delusions or hallucinations. Published ...

This news release is available in German. The scientific world was astonished when, in 2011, Chinese researchers claimed to have found evidence suggesting that minute fragments of plant genetic material - so-called microRNA molecules - of rice ingested from food could play a role in regulating physiological processes in the human body. If this is indeed true, it might even be possible to deliberately modify human physiological functions via this route, for instance by incorporating microRNAs into novel functional foods. As a strategy, this holds considerable potential. ...

Secukinumab (trade name: Cosentyx) has been approved since January 2015 for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. Such an added benefit cannot be derived from the dossier, however: In patients who are candidates for systemic treatment, an indirect comparison provided no suitable data because the minimum study duration had not been reached. In adults in whom other systemic treatments ...

This news release is available in German. The recovery of waste heat in all kinds of processes poses one of the main challenges of our time to making established processes more energy-efficient and thus more environmentally friendly. The Spin Seebeck effect (SSE) is a novel, only rudimentarily understood effect, which allows for the conversion of a heat flux into electrical energy, even in electrically non-conducting materials. A team of physicists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the University of Konstanz, TU Kaiserslautern, and the Massachusetts Institute ...

PULLMAN, Wash.--Washington State University researchers have discovered how to stretch metal films used in flexible electronics to twice their size without breaking. The discovery could lead to dramatic improvements and addresses one of the biggest challenges in flexible electronics, an industry still in its infancy with applications such as bendable batteries, robotic skins, wearable monitoring devices and sensors, and connected fabrics. The work was led by Rahul Panat and Indranath Dutta, researchers in Voiland College's School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, ...

September 8, 2015, New York, New York- Data from a three-country survey seeking to understand beliefs of adults on the role of diet for optimal health, as well as consumption of key micronutrients including Omega-3 and Vitamin D, will be published in the November/December issue of Nutrition Today. The survey of 3,000 American, British and German adults found that 72 percent reported having a "healthy" or "optimal" diet and more than half (52 percent) believed they consume all the key nutrients needed for optimal nutrition through food sources alone. However, the prevalence ...

Extinct Mediterranean forests of biblical times could return and thrive in warmer, drier future. The Mediterranean has cradled humanity and our cities, farms, domesticated animals, and logging habits for many thousands of years. During the last 5 to 8 millennia, as people developed farming and settled in cities, the landscape has gradually changed from a thick canopy of trees to open grass and shrubs. The ghosts of Sicily's extinct evergreen forests of holm oak (Quercus ilex) and olive trees (Olea europaea) remain in the record of pollen left in the lakebed sediments. ...

A pair of studies suggests that a region of the brain - called the insular cortex - may hold the key to treating addiction. Scientists have come to this conclusion after finding that smokers who suffered a stroke in the insular cortex were far more likely to quit smoking and experience fewer and less severe withdrawal symptoms than those with strokes in other parts of the brain. "These findings indicate that the insular cortex may play a central role in addiction," said Amir Abdolahi Ph.D., M.P.H., lead author of the studies. "When this part of the brain is damaged during ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 8, 2015 - Gastric cancer poses a significant health problem in developing countries and is typically associated with late-stage diagnosis and high mortality. A new study in The American Journal of Pathology points to a pivotal role played by the biomarker microRNA (miR)-506 in gastric cancer. Patients whose primary gastric cancer lesions express high levels of miR-506 have significantly longer survival times compared to patients with low miR-506 expression. In addition, miR-506 suppresses tumor growth, blood vessel formation, and metastasis. "Epithelial-to-mesenchymal ...

1. ACP recommends policies for practicing telemedicine in primary care Free: http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M15-0498 Editorial: http://www.annals.org/article.aspx?doi=10.7326/M15-1416 URLs go live when embargo lifts In a new position paper, the American College of Physicians (ACP) says that telemedicine can improve access to care, but policies are needed to balance the benefits and risks for both patients and physicians. The authors note that conscious scrutiny is especially important as policymakers and stakeholders shape the landscape for ...

An international team led by researchers at Uppsala University reports a surprising discovery from the genomes of eight Iberian Stone-Age farmer remains. The analyses revealed that early Iberian farmers are the closest ancestors to modern-day Basques, in contrast previous hypotheses that linked Basques to earlier pre-farming groups. The team could also demonstrate that farming was brought to Iberia by the same/similar groups that migrated to northern and central Europe and that the incoming farmers admixed with local, Iberian hunter-gather groups, a process that continued ...

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say they have discovered a new way that the most prevalent disease-causing fungus can thwart immune system attacks. The findings, published Sept. 7 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer new clues about how Candida albicans, the fungus responsible for vaginal yeast infections and the mouth infection thrush, is able to cause a deadly infection once it enters the bloodstream. When the body is faced with an infection, cells give a burst of free radicals to kill the germs. C. albicans ...

Boston, MA -- A new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that mobile phone records can be used to predict the geographical spread and timing of dengue epidemics. More people around the world are becoming vulnerable to this deadly virus as climate change expands the range of the mosquito that transmits dengue and infected travelers spread the disease across borders. Utilizing the largest data set of mobile phone records ever analyzed to estimate human mobility, the researchers developed an innovative model that can predict epidemics ...

Researchers at LSTM have shown that under certain circumstances evolution can be highly predictable, especially in terms of how creatures become resistant to dangerous toxins. Biologists looking at the control of malaria have known for some time that mosquito populations often become resistant to insecticides designed to kill them, but in a paper published today in the journal PNAS, researchers examine the response of a variety of insects, reptiles, amphibians and mammals to a natural selection pressure in the form of cardiac glycosides - toxins produced by certain plants ...