ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Most parents agree their children should be ready to move out of the pediatrician's office into adult-focused care by age 18 - but just 30 percent actually make that transition by that age, according to the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. As health care becomes more complex, it's difficult for teens to shift from relying on their parents to taking on their own health care needs. The C.S. Mott National Poll on Children's Health asked a national sample of parents of adolescents and young adults ...

Cities like Miami are all too familiar with hurricane-related power outages. But a Johns Hopkins University analysis finds climate change will give other major metro areas a lot to worry about in future storms. Johns Hopkins engineers created a computer model to predict the increasing vulnerability to hurricanes of power grids in major cities on or relatively near the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. They factored historic hurricane information in with plausible scenarios for future storm behavior, given a global rise in average temperatures. With that data, the team could pinpoint ...

Monstrous moonshine, a quirky pattern of the monster group in theoretical math, has a shadow - umbral moonshine. Mathematicians have now proved this insight, known as the Umbral Moonshine Conjecture, offering a formula with potential applications for everything from number theory to geometry to quantum physics. "We've transformed the statement of the conjecture into something you could test, a finite calculation, and the conjecture proved to be true," says Ken Ono, a mathematician at Emory University. "Umbral moonshine has created a lot of excitement in the world of math ...

By blocking a widespread enzyme, Centenary researchers have shown they can slow down the movement of cells and potentially stop tumours from spreading and growing. Using a new super-resolution microscope they've been able to see single molecules of the enzyme at work in a liver cancer cell line. Then they've used confocal microscopes to see how disrupting the enzyme slows down living cancer cells. The enzyme is DPP9 (dipeptidyl peptidase 9) which the researchers at the Centenary Institute and the Sydney Medical School were first to discover and clone, in 1999. Ever ...

Tropical Cyclone Bakung is moving in a westerly direction over the open waters of the Southern Indian Ocean and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the sea storm. Aqua passed over Bakung on Dec. 12 at 07:35 UTC (2:35 a.m. EST) and the MODIS instrument aboard took a visible image of the storm. The image showed that deeper convection (stronger currents of rising air that form the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone) was occurring around the low-level center of circulation, so the center was not apparent in the MODIS imagery. The bulk of the clouds associated ...

Natural gas from hydraulic fracturing generates income and, done well, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and water use compared to coal and even nuclear energy. However, widespread use of natural gas from fracking could slow the adoption of wind, solar and other renewables and, done poorly, release toxic chemicals into the environment. Robert Jackson, the Kevin and Michelle Douglas Professor of Environment and Energy at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, will discuss how to minimize the water and air impacts of fracking and other unconventional energy-extraction ...

Recent international climate talks have focused on the potential of reforestation and afforestation - planting trees in an area where there was no forest previously - to slow global warming. Increasingly, though, science is showing that planting more trees and increasing forest conservation can provide benefits beyond carbon storage, and that carbon-centric accounting is, in many cases, insufficient for climate mitigation policies. Robert Jackson, the Kevin and Michelle Douglas Professor of Environment and Energy at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, will discuss ...

Runoff from rainstorms in big cities can represent both threats and opportunities. Too much runoff in the wrong places causes flooding. Too little rainwater in the right places leads to dried-up creeks and rivers. Water that washes up pollution from city streets can dirty downstream watersheds. Figuring out the best solutions to these problems requires lots of data - data that are easy to get in highly developed countries, but much scarcer in others. On Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Perrine Hamel, a postdoctoral scholar with ...

Stanford scientists have found evidence that sections of the fault responsible for the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake that devastated northern Japan in 2011 were relieving seismic stress at a gradually accelerating rate for years before the quake. This "decoupling" process, in which the edges of two tectonic plates that are frictionally locked together slowly became unstuck, transferred stress to adjacent sections that were still locked. As a result, the quake, which was the most powerful ever recorded to hit Japan, may have occurred earlier than it might have otherwise, ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2014--Credit card fraud and identify theft are serious problems for consumers and industries. Though corporations and individuals work to improve safeguards, it has become increasingly difficult to protect financial data and personal information from criminal activity. Fortunately, new insights into quantum physics may soon offer a solution. As reported in The Optical Society's (OSA) new high-impact journal Optica, a team of researchers from the Netherlands has harnessed the power of quantum mechanics to create a fraud-proof method for authenticating ...

A survey of more than 300 college students reveals that college students who use "fake weed" or synthetic THC are most likely to have tried the drug because they were curious. Rebecca Vidourek, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of health promotion and assistant director of the Center for Prevention Science; Keith King, a UC professor of health promotion and director of the Center for Prevention Science; and Michelle Burbage, a graduate student and graduate assistant for UC's Health Promotion and Education Program, published their findings in the current issue ...

This news release is available in French. "Media reports about behavioural genetics unintentionally induce unfounded beliefs, therefore going against the educational purpose of scientific reporting," writes the University of Montreal's Alexandre Morin-Chassé, following his study of 1,500 Americans. "Among other things, we wanted to know if the public understood (or misunderstood) popular science articles about a new research field, genopolitics, and whether this popularization indeed helped people have an informed opinion on human genetics," Morin-Chassé explained. The ...

This news release is available in German. The ways animals play with inedible objects may be precursors of functional behaviors such as tool use and goal directed object manipulation. For these reasons, species of high technical intelligence are also expected to play intensely with inanimate objects when no obvious goal is pursued. Within object play, combinatory actions are considered a particularly informative trait in animals as well as human infants: Children start bashing two objects together when they are about 8 months old, at 10 months, they combine toys with ...

A study conducted by University of Granada scientists (from the Physiology, Obstetrics and Gynaecology Departments) and from the San Cecilio Clinical Hospital (Granada) has demonstrated that delaying the cutting of the umbilical cord in newborns by two minutes leads to a better development of the baby during the first days of life. This multidisciplinary work, published in the prestigious journal Pediatrics reveals that the time in cutting the umbilical cord (also called umbilical cord clampling) influences the resistance to oxidative stress in newborns. For this research, ...

In medicine, X-rays provide high-resolution images of our insides to help doctors make a definitive diagnosis. Industry uses X-rays, too - as a reliable, non-destructive way of seeing what's hidden on inside materials and components and to check for cracks or irregularities. However industry additionally draws upon different technologies that are not used in the medical field. Whereas medical X-ray machines have been specifically designed for human test subjects, industrial X-ray machines are used to analyze objects that vary much more in their size and material composition. ...

MANHASSET, NY -- Molecular Medicine, a peer-reviewed biomedical journal published by the Feinstein Institute Press, published the results of a new study reporting clinically significant pain reduction in type 2 diabetic patients. In an exploratory study conducted by Araim Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company developing novel treatments for chronic diseases, investigators also observed improvements in metabolic control in patients administered ARA 290. ARA 290 is a peptide engineered to activate the innate repair receptor, a receptor discovered by Araim scientists, which is ...

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have discovered a new signal pathway in the brain that plays an important role in learning and the processing of sensory input. It was already known that distinct glial cells receive information from neurons. However, it was unknown that these same glial cells also transmit information to neurons. The glia release a specific protein fragment that influences neuronal cross-talk, most likely by binding to the synaptic contacts that neurons use for communication. Disruption of this information flow from the ...

New research led by the University of Exeter has found that people who have a stronger sense of place at the global than the national level are more likely to accept that climate change is caused by human activities. This is the first time that acceptance of human causes of climate change has been shown to be linked to people's sense of place at the global level. The findings have significant implications both for climate change communications and for our understanding of place and identities. The study 'My country or my planet? Exploring the influence of multiple place ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Scientists at Indiana University and colleagues at Stanford and the University of Texas have demonstrated a technique for "editing" the genome in sperm-producing adult stem cells, a result with powerful potential for basic research and for gene therapy. The researchers completed a "proof of concept" experiment in which they created a break in the DNA strands of a mutant gene in mouse cells, then repaired the DNA through a process called homologous recombination, replacing flawed segments with correct ones. The study involved spermatogonial stem ...

Patients with Parkinson's, medics and carers have identified the top ten priorities for research into the management of the condition in a study by the University of East Anglia and Parkinson's UK. Commissioned by Parkinson's UK, people with direct and indirect personal experience of the condition worked together to identify crucial gaps in the existing evidence to address everyday practicalities in the management of the complexities of Parkinson's. Patients stated that the overarching research aspiration was an effective cure for Parkinson's but whilst waiting for this ...

DALLAS - Dec. 15, 2014 - UT Southwestern Medical Center neurology researchers have identified an important cell signaling mechanism that plays an important role in brain cancer and may provide a new therapeutic target. Researchers found that this mechanism -- a type of signaling termed constitutive or non-canonical epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling -- is highly active in glioblastomas, the most common type of adult brain cancer and a devastating disease with a poor prognosis. When activated in cancer cells, it protects the tumor cells, making them more ...

In the same way as we now connect computers in networks through optical signals, it could also be possible to connect future quantum computers in a 'quantum internet'. The optical signals would then consist of individual light particles or photons. One prerequisite for a working quantum internet is control of the shape of these photons. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and the FOM foundation have now succeeded for the first time in getting this control within the required short time. These findings are published today in Nature Communications. Quantum ...

For decades, the mantra of electronics has been smaller, faster, cheaper. Today, Stanford engineers add a fourth word - taller. At a conference in San Francisco, a Stanford team will reveal how to build high-rise chips that could leapfrog the performance of the single-story logic and memory chips on today's circuit cards. Those circuit cards are like busy cities in which logic chips compute and memory chips store data. But when the computer gets busy, the wires connecting logic and memory can get jammed. The Stanford approach would end these jams by building layers ...

PEOPLE who have problems with numbers may be more likely to feel negative about bowel cancer screening, including fearing an abnormal result, while some think the test is disgusting or embarrassing, according to a Cancer Research UK supported study* published today (Monday) in the Journal of Health Psychology. The researchers** sent information about bowel cancer screening to patients aged from 45 to 59 along with a questionnaire which assessed their numerical skills and attitudes to the screening test, which looks for blood in stool samples. Almost 965 people - registered ...

E-cigarette use among teenagers is growing in the U.S., and Hawaii teens take up e-cigarette use at higher rates than their mainland counterparts, a new study by University of Hawaii Cancer Center researchers has found. The findings come as e-cigarettes grow in popularity and the Food and Drug Administration is considering how to regulate their sale. Some public health officials are concerned that e-cigarettes may be recruiting a new generation of young cigarette smokers who otherwise might not take up smoking at all, and the study's results bolster this position. Data ...