MINNEAPOLIS - Researchers have developed a new scoring system to help determine which elderly people may be at a higher risk of developing the memory and thinking problems that can lead to dementia, according to a new study published in the March 18, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Our goal is to identify memory issues at the earliest possible stages," said study author Ronald C. Petersen, MD, PhD, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "Understanding what ...

ROCHESTER, Minn - Researchers at Mayo Clinic developed a new scoring system to help determine which elderly people may be at a higher risk of developing the memory and thinking problems that can lead to dementia. The study is published in the March 18, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Our goal is to identify people who are at the highest risk for dementia as early as possible" said study author Ronald Petersen, M.D., Ph.D., Chester and Debbie Cadieux Director of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer's Disease Research ...

Preserving isolated patches of habitat isn't enough to save species such as Bachman's Sparrow (Peucaea aestivalis) that depend on longleaf pine; habitat connectivity at the landscape level is also crucial. That is the message of a new paper by Paul Taillie, M. Nils Peterson, and Christopher Moorman of North Carolina State University, published this week in The Condor: Ornithological Applications. In the past, fire-dependent longleaf pine forests covered vast, unbroken areas of the southeastern U.S., and Bachman's Sparrows and other species adapted to live in this expansive ...

The TRMM satellite revealed that Tropical Cyclone Nathan had powerful thunderstorms known as "hot towers" near its center which are indicative of a strengthening storm. Cyclone Nathan is located in the Coral Sea off Australia's Queensland coast. Nathan formed on March 10 near the Queensland coast triggering warnings there before moving east. Once out at sea, Nathan made a loop and headed back to Queensland. On March 18, Nathan was nearing the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland. As a result warnings were in effect from Cape Melville to Innisfail, extending inland to Laura. ...

Modern life, with its preponderance of inadequate exposure to natural light during the day and overexposure to artificial light at night, is not conducive to the body's natural sleep/wake cycle. It's an emerging topic in health, one that UConn Health (University of Connecticut, Farmington, Conn.) cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens has been studying for three decades. "It's become clear that typical lighting is affecting our physiology," Stevens says. "But lighting can be improved. We're learning that better lighting can reduce these physiological effects. By that ...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (March 18, 2015) -- Come spring break, college students from all over the country travel to warmer climates for time off from school and to escape the cold weather. However, it's not all fun in the sun. At popular spring break destinations, fatalities from car crashes are significantly higher during the spring break weeks compared to other times of the year, according to a recent study published in the journal Economic Inquiry. "We found that between the last week of February and the first week of April, a significantly greater number of traffic fatalities ...

There's a carbon showdown brewing in the Arctic as Earth's climate changes. On one side, thawing permafrost could release enormous amounts of long-frozen carbon into the atmosphere. On the opposing side, as high-latitude regions warm, plants will grow more quickly, which means they'll take in more carbon from the atmosphere. Whichever side wins will have a big impact on the carbon cycle and the planet's climate. If the balance tips in favor of permafrost-released carbon, climate change could accelerate. If the balance tips in favor of carbon-consuming plants, climate ...

In 1996, a trio of scientists won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discovery of Buckminsterfullerene - soccer-ball-shaped spheres of 60 joined carbon atoms that exhibit special physical properties. Now, 20 years later, scientists have figured out how to turn them into Buckybombs. These nanoscale explosives show potential for use in fighting cancer, with the hope that they could one day target and eliminate cancer at the cellular level - triggering tiny explosions that kill cancer cells without affecting surrounding tissue. "Future applications would probably ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An Indiana University cognitive scientist and collaborators have found that posture is critical in the early stages of acquiring new knowledge. The study, conducted by Linda Smith, a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, in collaboration with a roboticist from England and a developmental psychologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, offers a new approach to studying the way "objects of cognition," such as words or memories of physical objects, are tied to the position ...

For generations, students have been taught the concept of "ecological succession" with examples from the plant world, such as the progression over time of plant species that establish and grow following a forest fire. Indeed, succession is arguably plant ecology's most enduring scientific contribution, and its origins with early 20th-century plant ecologists have been uncontested. Yet, this common narrative may actually be false. As posited in an article published in the March 2015 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, two decades before plant scientists explored the ...

Tirat Carmel, Israel - March 19, 2015 - MeMed, Ltd., today announced publication of the results of a large multicenter prospective clinical study that validates the ability of its ImmunoXpert in-vitro diagnostic blood test to determine whether a patient has an acute bacterial or viral infection. The study enrolled more than 1,000 patients and is published in the March 18, 2015 online edition of PLOS ONE. Unlike most infectious disease diagnostics that rely on direct pathogen detection, MeMed's assay decodes the body's immune response to accurately characterize the cause ...

The most extensive land-based study of the Amazon to date reveals it is losing its capacity to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. From a peak of two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year in the 1990s, the net uptake by the forest has halved and is now for the first time being overtaken by fossil fuel emissions in Latin America. The results of this monumental 30-year survey of the South American rainforest, which involved an international team of almost 100 researchers and was led by the University of Leeds, are published today in the journal Nature. Over recent ...

Messenger RNAs (mRNA) are linear molecules that contain instructions for producing the proteins that keep living cells functioning. A new study by UCL researchers has shown how the three-dimensional structures of mRNAs determine their stability and efficiency inside cells. This new knowledge could help to explain how seemingly minor mutations that alter mRNA structure might cause things to go wrong in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. mRNAs carry genetic information from DNA to be translated into proteins. They are generated as long chains of molecules, but ...

Many people in the UK feel a strong sense of regional identity, and it now appears that there may be a scientific basis to this feeling, according to a landmark new study into the genetic makeup of the British Isles. An international team, led by researchers from the University of Oxford, UCL (University College London) and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Australia, used DNA samples collected from more than 2,000 people to create the first fine-scale genetic map of any country in the world. Their findings, published in Nature, show that prior to the mass ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Each year, rice in Asia faces a big threat from a sesame seed-sized insect called the brown planthopper. Now, a study reveals the molecular switch that enables some planthoppers to develop short wings and others long -- a major factor in their ability to invade new rice fields. The findings will appear Mar. 18 in the journal Nature. Lodged in the stalks of rice plants, planthoppers use their sucking mouthparts to siphon sap. Eventually the plants turn yellow and dry up, a condition called "hopper burn." Each year, planthopper outbreaks destroy hundreds ...

Researchers have linked antibiotic resistance with poor governance and corruption around the world. Lead researcher Professor Peter Collignon from The Australian National University (ANU) School of Medicine said the increase in antibiotic-resistant infections was one of the greatest threats facing modern medicine. In the United States alone, around 23,000 deaths and two million illnesses each year have been attributed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. "We found poor governance and higher levels of corruption are associated with higher levels of antibiotic resistance," ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Cardiovascular researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have shown that a protein known as MG53 is not only present in kidney cells, but necessary for the organ to repair itself after acute injury. Results from this animal model study are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Previous work by Jianjie Ma, a professor and researcher in Ohio State's Department of Surgery and the Dorothy M. Davis Heart & Lung Research Institute, identified and proved that MG53 repairs heart, lung and skeletal muscle cells as well. "MG53 ...

Although bike-sharing systems have attracted considerable attention, they are falling short of their potential to transform urban transportation. A new study by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Assistant Professor Elena Belavina, INSEAD Professor of Sustainable Development Karan Girotra and INSEAD Ph.D. candidate Ashish Kabra found that it is possible for cities to increase ridership without spending more money on bikes or docking points -- simply by redesigning the network. The researchers spent four months in Paris observing the Velib' bike-share system ...

While doctors almost always agree on a pathological diagnosis of invasive breast cancer, there is room for improvement when diagnosing atypia (or atypical ductal hyperplasia-ADH) and DCIS (ductal carcinoma in-situ), Anna Tosteson, ScD and Tracy Onega, PhD from Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center have found. The Dartmouth investigators, and national collaborators, published the study, "Diagnostic Concordance Among Pathologists Interpreting Breast Biopsy Specimens," today in JAMA. "About 1.6 million breast biopsies are done every year in the U.S., yet in nearly ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new study from Oregon State University suggests there is a relationship between low levels of vitamin D and depression in otherwise healthy young women. OSU researchers found that young women with lower levels of vitamin D were more likely to have clinically significant depressive symptoms over the course of a five-week study, lead author David Kerr said. The results were consistent even when researchers took into account other possible explanations, such as time of year, exercise and time spent outside. "Depression has multiple, powerful causes ...

Interviewing women at a breast-imaging center in an urban safety net institution before and after they used a "mHealth" mobile health app on a tablet, Elissa Ozanne, PhD from Dartmouth's Norris Cotton Cancer Center and colleagues concluded that older, diverse, and low income women found it easy to use and acceptable. Published in the Journal of Health Disparities Research Practices, the paper with these findings is "Can mHealth Improve Risk Assessment in Underserved Populations? Acceptability of a Breast Health Questionnaire App in Ethnically Diverse, Older, Low-Income ...

Biochemists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have gained new insights into the generation and maintenance of circadian rhythms. They demonstrated that the Ras protein is important for setting the phase of such a circadian clock, as its activity determines the period length of the rhythm. Ras is also contributing to induce phase-shifts in circadian rhythms in response to external time cues such as light. The team headed by Prof Dr Rolf Heumann published their results in the magazine "Molecular Neurobiology". Ras activity varies throughout the day The circadian clock ...

Absence, it seems, really does make the heart grow fonder. That's according to research conducted by UC Santa Barbara anthropologists, who found that levels of the "love" hormone oxytocin increases among Tsimane men when they come home to their families after a day of hunting. The researchers also found that the increase in oxytocin was greater for those men who were absent longer, and it positively correlated with changes in testosterone. Their findings are published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. The Tsimane are an indigenous population of forager-farmers ...

For many, Facebook connects friends, family, and others with common interests. Despite the popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, scientists are only beginning to learn how they affect human interaction. In a recent study published by the journal Social Science & Medicine, Dartmouth researchers examined nearly 9,000 Facebook conversations to better understand how people seek and receive support on social networking sites. "Among the many Facebook conversations that were mostly casual, we noticed more serious exchanges among people who mentioned a major ...

As one of the strongest cyclones every recorded in the South Pacific Ocean, Cyclone Pam devastated the island archipelago of Vanuatu. The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core observatory provided data on rain rates throughout the storm. At the end of Pam's life on March 17, NASA's RapidScat provided a look at the winds of the waning storm. As the cyclone bore down on Vanuatu's central islands on the afternoon (local time) of March 13, 2015, Pam's maximum sustained winds were estimated to have increased to 270 kph (~167 mph) by the U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center ...