It's called the gambler's fallacy: After a long streak of losses, you feel you are going to win. But in reality, your odds of winning are no different than they were before. For years, the gambler's fallacy has been thought to be a prime example of human irrationality, but a new study published by researchers from the Texas A&M Health Science Center suggests that our brains naturally soak up the strange statistics of random sequences, causing us to commit the gambler's fallacy. The study, which appears in the March 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy ...

It's not much harder or more expensive to send a tweet or a Facebook post to hundreds or even thousands of people than to just a handful. So you'd think that the ease of communicating with lots of people via social networks would result in more and more people sharing their thoughts, political views, and cat videos. But that's not the case, says Associate Professor Zsolt Katona at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business (pictured, left). The flood of tweets and posts washing across cyberspace has created a huge imbalance in the number of people creating content and the ...

OTTAWA, March 10, 2015 - The younger a person is when they immigrate to Canada, the higher their risk of developing inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and its major subtypes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, according to a study by researchers at the University of Ottawa, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). Canada has one of the highest rates in the world of IBD and while immigrants to Canada have lower rates of IBD compared to Canadian-born residents, that risk goes up in immigrants who are ...

A team of astronomers from the University of Cambridge have identified nine new dwarf satellites orbiting the Milky Way, the largest number ever discovered at once. The findings, from newly-released imaging data taken from the Dark Energy Survey, may help unravel the mysteries behind dark matter, the invisible substance holding galaxies together. The new results also mark the first discovery of dwarf galaxies - small celestial objects that orbit larger galaxies - in a decade, after dozens were found in 2005 and 2006 in the skies above the northern hemisphere. The new ...

One of the most important areas in all of biology is the evolution of photosynthesis. Some species of single celled cyanobacteria, through photosynthesis, forever changed the atmosphere of the early Earth by filling it with oxygen, allowing a huge expansion in terms of what life was possible on the planet. Cardona et al., in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, examined the evolution origins of the D1 protein in cyanobacteria, which forms the heart of Photosystem II, the oxygen-evolving machine of photosynthesis. Photosystem II's role is to ...

Researchers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have produced the most detailed image yet of a fascinating region where clusters of hundreds of galaxies are colliding, creating a rich variety of mysterious phenomena visible only to radio telescopes. The scientists took advantage of new VLA capabilities to make a "true color" radio image. This image shows the region as it would appear if human eyes were sensitive to radio waves instead of light waves. In this image, red shows where longer radio waves predominate, and blue shows where shorter radio waves predominate, ...

As sailors and mountaineers know very well, every knot carries out a specific function. There's a knot that slides, one that "floats", and one that comes undone with a single pull. In the field of nanotechnology as well, it is useful to have several kinds of molecular knots to be used, for instance, as mechanically resistant nano-cages for delivering chemical compounds or for confining and controlling toxic reagents. So far, molecular knots have only been produced by chemical synthesis, obtaining constructs on an atomic scale. In the study coordinated by SISSA professor ...

DENVER (March 10, 2015) - As branding and advertising creep into almost every facet of life, a new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows it's now making substantial inroads into popular music. The study examined in detail the yearly top 30 Billboard songs from 1960 to 2013 - a total of 1,583 - and found a steep increase in `advertainment' or the use of product placement, branding and name dropping among the most popular music in the nation. In 2006 alone, 20 of the top 30 songs, or two out of three, included at least one reference to a person, place or ...

Researchers at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues in New York and the United Kingdom, have identified genetic markers, derived from blood samples that are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The markers are associated with gene networks that regulate innate immune function and interferon signaling. The findings, published in the March 10 issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, offer novel insights into the pathophysiology of PTSD. In clinical terms, researchers say ...

Ithaca, NY--What inspires people to support conservation? As concerns grow about the sustainability of our modern society, this question becomes more important. A new study by researchers at Cornell University provides one simple answer: bird watching and hunting. This survey of conservation activity among rural landowners in Upstate New York considered a range of possible predictors such as gender, age, education, political ideology, and beliefs about the environment. All other factors being equal, bird watchers are about five times as likely, and hunters about four ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 10, 2015 - In a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, researchers from the RAND Corporation report that for people receiving food assistance there are significant links between depression, poor dietary quality, and high body mass index (BMI). They suggest that understanding the risk of depression among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants could be important to understanding the relationship among SNAP participation, diet, and weight. "This study focuses on a group that is of particular ...

New evidence published today in the Cochrane Library shows that hormone replacement therapy does not protect post-menopausal women against cardiovascular disease, and may even cause an increased risk of stroke. HRT, now more commonly known as hormone therapy, is widely used for controlling menopausal symptoms. It has also been used for the prevention of cardiovascular disease in post-menopausal women. This latest evidence looked at the effects of using hormone therapy for at least six months and involved more than 40,000 women across the world. The length of time women ...

WASHINGTON, DC - March 10, 2015 - Households can serve as a reservoir for transmitting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Once the bacteria enters a home, it can linger for years, spreading from person to person and evolving genetically to become unique to that household. MRSA are strains of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus that are resistant to almost all antibiotics related to penicillin, known as the beta-lactams. Since ...

Middle-aged Americans who show high levels of societal involvement and mental health are especially likely to construe their lives as stories of personal redemption, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Previous research has shown that adults who are inclined toward generativity - the concern for and commitment to promoting the growth and well-being of future generations - are more likely to engage in a wide range of prosocial behaviors, including positive parenting styles, political participation, ...

Everything is connected, especially in the brain. A protein called BAI1, involved in limiting the growth of brain tumors, is also critical for spatial learning and memory, researchers have discovered. Mice missing BAI1 have trouble learning and remembering where they have been. Because of the loss of BAI1, their neurons have changes in how they respond to electrical stimulation and subtle alterations in parts of the cell needed for information processing. The findings may have implications for developing treatments for neurological diseases, because BAI1 is part of ...

BOSTON, MA - Healthcare spending is at an all-time high in the U.S., yet young African-American men see little benefit, according to Boston Medical Center (BMC) researchers' Viewpoint commentary published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The researchers note that black men have a life expectancy nearly five years less than white men. While heart disease and cancer contribute to this decreased life expectancy, homicide also plays a large role. From ages 1 to 14, homicide is either the second or third leading cause of death ...

As obesity rates rise, so does the incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2D). In obese individuals and those with obesity-induced T2D, there is an accumulation of immune cells within adipose tissue that results in a low level of chronic inflammation. Gut microbial populations are also altered in these individuals. Weight loss, either through diet or gastric bypass, improves TD2-associated symptoms and shifts the gut microbiota. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports that a population of T cells known as mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells is altered ...

Fast Facts: U.S. adults with a history of using some nonaddictive psychedelic drugs had reduced likelihood of psychological distress and suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts, according to data from a nationwide survey. While these psychedelic drugs are illegal, a Johns Hopkins researcher and study author recommends reconsidering their status, as they may be useful in treating depression. Some people have serious adverse reactions to these drugs, which may not stand out in the survey data because they are less numerous than positive outcomes. A history of ...

Fast Facts: Medicine-loaded nanoparticles show promise for humans needing corneal transplants. Tiny nanoparticles may be solution for medicine compliance. Animal study gives patients, family members and clinicians hope for more easily managing medicine after eye surgery. There are about 48,000 corneal transplants done each year in the U.S., compared to approximately 16,000 kidney transplants and 2,100 heart transplants [1] [2]. Out of the 48,000 corneal transplants done, 10 percent of them end up in rejection, largely due to poor medication compliance. This ...

More than 300 years ago, three African-born slaves died on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. No written records memorialized their fate, and their names and precise ethnic background remained a mystery. For centuries, their skeletons were subjected to the hot, wet weather of the tropical island until they were unearthed in 2010 during a construction project in the Zoutsteeg area of the capital city of Philipsburg. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of Copenhagen have extracted and sequenced tiny bits of DNA remaining ...

Caltech scientists, inspired by a chemical process found in leaves, have developed an electrically conductive film that could help pave the way for devices capable of harnessing sunlight to split water into hydrogen fuel. When applied to semiconducting materials such as silicon, the nickel oxide film prevents rust buildup and facilitates an important chemical process in the solar-driven production of fuels such as methane or hydrogen. "We have developed a new type of protective coating that enables a key process in the solar-driven production of fuels to be performed ...

People of differing competence tend to give each other's views equal weight, preventing them from making the best group decisions, finds new UCL-led research. This suggests that people with similar levels of competence make the best decision-making groups, as otherwise the tendency to assume equal competence can give undue weight to the opinions of less capable members. The new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, investigated how pairs of people with differing competence weighted their own judgements against each other's. Researchers ...

This news release is available in German. Reproduction at old age involves risks that may impact one's own life and may impose reduced biological fitness on the offspring. Such evidence, previously obtained in humans and other taxa under laboratory conditions, has now been confirmed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen together with colleagues from the UK and New Zealand for the first time in free-living animals. In a long-term study on a population of house sparrows they found that offspring of older parents themselves produced ...

Nearly three out of four Chinese adults have poor cardiovascular health, with poor diet and growing rates of obesity compounding the risks associated with continuing high rates of smoking, according to a new survey published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The 2010 China Noncommunicable Disease Surveillance Group collected cardiovascular health data from a nationally representative sample of more than 96,000 men and women in the general Chinese population. According to estimates derived from the survey results, just 0.2 percent of Chinese men and ...

People in a society are bound together by a set of connections - a social network. Cooperation between people in the network is essential for societies to prosper, and the question of what drives the emergence and sustainability of cooperation is a fundamental one. What we know about other people in a network informs how much we are willing to cooperate with them. By conducting a series of online experiments, researchers explored how two key areas of network knowledge effect cooperation in decision-making: what we know about the reputation and social connections of those ...