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Science26 Aug 2015

Family farm managers earn less, but gain 'emotional' wealth

ITHACA, N.Y. - After hours harvesting forage, managing livestock and milking cows, new Cornell University agricultural economic research shows family members who work on the family dairy farm make $22,000 less annually than comparable hired managers, but are handsomely compensated with "socioemotional" wealth. "While $22,000 seems like a large penalty, there are nonfinancial rewards they experience working for the family business," said Loren Tauer, professor at Cornell's Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, who with lead author Jonathan Dressler ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Colorful potatoes may pack powerful cancer prevention punch

Compounds found in purple potatoes may help kill colon cancer stem cells and limit the spread of the cancer, according to a team of researchers. Baked purple-fleshed potatoes suppressed the growth of colon cancer tumors in petri dishes and in mice by targeting the cancer's stem cells. Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. and responsible for more than 50,000 deaths annually, according to the American Cancer Society. Attacking stem cells is an effective way to counter cancer, according to Jairam K.P. Vanamala, associate professor ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Stiffer breast tissue in obese women promotes tumors

ITHACA, N.Y. - Women who are obese have a higher risk and a worse prognosis for breast cancer, but the reasons why remain unclear. A Cornell study published this month in Science Translational Medicine explains how obesity changes the consistency of breast tissue in ways that are similar to tumors, thereby promoting disease. The study of mice and women shows obesity leads to a stiffening of a meshwork of material that surrounds fat cells in the breast, called the extracellular matrix, and these biomechanical changes create the right conditions for tumor growth. The findings ...

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Technology26 Aug 2015

New survey examines racial and ethnic differences in technology use by millennials

A new study conducted by the Media Insight Project, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that while the similarities to the rest of their generation are numerous, there are some distinct differences in the way that Hispanic and African American Millennials use technology to access news and information. The source of their information is one area of difference: these young adults are more likely to use YouTube and Instagram for news than Millennials in general, though all groups rely ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Neurodegenerative disease clogs nuclear pores

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have discovered how the most common genetic defect in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis kills nerve cells. Their study suggests that the pores that allow molecules into and out of a cell's nucleus get jammed, a finding that could speed the search for other genes that promote this fatal illness. In people who have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the motor neurons that operate the muscles deteriorate. Over time, the disease deprives patients of the ability to walk, swallow, and breathe, and they usually die within three ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Antimatter catches a wave at SLAC

A study led by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles has demonstrated a new, efficient way to accelerate positrons, the antimatter opposites of electrons. The method may help boost the energy and shrink the size of future linear particle colliders - powerful accelerators that could be used to unravel the properties of nature's fundamental building blocks. The scientists had previously shown that boosting the energy of charged particles by having them "surf" a wave of ionized ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Capturing cancer

They're among the most powerful tools for shedding new light on cancer growth and evolution, but mathematical models of the disease for years have faced an either/or stand off. Though models have been developed that capture the spatial aspects of tumors, those models typically don't study genetic changes. Non-spatial models, meanwhile, more accurately portray tumors' evolution, but not their three-dimensional structure. A collaboration between Harvard, Edinburgh, and Johns Hopkins Universities including Martin Nowak, Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Methanotrophs: Could bacteria help protect our environment?

New insight into methanotrophs, bacteria that can oxidise methane, may help us develop an array of biotechnological applications that exploit methane and protect our environment from this potent greenhouse gas. Publishing in Nature, scientists led by Newcastle University have provided new understanding of how methanotrophs are able to use large quantities of copper for methane oxidation. They have identified a new family of copper storage proteins called Csp that are present in a range of bacteria. These proteins store metal in a way that has not been seen previously ...

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Earth Science26 Aug 2015

Scientists discover mechanism behind 'strange' earthquakes

It's not a huge mystery why Los Angeles experiences earthquakes. The city sits near a boundary between two tectonic plates -- they shift, we shake. But what about places that aren't along tectonic plate boundaries? For example, seismicity on the North American plate occurs as far afield as southern Missouri, where earthquakes between 1811 and 1812 estimated at around magnitude 7 caused the Mississippi River to flow backward for hours. Until now, the cause of that seismicity has remained unclear. While earthquakes along tectonic plate boundaries are caused by motion ...

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Environment26 Aug 2015

Pacific Northwest wildfires severe in intensity

The Pacific Northwest is abundantly dotted with wildfires in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. There are over 27 fires listed in the Inciweb database for the state of Washington. The largest active fire listed is the Okanogan Complex Fire which is currently at 256,567 acres and has 1,250 personnel working the fire. This fire began as a lightning strike on August 15, 2015. It is only 10% contained at present. Governor Inslee's request for a federal Emergency Declaration to provide additional resources to cover some of the costs related to multiple wildfires burning ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Unusual use of blue pigment found in ancient mummy portraits

Mostly untouched for 100 years, 15 Roman-era Egyptian mummy portraits and panel paintings were literally dusted off by scientists and art conservators from Northwestern University and the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology as they set out to investigate the materials the painters used nearly 2,000 years ago. What the researchers discovered surprised them, because it was hidden from the naked eye: the ancient artists used the pigment Egyptian blue as material for underdrawings and for modulating color -- a finding never before documented. Because blue has to be manufactured, ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

UCSF researchers control embryonic stem cells with light

UC San Francisco researchers have for the first time developed a method to precisely control embryonic stem cell differentiation with beams of light, enabling them to be transformed into neurons in response to a precise external cue. The technique also revealed an internal timer within stem cells that lets them tune out extraneous biological noise but transform rapidly into mature cells when they detect a consistent, appropriate molecular signal, the authors report in a study published online August 26 in Cell Systems. "We've discovered a basic mechanism the cell uses ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Wide-ranging networking boosts employee creativity

Companies can promote creativity in employees by encouraging them to network beyond their immediate business networks, according to a new study by management experts at Rice University, Australian National University (ANU), Erasmus University Rotterdam, Monash University in Clayton, Australia, and the University of Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. "Social networks can be important sources of information and insight that may spark employee creativity," the authors said. "The cross-fertilization of ideas depends not just on access to information and insights through one's ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Searching big data faster

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--For more than a decade, gene sequencers have been improving more rapidly than the computers required to make sense of their outputs. Searching for DNA sequences in existing genomic databases can already take hours, and the problem is likely to get worse. Recently, Bonnie Berger's group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has been investigating techniques to make biological and chemical data easier to analyze by, in some sense, compressing it. In the latest issue of the journal Cell Systems, Berger and colleagues ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Something to crow about

Among our greatest achievements as humans, some might say, is our cumulative technological culture -- the tool-using acumen that is passed from one generation to the next. As the implements we use on a daily basis are modified and refined over time, they seem to evolve right along with us. A similar observation might be made regarding the New Caledonian crow, an extremely smart corvid and the only non-human species hypothesized to possess its own cumulative technological culture. How the birds transmit knowledge to each other is the focus of a study by Corina Logan, a ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Cannabis and the brain, 2 studies, 1 editorial examine associations

Two studies and an editorial published online by JAMA Psychiatry examine associations between cannabis use and the brain. Cannabis, also known as marijuana, is a popular recreational drug and its legal status has been a source of enduring controversy. In the first study, David Pagliaccio, Ph.D., formerly of Washington University in St. Louis, and now at the National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md., and coauthors analyzed data from a group of twin/siblings (n=483 with 262 participants reporting ever using cannabis in their lifetime) to determine whether cannabis ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Cannabis use may influence cortical maturation in adolescent males

Toronto, CANADA - Male teens who experiment with cannabis before age 16, and have a high genetic risk for schizophrenia, show a different brain development trajectory than low risk peers who use cannabis. The discovery, made from a combined analysis of over 1,500 youth, contributes to a growing body of evidence implicating cannabis use in adolescence and schizophrenia later in life. The study was led by Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute in Toronto and is reported in JAMA Psychiatry (online) today, ahead of print publication. Adolescence is a period ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Cell transplantation procedure may one day replace liver transplants

Putnam Valley, NY. (Aug. 26, 2015) - Liver transplantation is currently the only established treatment for patients with end stage liver failure. However, this treatment is limited by the shortage of donors and the conditional integrity and suitability of the available organs. Transplanting donor hepatocytes (liver cells) into the liver as an alternative to liver transplantation also has drawbacks as the rate of survival of primary hepatocytes is limited and often severe complications can result from the transplantation procedure. In an effort to find potential therapeutic ...

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Earth Science26 Aug 2015

Earth's mineralogy unique in the cosmos

Washington, DC--New research from a team led by Carnegie's Robert Hazen predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos. Minerals form from novel combinations of elements. These combinations can be facilitated by both geological activity, including volcanoes, plate tectonics, and water-rock interactions, and biological activity, such as chemical reactions with oxygen and organic material. Nearly a decade ago, Hazen developed the idea that the ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

Observation stays over hospital admissions drives up costs for some Medicare patients

PHILADELPHIA - In the midst of a growing trend for Medicare patients to receive observation care in the hospital to determine if they should be formally admitted, a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows that for more than a quarter of beneficiaries with multiple observation stays, the cumulative out-of-pocket costs of these visits exceeds the deductible they would have owed for an inpatient hospital admission. According to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, there were 1.8 million observation patients ...

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Environment26 Aug 2015

LSU researchers conduct post-hurricane recovery analysis

BATON ROUGE - Ten years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, LSU researchers have analyzed and documented the recovery effort for the state. Initial reports have been released this week. Due to the unprecedented destruction of the 2005 storm season, recovery efforts traditionally supported by insurance and FEMA were supplemented by a unique set of programs funded through $13.4 billion of Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery, or CDBG-DR funds. The researchers from the LSU AgCenter and E. J. Ourso College of Business focused on ...

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Medicine26 Aug 2015

One in four hepatitis C patients denied initial approval for drug treatment

New Haven, Conn. -- Nearly one in four patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV) are denied initial approval for a drug therapy that treats the most common strain of the infection, according to a Yale School of Medicine study. The finding, published Aug. 27 in PLOS ONE, identifies a new barrier to caring for patients with this severe condition. Prior to the FDA approval of novel antiviral therapies for HCV in 2014, treatment options for patients were limited, requiring weekly injections of interferon-based therapy that caused severe side effects. The new regimens revolutionized ...

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Space26 Aug 2015

Self-healing material could plug life-threatening holes in spacecraft (video)

For astronauts living in space with objects zooming around them at 22,000 miles per hour like rogue super-bullets, it's good to have a backup plan. Although shields and fancy maneuvers could help protect space structures, scientists have to prepare for the possibility that debris could pierce a vessel. In the journal ACS Macro Letters, one team reports on a new material that heals itself within seconds and could prevent structural penetration from being catastrophic. It's hard to imagine a place more inhospitable to life than space. Yet humans have managed to travel ...

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Space26 Aug 2015

NASA measures rainfall in stronger Tropical Storm Ignacio

The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite measured rainfall as Tropical Depression Twelve was upgraded to Tropical Storm Ignacio. Tropical Depression 12E strengthened into Tropical Storm Ignacio at 5 p.m. EDT yesterday, August 25. At that time, it became the ninth named tropical storm of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season. The GPM core observatory satellite saw Ignacio on August 25, 2015 at 2256 UTC. GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) found rain falling at a rate of over 74 mm (2.9 inches) per hour with storm tops reaching to altitudes ...

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Science26 Aug 2015

Tackling the root cause of cystic fibrosis

Treatments for cystic fibrosis (CF) have added years to the lives of thousands of Americans. But they can be difficult to administer, and most don't fix the underlying cause. Scientists have now found that a small molecule, when tested in yeast, can substitute for a protein and restore a key cellular function related to those missing in people with CF and similar conditions. Their report appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. CF is caused by a genetic mutation that affects certain cellular proteins that make up "channels," which act like gates managing ...

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