EVANSTON, Ill. - Music training has well-known benefits for the developing brain, especially for at-risk children. But youngsters who sit passively in a music class may be missing out, according to new Northwestern University research. In a study designed to test whether the level of engagement matters, researchers found that children who regularly attended music classes and actively participated showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers after two years. The research, which appears online on Dec. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- For up to one in five Americans over age 65, getting older brings memory and thinking problems- along with the embarrassment of not being as "sharp" as they once were, and the worry that it will get much worse. They might just call it "getting older". But officially, when memory or cognitive problems don't interfere significantly with daily living, doctors call them mild cognitive impairment, or MCI. What can be done to prevent or slow MCI? And how much should seniors fear that their thinking or memory problems will get much worse? A pair of doctors ...

DALLAS - Dec. 16, 2014 - It's a sound that saves. A "real-time" radiation monitor that alerts by beeping in response to radiation exposure during cardiac-catheterization procedures significantly reduces the amount of exposure that medical workers receive, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found. In a randomized study, the researchers divided 505 patients undergoing either diagnostic coronary angiography or percutaneous coronary intervention, such as stent placement, into two groups. In half the procedures, medical workers used the current gold standard for radiation ...

Boston, MA-- Nutrition experts are continually debating the nutritional value of carbohydrate-containing foods and whether some are healthier than others. High carbohydrate foods are classified by how much they increase blood sugar; known as glycemic index. In new findings led by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, researchers looked at glycemic index' effect on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes and found that low glycemic diets did not improve insulin sensitivity or cardiovascular risk factors. ...

HOUSTON - (Dec. 16, 2014) - Rice University scientists have detected at least three instances of cross-species mating that likely influenced the evolutionary paths of "old world" mice, two in recent times and one in the distant past. The researchers think these instances of introgressive hybridization -- a way for genetic material and, potentially, traits to be passed from one species to another through interspecific mating -- are only the first of many needles waiting to be found in a very large genetic haystack. While introgressive hybridization is thought to be common ...

By analyzing data on multilingual Twitter users and Wikipedia editors and on 30 years' worth of book translations in 150 countries, researchers at MIT, Harvard University, Northeastern University, and Aix Marseille University have developed network maps that they say represent the strength of the cultural connections between speakers of different languages. This week, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that a language's centrality in their network -- as defined by both the number and the strength of its connections -- better predicts the ...

PRINCETON, N.J.--More than half of all American children will likely live with an unmarried mother at some point before they reach age 18, according to a report issued by Princeton University and Harvard University. The absence of a biological father increases the likelihood that a child will exhibit antisocial behaviors like aggression, rule-breaking and delinquency, the researchers report in the journal EducationNext. This finding - which holds true regardless of a child's race - is especially prevalent among young boys. As a result, these children are 40 percent less ...

We humans have an exceptional age structure compared to other animals: Our children remain dependent on their parents for an unusually long period and our elderly live an extremely long time after they have stopped procreating. Could the microscopic fellow travelers that consider the human body to be their home - collectively known as the microbiome - have played an active role in shaping and maintaining this unusual aspect of human nature? That is the speculative proposition advanced by Martin Blaser, professor of medicine and microbiology at NYU's Langone Medical ...

Humpback whales have a trick or two, when it comes to finding a quick snack at the bottom of the ocean. But how they pinpoint that meal at night, with little or no available light, remains a mystery. Susan Parks, assistant professor of Biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with a consortium of other researchers, has been studying these unique feeding behaviors. Her research emphasizes the importance of specific auditory cues that these mammoth creatures emit, as they search the deep ocean for their prey. Her findings are the ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a method of detecting, across the entire genome of human cells, unwanted DNA breaks induced by use of the popular gene-editing tools called CRISPR-Cas RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs). Members of the same team that first described these off-target effects in human cells describe their new platform, called Genome-wide Unbiased Indentification of DSBs Evaluated by Sequencing (GUIDE-seq), in a report being published online in Nature Biotechnology. "GUIDE-seq is the first genome-wide method of sensitively detecting ...

ANN ARBOR--A national survey of students in U.S. middle schools and high schools shows some important improvements in levels of substance use. Both alcohol and cigarette use in 2014 are at their lowest points since the study began in 1975. Use of a number of illicit drugs also show declines this year. These findings come from the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, which tracks trends in substance use among students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades. Each year the national study, now in its 40th year, surveys 40,000 to 50,000 students in about 400 secondary ...

The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth's climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, researchers have found. The findings mean that the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news: Earth and most species survived. The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit). ...

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health analyzed the results of the Oregon Health Experiment, where eligible uninsured individuals were randomly assigned Medicaid or to stay with their current care. Considered controversial because the experiment found no measurable gains for physical health it did reveal benefits for mental health, financial wellbeing, and preventive screening. In terms of quality-adjusted life years, the researchers showed that Medicaid is an excellent value--a $62,000 gain in quality-adjusted life years. Study findings are ...

Antimicrobial peptides are a distinctive class of potent, broad-spectrum antibiotics produced by the body's innate immune system--the first line of defense against disease-causing microbes. In a new study, Yixin Shi, Ph.D., and Wei Kong, Ph.D., researchers in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, explore the clever techniques used by bacteria to survive destruction from antimicrobial peptides--potent defense factors produced by all living forms, including humans. Professor Shi underscores the importance ...

It may seem counterintuitive, but exercise can be beneficial for people suffering from arthritis and other muscle and joint conditions. A new study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) finds that older adults experienced less pain, reduced stiffness and less fatigue after participating in a hospital-based exercise program. "The study adds to the growing body of evidence that exercise can help people with muscle and joint conditions," said Sandra Goldsmith, MA, MS, RD, director of Public and Patient Education at Hospital for Special Surgery. Up to 50 million adults ...

Home- and community-based HIV testing and counselling services can achieve high participation uptake in rural Africa but reach different populations within a community and should be provided depending on the groups that are being targeted, according to new research published in this week's PLOS Medicine by Niklaus Labhardt from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and colleagues from SolidarMed, a Swiss non-governmental Organization for Health in Africa. Annually, about 2.3 million people become newly infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. A key step ...

Neuroscientists from the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine have discovered that mice can detect minute differences in the temporal dynamics of the olfactory system, according to research that will be published on December 16 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The research team used light in genetically-engineered mice to precisely control the activity of neurons in the olfactory bulbs in mice performing a discrimination task. This approach to controlling neural activity, called optogenetics, allows for much more precise control over the activity ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Introverted employees are more likely to give low evaluations of job performance to extroverted co-workers, giving introverts a powerful role in workplaces that rely on peer-to-peer evaluation tools for awarding raises, bonuses or promotions, new research shows. Introverts consistently rated extroverted co-workers as worse performers, and were less likely to give them credit for work performed or endorse them for advancement opportunities, according to two studies from researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Florida and University ...

VIDEO: Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center discusses the discovery of organic matter on Mars and other recent results from the MSL Curiosity rover. Click here for more information. The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety ...

This news release is available in German. This news release is available in German. Seeing - recognising - acting. These three words describe how a sensory input can lead to a targeted movement. However, very little is known about how and where the brain converts external inputs into behavioural responses. Now, scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have been able to shed light on important neural circuitry involved in the prey capture behaviour exhibited by young zebrafish. The findings show that neurons in the retina of the ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - The KISS concept ¬- keep it simple, stupid - may work for many situations. However, when it comes to evolution, complexity appears to be key for prosperity and propagating future generations. Research led by Michigan State University's BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action shows that organisms sometimes have to use increasingly complex defenses to continue evading parasites' attacks and live longer than their simpler cousins. The results, published in the current issue of PLOS Biology, show how the virus-resistant hosts live better, ...

VIDEO: New research suggests that children who receive many material rewards from their parents will likely continue rewarding themselves with material goods when they are grown -- well into adulthood --... Click here for more information. COLUMBIA, Mo. - With the holiday season in full swing and presents piling up under the tree, many parents may be tempted to give children all the toys and gadgets they ask for or use the expectation of gifts to manage children's behavior. Now, ...

Researchers from Johns Hopkins have found that dense mats of interacting bacteria, called biofilms, were present in the majority of cancers and polyps, particularly those on the right side of the colon. The presence of these bacterial bunches, they say, may represent an increased risk for colon cancer and could form the basis of new diagnostic tests. Like tooth plaque and slime on pond stones, bacterial biofilms may coat the mucus layer of cells lining the colon, causing inflammation and some noncancerous bowel diseases. The bacteria "invade the layer of mucus that protects ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- American children are generally safer and better-educated than they have been in 20 years, a new report from Duke University finds. Stubborn problems remain, including high rates of child poverty and a still-raging obesity epidemic, the 2014 National Child and Youth Well-Being Index Report notes. But "compared to 20 years ago, U.S. children are doing pretty well," said the report's lead author, Kenneth Land, the John Franklin Crowell Professor of Sociology at Duke. The report is based on the Duke Child Well-Being Index, a comprehensive measure of ...

AMES, Iowa - As a glacier's sliding speed increases, the bed beneath the glacier can grow slipperier, according to laboratory experiments conducted by Iowa State University glaciologists. They say including this effect in efforts to calculate future increases in glacier speeds could improve predictions of ice volume lost to the oceans and the rate of sea-level rise. The glaciologists - Lucas Zoet, a postdoctoral research associate, and Neal Iverson, a professor of geological and atmospheric sciences - describe the results of their experiments in the Journal of Glaciology. ...