DURHAM, N.C. -- It's obvious drought can kill trees. But a new Duke University study of nearly 29,000 trees at two research forests in North Carolina reveals it's not always a swift or predictable end. "This is the first research to show that declines in tree growth during a drought can significantly reduce long-term tree survival in Southeastern forests for up to a decade after the drought ends," said Aaron Berdanier, a Ph.D. student in forest ecology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, who led the study By identifying the species at highest risk and ...

GeoSpace New study shows significant tsunami strength for parts of Southern California A new simulation of tsunamis generated by earthquake faults off the Santa Barbara coast demonstrates a greater potential for tsunami inundation in the cites of Ventura and Oxnard than previously thought, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists track air pollution by meal times Cars and trucks shouldn't take all of the blame for air pollution in Hong Kong. Smoke from cooking adds more of a specific type of pollution - organic aerosols - to the city's ...

New supercomputer models have come closer than ever to capturing the behavior of normal human heart valves and their replacements, according to recent studies by groups including scientists at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University. The studies focused on how heart valve tissue responds to realistic blood flow. The new models can help doctors make more durable repair and replacement of heart valves. "At the core of what we do is the development ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 19, 2015 -- Patients with hypertension treated with acupuncture experienced drops in their blood pressure that lasted up to a month and a half, researchers with the Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine have found. Their work is the first to scientifically confirm that this ancient Chinese practice is beneficial in treating mild to moderate hypertension, and it indicates that regular use could help people control their blood pressure and lessen their risk of stroke and heart disease. "This clinical study is the culmination of more than a ...

Don't look now, but the pronoun "I" is becoming obsolete. Recent microbiological research has shown that thinking of plants and animals, including humans, as autonomous individuals is a serious over-simplification. A series of groundbreaking studies have revealed that what we have always thought of as individuals are actually "biomolecular networks" that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes that have a significant effect on how the host develops, the diseases it catches, how it behaves and possibly even its social interactions. "It's a case ...

A longstanding mystery about the tiny stars that let loose powerful explosions known as Type Ia supernovae might finally be solved. For decades, astronomers have debated whether one white dwarf star, or two, is necessary for firing up this particular kind of supernova. The answer is not merely academic. Understanding the nitty-gritty physics and diversity of Type Ia supernovae will help illuminate our study of the evolution of galaxies and the strange cosmic force known as dark energy. "It's about understanding one of the ultimate mysteries about stars," Laura Chomiuk, ...

In a paper titled Hummingbird tongues are elastic micropumps which appears in the August 19 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Alejandro Rico Guevara and Margaret Rubega from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Tai-Hsi Fan from the School of Engineering, say that fluid is actually drawn into the tongue by the elastic expansion of the tongues grooves after they are squeezed flat by the beak. Their data shows that fifty years of research describing how hummingbirds and floral nectar have coevolved will have to be reconsidered. What is actually ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an efficient algorithm that can interpret the wheezing of patients with breathing difficulties to give medical providers information about what's happening in the lungs. The research is part of a larger, ongoing project to develop wearable smart medical sensors for monitoring, collecting and interpreting personal health data. The work was done by Saba Emrani and Hamid Krim, researchers in the National Science Foundation Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated ...

CHICAGO --- Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been passed down in many families for generations -- causing reproductive and metabolic health problems for millions of women around the world. Yet, its cause remains unknown despite more than 80 years of research since the disorder was first described in 1935. A new Northwestern Medicine genome-wide association study of PCOS -- the first of its kind to focus on women of European ancestry -- has provided important new insights into the underlying biology of the disorder. Using the DNA of thousands of women and genotyping ...

LAWRENCE -- Compulsory schooling laws instituted in the late 1800s and early 1900s caused more people in Northern states to marry people at their same education level and race, possibly contributing to economic inequality, according to a University of Kansas researcher's study. Emily Rauscher, a KU assistant professor of Sociology, found no increase in assortative mating in Southern states as a result of the laws, suggesting the influence of educational expansion on marital sorting depends on context. "It's difficult to know why the compulsory laws had different effects ...

Solo travellers don't go alone because they have to, they do it because they want to, a new Queensland University of Technology study has found. Professor Constanza (Connie) Bianchi, from QUT Business School, said there were a growing number of people who preferred to travel alone, despite having family and friends. She said solo travellers were choosing freedom, uncompromised fun and meeting new people over the desire to have a companion to share their experiences. In a study published in the International Journal of Tourism Research, Professor Bianchi looked at ...

This news release is available in Japanese. An international research team has some good news for the struggling honeybee, and the millions of people who depend on them to pollinate crops and other plants. These valuable pollinators have faced widespread colony losses over the past decade, largely due to the spread of a predatory mite called Varroa destructor. But the bees might not be in as dire a state as it seems, according to research recently published in Nature Communications. Researchers found a population of wild bees from around Ithaca, New York, which ...

Current international disease surveillance systems are mainly based on reports made by doctors after treatment of infected patients. As a consequence, disease-causing microorganisms and resistance bacteria have time to spread and make large population groups sick before they are detected. There is currently only very limited information about the global occurrence and transfer of antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases. Researchers at the National Food Institute and DTU Systems Biology are working to develop faster methods to detect and respond to outbreaks ...

Scientists at VIB and KU Leuven have shown that blocking the PHD1 oxygen sensor hinders the activation of p53, a transcription factor that aids colorectal cancer (CRC) cells in repairing themselves and thus resisting chemotherapy. Chemotherapy resistance remains a major clinical issue in the treatment of CRC. These findings indicate that PHD1 inhibition may have valuable therapeutic potential. The study was published in the leading medical journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, which features molecular biology-driven research. Chemotherapy remains the most widely used cancer ...

Safinamide (trade name: Xadago) has been available since February 2015 as add-on therapy for the treatment of mid- to late-stage Parkinson disease in adults. In combination with levodopa alone or together with other Parkinson disease medicinal products, this monoamine oxidase (MAO-B) inhibitor is used to help restore dopamine levels in the brain. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. Such an added benefit cannot be derived ...

The study, by scientists at the University of St Andrews, shows that simple increases in a man's height and age automatically makes them appear more dominant. The research, published today (Wednesday 19 August 2015) by the SAGE journal 'Perception', sheds light on why Hollywood directors might choose certain actors to play leading roles. The study was carried out by Carlota Batres, Daniel Re, and Professor David Perrett of the Perception Lab at the University's School of Psychology & Neuroscience. Carlota and her team used computer graphic manipulations to make subtle ...

The older the clinician, the more likely they are to think playing video games leads to violent behavior, according to new research published in Computers in Human Behavior. Psychology professor Dr. Christopher Ferguson, author of the study from Stetson University, US, says his findings go some way to explaining why people have different opinions about the effect of video games and suggests many of the reasons come down to generational issues. For parents, one way to close this gap is speaking to children and testing out the games themselves. As long as video games ...

WASHINGTON and NEW YORK (August 19, 2015)--A new report examining newly-released data from the 2014 Uniform Data System (UDS), which collects patient and health care information from the nation's community health centers, shows how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is changing insurance coverage and health care in the nation's most medically underserved urban and rural communities. Examining data collected from nearly 1,300 federally funded health centers operating in over 9,000 locations, the report shows that between 2013 and 2014, the number of health center patients with ...

CHICAGO, IL, August 19, 2015 - A new study revealed that your cereal choice at breakfast might have an impact on how much you eat for lunch. Newly published research in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition showed that a hearty bowl of instant oatmeal helped curb food intake at lunch better than a leading oat-based, cold cereal -- even when each bowl provided the same number of calories. The statistically significant results of the randomized, controlled crossover study (n=47) showed that a 250-calorie instant oatmeal serving (with an additional 113 calories ...

Racial disparity in mortgage rates is widespread between black and white borrowers, according to a newly published study which found more financially vulnerable black women suffer the most. The study, led by Ping Cheng, Ph.D., professor of finance in Florida Atlantic University's College of Business, used data from three waves of U.S. Survey of Consumer Finance and found that black borrowers on average pay about 29 basis points more than comparable white borrowers, or .29 percent more. Their article was published in the July 2015 issue of The Journal of Real Estate Finance ...

Reducing trade barriers between countries reduces the likelihood of armed conflict and leads to a reduction in defence spending. In turn, this promotes a domino effect in relation to other countries, which has a positive effect on the situation in the world as a whole. This is the conclusion reached by Roman Zakharenko, Assistant Professor of the HSE International College of Economics and Finance, and his colleagues regarding the relationship between trade and defence spending. In today's word, armed conflicts are not as frequent as they used to be, but defence spending ...

Scientists at the University of Surrey found peak concentrations of potentially harmful ultrafine particles reach up to 4000 times local background levels when undertaking building activities such as drilling. Breathing of these particles is linked with serious cardiovascular and respiratory system related diseases, with ultrafine particles penetrating deeper into the lungs. The researchers also found that the greatest ultrafine particle emissions occurred during wall chasing (cutting grooves into a wall using an electrical tool, for example to lay electrical cables). ...

BOSTON, Aug. 19, 2015 -- Tomato lovers rejoice: Adding or rearranging a few simple steps in commercial processing could dramatically improve the flavor of this popular fruit sold in the grocery store, according to researchers. The scientists will present new research on flavor-saving methods at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features more than 9,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics. It is being held here through Thursday. "Ideally, tomatoes should ...

BOSTON, Aug.19, 2015 -- Cross contamination in commercial processing facilities that prepare spinach and other leafy greens for the market can make people sick. But researchers are reporting a new, easy-to-implement method that could eliminate or reduce such incidences. The scientists will present their work at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features more than 9,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics. It is being held here through Thursday. Each year ...

BOSTON, Aug. 19, 2015 -- Alcoholism inflicts a heavy physical, emotional and financial toll on individuals and society. Now new discoveries and promising animal studies are offering a glimmer of hope that a new class of drugs could treat the disease without many of the unwanted side effects caused by current therapies. Researchers are presenting the results of their work today at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features more than 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science ...