MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (12/16/2014)--A new study by an international team of researchers shows for the first time that people may inherit some of the intestinal bacteria that cause Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, collectively know as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The study, recently published in Genome Medicine, also confirmed that antibiotics could worsen the imbalance in the gut microbes. About 1.6 million Americans suffer from Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, according to the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America. Understanding the causes of these ...

AMHERST, Mass. - In a follow-up to her earlier studies of learning in infancy, developmental psychologist Lisa Scott and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are reporting that talking to babies in their first year, in particular naming things in their world, can help them make connections between what they see and hear, and these learning benefits can be seen as much as five years later. "Learning in infancy between the ages of six to nine months lays a foundation for learning later in childhood," Scott says. "Infants learn labels for people and things ...

WASHINGTON, DC--December 16, 2014--Using mathematical modeling, researchers at New York and Vanderbilt universities have shown that commensal bacteria that cause problems later in life most likely played a key role in stabilizing early human populations. The finding, published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, offers an explanation as to why humans co-evolved with microbes that can cause or contribute to cancer, inflammation, and degenerative diseases of aging. The work sprung from a fundamental question in biology ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- In the first real-world trial of the impact of patient-controlled access to electronic medical records, almost half of the patients who participated withheld clinically sensitive information in their medical record from some or all of their health care providers. Should patients control who can see specific information in their electronic medical records? How much control should they have? Can doctors and other clinicians provide safe, high-quality care when a patient's preference may deny members of the medical team from seeing portions of the electronic ...

BALTIMORE, MD (Dec. 16, 2014)--With a unique, multi-faceted approach, researchers at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) have quantified the effect of previously unidentified anomalies in genetic expression that determine how the human brain develops from its earliest stages. Their work, published online December 15th in Nature Neuroscience, offers a novel technique for identifying biological markers in brain development that associate with risk for neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Using state-of-the-art ...

The mortality of larval Pacific oysters in Northwest hatcheries has been linked to ocean acidification. Yet the rate of increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the decrease of pH in near-shore waters have been questioned as being severe enough to cause the die-offs. Now, a new study of Pacific oyster and Mediterranean mussel larvae found that the earliest larval stages are sensitive to saturation state, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) or pH (acidity) per se. Saturation state is a measure of how corrosive seawater is to the calcium carbonate shells made by ...

Being "average" is often considered a bad thing, but new research suggests that averageness wins when people assess the trustworthiness of a face. The research indicates that, while typical-looking faces aren't seen as the most attractive, they are considered to be the most trustworthy. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Face typicality likely indicates familiarity and cultural affiliation - as such, these findings have important implications for understanding social perception, including cross-cultural ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Since 1998, hundreds and sometimes thousands of dead eider ducks have been washing up every year on Cape Cod's beaches in late summer or early fall, but the reasons behind these cyclic die-offs have remained a mystery. A team of scientists from Cornell, Tufts University, University of Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have pinned down one of the agents responsible: a pathogen they're calling Wellfleet Bay virus (WFBV). Their findings shed light on why eider ducks (also called common eiders) die on Cape Cod every ...

NEW YORK, NY -- Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have developed new technology that can assess the location and impact of a brain injury merely by tracking the eye movements of patients as they watch music videos for less than four minutes, according to a study published Friday on-line in the Journal of Neurosurgery. The study suggests that the use of eye tracking technology may be a potential biological marker for assessing brain function and monitoring recovery for patients with brain injuries. Led by Uzma Samadani, MD, PhD, chief of neurosurgery at New ...

GALVESTON, Texas -- In the largest study to date evaluating outcomes of Hispanic women with endometrial uterine cancer, researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have found that Hispanic women in the United States were significantly less likely to survive the cancer than non-Hispanic white women. A total of 69,764 women diagnosed with endometrial cancer between 2000 and 2010 were included in this study of public-use data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. The study is available online in the ...

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a way to emit and control quantum light generated using a chip made from silicon--one of the most widely used materials for modern electronics. The UC San Diego researchers recently described their new device's performance online in the journal Nature Communications, available via Open Access . The researchers say practical applications of quantum optics will seem more feasible if devices for generating and controlling these photons can be manufactured using conventional materials ...

It's the most basic of ways to find out what something does, whether it's an unmarked circuit breaker or an unidentified gene -- flip its switch and see what happens. New remote-control technology may offer biologists a powerful way to do this with cells and genes. A team at Rockefeller University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is developing a system that would make it possible to remotely control biological targets in living animals -- rapidly, without wires, implants or drugs. Today (December 15) in the journal Nature Medicine, the team describes successfully ...

BOSTON (Dec. 16, 2014) -- Extra vitamin E protected older mice from a bacterial infection that commonly causes pneumonia. Microbiologists and nutrition researchers from Tufts University report that the extra vitamin E helped regulate the mice's immune system. The findings, published online in advance of print in the The Journal of Immunology, show promise for studies investigating the effects of vitamin E and infection in humans. Older adults over age 65 are at high risk for developing pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs typically caused by infection. The most common ...

A scientific team at UBC and Providence Health Care have genetically engineered mice with less wrinkled skin, despite repeated exposure to wrinkle-inducing ultraviolet (UV) light. The youthful-looking mice were bred without the gene that produces Granzyme B, an enzyme that immune cells use to destroy harmful pathogens. The UBC-Providence team, led by Professor David Granville and postdoctoral fellow Leigh Parkinson, found that Granzyme B also does harm: When produced and released by skin cells in response to UV light, it triggers the breakdown of collagen, a structural ...

ANN ARBOR--A set of eight hurricane-forecast satellites being developed at the University of Michigan is expected to give deep insights into how and where storms suddenly intensify--a little-understood process that's becoming more crucial to figure out as the climate changes, U-M researchers say. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System is scheduled to launch in fall 2016. At the American Geophysical Union Meeting in San Francisco this week, U-M researchers released estimates of how significantly CYGNSS could improve wind speed and storm intensity forecasts. CYGNSS--said ...

Contrary to popular belief, new research suggests that some employees adapt well to pressures caused by changes in the workplace. Pay cuts, reduced working hours, fewer training and promotion opportunities are just a few of the measures organisations employ to combat economic downturn and industry competition. Where previous research has suggested cut backs result in a demotivated and unhappy workforce, experts from Monash University and The University of Iowa say this might not necessarily be the case. A new study published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational ...

A global fleet of composite planes could reduce carbon emissions by up to 15 percent, but the lighter planes alone will not enable the aviation industry to meet its emissions targets, according to new research. The study, by the Universities of Sheffield, Cambridge and UCL (University College London), is the first to carry out a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of a composite plane, such as the Boeing Dreamliner 787 or Airbus 350, and extrapolate the results to the global fleet. The LCA covers manufacture, use and disposal, using publicly available information ...

A team of Chinese and Italian scientists has joined efforts to provide a key to the understudied phaleratus group of blister beetles. During their research the scientists have also discovered a new species from the genus Hycleus, which they named after Marco Polo, as a tribute to their collaboration during the Ph.D. studies. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The phaleratus group to which the new species Hycleus marcipoli belongs, is part of the Meloidae family commonly known as the blister beetle family. The representatives of this group get ...

This news release is available in German. Whether an odor is pleasant or disgusting to an organism is not just a matter of taste. Often, an organism's survival depends on its ability to make just such a discrimination, because odors can provide important information about food sources, oviposition sites or suitable mates. However, odor sources can also be signs of lethal hazards. Scientists from the BMBF Research Group Olfactory Coding at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now found that in fruit flies, the quality and intensity of ...

Researchers studied 414 people with severe dementia along with their carers in England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. The study gathered information on quality of life, activities of daily living such as bathing, feeding and dressing and presence of depressive symptoms using standardised measures. In the groups studied, 37% of the 217 people living in the community showed signs of depression compared to 23% of the 197 in care homes. It is one of the few studies comparing similar groups of people living at home and in nursing homes. Professor ...

Some neurons are more active than others, even when they are positioned right next to each other and are one and the same neuron type. Dr. Jean-Sébastien Jouhanneau and Dr. James Poulet of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin Buch have discovered the cause for this phenomenon. They found that the more active neurons in the somatosensory area of the brain respond to a broader receptive field and probably play a particularly important role in our sensory perception. The findings of the researchers, who also work at the NeuroCure Cluster of ...

People and animals have been shown to discriminate between quantities. Lions, chimpanzees and hyenas, for example, will only approach a group of attackers if their own group outnumbers that of the intruders. These animals use numerical information to make decisions about their social life. Testing numerical competence In 2012 Friederike Range and Zsofia Virányi from the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna showed that wolves are capable of discriminating between different food quantities. In their present study, they asked ...

Stimulants use such as cocaine and amphetamine is associated with a nearly two-fold greater likelihood of suicidal behaviour amongst people who inject drugs, say researchers at the University of Montreal and the CHUM Research Centre. Drug addiction had already been identified as a major risk factor for suicide, and it is in fact the cause of ten percent of deaths among drug users. The data from this groundbreaking study could help develop and evaluate more appropriate suicide prevention efforts in this highly vulnerable population. The researchers were able to explore ...

GPs should consider a more overt discussion with patients when referring them for further investigation of symptoms which may indicate cancer, according to a paper published in the British Journal of General Practice. In an NIHR-funded study, researchers from the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Durham and Exeter conducted interviews with patients being referred for possible lung and colorectal cancer. They found that patients were rarely involved in the decision to be referred for investigation and that reasons for referral tended to be couched in non-specific ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2014 -- It's been a holiday decoration staple for decades, and it turns out that silver stuff hanging from your tree has quite a storied past. Tinsel has been made out of everything from real silver, to lead to other dangerously flammable materials. This week's Speaking of Chemistry decks your halls with the history of tinsel. Check it out at http://youtu.be/fql3aCuu1l0. INFORMATION: Speaking of Chemistry is a production of Chemical & Engineering News, a weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. The program features fascinating, weird and ...