For the first time researchers have measured large distances in the Universe using data, rather than calculations related to general relativity. A research team from Imperial College London and the University of Barcelona has used data from astronomical surveys to measure a standard distance that is central to our understanding of the expansion of the universe. Previously the size of this 'standard ruler' has only been predicted from theoretical models that rely on general relativity to explain gravity at large scales. The new study is the first to measure it using ...

About 95 percent of the more than 10,000 bird species known only evolved upon the extinction of dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. According to computer analyses of the genetic data, today's diversity developed from a few species at a virtually explosive rate after 15 million years already. KIT scientists designed the algorithms for the comprehensive analysis of the evolution of birds. To obtain the results that are now presented in the Science journal, a computing capacity of 300 processor-years was required. (DOI 10.1126/science.1253451) "Computation of these trees ...

This news release is available in Spanish. What is more, this study is the first one conducted using forensic samples taken from deceased individuals. So they examined all the sudden deaths that underwent forensic analysis and which took place in Bizkaia over a seven-year period, between January 2003 and December 2009. The post-mortem examinations were conducted by the only service existing in the province: the Forensic Pathology Service of Bizkaia of the Basque Institute of Forensic Medicine. The research has been published by the specialised journal Addiction, the ...

A study involving scientists from the University of Leicester has established a link between hypoglycaemia and increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality in patients with diabetes. Professors Kamlesh Khunti and Melanie Davies, scientists from the University of Leicester's Diabetes Research Centre, have confirmed an association between hypoglycaemia and an increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality in insulin-treated patients with diabetes, which could lead to changes in the way some patients' treatment is managed. The results were published online ...

Communication protocols for digital devices are very efficient but also very brittle: They require information to be specified in a precise order with a precise number of bits. If sender and receiver -- say, a computer and a printer -- are off by even a single bit relative to each other, communication between them breaks down entirely. Humans are much more flexible. Two strangers may come to a conversation with wildly differing vocabularies and frames of reference, but they will quickly assess the extent of their mutual understanding and tailor their speech accordingly. Madhu ...

Crocodilians, including the Australian saltwater crocodile, mutate at about a quarter of the rate of birds, new research has revealed. The discovery is the result of genome sequencing three crocodilian species - the Australian saltwater crocodile, the American alligator and the Indian gharial - by an international collaboration of scientists, including six from the University of Sydney's Faculty of Veterinary Science. The research is reported in a special edition of Science published on 12 December dedicated to all aspects of bird evolution and its closest living biological ...

New research published today in the journal Physical Review Letters describes how recreating isotopes that occur when a star explodes, can help physicists understand where life-supporting elements may be found in space. For the first time, a research team led by the University of Surrey, Japan's RIKEN Nishina Centre and the University of Beihang, was able to observe the isotopes of certain elemental chemicals formed as a star explodes. The isotopes of these elements (samarium and gadolinium) are sensitive tracers of the way that stars explode, and therefore help in ...

The first ever landing of a man-made probe onto a comet has been named Physics World Breakthrough of the Year for 2014. From a shortlist of 10 highly commended breakthroughs, the historic achievement by scientists working on the Rosetta mission was singled out by the Physics World editorial team for its significance and fundamental importance to space science. The landing of the Philae probe, which captivated not only the physics community but millions of people worldwide, was the culmination of 10 years' work by scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA), who successfully ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Dec. 12, 2014 - Understanding how nitrite can improve conditions such as hypertension, heart attack and stroke has been the object of worldwide research studies. New research from Wake Forest University has potentially moved the science one step closer to this goal. In a paper published online ahead of print in the February issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, senior co-author Daniel Kim-Shapiro, professor of physics at Wake Forest, and others show that deoxygenated hemoglobin is indeed responsible for triggering the conversion of nitrite ...

A study looking at Jamie's Ministry of Food Australia 10-week program has found that it brings not only a change in attitudes but also in behavior when buying healthy food. The research published in the open access journal BMC Public Health has found that these changes continue up to six months after completion of the program. Jamie's Ministry of Food was a campaign started with the aim of encouraging people to develop cooking skills to prepare simple, fresh and healthy food easily and quickly. It is based on a British initiative during the Second World War, which was ...

Malnutrition is a major cause of stunted growth in children, but new UCL research on mothers and children in Egypt suggests that the problem is not just about quantity of food but also quality. Obesity and malnutrition are often thought of as problems at opposite ends of the nutrition spectrum, but the study found that 6.7% of Egyptian mothers were obese and had stunted children. In these 'double-burden' households with obese mothers and stunted children, malnutrition is unlikely to be down to scarcity of food. The study, published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal, ...

In the Christmas issue of The BMJ, surgeons at the University Hospital of Wales examine the intertwined history of music and healing, and suggest tunes for surgeons and theatre staff to play - and to avoid - during operations. As early as 4000 BC, "hallelujah to the healer" was played as part payment for medicinal services, while the ancient Greeks identified Apollo as the father of both healing and music. More recently, studies have shown beneficial calming and even pain relieving effects of music for patients having surgery. But does music strike a chord with the ...

Sex differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency hospital admissions, and mortality are well documented. Males are more likely to be admitted to an emergency department after accidential injuries, more likely to be admitted with a sporting injury, and more likely to be involved in a fatal road traffic collision. However, little is known about sex differences in idiotic risk taking behaviour. So researchers in north east England decided to test "male idiot theory" (MIT) that many of the differences in risk seeking behaviour may be explained by the observation that ...

In fact, political centrists would do well to stop 'sitting on the fence' and boost their physical activity levels to improve their health, say the researchers. The term "armchair socialist" was coined in the 19th century by German economists who scoffed at academics advocating social policy, dubbing them "socialists of the chair" (Kathedersozialisten). The term has since evolved to describe middle class people who talk a lot about politics but who aren't politically active in any way, and fail to "walk the talk." The concept has been widely adopted, prompting several ...

Fed up with complaints about the lack of up to date magazines in the waiting room of his general practice, Professor Bruce Arroll and colleagues set out to answer the question. Their findings are published in the Christmas issue of The BMJ. A total of 87 magazines were stacked into three mixed piles and placed in the waiting room of a general practice in Auckland, New Zealand. They included non-gossipy magazines (Time magazine, the Economist, Australian Women's Weekly, National Geographic, BBC History) and gossipy ones (defined as having five or more photographs of celebrities ...

Inspired by the story of King Canute - the 11th century king who tried to command the tide to turn back - Westgate Medical Practice in Dundee decided to stop fighting the tide and let patients have appointments when they wanted. Their findings are published in the Christmas issue of The BMJ. Each morning, all patients telephoning for soon, immediate, or urgent care were invited to attend a daily appointment "pool" at 10.30am. Reception staff invited patients, if they wished, to state the clinical problem and which GP they normally saw. Patients were advised that they ...

Highlights In patients on dialysis, cinacalcet reduced the rate of bone fracture by 16% to 29%, after accounting for patient characteristics and other factors. Washington, DC (December 11, 2014) -- A drug that mimics calcium and lowers parathyroid levels may help prevent bone fractures in patients with kidney failure who are on dialysis, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Patients with kidney failure who are undergoing dialysis have an increased risk of bone fractures, and the risk of ...

Stroke is Australia's second biggest killer after coronary heart disease, but rates of a common type of stroke, intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH), appear to be falling, according to a UNSW study that is the largest of its kind in Australia. ICH accounts for about 15% of all strokes. Close to 40% of patients will die within 30 days and significant disability is common in survivors. The improvement in the incidence of ICH may be the result of the widespread implementation of proven prevention and treatment programs, the researchers say. The large retrospective, observational ...

The most ambitious genetic study ever undertaken on bird evolution has found that almost all modern birds diversified after the dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago. "The popular view until now has been that the extraordinary diversity of birds began during the dinosaur age but we found little support for this," said Associate Professor Simon Ho, from the University of Sydney who led a major component of the research looking at evolutionary timescale. An international collaboration of scientists worked for four years to sequence, assemble and compare the ...

People with a high level of education who complain about memory lapses have a higher risk for stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. "Studies have shown how stroke causes memory complaints," said Arfan Ikram, M.D., associate professor of neuroepidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. "Given the shared underlying vascular pathology, we posed the reverse question: 'Do memory complaints indicate an increased risk of strokes?'" As part of the Rotterdam Study (1990-93 and 2000-01), 9,152 participants 55 ...

Children with public insurance waited longer after initial evaluation for sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) to undergo polysomnography (PSG, the gold standard diagnostic test) and also waited longer after PSG to have surgery to treat the condition with adenotonsillectomy (AT) compared with children who were privately insured, according to a report published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. Low socioeconomic status (SES) is a barrier to quality care and improved health outcomes. SDB is a spectrum of sleep disruption that ranges from snoring to obstructive ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. - It's well known that chemotherapy helps fight cancer. It's also known that it wreaks havoc on normal, healthy cells. Michigan State University scientists are closer to discovering a possible way to boost healthy cell production in cancer patients as they receive chemotherapy. By adding thymine - a natural building block found in DNA - into normal cells, they found it stimulated gene production and caused them to multiply. The study can be found online in the journal Molecular Cell. "In most cases, cancer patients who receive chemotherapy lose ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Frederick Crane was a researcher under David E. Green in the mid-1950s, during the early days of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Institute, when he made his defining discovery. The lab group was on a mission to determine, bit by bit, how mitochondria -- the power plants of cells -- generate the energy required to sustain life. What Crane found, a compound called coenzyme Q, was a missing piece of the puzzle and became a major part of the legacy of mitochondrial research at UW-Madison. But it was no accident. "It was the result of a long ...

Montréal, December 11, 2014 - Researchers in Montréal led by Jacques Drouin, D.Sc., uncovered a mechanism regulating dopamine levels in the brain by working on a mouse model of late onset Parkinson's disease. The study, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Rory A. Fisher from the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, is published online today by the scientific journal PLoS Genetics. Using gene expression profiling, a method to measure the activity of thousands of genes, researchers investigated dopaminergic neurons in ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A new method that creates large-area patterns of three-dimensional nanoshapes from metal sheets represents a potential manufacturing system to inexpensively mass produce innovations such as "plasmonic metamaterials" for advanced technologies. The metamaterials have engineered surfaces that contain features, patterns or elements on the scale of nanometers that enable unprecedented control of light and could bring innovations such as high-speed electronics, advanced sensors and solar cells. The new method, called laser shock imprinting, creates shapes ...