No earlier than last year, did the first, and up until recently only, endemic to Upper Guinea family of torrent tooth-frog come to light. Now, Dr. Michael F. Barej from the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, and his colleagues verify the existence of as many as four new highly endangered species. In their study the researchers provide crucial insights for the conservation of the biodiversity hotspot. Their research on the suggested existence of a complex of cryptic (structurally identical) species is published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. Suffice ...

Quantum technology based on light (photons) has great potential for radically new information technology based on photonic circuits. Up to now, the photons in quantum photonic circuits have behaved in the same way whether they moved forward or backward in a photonic channel. This has limited the ability to control the photons and thus build complex circuits for photonic quantum computers. Now researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have discovered a new type of photonic channels, where back and forth are not equal distances! Such a system has been a missing component ...

New Haven, Conn. -- A multidisciplinary team at Yale, led by Yale Cancer Center members, has defined a subgroup of genetic mutations that are present in a significant number of melanoma skin cancer cases. Their findings shed light on an important mutation in this deadly disease, and may lead to more targeted anti-cancer therapies. The study was published July 27 in Nature Genetics. The role of mutations in numerous genes and genomic changes in the development of melanoma -- a skin cancer with over 70,000 new cases reported in the United States each year -- is well established ...

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) frequently develops between the age of two and three. This leukemia has various forms, which differ through certain changes in the genetic material of the leukemia cells. A team of scientists involved in a joint international project headed by Jean-Pierre Bourquin, a pediatric oncologist from the University Children's Hospital Zurich, and Martin Stanulla, a professor at Hannover Medical School, has now succeeded in decoding the genome and transcriptome of an as yet incurable sub-type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These results were ...

In February 1880 in his laboratory in Washington the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell developed a device which he himself called his greatest achievement, greater even than the telephone: the "photophone". Bell's idea to transmit spoken words over large distances using light was the forerunner of a technology without which the modern internet would be unthinkable. Today, huge amounts of data are sent incredibly fast through fibre-optic cables as light pulses. For that purpose they first have to be converted from electrical signals, which are used by computers and ...

Bethesda, MD (July 27, 2015) -- Weight loss through both lifestyle modification and bariatric surgery can significantly reduce features of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a disease characterized by fat in the liver, according to two new studies published in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "While the underlying cause of NASH is unclear, we most commonly see this condition in patients who are middle-aged and overweight or obese," said Giulio Marchesini, MD, from University of Bologna, Italy, and lead author of ...

As the International Olympic Committee prepares to choose between Beijing (China) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, a new report shows that the cost of last year's Games in Sochi, Russia, has been underestimated by billions of dollars. Ahead of the decision on 31 July, a study by Dr Martin Müller of the University of Birmingham finds that: The Sochi Games cost $16bn in sports-related expenditure alone - more than twice the official figure of $7bn Total costs, including capital costs, amount to $55bn Sochi is the most expensive ...

Putting in a lot of effort to earn a reward can make unappealing prizes more attractive to kindergartners, but not to preschoolers, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings revealed that when 6-year-olds worked hard to earn stickers that they ultimately didn't like, they were loath to give them up, whereas 4-year-olds were comparatively eager to give the unappealing stickers away. "When effort leads to an unsatisfying reward, adults experience a cognitive dissonance, arguably resolved ...

Psychologists at the University of York have revealed new evidence showing how specific language used by parents to talk to their babies can help their child to understand the thoughts of others when they get older. Studying the effects of maternal mind-mindedness (the ability to 'tune in' to their young child's thoughts and feelings), lead author Dr Elizabeth Kirk observed 40 mothers and their babies when they were 10, 12, 16, and 20 months old. Keeping a record of parental language while a mother and her child played for 10 minutes, psychologists logged every time ...

MIAMI - A new collaborative study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science & Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy examined predator-prey interactions between tiger sharks and sea turtles off the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. The research team used long-term satellite tagging data from large tiger sharks and adult female loggerhead sea turtles, common prey of tiger sharks, to examine their movement patterns and evaluate if turtles modify their behaviors to reduce their chances of a shark attack when turtle ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - July 27, 2015 - In the last decade, Intra-Arterial (IA) stroke therapy (a technique in which thrombolytic agents and devices are passed through the arteries directly to the clot site) has gained notable momentum as an effective and safe treatment option for patients. Two new studies released today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery 12th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, further reinforce the value and progress of IA treatment with conclusions that the innovative new devices that facilitate this approach are reducing treatment times, improving ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - July 27, 2015 - Despite efforts to close the time gap between symptom onset and stroke treatment - including improvements in public education, 911 dispatch operations, pre-hospital detection and triage, hospital stroke system development, and stroke unit management - a new study presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) 12th Annual Meeting suggests that delays in emergency transport are still prevalent and that improvements are needed to ensure patients can be treated within the optimal time window. Perhaps more than any ...

Whether restaurant customers have the option to add sausage or broccoli to their pizzas or make healthier substitutions to their salads or sandwiches ultimately can make or break a food retailer. A paper forthcoming in the September 2015 issue of the Journal of Retailing seeks to explain the way people decide to customize their food orders and the implications for retailers and customers alike. In "To Choose or to Reject: The Effect of Decision Frame on Food Customization Decisions," by Senior Lecturers Anish Nagpal and Jing Lei, of the University of Melbourne, ...

The Viking hit-and-run raids on monastic communities such as Lindisfarne and Iona were the most infamous result of burgeoning Scandinavian maritime prowess in the closing years of the Eighth Century. These skirmishes led to more expansive military campaigns, settlement, and ultimately conquest of large swathes of the British Isles. But Dr Steve Ashby, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, wanted to explore the social justifications for this spike in aggressive activity. Previous research has considered environmental, demographic, technological ...

Home births lead to higher infant mortality than hospital births, at least for mothers living in poorer areas. This is the conclusion of a new study conducted by N. Meltem Daysal (University of Southern Denmark and IZA), Mircea Trandafir (University of Southern Denmark and IZA) and Reyn van Ewijk (VU University Amsterdam and University of Mainz) that examines 356,412 low-risk Dutch women who delivered between 2000 and 2008 and who were allowed to choose between a home and a hospital birth. The safety of home births for low-risk women is a hotly debated topic in the Western ...

A 20-year study by James Cook University scientists has found a strong link between diabetes and tuberculosis in tropical Australia. Despite massive improvements in sanitation and antibiotic coverage over the last century, TB still remains the leading bacterial cause of death worldwide. Previous studies conducted in developing countries where TB is endemic have demonstrated the connection between the two diseases. But the study by JCU and Townsville Hospital researchers, published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, has for the first time established ...

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine has demonstrated for the first time that hydrogen sulphide (H2S), when applied exogenously, could protect testicular germ cells, which are male reproductive cells, against heat-induced injury, which is one of the major causes of male infertility. The findings may provide a new approach to treating male infertility. H2S, a colorless gas with the characteristic foul odour of rotten eggs, has been shown to produce anti-oxidant effects in various systems including the ...

Scientists uncover a port of liver entry for malaria parasites in a report published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. If these results hold up in humans, drugs that target this entry protein might help prevent the spread of disease. Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium falciparum, which is transmitted to humans via mosquito bite. Recent efforts to limit parasite transmission and increase treatment coverage has reduced the number of malaria-related deaths, but the parasite still causes roughly 200 million new infections and half a million deaths worldwide ...

Considering how many microorganisms we ingest each day, our gut has an extensive and well-developed immune system. This defense is involved in acute and chronic gut diseases, but it varies dramatically among people. A persistent question is how our genetic make-up affects our gut's ability to fight infections. EPFL scientists have found that gut immunity is not affected by single genes but by entire groups of genes. The study, which challenges simplistic views of gut disease, is published in Nature Communications. That gut feeling A healthy gut contains a multitude ...

Babies learn language best by interacting with people rather than passively through a video or audio recording. But it's been unclear what aspects of social interactions make them so important for learning. New findings by researchers at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the University of Washington demonstrate for the first time that an early social behavior called gaze shifting is linked to infants' ability to learn new language sounds. Babies about 10 months old who engaged in more gaze shifting during sessions with a foreign language tutor ...

Located in the South Atlantic, thousands of kilometers away from the nearest populated country, Tristan da Cunha is one of the remotest inhabited islands on earth. Together with the uninhabited neighboring island of Gough about 400 kilometers away, it is part of the British Overseas Territories. Both islands are active volcanoes, derived from the same volcanic hotspot. A team of marine scientists and volcanologists from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, from the University of Kiel and the University of London discovered that about 70 million years ago, ...

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a very aggressive form of pulmonary fibrosis and has a particularly poor prognosis. This fatal disease, for which so far no causal therapies exist, is characterized by a massive deposition of connective and scar tissue in the lung, which leads to a progressive loss of lung function and ultimately death. Connective tissue is mainly produced by myofibroblasts. The research group led by PD Dr. Silke Meiners of the Institute of Lung Biology and the CPC showed now for the first time that the activation of these myofibroblasts depends on increased ...

Doctors and researchers have long known that children who are missing about 60 genes on a certain chromosome are at a significantly elevated risk for developing either a disorder on the autism spectrum or psychosis -- that is, any mental disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations, including schizophrenia. But there has been no way to predict which child with the abnormality might be at risk for which disorder. New findings by researchers at UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh are the first to suggest a potential way to make that determination. In a study ...

Low-dose lithium reduced involuntary motor movements - the troubling side effect of the medication most commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease (PD) - in a mouse model of the condition that is diagnosed in about 60,000 Americans each year. The third in a series of studies from the Andersen lab involving PD and low-dose lithium, the results add to mounting evidence that low-doses of the psychotropic drug could benefit patients suffering from the incurable, degenerative condition. This study, published online in Brain Research, involved Parkinsonian mice that were given ...

Cancer can be caused solely by protein imbalances within cells, a study of ovarian cancer has found. The discovery is a major breakthrough because, until now, genetic aberrations have been seen as the main cause of almost all cancer. The research, published today in the journal Oncogene, demonstrates that protein imbalance is a powerful prognostic tool, indicating whether or not patients are likely to respond to chemotherapy and whether a tumour is likely to spread to other sites. The findings also open the possibility of new therapies aimed at measuring and preventing ...