Scientists first had to re-think death before they could develop a way of testing the potential harm to the environment caused by thousands of chemicals humankind uses each day. Researchers led by Dr Roman Ashauer, of the Environment Department at the University of York, refined the technique of survival analysis used routinely by toxicologists, biologists, medical researchers and engineers. The research could pave the way for testing the estimated 15,000 substances discovered daily. Survival analysis which helps to predict a huge range of functions such as the survival ...

New research by scientists at New Zealand's University of Otago and GNS Science is helping to solve the puzzle of how bacteria are able to live in nutrient-starved environments. It is well-established that the majority of bacteria in soil ecosystems live in dormant states due to nutrient deprivation, but the metabolic strategies that enable their survival have not yet been shown. The researchers took an extreme approach to resolving this enigma. They studied a strain of acidobacteria named Pyrinomonas methylaliphatogenes that was cultivated from heated and acidic geothermal ...

A study including researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago found evidence that gut microbes affect circadian rhythms and metabolism in mice. We know from studies on jet lag and night shifts that metabolism--how bodies use energy from food--is linked to the body's circadian rhythms. These rhythms, regular daily fluctuations in mental and bodily functions, are communicated and carried out via signals sent from the brain and liver. Light and dark signals guide circadian rhythms, but it appears that microbes ...

The more than 200 species in the family Mormyridae communicate with one another in a way completely alien to our species: by means of electric discharges generated by an organ in their tails. In a 2011 article in Science that described a group of mormyrids able to perceive subtle variations in the waveform of electric signals, Washington University in St. Louis biologist Bruce Carlson, PhD, noted that another group of mormyrids are much less discriminating (see illustration). The fish with nuanced signal discrimination can glean a stunning amount of information from ...

Cleaning up municipal and industrial wastewater can be dirty business, but engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed an innovative wastewater treatment process that not only mitigates carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but actively captures greenhouse gases as well. The treatment method, known as Microbial Electrolytic Carbon Capture (MECC), purifies wastewater in an environmentally-friendly fashion by using an electrochemical reaction that absorbs more CO2 than it releases while creating renewable energy in the process. "This energy-positive, carbon-negative ...

(BOSTON) - Super productive factories of the future could employ fleets of genetically engineered bacterial cells, such as common E. coli, to produce valuable chemical commodities in an environmentally friendly way. By leveraging their natural metabolic processes, bacteria could be re-programmed to convert readily available sources of natural energy into pharmaceuticals, plastics and fuel products. "The basic idea is that we want to accelerate evolution to make awesome amounts of valuable chemicals," said Wyss Core Faculty member George Church, Ph.D., who is a pioneer ...

Some neutron stars may rival black holes in their ability to accelerate powerful jets of material to nearly the speed of light, astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have discovered. "It's surprising, and it tells us that something we hadn't previously suspected must be going on in some systems that include a neutron star and a more-normal companion star," said Adam Deller, of ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Black holes and neutron stars are respectively the densest and second most dense forms of matter known in the Universe. ...

From an early age, human infants are able to produce vocalisations in a wide range of emotional states and situations - an ability felt to be one of the factors required for the development of language. Researchers have found that wild bonobos (our closest living relatives) are able to vocalize in a similar manner. Their findings challenge how we think about the evolution of communication and potentially move the dividing line between humans and other apes. Animal vocalisations are usually made in relatively narrow behavioural contexts linked to emotional states, such ...

Washington, DC-- Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions will alter the way that Americans heat and cool their homes. By the end of this century, the number of days each year that heating and air conditioning are used will decrease in the Northern states, as winters get warmer, and increase in Southern states, as summers get hotter, according to a new study from a high school student, Yana Petri, working with Carnegie's Ken Caldeira. It is published by Scientific Reports. "Changes in outdoor temperatures have a substantial impact on energy use inside," Caldeira ...

A team of scientists believe they have shown that memories are more robust than we thought and have identified the process in the brain, which could help rescue lost memories or bury bad memories, and pave the way for new drugs and treatment for people with memory problems. Published in the journal Nature Communications a team of scientists from Cardiff University found that reminders could reverse the amnesia caused by methods previously thought to produce total memory loss in rats. . "Previous research in this area found that when you recall a memory it is sensitive ...

Dogs have a specialized region in their brains for processing faces, a new study finds. PeerJ is publishing the research, which provides the first evidence for a face-selective region in the temporal cortex of dogs. "Our findings show that dogs have an innate way to process faces in their brains, a quality that has previously only been well-documented in humans and other primates," says Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University and the senior author of the study. Having neural machinery dedicated to face processing suggests that this ability is hard-wired ...

Trauma may cause distinct and long-lasting effects even in people who do not develop PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), according to research by scientists working at the University of Oxford's Department of Psychiatry. It is already known that stress affects brain function and may lead to PTSD, but until now the underlying brain networks have proven elusive. Led by Prof Morten Kringelbach, the Oxford team's systematic meta-analysis of all brain research on PTSD is published in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioural Reviews. The research is part of a larger ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (AUGUST 4, 2015). Researchers at the University of Virginia (UVa) examined the number and severity of subconcussive head impacts sustained by college football players over an entire season during practices and games. The researchers found that the number of head impacts varied depending on the intensity of the activity. Findings in this case are reported and discussed in "Practice type effects on head impact in collegiate football," by Bryson B. Reynolds and colleagues, published today online, ahead of print, in the Journal of Neurosurgery. The researchers ...

August 4, 2015 -- Treating maternal psychiatric disorder with commonly used antidepressants is associated with a lower risk of certain pregnancy complications including preterm birth and delivery by Caesarean section, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Medical Center, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. However, the medications -- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs -- resulted in an increased risk of neonatal problems. Findings are published online in the American Journal of Psychiatry. "To ...

Chestnut Hill, MA (August 4, 2015): It's been said that "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it," but even if you know your own history, that doesn't necessarily help you with self-control. New research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology shows the effectiveness of memory in improving our everyday self-control decisions depends on what we recall and how easily it comes to mind. "Despite the common belief that remembering our mistakes will help us make better decisions in the present," says the study's lead author, Hristina Nikolova, Ph.D., an ...

PHILADELPHIA - The roughly nine million Americans who rely on prescription sleeping pills to treat chronic insomnia may be able to get relief from as little as half of the drugs, and may even be helped by taking placebos in the treatment plan, according to new research published today in the journal Sleep Medicine by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Their findings starkly contrast with the standard prescribing practices for chronic insomnia treatment. The findings, which advocate for a dosing strategy of smaller and fewer ...

Research on alcohol-use disorders consistently shows problem drinking decreases as we age. Also called, "maturing out," these changes generally begin during young adulthood and are partially caused by the roles we take on as we become adults. Now, researchers collaborating between the University of Missouri and Arizona State University have found evidence that marriage can cause dramatic drinking reductions even among people with severe drinking problems. Scientists believe findings could help improve clinical efforts to help these people, inform public health policy changes ...

Here's a quick task: Take a look at the sentences below and decide which is the most effective. (1) "John threw out the old trash sitting in the kitchen." (2) "John threw the old trash sitting in the kitchen out." Either sentence is grammatically acceptable, but you probably found the first one to be more natural. Why? Perhaps because of the placement of the word "out," which seems to fit better in the middle of this word sequence than the end. In technical terms, the first sentence has a shorter "dependency length" -- a shorter total distance, in words, between ...

To arrange for an interview with a researcher, please contact the Communications staff member identified at the end of each tip. For more information on ORNL and its research and development activities, please refer to one of our media contacts. If you have a general media-related question or comment, you can send it to news@ornl.gov. CYBERSECURITY - Piranha nets honor ... Piranha, an award-winning intelligent agent-based technology to analyze text data with unprecedented speed and accuracy, will be showcased at the Smithsonian's Innovation Festival Sept. 26-27. The ...

Many people who are skeptical about vaccinating their children can be convinced to do so, but only if the argument is presented in a certain way, a team of psychologists from UCLA and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reported today. The research appears in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The finding is especially important because the number of measles cases in the U.S. tripled from 2013 to 2014. The disease's re-emergence has been linked to a trend of parents refusing to vaccinate their children. What ...

Like top musicians, songbirds train from a young age to weed out errors and trim variability from their songs, ultimately becoming consistent and reliable performers. But as with human musicians, even the best are not machines. To learn and improve, the songbird brain needs to shake up its tried-and-true patterns with a healthy dose of creative experimentation. Until now, no one has found a specific mechanism by which this could occur. Now, researchers at UC San Francisco have discovered a neurological mechanism that could explain how songbirds' neural creativity-generator ...

WASHINGTON (Aug. 3, 2015)--A new analysis of early hominin body size evolution led by a George Washington University professor suggests that the earliest members of the Homo genus (which includes our species, Homo sapiens) may not have been larger than earlier hominin species. As almost all of the hows and whys of human evolution are tied to estimates of body size at particular points in time, these results challenge numerous adaptive hypotheses based around the idea that the origins of Homo coincided with, or were driven by, an increase in body mass. In "Body Mass ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Coaches and trainers strive to keep their players healthy so they can perform at their maximum potentials. Injury restrictions, or limits on athletes' physical activity due to illnesses or injuries, can keep athletes on the bench for a game or even an entire season. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found college football players are more likely to experience injuries during test weeks than during training camp. The effects of academic stress on injury occurrences are even more pronounced among starting players, the researchers found. "Stress ...

Many studies have been conducted on the dangers of endocrine disrupting chemicals that mimic or block estrogen, the primary female hormone. Now new research shows that similar harm can be done by chemicals that affect male hormones, or androgens. Natural androgenic steroids excreted by humans and animals and synthetic androgenic steroids widely used in daily life and livestock are important androgenic endocrine disrupting chemicals because of their constant discharge into the aquatic environment via wastewater. A new Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry study shows that ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Public affairs experts say easy and constant access by citizens to important government information, referred to as government transparency, is vital for good governance as well as the perception by citizens that the government is trustworthy. However, many local governments suffer from a lack of transparency. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that county governments in densely populated urban areas tend to be more transparent on their official websites if their citizens have good Internet access. On the other hand, in counties with large ...