A new paper to be published in the journal Zootaxa (April 6, 2015) describes 30 new insect species in a single genus, Megaselia, of the fly family Phoridae. Describing 30 species in a single paper is rare, but what's especially striking is that all these come from urban Los Angeles. The discoveries come from researchers in the BioSCAN project (Biodiversity Science: City and Nature) at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM). The BioSCAN project is a three year investigation of patterns of biodiversity in and around urban Los Angeles, based on sampling ...

AUBURN, AL - In the production of organic vegetables, nitrogen is important, yet can be quite costly to manage. Nitrogen management is even more challenging when production practices call for the use of polyethylene mulch combined with fertigation. The authors of a new study published in HortScience have found that hydrolyzed fish fertilizer holds promise as an "economically feasible" nitrogen source for growing organic vegetables. "Soluble organic nitrogen sources suitable for fertigation in organic vegetable production are much needed," said lead author of the study, ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- In an editorial posted online today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, two practicing emergency medicine physicians from the University of California, Davis, and Brown University -- both thought leaders at the forefront of finding solutions to the public health crisis of gun violence -- urge their colleagues to take direct action to protect the health and safety of patients and communities. Their editorial follows the Feb. 24 call to action by eight health professional organizations, including the American College of Emergency Physicians, and ...

In the year since the World Health Organization (WHO) was first notified of an outbreak of what proved to be Ebola virus disease in the west African country of Guinea, more than 24,000 cases have been reported and over 10,000 individuals have died - primarily in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Moreover, countless non-Ebola deaths have occurred as a result of the closing of health systems in those countries, and an international aid effort has invested billions of dollars in control efforts. In a paper published in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine, experts in ...

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Nathan over the southern Top End of Australia's Northern Territory on March 25. On March 25, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) issued a Severe Weather Warning for heavy rainfall for people in the Daly, Arnhem, Carpentaria and Gregory forecast districts of Top End. The Top End contains the region's capital city of Darwin, and is home to Kakadu National Park, the country's largest national park. For updated watches and warnings, visit: http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/. When Suomi ...

Getting a good education may not improve your life chances of happiness, according to new mental health research from the University of Warwick. In a new study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers from Warwick Medical School examined socioeconomic factors related to high mental wellbeing, such as level of education and personal finances. Low educational attainment is strongly associated with mental illness but the research team wanted to find out if higher educational attainment is linked with mental wellbeing. The team found all levels of ...

Mobile devices have a large number of different adjustable system settings whose energy impact can be difficult to understand for the average user, and even for the expert. Some system settings have a direct and significant correlation with energy consumption, for example screen brightness and network connectivity. The energy impact of system settings and their combinations, such as the combination of roaming, high operating temperature, and bad signal strength, are much more difficult to predict. The research article by the Finnish computer scientists demonstrates that ...

An analysis conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) found that the risks of drinking raw (unpasteurized) cow's milk are significant. Consumers are nearly 100 times more likely to get foodborne illness from drinking raw milk than they are from drinking pasteurized milk. In fact, the researchers determined that raw milk was associated with over half of all milk-related foodborne illness, even though only an estimated 3.5% of the U.S. population consumes raw milk. Based on their findings, the researchers discourage the consumption ...

DETROIT - Co-existing psychiatric illness should be considered in assessing hospital readmissions for three common medical conditions used by Medicare and Medicaid to penalize hospitals with "excessive" readmission rates. That was the conclusion of a newly published collaborative study by 11 major U.S. healthcare providers - including Henry Ford Health System - affiliated with the nationwide Mental Health Research Network (MHRN). The study is published in Psychiatric Services. The subject of readmission rates has been of increasing concern to U.S. hospitals since ...

Scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health report that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) were two-and-a-half times more likely to have persistent gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms as infants and toddlers than children with typical development. Results are published in JAMA Psychiatry. The study is based on a large longitudinal survey of Norwegian mothers who were asked about their child's GI disturbances during the first three years of life. Questionnaires were completed when the children were 18 and 36 months of age. The authors ...

Gastrointestinal symptoms reported by mothers were more common and more often persistent in the first three years of life in children with autism spectrum disorder than in children with typical development and developmental delay, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterized by problems in social communication and interaction, as well as restricted/repetitive behaviors. Medical and psychiatric conditions are frequently associated with ASD and among the most common are gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and ...

A new analysis of surgical outcomes nationwide concludes that more use of minimally invasive surgery for certain common procedures can dramatically reduce post-operative complications and shave hundreds of millions of dollars off the nation's health care bill. Results of the research, conducted by Johns Hopkins investigators and published March 25 in JAMA-Surgery, indicate that American hospitals collectively could prevent thousands of post-surgical complications and save between $280 million and $340 million a year by using more minimally invasive procedures instead ...

A small imaging study suggests prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the toxic air pollution caused in part by vehicle emissions, coal burning and smoking, may be bad for children's brains and may contribute to slower processing speeds and behavioral problems, including attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) symptoms, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. PAHs are caused by the incomplete combustion of organic materials. In addition to outdoor air pollution, sources of indoor air pollution caused by PAHs can be cooking, ...

A variety of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) interventions helped to reduce suicide attempts and nonsuicidal self-injury acts in a randomized clinical trial of women with borderline personality disorder who were highly suicidal, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. DBT is a multicomponent therapy for individuals at high risk for suicide and for those with multiple severe mental disorders, particularly those who have marked impulsivity and an inability to regulate emotions. The components of DBT include individual therapy, group skills training, ...

Magnetic nanoparticles can open the blood-brain barrier and deliver molecules directly to the brain, say researchers from the University of Montreal, Polytechnique Montréal, and CHU Sainte-Justine. This barrier runs inside almost all vessels in the brain and protects it from elements circulating in the blood that may be toxic to the brain. The research is important as currently 98% of therapeutic molecules are also unable to cross the blood-brain barrier. "The barrier is temporary opened at a desired location for approximately 2 hours by a small elevation of the temperature ...

BETHESDA, MD, USA and VIENNA, AUSTRIA - Two of the world's largest professional societies of human geneticists have issued a joint position statement on the promise and challenges of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), a new procedure to test blood drawn from pregnant mothers for Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders in the fetus. The document addresses the current scope of and likely future improvements in NIPT technology, ways it may best fit with existing prenatal screening tools and protocols, options and priorities in its implementation, and associated social ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, March 25, 2015 -- "Create a password" is a prompt familiar to anyone who's tried to buy a book from Amazon or register for a Google account. Equally familiar is that red / yellow / green bar that rates the new password's strength. But when those meters give the go-ahead to passwords like Password1+, their effectiveness is called into question. New research from Concordia University exposes the weakness of password strength meters, and shows consumers should remain sceptical when the bar turns green in order to create ...

From AGU's blogs: Q&A with journalist-turned-geologist Rex Buchanan After decades as a science reporter, interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS) Rex Buchanan now finds himself at the epicenter of a media frenzy. Read parts one and two of a three-part series featuring an interview between Buchanan and University of California, Santa Cruz, science journalism student, Kerry Klein, in The Plainspoken Scientist. From Eos.org: Changing of the Guard: Satellite Will Warn Earth of Solar Storms This summer, Earth gets a new guardian--the Deep Space Climate ...

ATLANTA--Medication used to treat patients with type II diabetes activates sensors on brain cells that increase hunger, causing people taking this drug to gain more body fat, according to researchers at Georgia State University, Oregon Health and Science University, Georgia Regents University and Charlie Norwood Veterans Administration Medical Center. The study, published on March 18 in The Journal of Neuroscience, describes a new way to affect hunger in the brain and helps to explain why people taking a class of drugs for type II diabetes gain more body fat. Type II ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a control switch for the unfolded protein response (UPR), a cellular stress relief mechanism drawing major scientific interest because of its role in cancer, diabetes, inflammatory disorders and several neural degenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease. The normal function of the UPR pathway is to protect cells from stress but it can also trigger their death if the ...

An international team of researchers led by the University of Oklahoma has discovered a strong association between the lifestyles of indigenous communities and their gut microbial ecologies (gut microbiome), a study that may have implications for the health of all people. Under the direction of Cecil Lewis, co-director of the Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research in the OU College of Arts and Sciences, the team presents an in-depth analysis of the gut microbiome of the Matses, an Amazonian hunter-gatherer community, which is compared with that ...

Results from the first phase 1 trial of an Ebola vaccine based on the current (2014) strain of the virus are today published in The Lancet. Until now, all tested Ebola virus vaccines have been based on the virus strain from the Zaire outbreak in 1976. The results suggest that the new vaccine is safe, and provokes an immune response in recipients, although further long-term testing will be needed to establish whether it can protect against the Ebola virus. A team of researchers, led by Professor Fengcai Zhu, from the Jiangsu provincial center for disease prevention and ...

People who have suffered serious head injuries show changes in brain structure resembling those seen in older people, according to a new study. Researchers at Imperial College London analysed brain scans from over 1,500 healthy people to develop a computer program that could predict a person's age from their brain scan. Then they used the program to estimate the "brain age" of 113 more healthy people and 99 patients who had suffered traumatic brain injuries. The brain injury patients were estimated to be around five years older on average than their real age. Head ...

Boston, Mass. - March 25, 2015 - Nonprofit Global Oncology, Inc. (GO) today announced the launch of the Global Cancer Project Map, a first-of-its-kind online resource and virtual information exchange for connecting the global cancer community. Developed by GO in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Global Health, the Map enables worldwide access to cancer projects and expertise to improve cancer practices and patient outcomes, especially in low-resource settings. Find the Global Cancer Project Map here: http://gcpm.globalonc.org. The Map was ...

25.03.2015: Natural wetlands usually emit methane and sequester carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic interventions, in particular the conversion of wetlands for agriculture, result in a significant increase in CO2 emissions, which overcompensate potential decreases in methane emission. A large international research team now calculated that the conversion of arctic and boreal wetlands into agricultural land would result in an additional cumulative radiative forcing of about 0,1 MilliJoule (mJ) per square meter for the next 100 years. The conversion of temperate wetlands into agricultural ...