QUEBEC – In Canada, where outdoor growing seasons are limited, sales from greenhouse fruit and vegetable production operations still surpass $1.1 billion annually. Finding more efficient methods for providing lighting in greenhouse production is a key component to support these high levels of production and increase revenues. "Light irradiance is the limiting factor for increasing production in greenhouses, when all other factors (temperature, nutrient levels, and water availability) are adequately maintained," said the authors of a new study. McGill University researchers ...

Supercomputer simulations have shown that clusters of a protein linked to cancer warp cell membranes, according to scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School. This research on these protein clusters, or aggregates as scientists call them, could help guide design of new anticancer drugs. "The aggregate is a large substructure that imposes some kind of curvature on the membrane — that's really the major observation," said Alemayehu Gorfe, assistant professor of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology at the UTHealth Medical ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Substantial proportions of parents chose urgent care or emergency department visits when their sick children were excluded from attending child care, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers. The study, published today in Pediatrics, also found that use of the emergency department or urgent care was significantly higher among parents who are single or divorced, African American, have job concerns or needed a doctor's note for the child to return. Previous studies have shown children in child care are frequently ill with mild ...

GAINESVILLE, FL – The popularity of ornamental plants imported to the United States from China is accompanied by concerns about the potential to introduce pathogens into the market. Dracaena, a genus consisting of approximately 40 different species, including the widely recognized "lucky bamboo," is among the most frequently imported group of ornamentals to enter the U.S. for domestic sale and eventual export to Canada. The authors of a new research study say it is crucial to be vigilant about potential pests and pathogens on imported cuttings of Dracaena. "Pests and pathogens ...

Rochester, Minn. — Facial hair and home oxygen therapy can prove a dangerously combustible combination, a Mayo Clinic report published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings finds. To reach that conclusion, researchers reviewed home oxygen therapy-related burn cases and experimented with a mustachioed mannequin, a facial hair-free mannequin, nasal oxygen tubes and sparks. They found that facial hair raises the risk of home oxygen therapy-related burns, and encourage health care providers to counsel patients about the risk. MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video ...

VIDEO: A five-year study led by Robert Pringle (above), a Princeton University assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, suggests that certain wild African animals, particularly elephants, could be a boon... Click here for more information. While African wildlife often run afoul of ranchers and pastoralists securing food and water resources for their animals, the interests of fauna and farmer might finally be unified by the "Sodom apple," a toxic invasive plant ...

In our long struggle for survival, we humans learned that something approaching us is far more of a threat than something that is moving away. This makes sense, since a tiger bounding toward a person is certainly more of a threat than one that is walking away. Though we modern humans don't really consider such fear, it turns out that it still plays a big part in our day-to-day lives. According to University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Christopher K. Hsee, we still have negative feelings about things that approach us — even if they objectively are not ...

Several years ago, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers created a technology-enhanced glove that can teach beginners how to play piano melodies in 45 minutes. Now they've advanced the same wearable computing technology to help people learn how to read and write Braille. The twist is that people wearing the glove don't have to pay attention. They learn while doing something else. "The process is based on passive haptic learning (PHL)," said Thad Starner, a Georgia Tech professor and wearable computer pioneer. "We've learned that people can acquire motor skills ...

Many creatures in nature, including butterflies, newts and mole rats, use the Earth's inherent magnetic field lines and field intensity variations to determine their geographical position. A research team at the University of Minnesota has shown that the inherent magnetic fields of ferromagnetic objects can be similarly exploited for accurate position measurements of these objects. Such position measurement is enabled in this research by showing that the spatial variation of magnetic field around an object can be modeled using just the geometry of the object under consideration. ...

Scars — in particular keloid scars that result from overgrowth of skin tissue after injuries or surgeries — are unsightly and can even lead to disfigurement and psychological problems of affected patients. Individuals with darker pigmentation — in particular people with African, Hispanic or South-Asian genetic background — are more likely to develop this skin tissue disorder. Current therapy options, including surgery and injections of corticosteroids into scar tissues, are often ineffective, require clinical supervision and can be costly. A new invention by researchers ...

The D-Wave computer is currently the latest link of a long chain of computers designed for the solution of optimization problems. In what sense does it realize quantum computation? We describe the evolution of such computers and confront the different views concerning the quantum properties of the D-wave computer. Quantum algorithms show several benefits over classical ones. One strong example suggested by Shor in 1994 is the ability to factor numbers which can be effectively done on a quantum computer but is very hard on a classical computer. However, the actual model ...

If evidence of the Higgs boson revealed two years ago was the smoking gun, particle physicists at Rice University and their colleagues have now found a few of the bullets. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) published research in Nature Physics this week that details evidence of the direct decay of the Higgs boson to fermions, among the particles anticipated by the Standard Model of physics. The finding fits what researchers expected to see amid the massive amount of data provided by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The world's largest collider smashed ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The more cores — or processing units — a computer chip has, the bigger the problem of communication between cores becomes. For years, Li-Shiuan Peh, the Singapore Research Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, has argued that the massively multicore chips of the future will need to resemble little Internets, where each core has an associated router, and data travels between cores in packets of fixed size. This week, at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, Peh's group unveiled a 36-core chip that features just ...

Triple-negative breast cancers do not benefit from the targeted therapies that have greatly improved the survival of patients with other subtypes of breast cancer. But recent work shows that while these cancers lack estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and aren't driven by the gene HER2, up to a third of these tumors express the androgen receptor – clinical trials are underway to inhibit the androgen receptor in these tumors in much the same way that the drug Tamoxifen inhibits estrogen receptor in estrogen-receptor-positive breast cancers. A new University of Colorado ...

Chestnut Hill, MA (June 23, 2014): If you were warned how much extra credit card interest you'd pay by only making the minimum payment every month, you might want to increase your payments to retire the balance earlier, right? Not necessarily, according to a study by a Boston College marketing researcher who found that telling customers about the high cost of repaying the monthly minimum had little impact on repayment decisions. But when credit card consumers were shown a three-year payoff time frame with accompanying lower interest costs, this information "nudge" had ...

Have you ever found yourself gesticulating – and felt a bit stupid for it – while talking on the phone? You're not alone: it happens very often that people accompany their speech with hand gestures, sometimes even when no one can see them. Why can't we keep still while speaking? "Because gestures and words very probably form a single "communication system", which ultimately serves to enhance expression intended as the ability to make oneself understood", explains Marina Nespor, a neuroscientist at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste. Nespor, ...

CHICAGO, IL — Diabetic patients who don't know proper injection techniques may administer insulin incorrectly, leading to poor glycemic control and adverse outcomes, a new study from Iraq finds. The results were presented in a poster Monday, June 23 at ICE/ENDO 2014, the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society in Chicago. "Lack of simple education about proper injection techniques could be blamed for many complications and adverse outcomes. I thought about conducting this study after managing two teenage patients who suffered ...

Scientists discover and describe a new species of spider from Mexico. The new species belongs to the enigmatic family Paratropididae that is distinguished by representatives who possess unique camouflaging abilities. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Like all species form the family the new species Paratropis tuxtlensis has its entire body encrusted with soil particles. The encrusted soil on the exoskeleton could provide protection from predators or serve as camouflage to deceive their prey. The encrusted soil particles are because this species ...

Previously, as with the longitude problem 300 years earlier for fixing locations on Earth, there was no unified system of reference for calibrating the heavens. But now, when investigating the atmospheric structure and chemical make-up of stars, astronomers can use a new stellar scale as a 'ruler' – making it much easier for them to classify and compare data on star discoveries. In fact, the work is a critical first step in the Gaia satellite's mission to map the Milky Way, as the unprecedented levels of stellar data that will result need "consistent stellar parameters", ...

In the future, this kind of novel X-ray optics should be available to users at the BESSY II synchrotron source. Among many applications, the improved resolution permits investigations on ultrastructural features in biological specimens as well as studies on nanostructures in novel battery systems. The wavelength of light limits resolution in microscopy. Visible light can resolve structures on the order of a quarter micron, while the considerably shorter wavelength of X-rays can in principle resolve features down to a few nanometres. In addition, X-rays can also penetrate ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Eastern Finland have developed new "sensing skin" technology designed to serve as an early warning system for concrete structures, allowing authorities to respond quickly to damage in everything from nuclear facilities to bridges. "The sensing skin could be used for a wide range of structures, but the impetus for the work was to help ensure the integrity of critical infrastructure such as nuclear waste storage facilities," says Dr. Mohammad Pour-Ghaz, an assistant professor of civil, construction and ...

New Rochelle, NY, June 23, 2014—Men who have sex with men (MSM) have a disproportionately high risk of acquiring HIV, and unprotected sex between men accounts for most new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. Yet this population tends to underestimate their HIV risk and not take advantage of effective options such as pre-exposure prophylaxis drug treatment to prevent HIV infection, as documented in an article published in LGBT Health, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the LGBT Health website. Demetre Daskalakis, MD, ...

CHICAGO, IL — Treatment with the diabetes drug liraglutide, in combination with diet and exercise, led to a significant reduction in weight and improved a number of cardiovascular risk factors, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol, according to a multicenter study. The results, from more than 3,700 overweight and obese nondiabetic adults, were presented Saturday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago. "If these improvements continue over time, they may result in a lower risk ...

(Boston) – A better understanding of how the transcription factor Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor Gamma (PPARgamma) works is critical to find new ways to improve medications to treat type 2 diabetes. Drugs that activate PPARgamma, called thiazolidinediones (TZDs), have long been regarded as a treatment for type 2 diabetes based on their anti-inflammatory and potent insulin-sensitizing activity. When taken orally, TZDs help decrease insulin resistance. However, most medications in that class have now been withdrawn from the market, or severely limited in their ...

WASHINGTON, June 23, 2014 — In this week's episode, Reactions is getting sexy. Our latest video highlights the ways chemistry has made sex safer and (in one surprising case) spicier. From latex condoms to warming lubricants, birth control to emergency contraception, chemistry plays a big role in the bedroom, and not just the chemistry between you and your partner. The video is available at http://youtu.be/54-rMC_67TM.INFORMATION: Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. The American ...