VIDEO: A smooth dogfish shark attacks an odor cue at at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Click here for more information. The increasing acidification of ocean waters caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could rob sharks of their ability to sense the smell of food, a new study suggests. Elevated carbon dioxide levels impaired the odor-tracking behavior of the smooth dogfish, a shark whose range includes the Atlantic Ocean off the eastern United States. Adult ...

What doesn't kill us may make us stronger as a group, according to findings from new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research suggests that, despite its unpleasantness, pain may actually have positive social consequences, acting as a sort of "social glue" that fosters cohesion and solidarity within groups: "Our findings show that pain is a particularly powerful ingredient in producing bonding and cooperation between those who share painful experiences," says psychological scientist and lead researcher ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Paying attention all day in school as a kid isn't easy, especially for those who are at a higher risk of ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A new study from Michigan State University and University of Vermont researchers shows that offering daily, before-school, aerobic activities to younger, at-risk children could help in reducing the symptoms of ADHD in the classroom and at home. Signs can include inattentiveness, moodiness and difficulty getting along with others. The study can be found in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. "Early ...

Tiny single-cell organisms discovered living underground could help with the problem of nuclear waste disposal, say researchers involved in a study at The University of Manchester. Although bacteria with waste-eating properties have been discovered in relatively pristine soils before, this is the first time that microbes that can survive in the very harsh conditions expected in radioactive waste disposal sites have been found. The findings are published in the ISME (Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology) Journal. The disposal of our nuclear waste is very challenging, ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The same sex hormone that helps protect females from stroke may also reduce their risk of autism, scientists say. In the first look at a potential role of the female sex hormone in autism, researchers at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University have found expression of estrogen receptor beta – which enables estrogen's potent brain protection – is significantly decreased in autistic brains. The receptor also plays a role in locomotion as well as behavior, including anxiety, depression, memory, and learning. "If you ask any psychiatrist ...

Defects damage the ideal properties of many two-dimensional materials, like carbon-based graphene. Phosphorus just shrugs. That makes it a promising candidate for nano-electronic applications that require stable properties, according to new research by Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues. In a paper in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, the Rice team analyzed the properties of elemental bonds between semiconducting phosphorus atoms in 2-D sheets. Two-dimensional phosphorus is not theoretical; it was recently created ...

Malware is a type of malicious program whose general aim is to profit economically by carrying out actions without the user's consent, such as stealing personal information or committing economic fraud. We can find it "in any type of device ranging from traditional cell phones to today's smartphones, and even in our washing machine," explained one of the researchers, Guillermo Suarez de Tangil, from the Computer Science Department at UC3M. With the massive sales of smartphones in recent years (more than personal computers in all of their history), malware developers ...

Palaeontologists have developed methods to try to identify and correct for bias and incompleteness in the fossil record. A new study, published on 4 September 2014 in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that some of these correction methods may actually be misleading. The work is led by Dr Alex Dunhill (University of Leeds, formerly at the Universities of Bath and Bristol), together with Hannisdal (University of Bergen) and Professor Michael Benton (University of Bristol). Back to the origin of animals "The Earth keeps changing. Life keeps evolving. And there ...

Young people have a more robust immune response to the loss of a loved one, according to new research from the University of Birmingham, providing insight into how different generations cope with loss. The study, published in the journal Immunity and Ageing, shows how the balance of our stress hormones during grief changes as we age – meaning elderly people are more likely to have reduced immune function and, as a result, suffer from infections. It is the first research to compare different generations and display the relationship between stress hormones and immune ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 9, 2014 – Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYGN) today presented results from a pivotal clinical utility study of the Myriad myPath™ Melanoma test at the 2014 College of American Pathologists (CAP) annual meeting in Chicago, Ill. Myriad myPath Melanoma is a novel diagnostic test that differentiates malignant melanoma from benign skin lesions with greater than 90 percent accuracy and helps physicians deliver a more objective and confident diagnosis for patients. This study evaluated the impact of the myPath Melanoma diagnostic test on expert ...

Berkeley — Scientists estimate that fewer than 100 Devils Hole pupfish remain in their Mojave Desert home, but a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, is giving important guidance in the efforts to rescue them by establishing a captive breeding program. Considered the world's rarest fish, with one of the smallest geographic ranges of any wild vertebrate, the tiny pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) – about one-inch long as an adult – neared extinction in spring 2013 when populations dropped to an all-time low of 35 observable pupfish. While more ...

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest class of cell surface receptors in our cells, involved in signal transmission across the cell membrane. One of the biggest questions is how a signal recognized at the extracellular side of a GPCR induces a sequence of conformational changes in the protein and finally evokes an intracellular response. EPFL scientists have now used computer modeling to reveal in molecular detail the structural transitions that happen inside GPCRs during the signal transduction process. They discovered that a central step in the trans-membrane ...

A growing "dead zone" in the middle of the Arabian Sea has allowed plankton uniquely suited to low-oxygen water to take over the base of the food chain. Their rise to dominance over the last decade could be disastrous for the predator fish that sustain 120 million people living on the sea's edge. Scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and their colleagues are the first to document the rapid rise of green Noctiluca scintillans, an unusual dinoflagellate that eats other plankton and draws energy from the sun via microscopic algae living within ...

Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists have married two unconventional forms of carbon – one shaped like a soccer ball, the other a tiny diamond – to make a molecule that conducts electricity in only one direction. This tiny electronic component, known as a rectifier, could play a key role in shrinking chip components down to the size of molecules to enable faster, more powerful devices. "We wanted to see what new, emergent properties might come out when you put these two ingredients together to create a 'buckydiamondoid,'" said Hari Manoharan of the Stanford Institute for Materials ...

People who are obese may be more susceptible to environmental food cues than their lean counterparts due to differences in brain chemistry that make eating more habitual and less rewarding, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in Molecular Psychiatry. Researchers at the NIH Clinical Center found that, when examining 43 men and women with varying amounts of body fat, obese participants tended to have greater dopamine activity in the habit-forming region of the brain than lean counterparts, and less activity in the region controlling reward. Those ...

Munich, Germany: A new study has revealed how stem cells work to improve lung function in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Previous studies have shown that stem cells can reduce lung inflammation and restore some function in ARDS, but experts are not sure how this occurs. The new study, which was presented at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress today (09 September 2014), brings us a step closer to understanding the mechanisms that occur within an injured lung. ARDS is a life-threatening condition in which the efficiency of the lungs ...

Munich, Germany: A new study has found that factors, such as birth weight, gestational age at birth and lung function, growth and other measures at 8 years, can be used to predict lung function during mid to late teenage years. The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress in Munich today (9 September 2014), is part of a growing area of research aiming to understand how early life factors have an impact on the development of disease into adulthood. Data out of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Mothers and Children (ALSPAC) from ...

Munich, Germany: A proportion of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) cases may be linked with asbestos exposure, according to the results of a new study. If confirmed, the findings would mean that current treatment strategies need to be altered as people with a history of asbestos exposure are not currently able to access new treatments for IPF. The research, which was presented at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress today (09 September 2014), provided new mortality data for IPF, asbestosis and mesothelioma. Asbestosis is the name given to the ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 9, 2014 – Regenerative medicine researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have addressed a major challenge in the quest to build replacement kidneys in the lab. Working with human-sized pig kidneys, the scientists developed the most successful method to date to keep blood vessels in the new organs open and flowing with blood. The work is reported in journal Technology. "Until now, lab-built kidneys have been rodent-sized and have functioned for only one or two hours after transplantation because blood clots developed," said Anthony ...

Treatment at the earliest age when symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appear – sometimes in infants as young as 6 months old – significantly reduces symptoms so that, by age 3, most who received the therapy had neither ASD nor developmental delay, a UC Davis MIND Institute research study has found. The treatment, known as Infant Start, was administered over a six-month period to 6- to 15-month-old infants who exhibited marked autism symptoms, such as decreased eye contact, social interest or engagement, repetitive movement patterns, and a lack of intentional communication. ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – According to new research performed at the Mayo Clinic, iodine-based contrast material injected intravenously to enhance computed tomography (CT) images can be safely used in most patients. The study appears online in the journal Radiology. Of the 80 million or more CT scans performed each year in the United States, iodine-based contrast material is used in at least half to enhance computed tomography (CT) images, according to researcher Robert J. McDonald, M.D., Ph.D., a radiology resident at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. According to Dr. McDonald, ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- What do skipping school, failing tests and engaging in risky sexual behavior have in common? Lots, according to Indiana University researchers who combed through 80,000 diary entries written by 14- to 17-year-old girls. Although the findings are intuitive, this is the first study to examine the day-to-day relationship between teenage girls' reports about school-related events, how they felt and the sexual behaviors they participated in. Published Sept. 9 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the findings are based on a 10-year study of the development of ...

Researchers have identified a novel virus that could be the source of a severe, sometimes fatal respiratory disease that has been observed in captive ball pythons since the 1990s. The work is published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Investigators observed the virus, which they named ball python nidovirus, in eight snakes with pneumonia; virus levels were highest in the animals' lungs and other respiratory tract tissues. The team also sequenced the genome of the virus, finding it to be the largest of any RNA ...

Premature infants are at increased risk for a potentially lethal gastrointestinal disease called necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC. Studies conducted by researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles demonstrate that a protein called neuregulin-4 (NRG4)—present in breast milk, but absent from formula—may be protective against the intestinal destruction caused in NEC. Their results will be published online on September 9 in advance of the print edition of the American Journal of Pathology. Thirty percent of babies with NEC die from their disease, and even survivors can ...

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 9, 2014 – A man's likelihood of accumulating fat around his heart – an important indicator of heart disease risk – may be better determined if doctors consider his race and ethnicity, as well as where on his body he's building up excess fat, reveals an international evaluation led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The findings, published online today in the International Journal of Obesity, indicate that it may be useful to take racial and ethnic differences into account when designing programs to reduce obesity because ...