The inks on historical documents can hold many secrets. Its ingredients can help trace trade routes and help understand a work's historical significance. And knowing how the ink breaks down can help cultural heritage scientists preserve valuable treasures. In a study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers report the development of a new, non-destructive method that can identify many types of inks on various papers and other surfaces. Richard Van Duyne, Nilam Shah and colleagues explain that the challenge for analyzing inks on historical ...

In 2006, Austin, Texas, became the first city in the country to ban a commonly used pavement sealant over concerns that it was a major source of cancer-causing compounds in the environment. Eight years later, the city's action seems to have made a big dent in the targeted compounds' levels — researchers now report that the concentrations have dropped significantly. They published their study in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Peter C. Van Metre and Barbara J. Mahler point out that in 2005, researchers figured out that pavement sealants made from coal ...

Sexting among youth is more prevalent than previously thought, according to a new study from Drexel University that was based on a survey of undergraduate students at a large northeastern university. More than 50 percent of those surveyed reported that they had exchanged sexually explicit text messages, with or without photographic images, as minors. The study also found that the majority of young people are not aware of the legal ramifications of underage sexting. In fact, most respondents were unaware that many jurisdictions consider sexting among minors – particularly ...

The species diversity in soil fauna has been studied in temperate regions for more than 50 years, but with scarcely any mention of thrips. This lack of reference to thrips raises the question whether or not litter-dwelling thrips are distributed only in tropical and sub-tropical regions. To answer this question a total 150 leaf litter samples were collected from 6 natural reserves located in three climatic regions, temperate, subtropical and tropical, along a 4100 km latitudinal gradient in East China. The survey was done over a four-year period by Dr Jun Wang, who is ...

Children who spend more time in less structured activities—from playing outside to reading books to visiting the zoo—are better able to set their own goals and take actions to meet those goals without prodding from adults, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder. The study, published online in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, also found that children who participate in more structured activities—including soccer practice, piano lessons and homework—had poorer "self-directed executive function," a measure of the ability to set and reach goals ...

A new register-based study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows that drug therapy for ADHD does not entail an increased risk of suicide attempts or suicide, as was previously feared. The results are published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). "Our work in several ways shows that most likely there is no link between treatment with ADHD drugs and an increased risk of suicide attempts or suicide. The results rather indicate that ADHD drugs may have a protective effect," says Henrik Larsson, researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, ...

Cleveland, Ohio - Scientists have named a new species of horned dinosaur (ceratopsian) based on fossils collected from Montana in the United States and Alberta, Canada. Mercuriceratops (mer-cure-E-sare-ah-tops) gemini was approximately 6 meters (20 feet) long and weighed more than 2 tons. It lived about 77 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period. Research describing the new species is published online in the journal Naturwissenschaften. Mercuriceratops (Mercuri + ceratops) means "Mercury horned-face," referring to the wing-like ornamentation on its head ...

Frankfurt am Main, Germany, June 18th 2014. Spanish slugs (Arion lusitanicus) are one of the most common slug species in Central Europe. The animals sometimes nicknamed "killer slugs" are known to do their fair share of damage in fields and gardens. The slug was thought to have originated in Southern Europe. However researchers of the German Biodiversity and Climate Centre and the Goethe University now found out, that the prime example of an invasive species is originally from Central Europe and thus no "immigrant" after all. Control measures, such as the EU regulation ...

Leesburg, VA, June 18, 2014—Researchers in Saudi Arabia have identified key defining characteristics of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in CT imaging of patients confirmed as having the disease. The study found that the most common CT finding in hospitalized patients with MERS infection is suggestive of an organizing pneumonia pattern. "A few studies have described variable degrees of lung opacities in patients with MERS, but did not clearly address their exact distribution," said Amr M. Ajlan, the corresponding author of the study. "Because we evaluated the ...

OTTAWA, June 18, 2014 – In a recent study published in Tobacco Control, researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute have demonstrated the cost-effectiveness of the Ottawa Model for Smoking Cessation (OMSC), an intervention that includes in-hospital counseling, pharmacotherapy and post-hospital follow-up, compared to usual care among smokers hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction, unstable angina, heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The study examined patients hospitalized in Ontario, a province with a population of approximately ...

The review's sole author, Dr. Patricia Lopes from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich, says that animals from a number of different species will eat and drink less, reduce their activity and sleep more when they are sick in order to conserve energy for their recovery. However, this can all change depending on the social situation. In a paper published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Lopes reviewed a range of different social situations that affected the behavior of sick animals, including ...

An international study has analysed the association between childhood maltreatment and the volume of cerebral grey matter, responsible for processing information. The results revealed a significant deficit in various late developing regions of the brain after abuse. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), child maltreatment is defined as all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child's health, survival, development or dignity ...

Trap-jaw ant species are active hunters with venomous stings and jaws powerful enough to fling themselves through the air. According to new research, they are also spreading into new territory in the southeastern United States. The research was done by scientists at North Carolina State University, the Mississippi Entomological Museum, the University of California, Davis and Archbold Biological Station. "The fact that some of these species are spreading is interesting, in part, because these giant ants have managed to expand their territory without anyone noticing," says ...

While more and more genomic information is becoming available at a drastically increasing pace, the knowledge we can gain about how microorganisms interact with their surrounding, infect hosts and alter their molecular programs in accordance to changing environmental conditions remains widely not deducible from genomic data alone, the researchers from University of Southern Denmark claim. This raises questions regarding the value of newly sequenced species. The researchers have analyzed the genomes that are available from the past 20 years of sequencing bacterial DNA. ...

Magnetic separators exploit the difference in magnetic properties between minerals, for example when separating magnetite from quartz. But this exercise becomes considerably more complex when the particles are not magnetic. In the wake of previous particle levitation experiments under high-power magnetic fields, a new study reveals that particles are deflected away from the magnet's round-shaped bore centre in a horizontal direction. Previous studies had observed the vertical levitation of the particles. These findings are presented by Shixiao Liu from the Faculty of Engineering, ...

Scientists have found that two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures with asymmetric design enable a new quantum mechanism, triggering the emission of tunable light at terahertz frequencies—with unprecedented efficiency. The researchers, from the University of Southampton and Imperial College London, found that quantum wells, 2D nanostructures formed of several layers of semi-conductor alloys placed on top of each other like a sandwich, can enhance light emission in a technological challenging spectral range. It is hoped that the findings will have an impact on photonic ...

This news release is available in Spanish. The report explains that Ph.D.s who work as researchers represent, on average in the OECD, 68.6% of those who are employed. By institutional sectors, the percentages of employees who work as researchers break down as follows: 45.4% in the private sector, 70.8% in public administration and 75.9% in higher education. In Spain, 86% of Ph.D.s employed in higher education are researchers, while for the private sector, this figure is only 26.5%. According to OECD figures, leading innovative countries like the United States, ...

In new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Northeastern University professor Randall Hughes and her team at the Marine Science Center in Nahant, Mass. are the first to show that sound plays at least as much of a role in mud crabs' reaction to fish behavior as other widely studied cues—and possibly more. Fish are not silent creatures. Just like the terrestrial world, there's a veritable symphony of sound echoing under the sea. Indeed, the black drum fish was the subject of many a phone call to the Miami police back in 2005, when their ...

Adults are widely exposed to e-cigarette marketing through the media, but those messages reach different demographic groups in different ways, according to a survey by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Health Research and Policy. The study is published as a special supplement in the July 2014 issue of Tobacco Control. Eighty-six percent of those surveyed were aware of e-cigarettes, and 47 percent had seen or heard about them on television, on the radio, in print media or online. The survey of 17,522 adults was conducted online last ...

Crucially, the discovery, published today in the journal Nature Communications, shows that women who are overweight have a faulty switch. The finding may explain why overweight women have a higher likelihood of irregular contractions and are more likely to require a caesarean section than other women. It's well known that strong rhythmic contractions of the uterus are needed to allow the baby's head to dilate the cervix. However little was known about what controls these contractions until now. The groundbreaking research from Monash University, the Royal Women's Hospital ...

Superman isn't the only one who can see through solid surfaces. In a development that could revolutionize the management of precious groundwater around the world, Stanford researchers have pioneered the use of satellites to accurately measure levels of water stored hundreds of feet below ground. Their findings were published recently in Water Resources Research. Groundwater provides 25 to 40 percent of all drinking water worldwide, and is the primary source of freshwater in many arid countries, according to the National Groundwater Association. About 60 percent of all ...

With visitor numbers surging, Antarctica's ice-free land needs better protection from human activities, leading environmental scientists say. The new study, published today in the journal PLoS Biology, found that all 55 areas designated for protection lie close to sites of human activity. Seven are at high risk for biological invasions, and five of the distinct ice-free eco regions have no protected areas. Antarctica has over 40,000 visitors a year, and more and more research facilities are being built in the continent's tiny ice-free area. Most of the Antarctic wildlife ...

Depression is almost twice as common, and poor quality of life almost five times as common, in people with bipolar disorder who have elevated or low levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the blood. Researchers at Umeå University, Sweden, report this in a study published in the journal PLOS ONE. "In bipolar depression the stress system is often activated, which means that the affected individuals have elevated cortisol levels in the blood. We have now been able to show that both over- and underactivity in the stress system, with corresponding elevated or reduced cortisol ...

Korean research team revealed conflicting climate change patterns between the middle latitude areas of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres in relation to glacial and interglacial cycles which have been puzzled for the past 60 years. Doctor Kyoung-nam Jo from the Quaternary Geology Department of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources(KIGAM) revealed a clue for solving the riddle of past global climate change in his paper titled 'Mid-latitudinal interhemispheric hydrologic seesaw over the past 550,000 years' which was featured in the journal Nature. This ...

Researchers have identified the first genetic variations linked to race that begin to explain a higher risk of death among some African American and Caucasian patients taking the anti-clotting drug clopidogrel (Plavix) after a heart attack. These variants increased patients' risk of dying in the year following a first heart attack, but they appeared to do so for different reasons depending on race, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In particular, the team found that two DNA variants common in African Americans were associated ...