Failing to find a mating partner is a dent to the reproductive prospects of any animal, but in the flatworm species Macrostomum hystrix it might involve a real headache. Zoologists from the Universities of Basel and Bielefeld have discovered the extraordinary lengths to which this animal is willing to go in order to reproduce - including apparently injecting sperm directly into their own heads. The academic journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B has published their findings. The absence of a mate usually spells disaster for sexually reproducing animals. However, some ...

Atoms absorb and emit light of various wavelengths. Physicists have long known that there are some tiny changes, or shifts, in the light that gets absorbed or emitted, due to the properties of the atomic nucleus. Now, a team of scientists has elucidated the so-called hyperfine structure of cadmium atoms. Relying on a method called laser spectroscopy, they have measured variations in the energy transition within cadmium atom - Cd in the periodic table. They studied a chain of isotopes with an odd number of neutrons ranging from 59 in 107Cd to 75 in 123Cd. From these high-precision ...

A good night's sleep has long been recommended to those who have experienced a traumatic event. But an Oxford University-led study provides preliminary experimental work suggesting it could actually be the wrong thing to do. The research, conducted in Oxford's Wellcome Trust-funded Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute (SCNi) and published in the journal Sleep, showed that sleep deprivation might prevent people from consolidating memories of experimental trauma (emotional film clips in the study), reducing their tendency to experience flashbacks. Dr Kate Porcheret, ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Soldiers injured during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have the highest survival rates in history, thanks to the availability of surgeons skilled in combat care. But combat-ready surgical skills are hard to sustain off the battlefield. "A lot of knowledge builds up in the military medical enterprise during times of war," said Joseph Galante, who chairs the UC Davis Division of Trauma, Emergency and Critical Care Surgery and is a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves. "When peacetime comes, that knowledge can slide. We need to identify ways ...

The global supply of seafood is set to change substantially and many people will not be able to enjoy the same quantity and dishes in the future due to climate change and ocean acidification, according to UBC scientists. These findings were released today in Japan by the Nereus program, an international research team led by UBC scientists and supported by the Nippon Foundation. The Nereus program was formed to study the future of the world's oceans and seafood resources. Today it released a summary of the first phase of its research in a report titled 'Predicting Future ...

ASCO Perspective: Gary Schwartz, MD, ASCO Expert "This study adds to the growing discussion around food and cancer risk. While the findings are intriguing, it's far too soon to recommend any broad changes to grapefruit or orange consumption. Until conclusive data are available, we should continue to be cautious about protecting our skin from sun exposure." A new analysis of dietary patterns among more than 100,000 Americans suggests that frequent consumption of citrus -- namely whole grapefruit and orange juice -- may be associated with an increased risk of melanoma. ...

July 1 -- Researchers in the United Kingdom and Denmark have studied the "see-through" larvae of zebrafish to reveal how wound healing leads to skin cancer. Live imaging shows neutrophils, the protective inflammatory cells of the body's immune system, diverted from an induced wound to any nearby precancerous skin cells. The newly arrived neutrophils cause rapid division of these skin cells, which may cause them to progress to melanoma. The results are published in The EMBO Journal. "Our results provide direct visual evidence of a physical link between wound-associated ...

Scientists from the University of Leeds and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, have discovered a new protein which triggers the growth of blood vessels in breast cancer tumours which have spread to the brain, a common location which breast cancer can spread to. Dr Georgia Mavria's team in the School of Medicine at Leeds found that by withholding the DOCK4 protein in mouse models, a particular part of the blood vessel did not form as quickly, meaning tumours grew at a slower rate. Dr Mavria said: "We want to understand how these tumours form and grow, but we still ...

Storing solar energy as hydrogen is a promising way for developing comprehensive renewable energy systems. To accomplish this, traditional solar panels can be used to generate an electrical current that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, the latter being considered a form of solar fuel. However, the cost of producing efficient solar panels makes water-splitting technologies too expensive to commercialize. EPFL scientists have now developed a simple, unconventional method to fabricate high-quality, efficient solar panels for direct solar hydrogen production ...

Nine times more job offers after training Eases anxiety and boosts rapport with interviewer High unemployment for vets with PTSD and mentally ill CHICAGO --- Finding a job is difficult for veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and individuals with severe mental illness, who have high unemployment rates even though many want to work. The job interview -- especially hard for those with mental illness -- can be a major hurdle. A virtual human -- based on software originally used to train FBI agents -- helped vets with PTSD and individuals with severe ...

This news release is available in French. Regular, structured extracurricular sports seem to help kids develop the discipline they need in order to engage effectively in the classroom, according to a new study led by Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital. "We worked with information provided by parents and teachers to compare kindergarteners' activities with their classroom engagement as they grew up," Pagani said. "By time they reached the fourth grade, kids who played structured sports were identifiably ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Seven out of 10 college students feel stressed about their personal finances, according to a new national survey. Nearly 60 percent said they worry about having enough money to pay for school, while half are concerned about paying their monthly expenses. The findings suggest that the pressures of student loan debt and finding ways to make ends meet are weighing on America's college students, said Anne McDaniel, co-author of the study. In fact, 32 percent of students reported neglecting their studies at least sometimes because of the money they owed. "The ...

A new Cochrane systematic review published today of surgery for stress urinary incontinence makes an important contribution to an ongoing debate and will help women to make more informed choices about treatment. Inserting a 'mid-urethral sling', a type of tape, to support the muscles of the bladder by either the groin or abdomen results in similar cure rates. However, differences in complications and the long term need for repeat surgery mean that women will need to balance a number of different factors when choosing an operation. Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.--A new study from Indiana University provides evidence in mice that males may play a positive role in the development of offspring's brains starting before pregnancy. The research, reported July 30 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, found that female mice exposed to male pheromones gave birth to infants with greater mental ability. "This is the first study to show that pheromone exposure exerts an influence across generations in mammals," said Sachiko Koyama, an associate research scientist at the IU Bloomington ...

DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that there may be a reciprocal, causal pathway between job strain and disturbed sleep, implying that interventions to treat sleep problems may improve work satisfaction. Results show that higher work demands predicted subsequent sleep disturbances at the two-year follow-up. Similarly, sleep disturbances predicted a higher perception of stress, higher work demands, a lower degree of control, and less social support at work two years later. No relationship was found between disturbed sleep and physical work environment, shift work schedules ...

An international research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa has discovered a milk-and ochre-based paint dating to 49,000 years ago that inhabitants may have used to adorn themselves with or to decorate stone or wooden slabs. While the use of ochre by early humans dates to at least 250,000 years ago in Europe and Africa, this is the first time a paint containing ochre and milk has ever been found in association with early humans in South Africa, said Paola Villa, a curator at the University ...

NASA's Swift satellite detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from the constellation Cygnus on June 15, just before 2:32 p.m. EDT. About 10 minutes later, the Japanese experiment on the International Space Station called the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) also picked up the flare. The outburst came from V404 Cygni, a binary system located about 8,000 light-years away that contains a black hole. Every couple of decades the black hole fires up in an outburst of high-energy light, becoming an X-ray nova. Until the Swift detection, it had been slumbering since ...

June 30, 2015 - Two migraine surgery techniques targeting a specific "trigger site" are both highly effective in reducing the frequency and severity of migraine headaches, according to a randomized trial in the July issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Patients with temporal-type migraine derive similar and significant improvement from techniques that relieve pressure on (decompression) or remove a portion of (neurectomy) the nerve responsible for triggering their headaches, ...

A new University of Colorado Boulder framework used to screen hundreds of organic chemical compounds used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows that 15 may be of concern as groundwater contaminants based on their toxicity, mobility, persistence and frequency of use. Using a fast groundwater transport scenario, the team predicted that 41 of the 659 organic compounds screened would have 10 percent or more of their initial concentrations remaining at a transport distance of roughly 300 feet. That is the average state "setback" distance in the United States between ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a cell signaling pathway that appears to exert some control over initiation and progression of colorectal cancer, the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. A key protein in the pathway also appears to be predictive of cancer survival rates. The study is reported in the June 30 issue of eLife. The protein, known as Dishevelled-associating protein with a high frequency of leucine residues or Daple, is produced by nearly all healthy cells in the body and is ...

Brigham and Women's Hospital finds that developing and implementing an interdisciplinary care improvement initiative improves outcomes. Approximately 20 percent of all patients admitted to a hospital have a mental health condition, either as a primary or a secondary diagnosis, and a recent report by the Institute of Medicine warned that there is a critical shortage of health care professionals who are equipped to provide mental health and geriatric care to these patients in the hospital setting. Often, these patients experience delirium, alcohol withdrawal and suicide ...

The universe can be a very sticky place, but just how sticky is a matter of debate. That is because for decades cosmologists have had trouble reconciling the classic notion of viscosity based on the laws of thermodynamics with Einstein's general theory of relativity. However, a team from Vanderbilt University has come up with a fundamentally new mathematical formulation of the problem that appears to bridge this long-standing gap. The new math has some significant implications for the ultimate fate of the universe. It tends to favor one of the more radical scenarios ...

MAYWOOD, IL - In recent years, there has been widespread media coverage of studies purporting to show that radiation from X-rays, CT scans and other medical imaging causes cancer. But such studies have serious flaws, including their reliance on an unproven statistical model, according to a recent article in the journal Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment. Corresponding author is Loyola University Medical Center radiation oncologist James Welsh, MS, MD. "Although radiation is known to cause cancer at high doses and high-dose rates, no data have ever unequivocally ...

Poor sleep is associated with negative mood in women with bipolar disorder, according to researchers at Penn State College of Medicine and University of Michigan Medical School. Bipolar disorder is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks. The condition is marked by extreme mood episodes characterized as manic (highs) depressive (lows) or mixed. Sleep problems are common in people with bipolar disorder, and poor sleep quality and bipolar disorder appear to exacerbate each other. Previous ...

Carnegie Mellon University chemists have developed two novel methods to characterize 3-dimensional macroporous hydrogels -- materials that hold great promise for developing "smart" responsive materials that can be used for catalysts, chemical detectors, tissue engineering scaffolds and absorbents for carbon capture. Researchers working in the lab of Carnegie Mellon Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski published their results in the May issue of Advanced Science, with the article featured on the journal's back cover. Their findings are the latest in Matyjaszewski lab's long ...