URBANA, Ill. -- When grain and other commodity prices experienced explosive episodes between 2004 and 2013, the finger pointed toward index traders as the cause. University of Illinois researchers identified and date-stamped both upward and downward price bubbles for grain during that time period. They found that not only were index traders not to blame but that the bubbles didn't last nearly as long as many thought they did. "To an economist, a bubble is a period when the price is either above or below its true economic fundamental value, which is determined by the ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, 23 June, 2015 -- The United States Department of Defense (DOD) is widely reported to be the single largest consumer of petroleum in the world, spending billions of dollars on fuel every year. While the DOD provides Congress with yearly budget estimates, ongoing conflicts in the Middle East along with a volatile crude oil market have resulted in wide discrepancies between budgeted and actual fuel costs. New research from Concordia University in Montreal shows that while this perpetual overspending could have serious ...

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new approach for forming 3D shapes from flat, 2D sheets of graphene, paving the way for future integrated systems of graphene-MEMS hybrid devices and flexible electronics. "To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate graphene integration to a variety of different microstructured geometries, including pyramids, pillars, domes, inverted pyramids, and the 3D integration of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)/graphene hybrid structures," explained SungWoo Nam, an assistant professor ...

Consciousness -- the internal dialogue that seems to govern one's thoughts and actions -- is far less powerful than people believe, serving as a passive conduit rather than an active force that exerts control, according to a new theory proposed by an SF State researcher. Associate Professor of Psychology Ezequiel Morsella's "Passive Frame Theory" suggests that the conscious mind is like an interpreter helping speakers of different languages communicate. "The interpreter presents the information but is not the one making any arguments or acting upon the knowledge that ...

Scientists are expecting that this year's Chesapeake Bay hypoxic low-oxygen zone, also called the "dead zone," will be approximately 1.37 cubic miles - about the volume of 2.3 million Olympic-size swimming pools. While still large, this is 10 percent lower than the long-term average as measured since 1950. The anoxic portion of the zone, which contains no oxygen at all, is predicted to be 0.27 cubic miles in early summer, growing to 0.28 cubic miles by late summer. Low river flow and low nutrient loading from the Susquehanna River this spring account for the smaller ...

Milan, Italy - 23 June 2015: The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) has recommended uninterrupted anticoagulation with vitamin K antagonists during ablation and device implantation in a position paper presented today1 at EHRA EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM 2015 and published in EP Europace.2 'Antithrombotic management in patients undergoing electrophysiology procedures' was produced by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the ESC, and is endorsed by the ESC Working Group on Thrombosis, the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) in the US and the Asia Pacific ...

This news release is available in French. The presence of multiple BIXI stations within 1 km has contributed to an average increase of 2.7% in sales price of houses nearby We know that an extra bedroom, and a metro station nearby will make your house more valuable. Now it turns out that a bike-sharing station nearby will do the same. Researchers at McGill studied house sales in central Montreal before and after the Bixi bike sharing system was launched in Montreal in 2009. They found that a typical home in the central Montreal area they studied had about 12 Bixi stations ...

Washington, D.C. - June 23, 2015 - Researchers have identified a new class of antifungals to treat the more than 300 million people worldwide who develop serious fungal infections. The research is described in the current issue of mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. "Fungal infections are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and current antifungal drugs have drawbacks. These new drugs may pave the way for the development of a new class of antifungals," said principal investigator Maurizio Del Poeta, MD, a ...

Every time you've seen a plane take off or land at a hub airport, you've seen the world growing more connected, according to a new model developed by researchers at MIT. In a study published in the journal Transportation Research Part E, the MIT team outlines a model that determines the degree to which regions around the world are connected via air transportation. The researchers, at MIT's Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment (LAE), analyzed flight schedules between 1990 and 2012 from more than 1,100 airlines connecting over 4,600 airports around the world. ...

The early diagnosis of certain types of cancer, as well as nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica, may soon be facilitated by the use of a nanometric sensor capable of identifying biomarkers of these pathological conditions. The nanobiosensor was developed at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar), Sorocaba, in partnership with the São Paulo Federal Institute of Education, Science & Technology (IFSP), Itapetininga, São Paulo State, Brazil. It was originally designed to detect herbicides, heavy metals and other ...

Irvine, Calif., June 23 -- By identifying in spinal fluid how the characteristic mutant proteins of Huntington's disease spread from cell to cell, UC Irvine scientists and colleagues have created a new method to quickly and accurately track the presence and proliferation of these neuron-damaging compounds -- a discovery that may accelerate the development of new drugs to treat this incurable disease. The researchers added that the cell-to-cell "seeding" property of these mutant proteins seems to be a critical part of the disease's progression. Their findings also advance ...

A rigorous analysis of more than 20,000 medical records concludes that erectile dysfunction drugs, such as Viagra, are not a cause of melanoma, an often deadly form of skin cancer, despite the higher risk for the disease among users of these drugs. A detailed report on the research findings is to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association online June 23. The analysis, led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, of medical records for some 20,235 mostly white men suggests instead that the likely ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Heart attack patients age 65 and older who have reduced heart function might still benefit from implanted defibrillators, according to a Duke Medicine study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But fewer than 1 in 10 eligible patients actually get a defibrillator within a year of their heart attacks, the study found. Advanced age, transitions in care between the hospital and an outpatient clinic, and a mandatory waiting period to get a defibrillator after a heart attack were the most likely factors for low rates of use, according ...

Among Medicare patients who experienced a heart attack from 2007 to 2010, fewer than 1 in 10 eligible patients with low ejection fraction (a measure of how well the left ventricle of the heart pumps blood with each beat) received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) within 1 year after the heart attack, even though ICD implantation was associated with a lower risk of death at 2 years after implantation, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. More than 350,000 people experience sudden cardiac death in the United States annually. Clinical trials ...

Among men in Sweden, use of erectile dysfunctions drugs with phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors was associated with a modest but significant increased risk of malignant melanoma, although the pattern of association raises questions about whether this association is causal, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. Phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5; an enzyme), the target of oral erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs, is part of a pathway that has been implicated in the development of malignant melanoma. This has raised questions whether PDE5 inhibitors used to treat ...

Among extremely preterm infants, early screening for the vascular disorder patent ductus arteriosus before day 3 of life was associated with a lower risk of in-hospital death and pulmonary hemorrhage, but not with differences in other severe complications, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. The ductus arteriosus is a blood vessel in a fetus that bypasses pulmonary circulation by connecting the pulmonary artery directly to the ascending aorta. It usually closes within 72 hours of birth in most normal-term infants. However, failure to close is common ...

In an analysis of the findings of nearly 80 randomized trials that included about 6,500 participants, there was moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids (chemical compounds that are the active principles in cannabis or marijuana) for the treatment of chronic pain and lower-quality evidence suggesting that cannabinoids were associated with improvements in nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, sleep disorders, and Tourette syndrome, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. Medical cannabis refers to the use of cannabis or cannabinoids ...

An analysis of edible medical marijuana products from 3 major metropolitan areas found that many had lower amounts of key substances than labeled, which may not produce the desired medical benefit, while others contained significantly more of a certain substance than labeled, placing patients at risk of experiencing adverse effects, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA. As the use of cannabis (marijuana) for medical purposes has expanded, a variety of edible products for oral consumption has been developed. An estimated 16 percent to 26 percent of patients ...

In a proof-of-concept study, a team led by a Johns Hopkins researcher reports that the vast majority of edible cannabis products sold in a small sample of medical marijuana dispensaries carried labels that overstated or understated the amount of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Though the scope of the study was small, the researchers say, the results of the study suggest some medical cannabis patients could be unintentionally overdosing or are being cheated by mislabeled products. "If this study is representative of the medical cannabis market, we may have hundreds ...

BOSTON, June 23 -- In a Viewpoint published today in the Journal of the Medical Association (JAMA), researchers from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and Boston Children's Hospital call on the federal government to drop restrictions on total fat consumption in the forthcoming 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Co-authors Dariush Mozaffarian, M.D., Dr.P.H., dean of the Friedman School, and David Ludwig, M.D., Ph.D., director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital, highlight a key, ...

ANN ARBOR--A months-long literature search that involved tracking down century-old scientific papers and translating others from Czech and French helped University of Michigan ecologist Meghan Duffy answer a question she'd wondered about for years. The early studies helped Duffy determine that the microscopic aquatic parasite she first observed as a graduate student, and which her research team had recently collected in more than a dozen southeast Michigan lakes, is the same fungus-like organism that a French biologist first described in 1903. "The longer historical ...

U.S. consumers are often urged to "buy American," and some special interest groups even claim that buying foreign products is inappropriate, or even immoral. But when it comes to buying domestic products, positive feelings for one's own country may play a more important role than negative feelings toward another, according to a new study in the Journal of International Marketing. "National identity--feeling proud to be, say, an American--and believing that Americans should not buy foreign products influence attitudes toward domestic products, but the impact of national ...

More than four out of five counselors who treat patients for substance abuse have experienced some form of patient-initiated workplace violence according to the first national study to examine the issue, led by Georgia State University Professor Brian E. Bride. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, is the first to measure the extent of workplace violence in substance abuse treatment centers across the United States. Bride and his co-authors analyzed a large, national sample of Substance Use Disorder counselors from the National Institutes ...

Everyone in China knows global automobile brands such as Ford and Chevrolet. But do those brands really sell better than local ones such as Senova or Eado? The answer is yes, and the reason lies in a complicated mix of brand recognition and local culture, according to a new study in the Journal of International Marketing. "In countries such as China with strong class divisions, internationally recognized brands can be a way of conveying wealth, prestige, and status," write authors M. Berk Talay (University of Massachusetts), Janell D. Townsend (Oakland University), and ...

ANN ARBOR--A University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues are forecasting a slightly below-average but still significant "dead zone" this summer in the Chesapeake Bay, the nation's largest estuary. The 2015 Chesapeake Bay forecast calls for an oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic, region of 1.37 cubic miles, about 10 percent below the long-term average. The forecast was released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which sponsors the work. Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus ...