This news release is available in Japanese. New genetic tools are helping researchers to trace illegal ivory back to the elephant populations from which it came, and they might help law enforcement crack down on poaching in the future. Elephant poaching is happening at rates that threaten African populations with extinction. After analyzing 28 ivory seizures made between 1996 and 2014 -- each of them containing half a ton of tusks or more -- Samuel Wasser and colleagues suggest that the illegal ivory trade has been fueled primarily by two poaching hotspots in Africa ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers have found evidence of shared decision-making among a troop of wild baboons, providing insight into how animals that live in socially complex, hierarchical societies reach consensus on decisions that affect the entire group. Until now, researchers had wondered if animals with clear hierarchies, such as primates or wolves, use democracy to reach a consensus -- or if their decisions are governed by dominant leaders. It's been difficult to study this, however, because recording the behavior of many individuals simultaneously ...

This news release is available in Japanese. A new study aiming to provide a better understanding of how injection wells in the U.S. influence earthquake activity cites wastewater injection rate as a critical factor. In the study, the highest-rate wastewater disposal wells analyzed were nearly twice as likely to be associated with earthquake events compared to their lower-rate counterparts. Earthquakes can be induced by industrial processes, a fact established decades ago. Since 2009, when seismicity in the U.S. midcontinent began to surge, earthquakes induced by the underground ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Opening Iran's national uranium enrichment plant to multinational involvement could limit the long-term risks of Iran's nuclear program as restrictions on it expire, according to this Policy Forum. In July, Iran is expected to sign an agreement restricting its nuclear program, but also affirming its right to pursue uranium enrichment as those restrictions end in 2025 and beyond. Authors Alexander Glaser, Zia Mian, and Frank von Hippel suggest that selling shares of Iran's uranium enrichment plant to other countries could help ...

PRINCETON, N.J.--Within the next two weeks, or soon after, the United States and five world powers hope to finalize a nuclear deal with Iran to limit its nuclear activities in exchange for a relaxing of international economic and financial sanctions. But what happens in 10 years when some of the key restrictions being discussed begin to phase out? One of the biggest concerns is Iran's uranium enrichment program, which uses high-speed centrifuges to produce uranium enriched to a level appropriate for nuclear power reactor fuel. Enrichment plants like this can be quickly ...

Well-practiced motor skills like riding a bike are extremely stable memories that can be effortlessly recalled after years or decades. In contrast, a new study publishing in PLOS Computational Biology shows that changes to motor skill memories occurring over the course of a single practice session are not immediately stable, according to researchers Andrew Brennan and Maurice Smith of Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science and Center for Brain Science. We're all familiar with the old saying that you never forget how to ride a bike and perhaps personally ...

Chlamydia trachomatis is a formidable foe. It's the most common sexually transmitted pathogen, infecting more than 100 million people each year. In the developing world, chlamydial infection is the leading cause of preventable blindness. Around the world, it ranks as the number one cause of infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Chlamydial infection ignites chronic inflammation, which scars mucosal surfaces such as eyelids, ovaries or fallopian tubes. Most people who carry the bacterium don't know it. Women with chlamydia are much more vulnerable to other sexually transmitted ...

To predict how a seasonal influenza epidemic will spread across the United States, one should focus more on the mobility of people than on their geographic proximity, a new study suggests. PLOS Pathogens published the analysis of transportation data and flu cases conducted by Emory University biologists. Their results mark the first time genetic patterns for the spread of flu have been detected at the scale of the continental United States. "We found that the spread of a flu epidemic is somewhat predictable by looking at transportation data, especially ground commuter ...

Baboons live in a strongly hierarchical society, but the big guys don't make all the decisions. A new study from the University of California, Davis, reveals -- through GPS tracking -- that animals living in complex, stratified societies make some decisions democratically. The study breaks ground in how animal behavior data is collected. The study is being published Friday (June 19) in Science. "It's not necessarily the biggest alpha males that influence where groups go," said co-author Meg Crofoot, assistant professor of anthropology at UC Davis. "Our results illustrate ...

DNA from the 8,500-year-old skeleton of an adult man found in 1996, in Washington, is more closely related to Native American populations than to any other population in the world, according to an international collaborative study conducted by scientists at the University of Copenhagen and the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding challenges a 2014 study that concluded, based on anatomical data, that Kennewick Man was more related to indigenous Japanese or Polynesian peoples than to Native Americans. The study is likely to reignite a long-standing legal ...

NASA provided four different views of Tropical Depression Bill as it continued traveling through the south-central U.S. and into the Ohio Valley. NASA's Aqua and Terra satellite provided infrared and visible imagery while NASA/NOAA's GOES Project animated NOAA's GOES-East satellite imagery to show the storm's progression since landfall. The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite also showed rainfall estimates and locations. On June 18, the National Weather Service, Weather Prediction Center (NWS/WPC) noted that flood and flash flood watches and warnings ...

Kangaroos prefer to use one of their hands over the other for everyday tasks in much the same way that humans do, with one notable difference: generally speaking, kangaroos are lefties. The finding, reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 18--the first to consider handedness in wild kangaroos--challenges the notion that "true" handedness among mammals is a feature unique to primates. "According to a special-assessment scale of handedness adopted for primates, kangaroos pulled down the highest grades," says Yegor Malashichev of Saint Petersburg State ...

Anti-cancer strategies generally involve killing off tumor cells. However, cancer cells may instead be coaxed to turn back into normal tissue simply by reactivating a single gene, according to a study published June 18th in the journal Cell. Researchers found that restoring normal levels of a human colorectal cancer gene in mice stopped tumor growth and re-established normal intestinal function within only 4 days. Remarkably, tumors were eliminated within 2 weeks, and signs of cancer were prevented months later. The findings provide proof of principle that restoring the ...

American scientists have discovered that a drug commonly used to treat osteoporosis in humans also stimulates the production of cells that control insulin balance in diabetic mice. While other compounds have been shown to have this effect, the drug (Denosumab) is already FDA approved and could more quickly move to clinical trials as a diabetes treatment. The research is published June 18 in Cell Metabolism. Diabetes is a major health issue worldwide that arises due to a deficiency of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. In type 1 diabetes, beta cells die from ...

Cutaneous melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, is now believed to be divided into four distinct genomic subtypes, say researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, a finding that could prove valuable in the ever-increasing pursuit of personalized medicine. As part of The Cancer Genome Atlas, researchers identified four melanoma subtypes: BRAF, RAS, NF1 and Triple-WT, which were defined by presence or absence of mutations from analysis of samples obtained from 331 patients. The five-year study resulted from an international collaboration of ...

PHILADELPHIA -- Most of us need seven to eight hours of sleep a night to function well, but some people seem to need a lot less sleep. The difference is largely due to genetic variability. In research published online June 18th in Current Biology, researchers report that two genes, originally known for their regulation of cell division, are required for normal slumber in fly models of sleep: taranis and Cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (Cdk1). 'There's a lot we don't understand about sleep, especially when it comes to the protein machinery that initiates the process on the ...

In 2012, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine showed that heart muscle cells made from the skin of people with a cardiac condition called dilated cardiomyopathy beat with less force than those made from the skin of healthy people. These cells also responded less readily to the waves of calcium that control the timing and strength of each contraction. Now, the same research team has teased apart the molecular basis for these differences and identified a drug treatment that at least partially restores function to diseased cells grown in a laboratory ...

Adult neural stem cells, which are commonly thought of as having the ability to develop into many type of brain cells, are in reality pre-programmed before birth to make very specific types of neurons, at least in mice, according to a study led by UC San Francisco researchers. "This work fundamentally changes the way we think about stem cells," said principal investigator Arturo Alvarez-Buylla, UCSF professor of neurological surgery, Heather and Melanie Muss Endowed Chair and a principal investigator in the UCSF Brain Tumor Research Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad ...

We can alter our facial features in ways that make us look more trustworthy, but don't have the same ability to appear more competent, a team of New York University psychology researchers has found. The study, which appears in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a SAGE journal, points to both the limits and potential we have in visually representing ourselves--from dating and career-networking sites to social media posts. "Our findings show that facial cues conveying trustworthiness are malleable while facial cues conveying competence and ability are significantly ...

Want to lose abdominal fat, get smarter and live longer? New research led by USC's Valter Longo shows that periodically adopting a diet that mimics the effects of fasting may yield a wide range of health benefits. In a new study, Longo and his colleagues show that cycles of a four-day low-calorie diet that mimics fasting (FMD) cut visceral belly fat and elevated the number of progenitor and stem cells in several organs of old mice -- including the brain, where it boosted neural regeneration and improved learning and memory. The mouse tests were part of a three-tiered ...

Last June, in the early days of the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa, a team of researchers sequenced the genome of the deadly virus at unprecedented scale and speed. Their findings revealed a number of critical facts as the outbreak was unfolding, including that the virus was being transmitted only by person-to-person contact and that it was picking up new mutations through its many transmissions. While public health officials now believe the worst of the epidemic is behind us, it is not yet over, and questions raised by the previous work still await answers. To ...

PHILADELPHIA - Several well-known neurodegenerative diseases, such as Lou Gehrig's (ALS), Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Huntington's disease, all result in part from a defect in autophagy - one way a cell removes and recycles misfolded proteins and pathogens. In a paper published this week in Current Biology, postdoctoral fellow David Kast, PhD, and professor Roberto Dominguez, PhD, and three other colleagues from the Department of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, show for the first time that the formation of ephemeral compartments ...

University of California San Francisco scientists have identified characteristics of a family of daughter cells, called MPPs, which are the first to arise from stem cells within bone marrow that generate the entire blood system. The researchers said the discovery raises the possibility that, by manipulating the fates of MPPs or parent stem cells, medical researchers could one day help overcome imbalances and deficiencies that can arise in the blood system due to aging or in patients with specific types of leukemia. Similar imbalances can render patients vulnerable immediately ...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Advancing the field of structural biology that underpins how things work in a cell, researchers have identified how proteins change their shape when performing specific functions. The study's fresh insights, published online in the journal Structure, provide a more complete picture of how proteins move, laying a foundation of understanding that will help determine the molecular causes of human disease and the development of more potent drug treatments. Though it has long been recognized that proteins are not static, for more than 30 years, scientists' ...

The secret to preventing HIV infection lies within the human immune system, but the more-than-25-year search has so far failed to yield a vaccine capable of training the body to neutralize the ever-changing virus. New research from The Rockefeller University, and collaborating institutions, suggests no single shot will ever do the trick. Instead, the scientists find, a sequence of immunizations might be the most promising route to an HIV vaccine. Scientists have thought for some time that multiple immunizations, each tailored to specific stages of the immune response, ...