If you're a musician, this sounds too good to be true: University of Chicago psychologists have been able to train some adults to develop the prized musical ability of absolute pitch, and the training's effects last for months. Absolute pitch, commonly known as "perfect pitch," is the ability to identify a note by hearing it. The ability is considered remarkably rare, estimated to be less than one in 10,000 individuals. It has always been a very desired ability among musicians, especially since several famous composers, including Mozart, reportedly had it. The assumption ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- A new study by anthropologists from The University of Texas at Austin shows for the first time that epigenetic marks on DNA can be detected in a large number of ancient human remains, which may lead to further understanding about the effects of famine and disease in the ancient world. The field of epigenetics looks at chemical modifications to DNA, known as epigenetic marks, that influence which genes are expressed -- or turned on or off. Some epigenetic marks stay in place throughout a person's life, but others may be added or removed in response to ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - The modern sedimentary environment contains a diversity of microbes that interact very closely with the sediments, sometimes to such an extent that they form "biosediments." But can such a phenomenon be fossilized? How far back in time can "biosedimentation" be traced? In this study for Geology, Frances Westall and colleagues examine some of the oldest rocks on Earth -- in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa (older than 3.3 billion years), to answer this question. Westall and colleagues use multi-scale methods to document the simultaneous ...

WASHINGTON - Holding cynical beliefs about others may have a negative effect on your income according to research published by the American Psychological Association. "While previous research has associated cynicism with detrimental outcomes across a wide range of spheres of life, including physical health, psychological well-being and marital adjustment, the present research has established an association between cynicism and individual economic success," says Olga Stavrova, PhD, a research associate at the Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--After years of research decoding the complex structure and production of spider silk, researchers have now succeeded in producing samples of this exceptionally strong and resilient material in the laboratory. The new development could lead to a variety of biomedical materials -- from sutures to scaffolding for organ replacements -- made from synthesized silk with properties specifically tuned for their intended uses. The findings are published this week in the journal Nature Communications by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) ...

Lugano, 28 May 2015. The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), in collaboration with the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), expressed their views on the EU Clinical Trials Regulation in an official position paper recently published in Annals of Oncology1. "The Clinical Trials Regulation (CTR) represents one of the most important changes in the field of clinical trials in the last decade, however it still contains unresolved issues that may prove to be challenging for research in Europe and for implementation by Member States," ...

NEW YORK (May 28, 2015) - Healthcare workers frequently contaminate their gloves and gowns during every day care of nursing homes residents with drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, according to a new study. The findings were published online today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. "One in four nursing home residents harbor MRSA in some settings. We know that healthcare workers serve as a vector for MRSA transmission from one resident to another in settings such as nursing homes," ...

May 28, 2015 Toronto - A landmark clinical study in the Lancet provides convincing evidence that a frequently overlooked therapy for genetically-caused emphysema is effective and slows the progression of lung disease. Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency is an inherited disorder that can cause emphysema even without exposure to tobacco smoke. Alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) is a protein made in the liver that protects the lungs. With this disorder, the AAT protein builds up in liver cells and doesn't reach the lungs to protect them. Augmentation therapy involves regular infusions ...

New research by conservationists at the University of Kent suggests that in order to manage trade-threatened species more effectively the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) needs to act more upon the economic reality of wildlife trade. In a paper published in Biological Conservation Dan Challender and colleagues, Professor Douglas MacMillan from Kent and Professor Stuart Harrop from the University of Sussex, critically and constructively evaluated the CITES approach to controlling trade through means of a case study ...

The first tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season formed during the early morning of Thursday, May 28, 2015, well southwest of Mexico. An image of the storm taken from NOAA's GOES-West satellite shows the depression in infrared light as it was born in the early morning hours before sunrise. To the east of the depression, the GOES image shows the sunlight of dawn reaching Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. At 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT) the center of Tropical Depression One-E was located near latitude 11.0 North, longitude 110.4 West, ABOUT 685 miles (1,105 km) ...

Lip reading normally involves deciphering speech patterns, movements, gestures and expressions just by watching a person speak. Planet Earth has LIPS, too - they are an acronym for Large Igneous Provinces, huge accumulations of igneous rocks that form when hot magma extrudes from inside the Earth and flows onto the surface of the seafloor under several kilometres of water. An international team of scientists including University of Sydney geophysicists Professor Dietmar Müller, Dr Simon Williams and Dr Maria Seton from the School of Geosciences have found a novel ...

Despite community concerns about living under high-voltage power lines, a world-first QUT study reveals that there are far more charged particles beside busy roads. The study, published in the international journal Science of the Total Environment was conducted by Dr Rohan Jayaratne, Dr Xuan Ling and Professor Lidia Morawska from QUT's International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health who found that within 10 metres of a freeway, charged particles were up to 15 times more concentrated than beneath high-voltage power lines. "Although the effects of ions and charged ...

ESF has just published a report on a pilot study of the career paths of post-doctorates and doctorate alumni from five research funding and research performing organisations: AXA Research Fund (AXA RF), France, Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR), Luxembourg, Goethe Graduate Academy at the Goethe University Frankfurt (GRADE), Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland and TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a co-sponsored programme of UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and WHO. The study comprised focus groups and a survey of 880 doctorate ...

Earthquakes kill, but their aftershocks can cause the rapid collapse of buildings left standing in the aftermath of the initial quake. Research published in the International Journal of Reliability and Safety offers a new approach to predicting which buildings might be most susceptible to potentially devastating collapse due to the ground-shaking aftershock tremors. Negar Nazari and John W. van de Lindt of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and Yue Li of Michigan Technological University, in Houghton, USA, ...

In the most extensive survey of its kind ever conducted, a team of scientists have found an unambiguous link between the presence of supermassive black holes that power high-speed, radio-signal-emitting jets and the merger history of their host galaxies. Almost all of the galaxies hosting these jets were found to be merging with another galaxy, or to have done so recently. The results lend significant weight to the case for jets being the result of merging black holes and will be presented in the Astrophysical Journal. A team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space ...

Researchers from the University of Leicester have discovered that when it comes to rubbers, textured surfaces, and reproduction, more fluid formulations have greater reliability than those that are thick and sticky. Rubber compounds are widely used to mould and produce copies of textured surfaces for scientific analysis, but so far little research has been done to establish which rubbers make the most reliable copies. A new study published in the academic journal Scientific Reports, led by Professor Mark Purnell from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology, ...

The fixed-dose drug combination ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir (trade name Viekirax) has been available since January 2015 for the treatment of adults with chronic hepatitis C infection. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this drug combination offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. According to the findings, there are indications of an added benefit in patients who have not yet developed cirrhosis of the liver and who are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) ...

This news release is available in German. FRANKFURT. Scientists at the Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre working together with their Canadian counterparts, have reconstructed the climatic development of the Arctic Ocean during the Cretaceous period, 145 to 66 million years ago. The research team comes to the conclusion that there was a severe cold snap during the geological age known for its extreme greenhouse climate. The study published in the professional journal Geology is also intended to help improve prognoses ...

(Edmonton) Each year, thousands of Canadians are given the news: they have skin cancer. It is the most common form of cancer in Canada and around the world, but if detected early, survival rates are extremely high. According to Liam Rourke, it doesn't happen nearly as often as it could. "The difficulty is that people have a really hard time detecting skin cancer melanomas early," says Rourke, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry's Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta. "One of the reasons is that it's an exceptionally difficult task ...

Investigators at Stanford University have found a surprising link between creative problem-solving and heightened activity in the cerebellum, a structure located in the back of the brain and more typically thought of as the body's movement-coordination center. In designing the study, the researchers drew inspiration from the game Pictionary. The cerebellum, traditionally viewed as the brain's practice-makes-perfect, movement-control center, hasn't been previously recognized as critical to creativity. The new study, a collaboration between the School of Medicine and ...

Stanford electrical engineer Jelena Vuckovic wants to make computers faster and more efficient by reinventing how they send data back and forth between chips, where the work is done. In computers today, data is pushed through wires as a stream of electrons. That takes a lot of power, which helps explain why laptops get so warm. "Several years ago, my colleague David Miller carefully analyzed power consumption in computers, and the results were striking," said Vuckovic, referring to electrical engineering Professor David Miller. "Up to 80 percent of the microprocessor ...

A quantum system never relaxes. An isolated system (like a cloud of cold atoms trapped in optical grids) will endlessly oscillate between its different configurations without ever finding peace. In practice, these types of systems are unable to dissipate energy in any form. This is the exact opposite of what happens in classical physics, where the tendency to reach a state of equilibrium is such a fundamental drive that is has been made a fundamental law of physics, i.e., the second law of thermodynamics, which introduces the concept of entropy. This profound difference ...

WASHINGTON -- People who earn a college degree before getting married are much less likely to become obese than those who graduate from college after getting married, according to a new study. "People who get married before they earn a degree from a four-year college are about 65 percent more likely to later become obese than people who get married after college," said Richard Allen Miech, a research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and the lead author of the study. "While a college degree has long been shown to be associated ...

A fifty-fold between-country difference in rates of paracetamol-induced acute liver failure that leads to liver transplant (ALFT) has been revealed by a study that compared patient data from seven countries at the request of the European Medicines Agency: France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and the UK. Researchers discovered that this variation was even more pronounced on a per-capita basis, with a 200-fold difference in ALFT cases. Publishing these findings in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, the authors call for further research to identify ...

Several genes have been lost from the Y chromosome in humans and other mammals, according to research published in the open access journal Genome Biology. The study shows that essential Y genes are rescued by relocating to other chromosomes, and it identifies a potentially important genetic factor in male infertility. The Y chromosome is dramatically smaller than the X chromosome and has already lost nearly all of the 640 genes it once shared with the X chromosome. An extreme example of genes disappearing from the Y chromosome can be found in the Ryukyu spiny rat, ...