HOUSTON -- (May 15, 2014) -- A first-of-its-kind study this week suggests that the genomes of new species may evolve in a similar, repeatable fashion -- even in cases where populations are evolving in parallel at separate locations. The research is featured on the cover of the May 16 issue of Science. A team of evolutionary biologists at Rice University, the University of Sheffield and eight other universities used a combination of ecological fieldwork and genomic assays to see how natural selection is playing out across the genome of a Southern California stick insect ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 15, 2014) – The proportion of marijuana-positive drivers involved in fatal motor vehicle crashes in Colorado has increased dramatically since the commercialization of medical marijuana in the middle of 2009, according to a study by University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers. With data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Fatality Analysis Reporting System covering 1994 to 2011, the researchers analyzed fatal motor vehicle crashes in Colorado and in the 34 states that did not have medical marijuana laws, comparing changes ...

Primary care physicians already have enough administrative duties on their plates, and the implementation of electronic medical records has only added to their burden. As a result, they have less time to spend with their patients. But a new UCLA study suggests a simple way to lighten their load: a "physician partner" whose role would be to work on those administrative tasks, such as entering information into patient records, that take up so much of doctors' time. A physician partner allows doctors to focus more of their attention on their patients and leads to greater ...

Stereotypes of gay men as effeminate and weak and black men as threatening and aggressive can hurt members of those groups when white people evaluate them in employment, education, criminal justice and other contexts. But the negative attributes of the two stereotypes can cancel one another out for gay black men in the employment context, according to research by a Princeton University graduate student in sociology, challenging the commonly held idea that membership in multiple marginalized groups leads to more discrimination than being a member of a single such group. Sociologist ...

The body's innate immune system is a first line of defense, intent on sensing invading pathogens and wiping them out before they can cause harm. It should not be surprising then that bacteria have evolved many ways to specifically evade and overcome this sentry system in order to spread infection. A study led by researchers in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine now reveals how some Salmonella bacteria hide from the immune system, allowing them to persist and cause systemic infection. The findings could help researchers craft a more effective ...

RENO, Nev. – Like a detective story with twists and turns in the plot, scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno are unfolding a story about the rapid uplift of the famous 400-mile long Sierra Nevada mountain range of California and Nevada. The newest chapter of the research is being published today in the scientific journal Nature, showing that draining of the aquifer for agricultural irrigation in California's Central Valley results in upward flexing of the earth's surface and the surrounding mountains due to the loss of mass within the valley. The groundwater subsidence ...

This news release is available in Spanish and Arabic. The discovery of a near-complete human skeleton in a watery cave in Mexico is helping scientists answer the question, "Who were the first Americans?" The finding, reported in the 16 May issue of the journal Science, sheds new light on a decades-long debate among archaeologists and anthropologists. Deciphering the ancestry of the first people to populate the Americas has been a challenge. On the basis of genetics, modern Native Americans are thought to descend from Siberians who moved into eastern Beringia (the ...

WASHINGTON (May 15, 2014)—The skeletal remains of a teenage female from the late Pleistocene or last ice age found in an underwater cave in Mexico have major implications for our understanding of the origins of the Western Hemisphere's first people and their relationship to contemporary Native Americans. In a paper released today in the journal Science, an international team of researchers and cave divers present the results of an expedition that discovered a near-complete early American human skeleton with an intact cranium and preserved DNA. The remains were found surrounded ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—For more than a decade, Washington State University molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp has teased out the ancient DNA of goose and salmon bones from Alaska, human remains from North and South America, and human coprolites—ancient poop—from Oregon and the American Southwest. His aim: use genetics as yet another archaeological record offering clues to the identities of ancient people and how they lived and moved across the landscape. As head of the team studying the DNA of Naia, an adolescent girl who fell into a Yucatan sinkhole some 12,000 years ago, he ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study could help resolve a longstanding debate about the origins of the first people to inhabit the Americas, researchers report in the journal Science. The study relies on genetic information extracted from the tooth of an adolescent girl who fell into a sinkhole in the Yucatan 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. The girl's remains were found alongside those of ancient extinct beasts that also fell into the "inescapable natural trap," as researchers described the sinkhole. The team used radiocarbon dating and analyzed chemical signatures in bones and ...

Eastern Asia, Western Asia, Japan, Beringia and even Europe have all been suggested origination points for the earliest humans to enter the Americas because of apparent differences in cranial form between today's Native Americans and the earliest known Paleoamerican skeletons. Now an international team of researchers has identified a nearly complete Paleoamerican skeleton with Native American DNA that dates close to the time that people first entered the New World. "Individuals from 9,000 or more years ago have morphological attributes -- physical form and structure -- ...

AUSTIN, Texas — The ancient remains of a teenage girl found in an underwater Mexican cave establish a definitive link between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans, according to a new study released today in the journal Science. The study was conducted by an international team of researchers from 13 institutions, including Deborah Bolnick, assistant professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin, who analyzed DNA from the remains simultaneously with independent researchers at Washington State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The ...

Scientists have created a 'heavy' mouse, the world's first animal enriched with heavy but non-radioactive isotopes - enabling them to capture in unprecedented detail the molecular structure of natural tissue by reading the magnetism inherent in the isotopes. This data has been used to grow biological tissue in the lab practically identical to native tissue, which can be manipulated and analysed in ways impossible for natural samples. Researchers say the approach has huge potential for scientific and medical breakthroughs: lab-grown tissue could be used to replace heart ...

Cave-diving scientist Patricia A. Beddows of Northwestern University is a member of an international team of researchers and cave divers this week announcing the discovery in an underwater Yucatán Peninsula cave of one of the oldest human skeletons found in North America. Details of "Naia," a teenage girl who went underground to seek water and fell to her death in a large pit named Hoyo Negro ("black hole" in Spanish), will be published May 16 in the journal Science. "The preservation of all the bones in this deep water-filled cave is amazing -- the bones are beautifully ...

Stanford, CA—All living cells are held together by membranes, which provide a barrier to the transport of nutrients. They are also the communication platform connecting the outside world to the cell’s interior control centers. Thousands of proteins reside in these cell membranes and control the flow of select chemicals, which move across the barrier and mediate the flux of nutrients and information. Almost all of these pathways work by protein handshakes--one protein “talking” to another in order to, for example, encourage the import of a needed nutrient, to block a compound ...

Assembling the puzzles of quantum materials is, in some ways, like dipping a wire hanger into a vat of soapy water, says CIFAR (Canadian Institute for Advanced Research) Fellow Joseph Thywissen (University of Toronto). Long before mathematical equations could explain the shapes and angles in the soap foams, mathematicians conjectured that soap films naturally found the geometry that minimized surface area, thus solving the problem of minimal surfaces. They could be created simply by blowing soap bubbles. At the University of Toronto's Ultracold Atoms Lab, Thywissen ...

Her name is Naia, and for thousands and thousands of years, the skeleton of this young woman was buried underwater in an elaborate cave system in the Yucatan Peninsula after she had apparently fallen into what was then a dry deep pit. Now, a team of researchers, including Professor Yemane Asmerom and Research Scientist Victor Polyak at the University of New Mexico's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, have accurately determined the age of the oldest-known, well-preserved human skeleton. Naia was one of the earliest inhabitants of the Americas and has helped resolve ...

When making cellulosic ethanol from plants, one problem is what to do with a woody agricultural waste product called lignin. The old adage in the pulp industry has been that one can make anything from lignin except money. A new review article in the journal Science points the way toward a future where lignin is transformed from a waste product into valuable materials such as low-cost carbon fiber for cars or bio-based plastics. Using lignin in this way would create new markets for the forest products industry and make ethanol-to-fuel conversion more cost-effective. "We've ...

Researchers have found the first definitive evidence of how silicalite-1 (MFI type) zeolites grow, showing that growth is a concerted process involving both the attachment of nanoparticles and the addition of molecules. Both processes appear to happen simultaneously, said Jeffrey Rimer, an engineering professor at the University of Houston and lead author of a paper published Thursday in the journal Science. He said a second component to the research could have even more lasting impact. He and researcher Alexandra I. Lupulescu used a new technique allowing them to view ...

Chronically homeless, alcohol-dependent individuals might benefit from a new intervention that does not require them to stop or even reduce drinking, according to the results of a preliminary study in Seattle. Participants in the 12-week pilot program received monthly injections of an anti-craving medication, extended-release naltrexone. They also met regularly with study physicians to set their own goals for treatment and to learn to be safer in their use of alcohol. "Abstinence-based alcohol treatment has not been effective for or desirable to many homeless people ...

HOUSTON – (May 15, 2014) – Children of fathers who are in technical occupations are more likely to have an autism spectrum disorder, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The findings will be presented Friday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Atlanta. During participation in the LoneStar LEND program, first author Aisha S. Dickerson, Ph.D., a researcher at UTHealth's Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences, used the United States government's Standard Occupational Classification system. ...

The immune system's B cells protect us from disease by producing antibodies, or "smart bullets," that specifically target invaders such as pathogens and viruses while leaving harmless molecules alone. But how do B cells determine whether a threat is real and whether to start producing these weapons? An international team of life scientists shows in the May 16 issue of the journal Science how and why these cells respond only to true threats. "It is critical for B cells to respond either fully or not at all. Anything in between causes disease," said the study's senior ...

PITTSBURGH—Clouds play a critical role in Earth's climate. Clouds also are the largest source of uncertainty in present climate models, according to the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Much of the uncertainty surrounding clouds' effect on climate stems from the complexity of cloud formation. New research from scientists at the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiment at CERN, including Carnegie Mellon University's Neil Donahue, sheds light on new-particle formation — the very first step of cloud formation and a critical component ...

The newly updated, online, interactive state data tool allows policymakers, educators and other users to discern trends in education, science and research in each of the 50 states. This free resource supplements the state data in the 2014 Science and Engineering Indicators report, the premier source of information and analysis of the nation's position in science and engineering education and research. The biennial report is published by the National Science Board, the policy making body of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The tool features 59 state indicators of ...

CLEVELAND -- At the 2014 American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting, neurosurgical researchers from University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center presented results from a small study looking at deep brain electrode implantation as a possible alternative to the traditional WADA test used prior to epilepsy surgery. The WADA test is considered the gold standard for identifying the side of the brain for speech dominance. In the WADA test, doctors put one half of a patient's brain to sleep for a few minutes using medication and then have the patient read ...