CORAL GABLES, Fla. (May 27, 2015) - Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurological condition that affects approximately two percent of people around the world. Although several genes have been linked to multiple concurring conditions of ASD, the process that explains how specific genetic variants lead to behaviors characteristic of the disorder remains elusive. Now, researchers are utilizing animal models to understand how dysfunction of either of two genes associated with ASD, SYNGAP1 and SHANK 3, contributes to risk in ASD. The new findings pinpoint the actual place ...

Every year, an estimated half-million Americans undergo surgery to have a stent prop open a coronary artery narrowed by plaque. But sometimes the mesh tubes get clogged. Scientists report in the journal ACS Nano a new kind of multi-tasking stent that could minimize the risks associated with the procedure. It can sense blood flow and temperature, store and transmit the information for analysis and can be absorbed by the body after it finishes its job. Doctors have been implanting stents to unblock coronary arteries for 30 years. During that time, the devices have evolved ...

One way to help the elderly cross what's known as the "digital divide" is the use of tablets, those smaller, lighter, easy-to-use computers that seem to be taking the place of laptops. New Michigan State University research has found that the use of tablets does make it easier, breaking down some of the barriers that keep seniors from getting connected. In addition to being smaller, lighter and more portable, tablets allow people to maneuver online without having to move and click a mouse. "The dexterity required to control a mouse is really hard for some older adults," ...

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, has identified a young planetary system which may aid in understanding how our own solar system formed and developed billions of years ago. Using the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) at the Gemini South telescope in Chile, the researchers identified a disc-shaped bright ring of dust around a star only slightly more massive than the sun, located 360 light years away in the Centaurus constellation. The disc is located between about 37 and 55 Astronomical Units (3.4 - 5.1 billion miles) ...

The DNA encoding all life on Earth is made of four building blocks called nucleotides, commonly known as "letters," that line up in pairs and twist into a double helix. Now, two groups of scientists are reporting for the first time that two new nucleotides can do the same thing -- raising the possibility that entirely new proteins could be created for medical uses. Their two studies appear in ACS' Journal of the American Chemical Society. Synthetic biologists have been attempting for years to expand on nature's genetic "alphabet," consisting of the nucleotide bases cytosine, ...

With summer nearly here, U.S. consumers might think they have an abundance of sunscreen products to choose from. But across the Atlantic, Europeans will be slathering on formulations that manufacturers say provide better protection against the sun's damaging rays -- and skin cancer -- than what's available stateside, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Marc S. Reisch, a senior correspondent at C&EN, reports that sunscreens on the U.S. market do protect users from some ultraviolet-A and ...

Patients treated for an acute respiratory infection by a doctor on a telephone or live video are as likely to be prescribed an antibiotic as patients who are treated by a physician face-to-face for the same illness, according to a new RAND Corporation study. However, the patients treated virtually were more likely to be prescribed a broad-spectrum antibiotic -- concerning since overuse of the drugs increases costs and contributes to antibiotic resistance, according to the study. Researchers say both treatment settings had high rates of inappropriate prescribing for ...

Some children with autism should undergo ongoing screenings for apraxia, a rare neurological speech disorder, because the two conditions often go hand-in-hand, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. Over the course of a three-year study, 64 percent of children initially diagnosed with autism were found to also have apraxia. The study also showed that the commonly used Checklist for Autism Spectrum Disorder (CASD) accurately diagnoses autism in children with apraxia. "Children with apraxia have difficulty coordinating the use of their tongue, lips, ...

The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks - at which point does the object decide? Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure ...

An international team of scientists studying ultrafast physics have solved a mystery of quantum mechanics, and found that quantum tunneling is an instantaneous process. The new theory could lead to faster and smaller electronic components, for which quantum tunneling is a significant factor. It will also lead to a better understanding of diverse areas such as electron microscopy, nuclear fusion and DNA mutations. "Timescales this short have never been explored before. It's an entirely new world," said one of the international team, Professor Anatoli Kheifets, from The ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Right before a cell starts to divide to give birth to a daughter cell, its biochemical machinery unwinds the chromosomes and copies the millions of protein sequences comprising the cell's DNA, which is packaged along the length of the each chromosomal strand. These copied sequences also need to be put back together before the two cells are pulled apart. Mistakes can lead to genetic defects or cancerous mutations in future cell generations. Just like raising a building requires scaffolding be erected first, cells ...

The method used to calculate Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, the most trusted benchmark for U.S. residential real estate prices, contains a flaw that likely could lead to misstating its monthly estimates, according to a newly published study led by faculty at Florida Atlantic University. The paper published in the Journal of Real Estate Research identifies an important deficiency in the Weighted Repeated Sales (WRS) method developed by economists Karl Case and Robert Shiller, which compares repeat sales of the same homes in an effort to study home ...

Anti-osteoporotic medication is not an effective means for preventing hip fractures among the elderly, concludes a study recently published in the BMJ. Proximal femoral fractures (i.e., hip fractures) occur in the world at a rate of 1.5 million per year, or 7,000 per year in Finland. As most such fractures occur among older people, their number is expected to grow as the population ages. Hip fractures often lead to permanently reduced mobility, quality of life and general health, as well as result in significant social costs. Since the early 1990s, anti-osteoporotic ...

The teacher's interaction style can either foster or slow down the development of math skills among children with challenging temperaments. This was shown in the results of the study "Parents, teachers and children's learning" carried out at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Ph.D. Jaana Viljaranta, along with her colleagues, studied the role of teachers' interaction styles in academic skill development among children with different temperamental characteristics. A child's challenging temperament may show up in the classroom, for example, as low task-orientation ...

When Niels Bohr hypothesised his model of atom with the electrons orbiting the nucleus just like satellites orbit a planet, he was engaging in analogical reasoning. Bohr transferred to atoms the concept of "a body orbiting another", that is, he transferred a relation between objects to other, new objects. Analogical reasoning is an extraordinary ability that is unique to the human mind, is not seen in animals (except very rarely in primates) and that forms the basis of highly sophisticated human thoughts. Scientists have wondered about the origin of this cognitive function: ...

Jena (Germany) March 1938: The Italian elementary particle physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a post ship in Naples, heading for Palermo. But he either never arrives there - or he leaves the city straight away - ever since that day there has been no trace of the exceptional scientist and until today his mysterious disappearance remains unresolved. Since then, Majorana, a pupil of the Nobel Prize winner Enrico Fermi, has more or less been forgotten. What the scientific world does remember though is a theory about nuclear forces, which he developed, and a very particular elementary ...

Hodgkin's lymphoma--cancer of the lymph nodes--arises in more than 150 children and adolescents in Germany each year. Nine out of ten patients survive the disease, thanks to the highly effective treatments that are now available. Depending on the type of treatment given, however, there may be late sequelae, as discussed by Wolfgang Dörffel and colleagues in an original article in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 320-7). These authors studied the question of which types of treatment were more likely to be followed ...

An international team of researchers has for the first time predicted the occurrence of aurorae visible to the naked eye on a planet other than Earth. Mars' upper atmosphere may be indeed closer to Earth's than previously thought. Researchers showed that the upper atmosphere of Mars glows blue depending on the activity of the Sun. The result was achieved through numerical simulation and a laboratory experiment, called the Planeterrella, used to simulate the aurora. The study was published in the leading planetology publication Planetary and Space Science on 26 May. 'The ...

GAINESVILLE, FL -- As the container nursery industry faces severe restrictions on water use, researchers are looking to identify ways to minimize watering needs and eliminate excess watering. The authors of a new study say that understanding container-grown plants' capacity to "capture" sprinkler irrigation water can give growers important tools that help them adjust irrigation rates, reduce water use, and produce healthy plants. Jeff Million and Thomas Yeager from the Department of Environmental Horticulture at the University of Florida say that there has been limited ...

Brisbane flood victims suffered more psychological distress during the rebuilding phase than as waters inundated their homes and businesses, a Queensland University of Technology study has found. Kelly Dixon, from QUT's School of Psychology and Counselling, has looked at the mental health impacts caused by the Brisbane 2011 and the Mackay 2008 flood disasters. "The findings showed that aftermath stress contributed to poor mental health outcomes over and above the flood itself, prior mental health issues and demographic factors," Ms Dixon said. Presenting her findings ...

In a groundbreaking study published recently in the Journal Psychology, Professor Lea Waters from the Melbourne Graduate School of Education outlines how children can draw on their personal strengths to cope with the demands that lead to stress. "While some stress such as toxic stress caused by a long lasting intense negative experience can have a debilitating effect on the wellbeing of children, not all stress is bad or damaging," Professor Waters said. "Positive stress is a normal part of the developmental process. When managed well, it has the potential to help children ...

Warring armies use a variety of tactics as they struggle to gain the upper hand. Among their tricks is to attack with a decoy force that occupies the defenders while an unseen force launches a separate attack that the defenders fail to notice. A study published earlier this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the Hepatitis C virus (HCV) may employ similar tactics to distract the body's natural defenses. After infecting patients, Hepatitis C evolves many variants, among them an "altruistic" group of viral particles that appears ...

Millions of genetic variants have been discovered over the last 25 years, but interpreting the clinical impact of the differences in a person's genome remains a major bottleneck in genomic medicine. In a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine on May 27, a consortium including investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Partners HealthCare present ClinGen, a program to evaluate the clinical relevance of genetic variants for use in precision medicine and research. "We're dealing with massive amounts of information: more than 80 million genetic ...

Tremendous advances have been made in decoding the human genome in recent years but critical questions remain regarding what these variants mean and how they can be applied in clinical practice. In a comprehensive paper to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine on May 27, 2015, "ClinGen: The Clinical Genome Resource," a consortium including investigators from the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) provide a detailed overview of ClinGen, an NIH-supported program to evaluate the clinical relevance of genetic variants for use in precision ...

Women who eat a Mediterranean diet could cut their risk of womb cancer by more than half (57 per cent), according to a study published today (Wednesday) in the British Journal of Cancer*. The Italian researchers looked at the diets of over 5,000 Italian women to see how closely they stuck to a Mediterranean diet and whether they went on to develop womb cancer**. The team broke the Mediterranean diet down into nine different components and measured how closely women stuck to them. The diet includes eating lots of vegetables, fruits and nuts, pulses, cereals and potatoes, ...