Research suggests that genes that affect hearing and cognitive function may play roles in one's musical aptitude, or the ability to understand and perceive rhythm, pitch, timbre, tone durations, and formal structure in music. The authors of a BioEssays article explain that extremes in musical aptitude (extreme capacity/no capacity) are rare within a population, with the majority of individuals having moderate aptitude. "This is a typical feature of a complex trait attributable to several underlying genes, and it is influenced to varying degrees by environmental factors, ...

Researchers who transplanted combinations of wild, domesticated, and domesticated-wild hybridized populations of a fish species to new environments found that within 5 to 11 generations, selection could remove introduced foreign genes from wild populations that hybridized with domesticated populations. The Evolutionary Applications study provides evidence that natural selection, over time, removes the adaptive advantages that hybridized populations experience as a result of increased genetic diversity. "The results may be useful for policy makers who classify the protection ...

As the number of U.S. casualties rose in Afghanistan, reporters filed more stories about the conflict and those articles grew increasingly negative about both the war effort and the military, according to a Penn State researcher. "When the war in Afghanistan started, the tone of the stories that reporters filed was generally neutral," said Michel Haigh, associate professor of communications. "However, over time, and as casualties increased, the coverage became more negative." In 2003, as the media began to focus more on the conflict in Iraq, reporters wrote less than 20 ...

There is no published account where hippopotamuses are demonstrably shown swimming or floating at the surface of any body of water. But if they can't swim, how did they reach and colonize islands? Experts say that widely accepted models for the methods, patterns, and timing of the colonization and dispersal to several islands (e.g. Cyprus, Crete, and Madagascar) may need to be reconsidered. "Although land bridge connections between these islands and the mainland are not currently supported by positive geological evidence, neither is there any contradictory evidence ...

A new study reveals that people find the smell of others with similar political opinions to be attractive, suggesting that one of the reasons why so many spouses share similar political views is because they were initially and subconsciously attracted to each other's body odor. During the study, 146 participants rated the attractiveness of the body odor of unknown strong liberals and strong conservatives, without ever seeing the individuals whose smells they were evaluating. "People could not predict the political ideology of others by smell if you asked them, but they ...

A new study finds that habitual use of Facebook makes individuals susceptible to social media phishing attacks by criminals, likely because they automatically respond to requests without considering how they are connected with those sending the requests, how long they have known them, or who else is connected with them. Predictors of habitual use of Facebook include frequent interactions with the platform, a large number of friend connections, and individuals' inability to regulate their social media consumption. "Social media phishing is the attack vector of choice ...

Most homeowners are willing to take part in cost-sharing that helps pay for wildfire risk mitigation on their properties, but some of those with the highest wildfire risk are the least likely to participate in those programs, according to a collaborative study by the University of Colorado Boulder and partnering institutions. Past studies have shown that people who think their properties are vulnerable to wildfires are more open to taking actions that lower the risk, like clearing vegetation around their homes to create a defensible space. In the new study, published ...

Judges with daughters consistently vote in a more feminist fashion on gender issues than judges who have only sons, and the effect appears to be driven primarily by Republican judges. The findings are based on data on the families of 224 judges sitting on the US Courts of Appeals, as well as nearly 1,000 gender-related cases decided by these judges. The American Journal of Political Science study reveals that personal experiences influence how judges make decisions, and that empathy may indeed be a component in how judges decide cases. INFORMATION: END ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Adolescent girls living in economically disadvantaged families are more likely than their male counterparts to become overweight or obese, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. The study, published online this month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, shows long-lasting consequences of economic hardship in childhood for the risk of obesity in adulthood. The findings emphasize the need for programs and policies addressing the adverse health effects of socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood and adolescence, says Tetyana ...

In an unprecedented evolution experiment scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries have demonstrated for the first time, that the single most important calcifying algae of the world's oceans, Emiliania huxleyi, can adapt simultaneously to ocean acidification and rising water temperatures. In their study, the researchers found no evidence for the widespread idea that evolutionary adaptations to these two aspects of climate change would interfere with each other. "Even though the experiment was conducted under ...

San Francisco, September 14, 2014—A blood test may be beneficial in indicating neoadjuvant treatment regimens for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. Results of a nine-year study of patients undergoing concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy (CCRT) for esophageal cancer show that levels of two proteins found in the body, vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A) and transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), indicate patients' ...

San Francisco, September 14, 2014—High-risk prostate cancer patients who receive radiation therapy (RT) and an 18-month course of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) recover a normal testosterone level in a shorter amount of time compared to those who receive a 36-month course of ADT, thus resulting in a better quality of life (QOL) and without detriment to long-term outcomes, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. Researchers analyzed data from 561 patients with high-risk prostate cancer from ...

San Francisco, September 14, 2014—Patient-reported data indicates that when Manuka honey is prescribed for esophagitis pain during radiation therapy (RT), it is not more effective than standard medical care, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. Esophagitis, inflammation that damages tissues of the esophagus and causes discomfort, is a common and temporary side effect experienced by the majority of lung cancer patients undergoing RT. Small studies have previously been conducted to evaluate ...

San Francisco, September 14, 2014—A secondary analysis of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project B-32 trial (Krag 2010) indicates that radiation therapy (RT) does not increase the incidence of lymphedema in patients with node-negative breast cancer, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. The original NSABP B-32 study was a randomized trial of sentinel node biopsy (SNB) versus SNB + axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in 5,611 women with clinically node-negative breast cancer. ...

San Francisco, September 14, 2014—Patients with stage I and II Hodgkin's Disease who receive consolidated radiation therapy (RT) have a higher 10-year survival rate of 84 percent, compared to 76 percent for patients who did not receive RT; and, the data also shows a decrease in utilization of RT, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. Researchers evaluated clinical features and survival outcomes among 41,502 patients diagnosed with stage I and II Hodgkin's Disease from 1998 to 2011 from a prospectively ...

San Francisco, September 14, 2014—Radiation therapy (RT) alone is as effective in decreasing swallowing complications experienced by advanced esophageal cancer patients as RT combined with chemotherapy, thus allowing patients to forgo chemotherapy, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 56th Annual Meeting. In this international study that included sites in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom, researchers assessed the use of palliative chemotherapy combined with RT, or chemoradiotherapy (CRT), ...

"The results will allow us to better understand how the fish communities might shift under different climate change scenarios and provide the type of environmental data to inform future decisions relating to the management and siting of protected areas," said Paula Whitfield, a research ecologist at NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) and lead author of the study. The North Carolina reefs lie within the temperate-tropical transition zone, where historically, both temperate and tropical species live, at their respective range limits. However, water ...

Sharks, swamps and a tropical rainforest teeming with life – it's not what comes to mind when you think of Yorkshire, England. But for the first time evidence of Doncaster's 310-million-year-old past, including a fossilised shark egg case, has been discovered in a derelict mining tip. Some of the fossilised plants and creatures may even be new to science, and as well as the egg case, several horseshoe crabs and some previously unrecorded seed pods are amongst the finds. All had been preserved in rocks that formed within the coal and shale deposits in what is one of only ...

Rosemont, Ill., September 15, 2014: Globally, cardiovascular disease (CVD) claims 17 million lives each year, while complications from high blood pressure take an additional 9.4 million.1 New research presented by international scientists at the 12th Euro Fed Lipid Congress in Montpellier, France on September 15, 2014, suggests that milk consumption and dairy may play a beneficial role. At the Milk and Dairy Products in Human Health session, the association between milk and risk for hypertension and CVD was examined by Dr. Sabita S. Soedamah-Muthu from Wageningen University ...

This news release is available in German. The life of a cell is straightforward: it doubles, divides in the middle and originates two identical daughter cells. Therefore, it has been long assumed that cells of the same kind are similarly sized and big cells cannot divide symmetrically. Silvia Bulgheresi's team, University of Vienna, revealed that two non-model bacteria divide regularly despite growing so long to be perceivable by the naked eye. These findings have been published in the renowned journal Nature Communications. "The microorganisms thriving on the ...

A tiny fragment of Martian meteorite 1.3 billion years old is helping to make the case for the possibility of life on Mars, say scientists. The finding of a 'cell-like' structure, which investigators now know once held water, came about as a result of collaboration between scientists in the UK and Greece. Their findings are published in the latest edition of the journal Astrobiology. While investigating the Martian meteorite, known as Nakhla, Dr Elias Chatzitheodoridis of the National Technical University of Athens found an unusual feature embedded deep within the ...

Adults who were abused or neglected as children are known to have poorer health, but adults who tend to focus on and accept their reactions to the present moment—or are mindful—report having better health, regardless of their childhood adversity. These findings, to be published in the October issue of Preventive Medicine, are based on the first study ever conducted to examine the relationship between childhood adversity, mindfulness, and health. Led by Robert Whitaker, professor of public health and pediatrics at Temple University, the researchers surveyed 2,160 adults ...

The creation of the Vuoksi River and the subsequent rapid decrease in the water level of Lake Saimaa approximately 6,000 years ago revealed thousands of square kilometres of new, fertile land in eastern Finland. A multidisciplinary research project organised by University of Helsinki researchers has studied the role that the decrease in water levels has played in the interaction between nature and humans. After dramatic shifts in the waterways, human life in the area underwent significant changes and gave rise to a new, innovative culture. This stemmed from an increase ...

In a report published in today's Journal of Law and Medicine, the authors say an exemption to mandatory reporting in Western Australian legislation provides a model for amending equivalent laws in others jurisdictions, which could pave the way for nationally consistent legislation. The call to amend and harmonise mandatory reporting laws also has the backing of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and a 2011 Senate Committee inquiry. "Doctors who are unwell need to feel they can attend their treating doctor without the stumbling block of mandatory reporting," ...

Metastatic melanoma is a highly aggressive skin cancer whose incidence is on the rise at an alarming rate. Research has revealed that metastatic tumor cells share similar signaling pathways with embryonic stem cells to sustain plasticity and growth. However, major regulators of these pathways are often missing in tumor cells, thus allowing uncontrolled tumor growth and spreading to occur. During early vertebrate development, Nodal, an embryonic growth factor that governs the growth, pattern and position of tissues, is critical for normal maturation. Nodal plays a significant ...