Diets of snakes from a temperate region in South America may depend more on phylogeny (ancestry) than ecology, according to a study published May 6, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Gisela Bellini from Instituto Nacional de Limnología, Argentina and colleagues. Some scientists believe that the deep history hypothesis based on phylogeny -- the history of evolution, or ancestry and relationships between snakes -- and ecological interactions from the competition-predation hypothesis may act together to determine the structure of snake communities. The authors ...

Post-surgical leaks that develop after a segment of the colon has been removed and stitched back together often are caused not by negligence or technical error but by bacteria in the bowel that elude antibiotics, according to new evidence about this devastating complication of gastrointestinal surgery. Such leaks, which can develop days or weeks after the procedure, allow the bowel's contents to spill into the abdomen and can cause pain, fever, sepsis and even death. In patients undergoing high risk surgery such as in the rectum, leak rates can approach 30 percent. ...

Berkeley -- A research team led by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, has developed a new mobile phone microscope that uses video to automatically detect and quantify infection by parasitic worms in a drop of blood. This next generation of UC Berkeley's CellScope technology could help revive efforts to eradicate debilitating diseases in Africa by providing critical information for health providers in the field. "We previously showed that mobile phones can be used for microscopy, but this is the first device that combines the imaging technology with ...

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is a growing problem in the United States and the world. New findings by researchers in evolutionary biology and mathematics could help doctors better address the problem in a clinical setting. Biologist Miriam Barlow of the University of California, Merced, and mathematician Kristina Crona of American University tested and found a way to return bacteria to a pre-resistant state. In research published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, they show how to rewind the evolution of bacteria and verify treatment options for a family ...

Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues have developed a mobile phone microscope to measure blood levels of the parasitic filarial worm Loa loa. The point-of-care device may enable safe resumption of mass drug administration campaigns to eradicate the parasitic diseases onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). Efforts to eliminate these diseases in Central Africa through community-wide administration ...

Just witnessing aggression or other bad behaviour at work can affect our well-being, but the right support from employers and colleagues can limit the consequences. That is the conclusion of research being presented today, Thursday 7 May 2015, by Dr Christine Sprigg from the Institute of Work Psychology at the Sheffield University Management School at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society in Liverpool. Dr Sprigg and her colleagues surveyed 127 British employees who had witnessed aggression at work. Employees were asked to complete a number of psychological ...

Psychologists are to improve online health information on lung cancer after research showed that family members are more likely to search online to encourage loved ones to seek help. This is one of the outcomes from research by PhD student Julia Mueller based in the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work at The University of Manchester (part of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre) who will present her study today, Thursday 7 May 2015, at the Annual Conference of the British Psychology Society being held in Liverpool. Julia Mueller said: "People displaying ...

Children are more likely to display troublesome behaviour in families in which the father feels unsupported by his partner. The findings by Doctoral Researcher Rachel Latham from the University of Sussex will be presented today, Thursday 7 May 2015, at the Annual Conference of the British Psychology Society being held in Liverpool. The ways in which parents work together in their roles has been shown to be an important factor in relation to the behaviour of their children. However, few studies have distinguished between mothers' and fathers' perceptions of the support ...

How to protect your chicks from predators? Build a dome over them! There is tremendous diversity among the nests of birds, in nest location, structure, materials, and more, but we know very little about the forces that shaped the evolution of this incredible variety. In a new paper published this week in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, Zachary Hall, Sally Street, Sam Auty, and Susan Healy of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland test the hypothesis that domed-shaped nests arose as a result of some species transitioning to nesting on the ground, where the risk from ...

Viewing violent news events via social media can cause people to experience symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This is one of the findings by Dr Pam Ramsden from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Bradford that will be presented today, Thursday 7 May 2015, at the Annual Conference of the British Psychology Society being held in Liverpool. Dr Ramsden explained: "The negative effects of exposure to other people's suffering have long been recognised in roles such as professional healthcare workers. Various studies have documented the ...

NEWPORT, Ore. - A new study on the impact of 'drive-hunting' dolphins in the Solomon Islands is casting a spotlight on the increasing vulnerability of small cetaceans around the world. From 1976 to 2013, more than 15,000 dolphins were killed by villagers in Fanalei alone, where a single dolphin tooth can fetch the equivalent of 70 cents ($0.70 U.S.) - an increase in value of five times just in the last decade. Results of the Solomon Islands study are being reported this week online in the new journal, Royal Society Open Science. "In the Solomon Islands, the hunting ...

Male job applicants who are perceived to have high levels of leadership potential are rated as a better employment prospect than a female applicant with proven leadership track record. This is the finding of a study by undergraduate student Fatima Tresh, Dr Georgina Randsley de Moura and Abigail Player from the University of Kent that will presented today, Wednesday 6 May at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Liverpool. The study was funded by a 2014 BPS Undergraduate Research Assistantship Scheme. The scheme marks out a student as a future researcher ...

New York, NY - Although rates of childhood obesity have risen over the last several decades, a vast majority of parents perceive their kids as "about the right weight," according to new research led by NYU Langone Medical Center. The research findings appear online in the journal Childhood Obesity, and also included researchers from Georgia Southern University and Fudan University in Shanghai. The authors believe it is the first study to examine the lack of change over time of parents' perception of their preschool child's weight status. The results are important, they ...

Health interventions to increase exercise in older people could be more successful if they differentiated between people aged 65 to 79 years old and those over 80 years old. This is the finding of a study by Dr Mark Moss and colleagues from Northumbria University that will be presented today, Thursday 7 May 2015 at the Annual Conference of the British Psychology Society being held in Liverpool. Some 144 participants aged 65 to 95 completed questionnaires about their current health and wellbeing, vitality, motivation to exercise and barriers to exercise. Age was ...

Local media's sensitive approach to communities trying to cope in the face of trauma helps local people adapt to the stressful events by strengthening community bonds. This is one of the findings of a study by MSc student Suzanne Day from Lancaster University being presented today, Wednesday 6 May 2015, at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Liverpool. The study examined how West Cumbrian communities coped with two local traumatic events in a short space of time (the November 2009 floods and June 2010 Cumbria shootings). A total of 77 adults who were ...

A fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) not only cured a case of Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infection in a 66 year old man; it eliminated populations of multi-drug resistant organisms both in the patient's gastrointestinal tract, and several other body sites. This case report is published ahead of print April 15 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The patient suffered from quadriplegia and multiple other conditions, requiring a ventilator, a feeding tube, and chronic foley catheterization. As a result of his ...

Imagine taking strands of DNA - the material in our cells that determines how we look and function - and using it to build tiny structures that can deliver drugs to targets within the body or take electronic miniaturization to a whole new level. While it may still sound like science fiction to most of us, researchers have been piecing together and experimenting with DNA structures for decades. And, in recent years, work by scientists such as McGill University chemistry professor Hanadi Sleiman has moved the use of man-made DNA structures closer to a variety of real-world ...

A study of survival rates in trauma patients following health insurance reform in Massachusetts found a passing increase in adjusted mortality rates, an unexpected finding suggesting that simply providing insurance incentives and subsidies may not improve survival for trauma patients, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. Massachusetts introduced health care reform in 2006 to expand health insurance coverage and improve outcomes. Some previous research has suggested improved survival rates following injury in patients with insurance. But the relationship ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, May 6, 2015 -- Plans for summer holidays are already taking shape. But before jetting off for some fun in the sun, many travellers will have to cope with long delays on the airport runway. Thanks to new research from Concordia University, however, that time spent twiddling your thumbs on the tarmac could be significantly reduced. In a new study, forthcoming in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Journal of Aircraft, Concordia mechanical engineering professor Georgios Vatistas describes a new ...

A Stirling scientist who discovered a new Scottish flower has made an unexpected second finding which provides unique insight into our understanding of evolution. Dr Mario Vallejo-Marin, a Plant Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Stirling, first unearthed a new species of monkeyflower on the bank of a stream in South Lanarkshire, Southern Scotland in 2012. A subsequent expedition two years later led Dr Vallejo-Marin to locate the impressive yellow flower some 350 miles north, near Stromness on the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. "Orkney was ...

There are now over 80,000 apps marketed as "educational" in the Apple app store, the majority of which are targeted towards children and even babies. Parents are led to believe that these apps provide real learning opportunities for their children, but scientific research suggests that many of the apps are nothing more than digital candy. "Many apps marketed as 'educational' are basically the equivalent of sugary foods," says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek of Temple University, co-author on a new report investigating educational apps. "At best, most of these apps will do no harm; ...

NEW YORK (May 6, 2015) -- To fence or not to fence? That is the question facing conservationists concerned with barriers that keep wildlife in and people out. According to a new study by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups, appearing in April 20 edition of the Journal of Applied Ecology, new policies must be developed before fences are erected - particularly in dryland ecosystems where mobility is essential for both humans and wildlife. Some nations are considering fences as a means to protect remnant wildlife ...

This news release is available in German. An X-ray study carried out at DESY allows to improve the quality of chocolate. The study offers new insights into the formation of fat bloom, an unwelcome white layer that occasionally forms on chocolate. "Although fat blooming is perfectly harmless, it causes millions in damage to the food industry as a result of rejects and customer complaints," explains the main author of the study, Svenja Reinke, from the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH). "Despite this well known quality issue, comparatively little has been known ...

(BOSTON) - Increasingly, scientists across the world and in the Unites States are reporting new and groundbreaking innovations in biotechnology with transformative implications in human health and environmental sustainability. Examples range from synthetically created, metabolically-engineered bacteria for the sustainable production of fuel to gene editing therapies that could one day help in the prevention and treatment of a large number of human diseases. While these technologies are developed in laboratories, researchers are not only giving utmost consideration to ...

New Haven, Conn. - Convincing a large group of people to change its behavior is no popularity contest, a new study shows. In a novel experiment, researchers found that certain public health interventions work best when key "influencers" in a face-to-face social network are exposed to the program. What's surprising, they say, is that those key influencers are not the most socially connected people in the network. Furthermore, those individuals can be identified through a survey method informed by network structure rather than costly and time-consuming social network mapping. ...