Tropical plantations in Southeast Asia have supplied most of the essential, natural rubber for truck, car and airplane tires for the past century. Now the tire industry and others say they're finally overcoming long-standing challenges to turn a desert shrub into an alternative source of the stretchy material. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) explains that the latest developments will help diversify an otherwise vulnerable supply chain. Alexander Tullo, a senior correspondent at C&EN, explains that natural rubber has unique properties that make it ideal ...

Rapidly swinging from extremes of joy and energy to sadness, fatigue, and confusion, bipolar disorder (BD) patients feel desperate and largely alone in the world. And according to the National Institutes of Health, between 25-50 percent of the roughly 3% of Americans living with BD attempt suicide at least once. Lithium is among the most effective therapies for BD, and remains the first-line treatment even as other mood stabilizing drugs have become available. But about half of the patients prescribed lithium do not respond to the treatment. A new Tel Aviv University ...

TORONTO, April 22, 2015 -- A genetic test that can prevent 'killer' bees from spreading around the world has been created in a research effort led by University of Sydney scholars jointly with York University scientists. "Our genetic test is highly accurate and considerably more sophisticated than the old tests that have a high tendency to misclassify hybrid bees," says Professor Amro Zayed in the department of Biology, Faculty of Science. Africanized honeybees are highly aggressive and very difficult to manage relative to European honeybees used by Canadian and Australian ...

In the most comprehensive study ever on the impact of smoking on cardiovascular disease in older people, epidemiologist Dr. Ute Mons from the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) analyzed 25 individual studies, compiling data from over half a million individuals age 60 and older. Twice as many smokers die from cardiovascular disease than life-long non-smokers do. The increase in risk depends on the number of cigarettes that a person has smoked in his or her lifetime. After one quits smoking, this risk continues to decrease. On average, ...

In the quantum world of light, being distinguishable means staying lonely. Only those photons that are indistinguishable can wind up in a pair, through what is called Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. This subtle quantum effect has been successfully imaged for the first time by two doctoral students from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw. Physicists have long known that photons can become bunched together. However, technological limitations have prevented the phenomenon from actually being observed directly. Only recently has this feat been achieved by two ...

Bethesda, MD, April 20, 2015: The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), the premier global, non-profit organization serving molecular diagnostic professionals, today published a special article in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics titled, "Do Circulating Tumor Cells, Exosomes, and Circulating Tumor Nucleic Acids Have Clinical Utility?" The report provides a thorough overview of research to-date on the minimally invasive "liquid biopsy" approaches to cancer diagnostics. "As a group of molecular diagnostic experts, we were intrigued and excited by the emerging ...

Hasbro Children's Hospital study finds link between adverse childhood experiences and pediatric asthma Children who experience violence, substance abuse at home report significantly higher rates of asthma PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Robyn Wing, M.D., an emergency medicine physician at Hasbro Children's Hospital, recently led a study that found children who were exposed to an adverse childhood experience (ACE) were 28 percent more likely to develop asthma. The rate of asthma occurrence further increased in children with each additional ACE exposure. The study, recently published ...

Scientists have for the first time captured live images of the process of taste sensation on the tongue. The international team imaged single cells on the tongue of a mouse with a specially designed microscope system. "We've watched live taste cells capture and process molecules with different tastes," said biomedical engineer Dr Steve Lee, from The Australian National University (ANU). There are more than 2,000 taste buds on the human tongue, which can distinguish at least five tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter and umami. However the relationship between the ...

Rather than slowing down, ants speed up in response to a higher density of traffic on their trails, according to new research published in Springer's journal The Science of Nature - Naturwissenschaften. When the researchers increased the supply of food by leaving food next to the trail, ants accelerated their speed by 50 percent. This was despite more than double the density of traffic. When food increases in supply, more forager ants are sent out to carry it back to the nest. With this increase in ant density, the number of encounters between outbound and incoming individuals ...

The ability of materials to conduct heat is a concept that we are all familiar with from everyday life. The modern story of thermal transport dates back to 1822 when the brilliant French physicist Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier published his book "Théorie analytique de la chaleur" (The Analytic Theory of Heat), which became a corner stone of heat transport. He pointed out that the thermal conductivity, i.e., ratio of the heat flux to the temperature gradient is an intrinsic property of the material itself. The advent of nanotechnology, where the rules of classical ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have made an important finding that could help develop an early test for kidney disease. Dr Rachel Lennon from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research has been studying why some people are more susceptible to kidney disease because of their race and gender. She explains: "It's well known that impaired kidney function is more common in Afro-Caribbean individuals compared to those from a Caucasian background, and in men compared to women. However, the reasons for the difference in susceptibility are only just being ...

This news release is available in German. The size of the neonatal skull is large relative to the dimensions of the birth canal in the female pelvis. This is the reason why childbirth is slower and more difficult in humans than in most other primates. Scientists from the Universities of Oslo and Vienna, identified adaptations in the morphology of the human body, which were unknown so far. The results of this new study appeared in the current edition of PNAS. Upright walking and difficult birth In hominids, upright walking evolved 4-5 million years ago. The ...

Is it possible to prevent mental health problems in higher education students? The answer is "yes" according to a team of psychologists from Loyola University Chicago who conducted a careful, systematic review of 103 universal interventions involving over 10,000 students enrolled in 2- and 4-year colleges and universities and graduate programs. The findings appear in the May 2015 issue of Prevention Science, published by Springer. Researchers indicated that universal prevention interventions - that is, programs targeting general students, not just students who are at ...

Researchers from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry are part of a team led by the University of Oxford, who have carried out new research that suggests mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) could provide an alternative non-drug treatment for people who do not wish to continue long-term antidepressant treatment. The results are published in "The Lancet". The results come from the first ever large study to compare MBCT - structured training for the mind and body which aims to change the way people think and feel about their experiences ...

Fragments of asteroids regularly land on Earth as meteorites. If you examine such a find, you can see that it comprises millimetre-sized round stones, known as chondrules. These small particles are believed to be the original building blocks of the solar system. However, the research community has not previously been able to explain how the chondrules formed asteroids. A new study shows that asteroids were formed by capturing chondrules with the help of gravitational force. "The chondrules are of exactly the right size to be slowed down by the gas that orbited the young ...

Researchers at the Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) have identified a new way of treating colorectal cancer. In the study published in the journal Science Signaling, the team led by LLuís Espinosa, investigator of IMIM's research group into stem cells and cancer, have shown that inhibition of endosomal activity is a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of cancers with the BRAF mutated gene. This discovery is an important step in the personalisation of the treatment of colorectal cancer, as the presence of this mutation is ...

Bethesda, MD (April 22, 2015) -- The May issues of AGA's journals -- Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Gastroenterology -- highlight important research updates on the most deadly forms of liver disease. Here's what you need to know: Researchers confirm that NAFLD worsens heart disease. One specific cardiovascular disease risk factor -- psychological distress -- is linked to death from liver disease in a large, general population sample. Improvements in cirrhosis care have contributed to a 41 percent decrease in inpatient mortality. For access to any of ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered that electron spin brings a previously unknown degree of order to the high entropy alloy nickel iron chromium cobalt (NiFeCrCo) - and may play a role in giving the alloy its desirable properties. "High entropy alloys have garnered a lot of attention over the past 10 years because they have remarkable properties," says Doug Irving, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the work. High entropy alloys are materials that consist ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio--An international research team is bringing a new weapon to bear against invasive earthworms. The ongoing research project at The Ohio State University, the University of Alberta and Simon Fraser University uses statistical analysis to forecast one worm species' spread, in hopes of finding ways to curtail it. Most recently, they've focused on the boreal forest of northern Alberta. No native worms live in the forest whatsoever; the region had been worm-free since the last ice age 11,000 years ago, until invasive European species began working their way ...

Alternative variations from popular artists' videos may reach an audience of millions, shows the new study from Finland's Aalto University. Music is the most popular YouTube content by several measures, including video views and search activity. The world's first academic study on YouTube music consumption by Aalto University in Finland shows that one reason for its popularity lies in users' own video. People re-use original music by popular artists to create their own alternative video variations, which may reach an audience of millions and can be found alongside any ...

TORONTO, April 22, 2015--In a study to ascertain whether breast arterial calcification (BAC) detected with digital mammography correlates to chest CT findings of coronary artery calcification (CAC), researchers have discovered a striking relationship between the two factors. In 76% of the study cohort, women who had a BAC score of 0 also had a CAC score of 0. As the BAC score increases, there is a concomitant increase in the CAC score. The findings indicate that the presence of BAC could play a significant role in identifying women who may benefit from coronary artery ...

The exoplanet 51 Pegasi b [1] lies some 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It was discovered in 1995 and will forever be remembered as the first confirmed exoplanet to be found orbiting an ordinary star like the Sun [2]. It is also regarded as the archetypal hot Jupiter -- a class of planets now known to be relatively commonplace, which are similar in size and mass to Jupiter, but orbit much closer to their parent stars. Since that landmark discovery, more than 1900 exoplanets in 1200 planetary systems have been confirmed, but, in the year of the ...

People waiting for organ transplants may soon have higher hopes of getting the help that they need in time. Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology have developed a new technique that extends the time that donor organs last and can also resuscitate organs obtained after cardiac arrest. The work published in Scientific Reports details a procedure that cools organs down to 22 °C (71.6 °F) and slows down organ function while still supplying oxygen, resulting in more successful transplants than the current standard methods. Team leader Takashi Tsuji ...

Real or counterfeit? Northwestern University scientists have invented sophisticated fluorescent inks that one day could be used as multicolored barcodes for consumers to authenticate products that are often counterfeited. Snap a photo with your smartphone, and it will tell you if the item is real and worth your money. Counterfeiting is very big business worldwide, with $650 billion per year lost globally, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. The new fluorescent inks give manufacturers and consumers an authentication tool that would be very difficult for ...

Overall, an estimated 211,514 people attended Emergency Departments (EDs), Minor Injury Units (MIUs) and Walk-in Centres in England and Wales for treatment following violence in 2014 - 22,995 fewer than in 2013. Serious violence affecting all age groups decreased in 2014 compared to 2013. Most notably, recorded acts of violence against children (0-10 year olds) and adolescents (11-17 year olds) were marked by an 18% decline. The data was gathered from a scientific sample of 117 EDs, MIUs and Walk-in Centres in England and Wales. All are certified members of the National ...