A team of Spanish researchers have obtained the first partial genome sequence of an ancient pig. Extracted from a sixteenth century pig found at the site of the Montsoriu Castle in Girona, the data obtained indicates that this ancient pig is closely related to today's Iberian pig. Researchers also discard the hypothesis that Asian pigs were crossed with modern Iberian pigs. The study, published in Heredity, sheds new light on evolutionary aspects of pig species, and particularly on that of the Iberian breed, considered to be representative of original European Mediterranean ...

Smoke from the fires in the Selway Complex is wafting into the Selway River valley in this image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on September 15, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. All the fires began between August 10 and August 25, 2014 by lightning strikes. The following fires are part of the Selway Complex: Raven Creek, Elevator Mountain, Eagle Creek, Vance Mountain, Nick Wynn, and Jerusalem fires. The Johnson Bar fire is also contributing to the smoke ...

Lamprey—slimy, eel-like parasitic fish with tooth-riddled, jawless sucking mouths—are rather disgusting to look at, but thanks to their important position on the vertebrate family tree, they can offer important insights about the evolutionary history of our own brain development, a recent study suggests. The work appears in a paper in the September 14 advance online issue of the journal Nature. "Lamprey are one of the most primitive vertebrates alive on Earth today, and by closely studying their genes and developmental characteristics, researchers can learn more about ...

(MEMPHIS, TENN. – September 16, 2014) A study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators has found the chemotherapy dose threshold below which male childhood cancer survivors are likely to have normal sperm production. The study appears in September 17 edition of the journal Lancet Oncology. By clarifying which patients are at highest risk for reduced sperm production as adults, researchers expect the findings to eventually increase use of pre-treatment fertility preservation methods such as sperm banking. The study involved drugs called alkylating agents ...

State legislators are more attentive to wealthy citizens' political opinions compared to poor citizens' opinions when making policy decisions, but stricter regulations on professional lobbyists can promote more equal political representation, according to a Baylor University study. "Stricter lobbying laws are an important tool for ensuring that citizens' opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make important policy decisions," said researcher Patrick Flavin, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. The ...

Sticklebacks, the roaches of the fish world, are the ideal animal in which to study the genes that control body shape. They've moved from the ocean into tens of thousands of freshwater streams and lakes around the world, each time changing their skeleton to adapt to the new environment. Breeding studies between marine and freshwater populations of sticklebacks now have turned up one of the genes that controls tooth number, plus evidence that a simple change in that gene's regulation in a freshwater population is associated with a near doubling in the number of teeth. ...

A new study of high school activities bears this message for incoming high school students: Play what the smart kids play. Joining an extra-curricular team or club with members that get good grades can double a high school student's odds of going to college. And Brigham Young University sociologist and study co-author Lance Erickson knows how to sell the study to teens. "Tell your parents, whatever they ground you from, it shouldn't be from practice or a club activity," said Erickson. "If they ground you from a school club, you are more likely to end up living at ...

VIDEO: In this Science Minute from NIMBioS, Dr. Elizabeth Hobson explains what monk parakeets can teach us about complex sociality. Click here for more information. KNOXVILLE—Science has learned a great deal about complex social behavior by studying nonhuman mammals and primates, but parrots might have something to teach too. With their unusually large brains relative to their body size and advanced cognition, parrots live in a complex social environment---not merely in ...

As nations zero in on the UN's post-2015 global Sustainable Development Goals, innovations being successfully pioneered and demonstrated in Malaysia offer several proven tactical ideas for improving the world, says an influential international sustainable development networking organization. The UN's Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), through its Malaysian chapter, cites ways in which the country is "rising to the challenge," including the construction of ingenious, self-sustaining "smart" villages -- each lifting about 100 families out of poverty and ...

The risk of severe maternal morbidity amongst women in Australia is increased by lower socioeconomic position, suggests a new study published today (17 September) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Australians generally enjoy high standards of living; however, existing research has concluded that health disparities exist, in particular between indigenous and non indigenous Australians. This case-control study aimed to explore the independent impact of socioeconomic position on severe maternal morbidities associated with direct maternal ...

Trees have been growing significantly faster since the 1960s. The typical development phases of trees and stands have barely changed, but they have accelerated -- by as much as 70 percent. This was the outcome of a study carried out by scientists from Technische Universität München based on long-term data from experimental forest plots that have been continuously observed since 1870. Their findings were published recently in Nature Communications. Three decades ago, "forest dieback" was a hot topic, with the very survival of large forest ecosystems seemingly in doubt. ...

One sip of a perfectly poured glass of wine leads to an explosion of flavours in your mouth. Researchers at Aarhus University, Denmark, have now developed a nanosensor that can mimic what happens in your mouth when you drink wine. The sensor measures how you experience the sensation of dryness in the wine. When wine growers turn their grapes into wine, they need to control a number of processes to bring out the desired flavour in the product that ends up in the wine bottle. An important part of the taste is known in wine terminology as astringency, and it is characteristic ...

This news release is available in Spanish and Spanish. As far as the conclusions of the study are concerned, the following aspects, among others, are worth highlighting: the more compact the town or city is, the more concentrated is its population; the more jobs there are in the municipality itself, etc., the less private vehicles are used; the better the offer of public transport, the lower the number of people who use private cars; the higher the per capita income is (in small localities), the greater is the tendency to use the private car. According to Mendiola, ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Obesity and overweight affect more than half of the population in our Community. Excess weight causes important alterations in the organism, one of which affects liver function. Fat accumulates in the liver producing hepatic steatosis which, in certain circumstances, causes inflammation, fibrosis and finally, cirrhosis. To date, the most reliable method for determining hepatic fat has been hepatic biopsy. Imaging techniques such as abdominal ecography detect it but are less precise for determining the quantity of fat. But ...

The car of the future will be safer, smarter and offer greater high-tech gadgets, but be warned without improved security the risk of car hacking is real, according to a QUT road safety expert. Professor Andry Rakotonirainy will speak at the Occupational Safety in Transport Conference (OSIT) on the Gold Coast on September 18-19 on the security threat facing drivers as vehicles become computers on wheels. Professor Rakotonirainy, from QUT's Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety - Queensland (CARRS), has researched the security systems of existing fleet, future ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Right now no one can say whether yoga provides clinical benefits to people with bipolar disorder, but in a new article in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice, researchers report survey responses they gathered from scores of people with the condition who practice yoga. What the collective testimony suggests is that yoga can be a substantial help, but it sometimes carries risks, too. "There is no scientific literature on hatha yoga for bipolar disorder," said lead author Lisa Uebelacker, associate professor (research) of psychiatry ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — After decades of decline, grasses have returned to some once-denuded patches of Cape Cod's saltmarshes. To the eye, the marsh in those places seems healthy again, but a new study makes clear that a key service of the marsh – coastal protection – remains diminished. "We've got the aesthetics back but the ecosystem function hasn't come back," said ecologist Mark Bertness, professor of biology at Brown and senior author of the study in the journal Biological Conservation. "The metric of a recovered habitat should not be 'Does it look ...

For most people biofilms conjure up images of slippery stones in a streambed and dirty drains. While there are plenty of "bad" biofilms around – they even cause pesky dental plaque and a host of other more serious medical problems – a team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University sees biofilms as a robust new platform for designer nanomaterials that could clean up polluted rivers, manufacture pharmaceutical products, fabricate new textiles, and more. In short, they want to give biofilms a facelift, and have developed a novel protein ...

Researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health are the first to demonstrate an association between childhood asthma and prenatal exposure to two phthalates used in a diverse array of household products. Results appear online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Children born to mothers exposed during pregnancy to higher levels of the chemicals, butylbenzyl phthalate (BBzP) and di-n-butyl phthalate (DnBP) had a 72 percent and 78 percent increase in risk of developing asthma between age 5 and 11, ...

The risk of severe maternal morbidity amongst women in Australia is increased by lower socioeconomic position, suggests a new study published today (17 September) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Australians generally enjoy high standards of living; however, existing research has concluded that health disparities exist, in particular between indigenous and non indigenous Australians. This case-control study aimed to explore the independent impact of socioeconomic position on severe maternal morbidities associated with direct maternal ...

Women from lower socioeconomic groups in the UK report a poorer experience of care during pregnancy and there needs to be a greater focus on their care, suggests a new study published today (17 September) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG). Differences in health outcomes amongst different socioeconomic groups have been demonstrated in many areas and have provided the focus for national initiatives in the UK to reduce the observed inequalities. The Oxford University study, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, explores ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (September 17, 2014)—The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) has published its key, evidence-based recommendations for the comprehensive care of midlife women—on everything from hot flashes to heart disease. The special feature, "The North American Menopause Society Recommendations for Clinical Care of Midlife Women," was published online today in the Society's journal Menopause. This is the first, comprehensive set of evidence-based recommendations for the care of midlife women freely available to all clinicians who care for women at this stage of life. ...

Transmission of bacterial infections, including MRSA and MSSA could be curbed by coating hospital surfaces with microscopic bumps that mimic the scaly surface of shark skin, according to research published in the open access journal Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control. The study modelled how well different materials prevented the spread of human disease bacteria through touching, sneezes or spillages. The micropattern, named Sharklet™, is an arrangement of ridges formulated to resemble shark skin. The study showed that Sharklet harboured 94% less MRSA bacteria ...

An international research group led by Junko Ueda, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science postdoctoral fellow, has made surprising observations that most galaxy collisions in the nearby Universe — within 40 million light-years from Earth — result in so-called disc galaxies. Disc galaxies — including spiral galaxies like the Milky Way and lenticular galaxies — are defined by pancake-shaped regions of dust and gas, and are distinct from the category of elliptical galaxies. It has, for some time, been widely accepted that merging disc galaxies would eventually form ...

NEW YORK (17 September, 2014)—More than $100 trillion in cumulative public and private spending, and 1,700 megatons of annual carbon dioxide (CO2)—a 40 percent reduction of urban passenger transport emissions—could be eliminated by 2050 if the world expands public transportation, walking and cycling in cities, according to a new report released by the University of California, Davis, and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). Further, an estimated 1.4 million early deaths could be avoided annually by 2050 if governments require the strongest ...