MISSOULA – Winsor Lowe, interim director of the University of Montana's Wildlife Biology Program, co-wrote a research paper published April 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on how streamwater chemistry varies across a headwater stream network. Lowe and co-authors from Virginia Tech, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Washington, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the University of Connecticut and the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station examined 664 water samples collected every 10 meters along 32 tributaries ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Two independent studies use two very different approaches to reach the same conclusion: some online retailers really do have an advantage over traditional brick-and-mortar stores. The studies find evidence from investors, analysts and consumers themselves that suggest online stores have a competitive edge when they don't have to collect sales tax from shoppers. Both studies were conducted by researchers at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and their colleagues. In one study, Brian Baugh, Itzhak Ben-David, and Hoonsuk Park ...

JUPITER, FL, April 22, 2014 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a protein complex that plays a critical but previously unknown role in learning and memory formation. The study, which showed a novel role for a protein known as RGS7, was published April 22, 2014 in the journal eLife, a publisher supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust. "This is a critical building block that regulates a fundamental process—memory," said Kirill Martemyanov, a TSRI associate ...

Almost one-third of adults in Canada have experienced child abuse — physical abuse, sexual abuse or exposure to intimate partner (parents, step-parents or guardians) violence in their home. As well, child abuse is linked to mental disorders and suicidal ideation (thoughts) or suicide attempts, found an article published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "From a public health standpoint, these findings highlight the urgent need to make prevention of child abuse a priority in Canada," writes Dr. Tracie Afifi, departments of Community Health Sciences and Psychiatry, ...

A review of the literature on treating multiple sclerosis (MS) aims to provide physicians with evidence-based information on the latest treatments for this chronic disease. The article, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) looks at the latest pharmacologic research as well as disease-modifying agents and the benefits and risks of various treatments. "Recently, several new compounds have been developed and approved with the aim of favourably changing the disease course, but with varied success," writes Dr. Loredana La Mantia, Cochrane Multiple Sclerosis ...

This news release is available in German. Reactive oxygen species are important intracellular signaling molecules, but their mode of action is complex: In low concentrations they regulate key aspects of cellular function and behavior, while at high concentrations they can cause "oxidative stress", which damages organelles, membranes and DNA. To analyze how redox signaling unfolds in single cells and organelles in real-time, an innovative optical microscopy technique has been developed jointly by the teams of LMU Professor Martin Kerschensteiner and TUM Professor ...

DENVER (April 22, 2014) – Two studies from the University of Colorado Denver are shedding new light on the most common type of `friend' to be unfriended on Facebook and their emotional responses to it. The studies, published earlier this year, show that the most likely person to be unfriended is a high school acquaintance. "The most common reason for unfriending someone from high school is that the person posted polarizing comments often about religion or politics," said Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student in the Computer Science and Information Systems program at ...

Bethesda, MD, April 22, 2014: The Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) released a report today in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics on recommendations for a molecular diagnostics curriculum at both the baccalaureate and master's levels of education. The report was prepared by the Medical Laboratory Scientist (MLS) Curriculum Task Force of the AMP Training and Education Committee. "Our goal was to address the critical need of educating future medical laboratory scientists appropriately in order to manage the rapidly growing and changing realm of molecular diagnostic ...

HOUSTON – (April 22, 2014) – Biotechnology scientists must be aware of the broad patent landscape and push for new patent and licensing guidelines, according to a new paper from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Published in the current issue of the journal Regenerative Medicine, the paper is based on the June 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) v. Myriad Genetics that naturally occurring genes are unpatentable. The court case and rulings garnered discussion in the public about patenting biological materials. "The ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Inspired by the fist-like club of a mantis shrimp, a team of researchers led by University of California, Riverside, in collaboration with University of Southern California and Purdue University, have developed a design structure for composite materials that is more impact resistant and tougher than the standard used in airplanes. "The more we study the club of this tiny crustacean, the more we realize its structure could improve so many things we use every day," said David Kisailus, a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Science and the Winston ...

VIDEO: This 3-D flyby from NASA's TRMM satellite of Tropical Cyclone Jack on April 21 shows that some of the thunderstorms were shown by TRMM PR were still reaching height of... Click here for more information. Tropical Cyclone Jack lost its credentials today, April 22, as it no longer qualified as a tropical cyclone. However, before it weakened, NASA's TRMM satellite took a "second look" at the storm yesterday. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite had two ...

WASHINGTON D.C., April 22, 2014 -- By combining the powers of two single-atom-thick carbon structures, researchers at the George Washington University's Micro-propulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory have created a new ultracapacitor that is both high performance and low cost. The device, described in the Journal of Applied Physics, capitalizes on the synergy brought by mixing graphene flakes with single-walled carbon nanotubes, two carbon nanostructures with complementary properties. Ultracapacitors are souped-up energy storage devices that hold high amounts of energy ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—Using fish bred at Washington State University, an international team of researchers has mapped the genetic profile of the rainbow trout, a versatile salmonid whose relatively recent genetic history opens a window into how vertebrates evolve. The 30-person team, led by Yann Guiguen of the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, reports its findings this week in Nature Communications. The investigators focused on the rate at which genes have evolved since a rare genome doubling event occurred in the rainbow trout approximately 100 million years ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Analyzing thousands of breeding bird surveys sent in by citizen scientists across the western United States and Canada over 35 years, wildlife researchers report that most of the 40 songbird species they studied shifted either northward or toward higher elevation in response to climate change, but did not necessarily do both. This means that most previous studies of potential climate change impacts on wildlife that looked only at one factor or the other have likely underestimated the effects of environmental warming, say research wildlife biologists ...

WASHINGTON D.C., April 22, 2014 -- A team of researchers in Japan has developed a solid-state lamp that emits high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light at the shortest wavelengths ever recorded for such a device, from 140 to 220 nanometers. This is within the range of vacuum-UV light -- so named because while light of that energy can propagate in a vacuum, it is quickly absorbed by oxygen in the air. This fact makes vacuum UV light extremely useful for industrial applications from sterilizing medical devices to cleaning semiconductor substrates because when it strikes oxygen-containing ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)–A computational tool developed at the University of Utah (U of U) has successfully identified diseases with unknown gene mutations in three separate cases, U of U researchers and their colleagues report in a new study in The American Journal of Human Genetics. The software, Phevor (Phenotype Driven Variant Ontological Re-ranking tool), identifies undiagnosed illnesses and unknown gene mutations by analyzing the exomes, or areas of DNA where proteins that code for genes are made, in individual patients and small families. Sequencing the genomes of individuals ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (INPA), Brazil, this week report that they have discovered a new genus and species of electric knifefish in several tributaries of the Negro River in the Amazonia State of Brazil. Professor Cristina Cox Fernandes at UMass Amherst, with Adília Nogueira and José Antônio Alves-Gomes of INPA, describe the new bluntnose knifefish in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Their paper offers details about ...

PHILADELPHIA (April 22, 2014) – That person we all seem to know who we say is neurotic and unable to take action? Turns out he or she isn't unable to act but simply doesn't want to. A study of nearly 4,000 college students in 19 countries has uncovered new details about why neurotic people may avoid making decisions and moving forward with life. Turns out that when they are asked if action is positive, favorable, good, they just don't like it as much as non-neurotics. Therefore persuasive communications and other interventions may be useful if they simply alter ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Nearly 7 in 10 Americans support mandated coverage of birth control medications, according to a new national survey by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System. Women, blacks, Hispanics, parents with children under the age of 18 at home, and adults with private or public insurance were significantly more likely than other adults to support universal coverage of birth control medications, according to the findings that appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Individuals from all 50 states and the District of ...

Using nanodot technology, Berkeley Lab researchers have demonstrated the first size-based form of chromatography that can be used to study the membranes of living cells. This unique physical approach to probing cellular membrane structures can reveal information critical to whether a cell lives or dies, remains normal or turns cancerous, that can't be obtained through conventional microscopy. "We've developed membrane-embedded nanodot array platforms that provide a physical means to both probe and manipulate membrane assemblies, including signaling clusters, while they ...

Working with mice and rabbits, Johns Hopkins scientists have found a way to block abnormal cholesterol production, transport and breakdown, successfully preventing the development of atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attacks and strokes and the number-one cause of death among humans. The condition develops when fat builds inside blood vessels over time and renders them stiff, narrowed and hardened, greatly reducing their ability to feed oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscle and the brain. In a series of experiments, described April 7 in the journal Circulation, ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 22, 2014—Hemoglobin A1c is the standard measurement for assessing glycemic control over time in people with diabetes. Blood levels of A1c are typically measured every few months in a laboratory, but now researchers have developed a data-based model that accurately estimates A1c using self-monitored blood glucose (SMBG) readings, as described in Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT), a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the DTT website at http://www.liebertpub.com/dtt. In "Accuracy ...

A new study from North Carolina State University and the University of Toronto finds that people pay more attention to the upper half of their field of vision – a finding which could have ramifications for traffic signs to software interface design. "Specifically, we tested people's ability to quickly identify a target amidst visual clutter," says Dr. Jing Feng, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work. "Basically, we wanted to see where people concentrate their attention at first glance." Researchers had participants fix ...

This news release is available in French. Performed in less than a month, sequencing of the complete genome and subsequent phylogenetic analysis show that the virus present in Guinea forms a clade (variant) that is distinct from strains previously identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Gabon. Epidemiological investigations also linked the laboratory confirmed cases with the initial deaths recorded during the December 2013 outbreak. Ebola virus is a lethal, highly contagious virus for which there is presently no treatment. The symptoms are somewhat ...

This news release is available in German. Scientists of the Max F. Perutz Laboratories of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, together with colleagues of the ETH Zurich, have now shown how double stranded RNA, such as viral genetic information, is prevented from entering the nucleus of a cell. During the immune response against viral infection, the protein ADAR1 moves from the cell nucleus into the surrounding cytoplasm. There it modifies viral RNA to inhibit reproduction of the virus. But how is the human genome protected from inadvertent ...