Around 12,800 years ago, a sudden, catastrophic event plunged much of the Earth into a period of cold climatic conditions and drought. This drastic climate change—the Younger Dryas—coincided with the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, such as the saber-tooth cats and the mastodon, and resulted in major declines in prehistoric human populations, including the termination of the Clovis culture. With limited evidence, several rival theories have been proposed about the event that sparked this period, such as a collapse of the North American ice sheets, a major volcanic ...

LAWRENCE — A study from the University of Kansas finds that people can accurately detect the personality traits of strangers through Facebook activity; however, changes to the social media site in the past three years could be making it harder to do so. Researchers sampled 100 Facebook users, paralleling the demographics of the social networking site, and asked them to fill out a personality survey. A group of coders looked at each person's Facebook activity, 53 cues in all, to see whether certain personality types were more likely to do specific activities. The researchers ...

Don't get mad the next time you catch your teenager texting when he promised to be studying. He simply may not be able to resist. A University of Iowa study found teenagers are far more sensitive than adults to the immediate effect or reward of their behaviors. The findings may help explain, for example, why the initial rush of texting may be more enticing for adolescents than the long-term payoff of studying. "The rewards have a strong, perceptional draw and are more enticing to the teenager," says Jatin Vaidya, a professor of psychiatry at the UI and corresponding ...

The sixth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season formed in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean and NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured it. A visible image of Tropical Depression 6 was taken by NOAA's GOES-East satellite at 7:45 a.m. EDT on September 11 as it developed. The image was created by NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In addition to using GOES imagery and data from other NOAA and NASA satellites, The National Hurricane Center also uses measurements from the Advanced Scatterometer or ASCAT instrument ...

An NJIT research team has estimated the total mass of oil that reached the Gulf of Mexico shore in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout. It's the first time such an estimate was reported, and the study is published in the August issue of Environmental Science and Technology. The researchers found that 22,000 tons of oil reached the Gulf shoreline in 2010. This finding will help officials determine the persistence of oil on the shore and identify potential harm to the ecosystem. The study was conducted by the Center for Natural Resources Development and Protection ...

PHILADELPHIA – Amid recent discussion about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, Penn Medicine physicians say that high-income countries like the United States have an obligation to help those affected by the outbreak and to advance research to fight the deadly disease — including in the context of randomized clinical trials of new drugs to combat the virus. The two new editorials, which will appear "online first" in JAMA on September 11th, are written by faculty members in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Department of Social Science, ...

A team of Iranian researchers from the Rice Research Institute of Iran have discovered that Gynnodomorpha permixtana, a well-known moth species from Europe and Asia, has changed its host preferences in order to adjust to Iran's northern region environmental conditions. The importance of this adaptation for biological control of problematic weeds in rice fields and the biology of the moth on new host plant have been described in the open access journal Nota Lepidopterologica. The larvae of G. permixtana have been so far reported to feed on the seeds and flowers of plant ...

Sept. 11, 2014 - New research from Arizona State University and the University of Tokyo that analyzes transmission rates of Ebola in West African countries shows how rapidly the disease is spreading. Researchers Gerardo Chowell-Puente, ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change Associate Professor, and Hiroshi Nishiura of the University of Tokyo found that transmission rates for each single case of Ebola consistently showed at least one new case of the disease being transmitted. Country-specific analysis of transmission rates in Liberia and Sierra Leone showed on ...

One third of men in academic science are willing to scale back their careers to focus on family life, according to researchers. While traditional fatherhood roles may be shifting, men in the male-dominated field of academic science, such as physics and biology, face significant challenges in trying to balance work and family life, said Sarah Damaske, assistant professor of labor and employment relations and sociology, Penn State. The majority of men studied spoke of the pull of fatherhood and a desire to spend more time with children, yet they also acknowledged that academic ...

MAYWOOD, Ill – (Sept. 11, 2014) A deficiency of a single vitamin, B1 (thiamine), can cause a potentially fatal brain disorder called Wernicke encephalopathy. Symptoms can include confusion, hallucinations, coma, loss of muscle coordination and vision problems such as double vision and involuntary eye movements. Untreated, the condition can lead to irreversible brain damage and death, according to neurologists at Loyola University Medical Center. In the developed world, Wernicke encephalopathy typically occurs in people who have disorders such as alcoholism and anorexia ...

NEW YORK (September 10, 2014) – Members of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care (MECCC) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University's NCI–designated Albert Einstein Cancer Center will present new study findings at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) revealing the impact socioeconomic status has on radiation treatment compliance, predictive indicators for clinical outcomes and on radiation therapy duration and dosing recommendations. ASTRO is being held September 14 ...

There are more than 150 species of beetles in the genus Calathus, 17 of which have only been found in the mountains of the Ethiopian Highlands. Now scientists have found two new ones — Calathus juan and Calathus carballalae — and have described them in Annals of the Entomological Society of America. C. juan is named for Juan Novoa, the son of one of the authors, in recognition of his help on various beetle-collecting expeditions. Adults are black and shiny, and are 9.5-11.5 millimeters long. It was found under stones at the base of giant, tree-like plants called lobelias ...

This news release is available in German. Historic stone buildings are tourist magnets. The Jordanian rock city of Petra, the medieval town of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea and the sandstone temples at Luxor, Egypt, for example, attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. These cultural assets all have one thing in common: they suffer from weathering caused by salts. These crystallise inside the porous building materials and generate enough force for the stone to break or crumble. The same problem also occurs in concrete buildings in this country. Researchers at ...

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, there are more than 300,000 cases of Lyme disease in the U.S. each year. Last year, most Lyme disease cases reported to the CDC were concentrated heavily in the Northeast and upper Midwest, with 96 percent of cases in 13 states. In fact, the disease gets its name from the northeastern town of Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first discovered. However, a new article published in the Journal of Medical Entomology reports that the ticks that vector Lyme disease — Ixodes scapularis, also known as blacklegged ticks or deer ...

VIDEO: Researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Minnesota have found that local governments can help reduce youth obesity levels by increasing the amount and type of public... Click here for more information. COLUMBIA, Mo. – As youth obesity levels in America remain at record high levels, health professionals and policymakers continue to search for solutions to this national health issue. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri and the University ...

(Boston)--Adults who consume a high-protein diet may be at a lower risk for developing high blood pressure (HBP). The study, published in the American Journal of Hypertension, by researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), found participants consuming the highest amount of protein (an average of 100 g protein/day) had a 40 percent lower risk of having high blood pressure compared to the lowest intake level. One of three U.S. adults has hypertension and 78.6 million are clinically obese, a risk factor for the development of hypertension. Because of the ...

This news release is available in German. When it comes to defence against viruses, the immune system has an arsenal of weapons at its disposal including killer cells, antibodies and messenger molecules, to name just a few. When a pathogen attacks the body, the immune system usually activates the appropriate mechanisms. However, some of the mechanisms do not have to be triggered; they are continuously active as a standing army. Researchers from ETH Zurich, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Bern, have now discovered a new form of this so-called ...

MISSOULA – From antlers to horns, humans have long been fascinated by animals' ability to defend themselves with their natural-born weapons. But until now, no studies have directly tested whether those weapons perform better at the animals' own style of fighting than they would using the fighting style of another species. Researchers at the University of Montana recently discovered each species' weapons are structurally adapted to meet their own functional demands of fighting. The groundbreaking research, conducted over the past year by UM doctoral student Erin McCullough ...

A team of Berkeley Lab researchers believes it has uncovered the secret behind the unusual optoelectronic properties of single atomic layers of transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) materials, the two-dimensional semiconductors that hold great promise for nanoelectronic and photonic applications. Using two-photon excitation spectroscopy, the researchers probed monolayers of tungsten disulfide, one of the most promising of 2D materials, and found evidence for the existence of excitonic dark states – energy states in which single photons can be neither absorbed nor emitted. ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—Consumer price comparison is almost nonexistent in the U.S. health care system, but a new study shows that when given the choice between a less costly "open" operation or a pricier laparoscopy for their children's appendicitis, parents were almost twice as likely to choose the less expensive procedure – when they were aware of the cost difference. The study, published in the September issue of Annals of Surgery online, shows that providing pricing information upfront can influence patient choice of surgical procedures and potentially lead to cost savings ...

Endometriosis often takes a long time to be diagnosed and affects all areas of a women's life, a study has found. Research led by Monash University's Kate Young published in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care found that endometriosis affects women's sex lives, personal relationships, work life, and emotional wellbeing. Endometriosis is a chronic, recurring disease that is experienced by approximately 10 per cent of women worldwide. Common symptoms include painful menstruation, heavy menstrual bleeding, painful sex and infertility. Ms Young, ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2014—Zooming in on diseased tissue or scanning fragile biological samples are essential tools in medicine and biological research, but this often requires peering through layers of tissue and other materials that can blur and distort the image. Certain modern microscopes can compensate for this, but only for weak aberrations or by using invasive "guide stars," imaging aids that provide a stable reference point. In a first-of-its-kind demonstration, published today in The Optical Society's (OSA) new high-impact journal Optica, a team of researchers ...

After the detection of the ozone-depleting properties of CFCs in the 1970s, data from satellite measurements in 1985 startled mankind. A huge hole had been discovered over the Antarctic in the ozone layer that protects the Earth from dangerous, carcinogenic UV rays. Already in 1987 politicians around the world reached agreement on the Montreal Protocol that bans ozone-depleting substances, in particular chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). 197 states have now ratified this international treaty. A series of scientific expert reports has since accompanied the efforts to save the ozone ...

With the rise of emerging economies around the world and a concomitant upgrade of health care systems, the global population has been rapidly expanding. As a consequence, worldwide demand for agricultural products is also growing. Crops now provide food and the other important resources for seven billion humans. Food supplies are primarily based on such crops as wheat, maize, rice and vegetables. But as the area of arable land and of cultivated land continues to decline, the future ability to meet the world's food security needs has come under a cloud of uncertainty. Meanwhile, ...

A hiatus in global warming ongoing since 2001 is due to a combination of a natural cooling phase, known as multidecadal variability (MDV) and a downturn of the secular warming trend. The exact causes of the latter, unique in the entire observational record going back to 1850, are still to be identified, according to an article by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). The earth hasn't warmed at the same pace during the 20th century. The noticeable temperature increases during some periods interspersed with fairly stable or decreasing levels during others ...