Modern-day puffins and auks have long been recognized as environmental indicator species for ongoing faunal shifts, and fossil records now indicate that ancient relatives were similarly informative. Researchers have found that puffins and auks may have been at their most diverse and widespread levels during a relatively warm period of Earth's history. The results also explain how past extinctions have shaped the geographic distribution and population size of existing species. Authors Adam Smith of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, N.C., and ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A new analysis of global energy use, economics and the climate shows that without new climate policies, expanding the current bounty of inexpensive natural gas alone would not slow the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide over the long term, according to a study appearing today in Nature. Because natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, many people hoped the recent natural gas boom could help slow climate change—and according to government analyses, natural gas did contribute partially to a decline in U.S. carbon ...

This market effect erases the advantage of lower emissions from the natural gas itself, according to an unprecedented international comparison of computer simulations. "The upshot is that abundant natural gas alone will not rescue us from climate change," says the lead author Haewon McJeon of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Especially in the US advances such as hydraulic fracturing – pumping liquids into stone to break it up and release the gas, known as fracking – and horizontal drilling have led to bountiful natural ...

UCLA researchers have discovered that some scar-forming cells in the heart, known as fibroblasts, have the ability to become endothelial cells — the cells that form blood vessels. The finding could point the way toward a new strategy for treating people who have suffered a heart attack, because increasing the number of blood vessels in the heart boosts its ability to heal after injury. In studies involving mice, the UCLA team also found that a drug could enhance this phenomenon and improve the repair process after a heart attack. The research is published in the ...

New York, NY—October 15, 2014—Researchers from Columbia Engineering and the Georgia Institute of Technology report today that they have made the first experimental observation of piezoelectricity and the piezotronic effect in an atomically thin material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), resulting in a unique electric generator and mechanosensation devices that are optically transparent, extremely light, and very bendable and stretchable. In a paper published online October 15, 2014, in Nature, research groups from the two institutions demonstrate the mechanical ...

CHAPEL HILL – Researchers from the UNC School of Medicine have discovered that cells called fibroblasts, which normally give rise to scar tissue after a heart attack, can be turned into endothelial cells, which generate blood vessels to supply oxygen and nutrients to the injured regions of the heart, thus greatly reducing the damage done following heart attack. This switch is driven by p53, the well-documented tumor-suppressing protein. The UNC researchers showed that increasing the level of p53 in scar-forming cells significantly reduced scarring and improved heart ...

Removing a child's tonsils is one of the most common surgeries performed in the United States, with approximately 500,000 children undergoing the procedure each year. New research finds that children from lower-income families are more likely to have complications following the surgery. In the first study of its kind to analyze post-operative complications requiring a doctor's visit within the first 14 days after tonsillectomy, researchers saw a significant disparity based on income status, race and ethnicity. "Surprisingly, despite all children having a relatively ...

WORCESTER, MA – An international group of scientists led by Gang Han, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, has combined a new type of nanoparticle with an FDA-approved photodynamic therapy to effectively kill deep-set cancer cells in vivo with minimal damage to surrounding tissue and fewer side effects than chemotherapy. This promising new treatment strategy could expand the current use of photodynamic therapies to access deep-set cancer tumors. "We are very excited at the potential for clinical practice using our enhanced red-emission nanoparticles ...

Montréal, October 15, 2014 – An important scientific breakthrough by a team of IRCM researchers led by Michel Cayouette, PhD, is being published today by The Journal of Neuroscience. The Montréal scientists discovered that a protein found in the retina plays an essential role in the function and survival of light-sensing cells that are required for vision. These findings could have a significant impact on our understanding of retinal degenerative diseases that cause blindness. The researchers studied a process called compartmentalization, which establishes ...

Do you believe in science? Your faith in science may actually make you more likely to trust information that appears scientific but really doesn't tell you much. According to a new Cornell Food and Brand Lab study, published in Public Understanding of Science, trivial elements such as graphs or formulas can lead consumers to believe products are more effective. "Anything that looks scientific can make information you read a lot more convincing," says the study's lead author Aner Tal, PhD, "The scientific halo of graphs, formulas, and other trivial elements that look scientific ...

During the 1930s, North America endured the Dust Bowl, a prolonged era of dryness that withered crops and dramatically altered where the population settled. Land-based precipitation records from the years leading up to the Dust Bowl are consistent with the telltale drying-out period associated with a persistent dry weather pattern, but they can't explain why the drought was so pronounced and long-lasting. The mystery lies in the fact that land-based precipitation tells only part of the climate story. Building accurate computer reconstructions of historical global precipitation ...

Our mood can affect how we walk — slump-shouldered if we're sad, bouncing along if we're happy. Now researchers have shown it works the other way too — making people imitate a happy or sad way of walking actually affects their mood. Subjects who were prompted to walk in a more depressed style, with less arm movement and their shoulders rolled forward, experienced worse moods than those who were induced to walk in a happier style, according to the study published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. CIFAR Senior Fellow Nikolaus ...

Rochester, Minn. – The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the American Association of Neuromuscular & Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) offer a new guideline on how to determine what genetic tests may best diagnose a person's subtype of limb-girdle or distal muscular dystrophy. The guideline is published in the October 14, 2014, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the AAN. Researchers reviewed all of the available studies on the muscular dystrophy, a group of genetic diseases in which muscle fibers are unusually susceptible to damage, as ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), many teens skip breakfast, which increases their likelihood of overeating and eventual weight gain. Statistics show that the number of adolescents struggling with obesity, which elevates the risk for chronic health problems, has quadrupled in the past three decades. Now, MU researchers have found that eating breakfast, particularly meals rich in protein, increases young adults' levels of a brain chemical associated with feelings of reward, which may reduce food cravings and overeating ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To address the HIV epidemic in Mexico is to address it among men who have sex with men (MSM), because they account for a large percentage of the country's new infections, says Omar Galárraga, assistant professor of health services policy and practice in the Brown University School of Public Health. A major source of the new infections is Mexico City's male-to-male sex trade, Galárraga has found. In his research, including detailed interviews and testing with hundreds of male sex workers on the city's streets and in ...

Coordinating product placement with advertising in the same television program can reduce audience loss over commercial breaks by 10%, according to a new study in the Articles in Advance section of Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Synergy or Interference: The Effect of Product Placement on Commercial Break Audience Decline is by David A. Schweidel, Associate Professor of Marketing at Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Natasha Zhang Foutz, Assistant Professor of Marketing at McIntire School ...

UPTON, NY—The proteins that drive DNA replication—the force behind cellular growth and reproduction—are some of the most complex machines on Earth. The multistep replication process involves hundreds of atomic-scale moving parts that rapidly interact and transform. Mapping that dense molecular machinery is one of the most promising and challenging frontiers in medicine and biology. Now, scientists have pinpointed crucial steps in the beginning of the replication process, including surprising structural details about the enzyme that "unzips" and splits ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 15, 2014—Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated an additive manufacturing method to control the structure and properties of metal components with precision unmatched by conventional manufacturing processes. Ryan Dehoff, staff scientist and metal additive manufacturing lead at the Department of Energy's Manufacturing Demonstration Facility at ORNL, presented the research this week in an invited presentation at the Materials Science & Technology 2014 conference in Pittsburgh. "We can now ...

October 15, 2014 – A recently concluded demonstration project made meaningful progress toward introducing a "patient-centered medical home" approach at "safety net" practices serving vulnerable and underserved populations. Lessons learned in the course of developing and implementing the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative (SNMHI) are featured in a special November supplement to Medical Care. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The supplement presents nine original papers sharing "experience and learning" from ...

AMES, Iowa – The stories are shocking and heartbreaking, but they are often disjointed and hard to follow. In severe cases, the narratives are even more chaotic. This is reality for victims of workplace bullying and a major reason why they stay silent, said Stacy Tye-Williams, an assistant professor of communications studies and English at Iowa State University. No one expects to go to work and feel as though they are back on the school playground, but bullying is all too common for many workers. Approximately 54 million workers, or 35 percent of U.S. employees, ...

A study published online today in the journal Conservation Physiology has shown that the epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) displays physiological tolerance to elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) in its environment after being exposed to CO2 levels equivalent to those that are predicted for their natural habitats in the near future. Atmospheric CO2 levels have increased by almost 40% in the last 250 years, and the world's oceans have absorbed more than 30% of the additional CO2. The resulting rise in seawater CO2 and associated reduction in pH – known as ocean ...

A shark's habitat can reduce its sensitivity to rising CO2 levels, according to Australian scientists. Globally, ocean acidification - linked to emissions of greenhouse gases - remains a major concern and scientists say it will harm many marine species over the next century. Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University have found that the epaulette shark, a species that shelters within reefs and copes with low oxygen levels, is able to tolerate increased carbon dioxide in the water without any obvious physical ...

A federal prescription-subsidy program for low-income women on Medicare significantly improved their adherence to hormone therapy to prevent the recurrence of breast cancer after surgery. "Our findings suggest that out-of-pocket costs are a significant barrier" to women complying with hormone therapy, said Dr. Alana Biggers, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, and lead investigator on the study. Programs that lower these costs can "improve adherence -- and, hopefully, breast cancer outcomes -- for low-income ...

Alcohol consumption isn't the only thing a breath analysis can reveal. Scientists have been studying its possible use for diagnosing a wide range of conditions in humans — and now in the beloved bottlenose dolphin. In a report in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry, one team describes a new instrument that can analyze the metabolites in breath from dolphins, which have been dying in alarming numbers along the Atlantic coast this year. Cristina E. Davis and colleagues note that studying dolphins' health is about more than preserving their populations — the ...

Arsenic, a well-known poison, can be taken out of drinking water using sophisticated treatment methods. But in places that lack the equipment or technical know-how required to remove it, it still laces drinking water and makes people sick. To tackle this problem, scientists have come up with a new low-cost, simple way to remove arsenic using leftovers from another known health threat — cigarettes. They report their method in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Jiaxing Li and colleagues explain that naturally occurring and industry-related arsenic ...