HUNTSVILLE, TX (6/4/14) -- Researchers at Sam Houston State University have found a genetic characteristic that interacts with childhood adversity to predict higher rates of crime in an incarcerated sample. The study is the first in a series that will examine contributions of genetic and environmental variations to criminal behavior. Published in Psychiatric Genetics, this study examines the role of monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), which has been linked to aggression, violence, and various types of childhood adversity in prior research. The study found MAOA genotype interacted ...

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have found two new chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and one new hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) in the atmosphere. The research, published today in the journal Atmosphere, comes after another four man-made gases were discovered by the same team in March. Scientists made the discovery by comparing today's air samples with air collected between 1978 and 2012 in unpolluted Tasmania, and samples taken during aircraft flights. Measurements show that all but one of the new gases have been released into the atmosphere in recent years. ...

An international team of scientists, led by astronomers at Queen Mary University of London, report of two new planets orbiting Kapteyn's star, one of the oldest stars found near the Sun. One of the newly-discovered planets could be ripe for life as it orbits at the right distance to the star to allow liquid water on its surface. Discovered at the end of the 19th century and named after the Dutch astronomer who discovered it (Jacobus Kapteyn), Kapteyn's star is the second fastest moving star in the sky and belongs to the galactic halo, an extended cloud of stars orbiting ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Exposure to iron pipes and steel rebar, such as the materials found in most hatcheries, affects the navigation ability of young steelhead trout by altering the important magnetic "map sense" they need for migration, according to new research from Oregon State University. The exposure to iron and steel distorts the magnetic field around the fish, affecting their ability to navigate, said Nathan Putman, who led the study while working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, part of OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences. Just ...

Washington, D.C.— An international team of astronomers, including five Carnegie scientists, reports the discovery of two new planets orbiting a very old star that is near to our own Sun. One of these planets orbits the star at the right distance to allow liquid water to exist on its surface, a key ingredient to support life. Their work is published by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Kapteyn's Star, named after the Dutch astronomer, Jacobus Kapteyn, who discovered it at the end of the 19th century, is the second fastest-moving star in the sky and belongs ...

Deep sea fishes remove and store more than one million tonnes of CO2 from UK and Irish surface waters every year, according to a new study led by the University of Southampton. This natural carbon capture and storage scheme could store carbon equivalent to £10 million per year in carbon credits. Fish living in deep waters on the continental slope around the UK play an important role carrying carbon from the surface to the seafloor. It is assumed that deep water fishes all depend on particles that fall from the surface for their energy. These bottom-living deep water ...

New research, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal, shows that rates of adverse outcomes, including premature death and violent crime, in people with schizophrenia are increasing, compared to the general population. The results come from a unique study, led by Dr Seena Fazel, at Oxford University, UK, which analyses long-term adverse outcomes – including conviction for a violent crime (such as homicide or bodily harm) premature death (before the age of 56), and death by suicide – between 1972 and 2009 in nearly 25,000 people in Sweden diagnosed with schizophrenia ...

A 10-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) is effective in reducing the number of new cases of likely-bacterial community-acquired pneumonia in infants in Latin America, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Xavier Sáez-Llorens and colleagues from Department of Infectious Diseases, Panama found that the 10-valent PCV reduced the number of new cases of likely-bacterial community-acquired pneumonia in infants by 22% (95% CI: 7.7, 34.2) compared to those who received the control vaccine in the per-protocol cohort at the pre-planned interim analysis ...

Centenarians are more likely to die of pneumonia and frailty or "old age" and less likely to die of the chronic conditions often associated with old age, such as cancer or ischemic heart disease, compared with older adults younger than 100 years, according to a study by Catherine Evans and colleagues from King's College London, London, UK. Centenarians were most likely to die in a care home (61%) or hospital (27%) and less likely to die at home (10%) or in hospice care (0.2%). Higher care bed capacity was associated with fewer deaths of centenarians in hospital. The ...

Over 35,000 people lived to 100 years or more in England over the last ten years, with a large proportion subsequently dying from frailty exacerbated by pneumonia, according to a new study by King's College London. With the number of centenarians set to grow, end-of-life care needs to be tailored to the increasing frailty in this age group, warn the King's palliative care researchers. Boosting care home capacity and planning health services for the rise in centenarians could help to reduce reliance on hospital admission at the end of life and ensure a better quality of ...

The social insects, including bees, wasps, ants and termites have developed a highly advanced society where division of labor amongst workers to serve the queen's reproduction has long fascinated biologists who have wanted to uncover the molecular pathways driving the complex behavior of insect societies. In the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, Claire Morandin et al. performed molecular evolutionary analyses on the egg yolk forming protein, Vitellogenin (Vg), and its many forms, amongst seven Formica ant species. Vitellogenin is known to play ...

Cutting-edge observations with the 1.6-meter telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California have taken research into the structure and activity of the Sun to new levels of understanding. Operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), the telescope at Big Bear is the most powerful ground-based instrument dedicated to studying the Sun. A group of astronomers led by Dr. Santiago Vargas Domínguez has analyzed the highest- resolution solar observations ever made. A summary of their work at BBSO was presented on June 2 at the 224th meeting of the American ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Not all cancer cells are created equal – some stay put in the primary tumor, while others move and invade elsewhere. A major goal for cancer research is predicting which cells will metastasize, and why. A Cornell cancer research team is taking a new approach to screening for these dangerous cells, using a microfluidic device they invented that isolates only the most aggressive, metastatic cells. "The approach we've taken is a reverse approach from what is conventionally done," said Cynthia Reinhart-King, associate professor of biomedical engineering and ...

Only a third of older breast cancer patients saw a cardiologist within 90 days of developing heart problems, in a study presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2014 Scientific Sessions. Breast cancer patients with heart problems who saw a cardiologist were more likely to receive standard therapy for their heart failure than those who did not see a heart specialist, the study found. "The majority of older women who develop heart problems after their breast cancer therapy aren't treated by a cardiologist, and they had lower ...

Minorities at a higher risk of developing hypertension used a community-based program to significantly lower their blood pressure, researchers said at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2014 Scientific Sessions. Minorities at a higher risk of developing hypertension used a community-based program to significantly lower their blood pressure, researchers said at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2014 Scientific Sessions. Researchers assessed the use of the American Heart Association's Check. Change. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) are associated with improved survival among heart failure patients whose left ventricles only pump 30 to 35 percent of blood out of the heart with each contraction, according to a study from the Duke Clinical Research Institute. The findings, published in the June 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, support existing recommendations to implant ICDs in patients with a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) – a measurement of how much blood is squeezed out of the heart – of 35 percent ...

Individuals who are hospitalized for the skin conditions of Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis appear to have a high risk of recurrence, according to a study in the June 4 issue of JAMA. Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) are life-threatening conditions that develop primarily as responses to drugs, and result in extensive epidermal detachment (upper layers of the skin detach from the lower layers). Recurrence has been reported in isolated cases, and the overall risk of recurrence has been unknown, according to background ...

In a study that included nearly 65,000 older patients hospitalized with pneumonia, treatment that included azithromycin compared with other antibiotics was associated with a significantly lower risk of death and a slightly increased risk of heart attack, according to a study in the June 4 issue of JAMA. Pneumonia and influenza together are the eighth leading cause of death and the leading causes of infectious death in the United States. Although clinical practice guidelines recommend combination therapy with macrolides (a class of antibiotics), including azithromycin, ...

An examination of the benefit of preventive placement of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) in patients with a less severe level of heart failure, a group not well represented in clinical trials, finds significantly better survival at three years than that of similar patients with no ICD, according to a study in the June 4 issue of JAMA. Although clinical trials have established the ICD as the best currently available therapy to prevent sudden cardiac death in patients with heart failure, some uncertainties remain regarding preventive use of ICDs in patients ...

June 3, 2014 – BRONX, NY – The study was led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)─designated Albert Einstein Cancer Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care and was published online today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI). "Tests assessing metastatic risk can help doctors identify which patients should receive aggressive therapy and which patients should be spared," said Thomas Rohan, M.D., Ph.D., the lead and corresponding author of the study and professor ...

A frontier lies deep within our cells. Our bodies are as vast as oceans and space, composed of a dizzying number of different types of cells. Exploration reaches far, yet the genes that make each cell and tissue unique have remained largely obscure. That's changing with the help of a team led by Gregorio Valdez, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. Valdez and his team designed a search engine – called EvoCor – that identifies genes that are functionally linked. The name, a portmanteau of "evolution" and "correlation," points to ...

A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that new therapies for kidney disease could be developed more quickly by revising the definition of kidney disease progression used during clinical trials. If adopted, the new definition could shorten the length of some clinical trials and also potentially encourage more clinical trials in kidney disease. The findings will be published in the June 3, 2014 online edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a worldwide public health ...

Faster electronic device architectures are in the offing with the unveiling of the world's first fully two-dimensional field-effect transistor (FET) by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Unlike conventional FETs made from silicon, these 2D FETs suffer no performance drop-off under high voltages and provide high electron mobility, even when scaled to a monolayer in thickness. Ali Javey, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer science, led ...

The 1.6 meter telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California has given researchers unparalleled capability for investigating phenomena such as solar flares. Operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), the BBSO instrument is the most powerful ground-based telescope dedicated to studying the star closest to Earth. On June 2, Distinguished Professor of Physics Haimin Wang joined NJIT colleagues at the 224th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), held in Boston, Massachusetts, to present intriguing data about solar flares — specifically, ...

Multi-wavelength observations of sunspots with the 1.6-meter telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California and aboard NASA's IRIS spacecraft have produced new and intriguing images of high-speed plasma flows and eruptions extending from the Sun's surface to the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, the corona. Operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), BBSO houses the largest ground-based telescope dedicated to solar research. On June 2, NJIT researchers reported on the acquisition of these images at the 224th meeting of the American Astronomical ...