September 9, 2014 – Poverty—rather than biased reporting—seems to account for the higher rates of child abuse and neglect among black children, reports a study in the September Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, the official journal of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. States with a higher proportion of minority children living in poverty also have greater racial/ethnic disparities in child abuse and neglect, according to the new research ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If you want to learn more about the people in urban communities – from their health habits to what their neighborhood needs – save a stamp on mailing a survey. Just text them. A new pilot study among low-income African-Americans in Detroit suggests that there is a clear preference on how residents choose to communicate – whether it's by researchers asking questions for a health study or community advocates gauging resource needs. They want you to talk to them through their phones. "Our study shows great potential to connect with a population that's ...

WASHINGTON - People living in more liberal countries are happier on average than those in less liberal countries, but individually, conservatives are happier than liberals no matter where they live, according to a study of people in 16 Western European countries. "Liberal governments tend to do more to shield citizens against certain hardships, such as unemployment and poverty, which can make people feel happier overall," said the study's lead author, Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, PhD, of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. "On the other hand, conservatives rate their ...

Another mystery of the human body has been solved by scientists who have identified how a molecular motor essential for human development works. They have also pinpointed why mutations in genes linked to this motor can lead to a range of human diseases. Researchers at the University of Bristol have defined the composition of the human version of a molecular motor, called 'cytoplasmic dynein-2', that is essential for normal human development. Dynein 2 directs molecules into cilia as well as controlling their movement along cilia. Cilia are slender protrusions that act ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed artificial intelligence (AI) software that is significantly better than any previous technology at predicting what goal a player is trying to achieve in a video game. The advance holds promise for helping game developers design new ways of improving the gameplay experience for players. "We developed this software for use in educational gaming, but it has applications for all video game developers," says Dr. James Lester, a professor of computer science at NC State and senior author of a paper on the work. ...

The sharp X-ray vision of DESY's research light source PETRA III paves the way for a new technique to produce cheap, flexible and versatile double solar cells. The method developed by scientists from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Roskilde can reliably produce efficient tandem plastic solar cells of many metres in length, as a team around senior researcher Jens W. Andreasen reports in the journal Advanced Energy Materials. The scientists used a production process, where the different layers of a polymer (plastic) solar cell are coated from various solutions ...

Although conceptually they could be equivalent, a biosimilar drug is not a generic drug. The latter are exact copies of relatively simple molecules (paracetamol, acetylsalicylic acid), obtained by means of chemical synthesis methods. Biosimilars, by contrast, are copies of highly complex molecules of a protein nature, the production of which involves biological processes and materials, like cell culture or the extraction of products using living organisms, which is why there is no product that is exactly the same as the other. As they are comparable but not exact copies ...

PITTSBURGH—A smart headlight developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute enables drivers to take full advantage of their high beams without fear of blinding oncoming drivers or suffering from the glare that can occur when driving in snow or rain at night. The programmable headlight senses and tracks virtually any number of oncoming drivers, blacking out only the small parts of the headlight beam that would otherwise shine into their eyes. During snow or rain showers, the headlight improves driver vision by tracking individual flakes and drops in the immediate ...

As Alzheimer's disease progresses, it kills brain cells mainly in the hippocampus and cortex, leading to impairments in "neuroplasticity," the mechanism that affects learning, memory, and thinking. Targeting these areas of the brain, scientists hope to stop or slow the decline in brain plasticity, providing a novel way to treat Alzheimer's. Groundbreaking new research has discovered a new way to preserve the flexibility and resilience of the brain. The study, led by Tel Aviv University's Prof. Illana Gozes and published in Molecular Psychiatry, reveals a nerve cell protective ...

VIDEO: A smooth dogfish shark attacks an odor cue at at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Click here for more information. The increasing acidification of ocean waters caused by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could rob sharks of their ability to sense the smell of food, a new study suggests. Elevated carbon dioxide levels impaired the odor-tracking behavior of the smooth dogfish, a shark whose range includes the Atlantic Ocean off the eastern United States. Adult ...

What doesn't kill us may make us stronger as a group, according to findings from new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research suggests that, despite its unpleasantness, pain may actually have positive social consequences, acting as a sort of "social glue" that fosters cohesion and solidarity within groups: "Our findings show that pain is a particularly powerful ingredient in producing bonding and cooperation between those who share painful experiences," says psychological scientist and lead researcher ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Paying attention all day in school as a kid isn't easy, especially for those who are at a higher risk of ADHD, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A new study from Michigan State University and University of Vermont researchers shows that offering daily, before-school, aerobic activities to younger, at-risk children could help in reducing the symptoms of ADHD in the classroom and at home. Signs can include inattentiveness, moodiness and difficulty getting along with others. The study can be found in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. "Early ...

Tiny single-cell organisms discovered living underground could help with the problem of nuclear waste disposal, say researchers involved in a study at The University of Manchester. Although bacteria with waste-eating properties have been discovered in relatively pristine soils before, this is the first time that microbes that can survive in the very harsh conditions expected in radioactive waste disposal sites have been found. The findings are published in the ISME (Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology) Journal. The disposal of our nuclear waste is very challenging, ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The same sex hormone that helps protect females from stroke may also reduce their risk of autism, scientists say. In the first look at a potential role of the female sex hormone in autism, researchers at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University have found expression of estrogen receptor beta – which enables estrogen's potent brain protection – is significantly decreased in autistic brains. The receptor also plays a role in locomotion as well as behavior, including anxiety, depression, memory, and learning. "If you ask any psychiatrist ...

Defects damage the ideal properties of many two-dimensional materials, like carbon-based graphene. Phosphorus just shrugs. That makes it a promising candidate for nano-electronic applications that require stable properties, according to new research by Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues. In a paper in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters, the Rice team analyzed the properties of elemental bonds between semiconducting phosphorus atoms in 2-D sheets. Two-dimensional phosphorus is not theoretical; it was recently created ...

Malware is a type of malicious program whose general aim is to profit economically by carrying out actions without the user's consent, such as stealing personal information or committing economic fraud. We can find it "in any type of device ranging from traditional cell phones to today's smartphones, and even in our washing machine," explained one of the researchers, Guillermo Suarez de Tangil, from the Computer Science Department at UC3M. With the massive sales of smartphones in recent years (more than personal computers in all of their history), malware developers ...

Palaeontologists have developed methods to try to identify and correct for bias and incompleteness in the fossil record. A new study, published on 4 September 2014 in the journal Nature Communications, suggests that some of these correction methods may actually be misleading. The work is led by Dr Alex Dunhill (University of Leeds, formerly at the Universities of Bath and Bristol), together with Hannisdal (University of Bergen) and Professor Michael Benton (University of Bristol). Back to the origin of animals "The Earth keeps changing. Life keeps evolving. And there ...

Young people have a more robust immune response to the loss of a loved one, according to new research from the University of Birmingham, providing insight into how different generations cope with loss. The study, published in the journal Immunity and Ageing, shows how the balance of our stress hormones during grief changes as we age – meaning elderly people are more likely to have reduced immune function and, as a result, suffer from infections. It is the first research to compare different generations and display the relationship between stress hormones and immune ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 9, 2014 – Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYGN) today presented results from a pivotal clinical utility study of the Myriad myPath™ Melanoma test at the 2014 College of American Pathologists (CAP) annual meeting in Chicago, Ill. Myriad myPath Melanoma is a novel diagnostic test that differentiates malignant melanoma from benign skin lesions with greater than 90 percent accuracy and helps physicians deliver a more objective and confident diagnosis for patients. This study evaluated the impact of the myPath Melanoma diagnostic test on expert ...

Berkeley — Scientists estimate that fewer than 100 Devils Hole pupfish remain in their Mojave Desert home, but a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, is giving important guidance in the efforts to rescue them by establishing a captive breeding program. Considered the world's rarest fish, with one of the smallest geographic ranges of any wild vertebrate, the tiny pupfish (Cyprinodon diabolis) – about one-inch long as an adult – neared extinction in spring 2013 when populations dropped to an all-time low of 35 observable pupfish. While more ...

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest class of cell surface receptors in our cells, involved in signal transmission across the cell membrane. One of the biggest questions is how a signal recognized at the extracellular side of a GPCR induces a sequence of conformational changes in the protein and finally evokes an intracellular response. EPFL scientists have now used computer modeling to reveal in molecular detail the structural transitions that happen inside GPCRs during the signal transduction process. They discovered that a central step in the trans-membrane ...

A growing "dead zone" in the middle of the Arabian Sea has allowed plankton uniquely suited to low-oxygen water to take over the base of the food chain. Their rise to dominance over the last decade could be disastrous for the predator fish that sustain 120 million people living on the sea's edge. Scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and their colleagues are the first to document the rapid rise of green Noctiluca scintillans, an unusual dinoflagellate that eats other plankton and draws energy from the sun via microscopic algae living within ...

Menlo Park, Calif. — Scientists have married two unconventional forms of carbon – one shaped like a soccer ball, the other a tiny diamond – to make a molecule that conducts electricity in only one direction. This tiny electronic component, known as a rectifier, could play a key role in shrinking chip components down to the size of molecules to enable faster, more powerful devices. "We wanted to see what new, emergent properties might come out when you put these two ingredients together to create a 'buckydiamondoid,'" said Hari Manoharan of the Stanford Institute for Materials ...

People who are obese may be more susceptible to environmental food cues than their lean counterparts due to differences in brain chemistry that make eating more habitual and less rewarding, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in Molecular Psychiatry. Researchers at the NIH Clinical Center found that, when examining 43 men and women with varying amounts of body fat, obese participants tended to have greater dopamine activity in the habit-forming region of the brain than lean counterparts, and less activity in the region controlling reward. Those ...

Munich, Germany: A new study has revealed how stem cells work to improve lung function in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Previous studies have shown that stem cells can reduce lung inflammation and restore some function in ARDS, but experts are not sure how this occurs. The new study, which was presented at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress today (09 September 2014), brings us a step closer to understanding the mechanisms that occur within an injured lung. ARDS is a life-threatening condition in which the efficiency of the lungs ...