Children of the Information Age are inundated with written words streaming across smartphone, tablet, and laptop screens. A new Tel Aviv University study says that preschoolers should be encouraged to write at a young age -- even before they make their first step into a classroom. A new study published in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly explains why early writing, preceding any formal education, plays an instrumental role in improving a child's literacy level, vocabulary, and fine motor skills. The research, conducted by Prof. Dorit Aram of TAU's Jaime and Joan ...

Princeton University researchers have uncovered a previously unknown, and possibly substantial, source of the greenhouse gas methane to the Earth's atmosphere. After testing a sample of abandoned oil and natural gas wells in northwestern Pennsylvania, the researchers found that many of the old wells leaked substantial quantities of methane. Because there are so many abandoned wells nationwide (a recent study from Stanford University concluded there were roughly 3 million abandoned wells in the United States) the researchers believe the overall contribution of leaking ...

What drives some subsidiaries to strive for so much autonomy that they are actually harming the parent company? A new study in the Journal of International Marketing shows that these dysfunctional business relationships can be understood and improved using basic psychology. "A subsidiary's desire for autonomy is psychological in nature. The desire is for more decision making authority in marketing decisions, and the ability to make these decisions without interference from headquarters. Subsidiary employees want to work more independently even if this means risking conflicts ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A laboratory at Purdue University provided a critical part of the world's first transistor in 1947 - the purified germanium semiconductor - and now researchers here are on the forefront of a new germanium milestone. The team has created the first modern germanium circuit - a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) device - using germanium as the semiconductor instead of silicon. "Bell Labs created the first transistor, but the semiconductor crystal made of purified germanium was provided by Purdue physicists," said Peide "Peter" Ye, a Purdue ...

Many people have strong habits when it comes to shopping, preferring favorite stores and favorite brands. But a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research suggests that these same shoppers may have hidden habits that are hurting sales. "Evidence suggests the existence of customer habits, beyond repeat purchases, that have serious implications for profits and firm performance. Whereas repeat purchase habits have been studied and shown to have a positive impact on sales, there are other common habits which have a notably negative effect on a company's bottom line," ...

Johns Hopkins computers scientists, who have already used Twitter posts to track flu cases, say their techniques also show promise as a tool to gather important information about some common mental illnesses. By reviewing tweets from users who publicly mentioned their diagnosis and by looking for language cues linked to certain disorders, the researchers say, they've been able to quickly and inexpensively collect new data on post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder. In research presented at three scientific conferences ...

Take a look in your pantry: the miracle ingredient for fighting obesity may already be there. A simple potato extract may limit weight gain from a diet that is high in fat and refined carbohydrates, according to scientists at McGill University. The results of their recent study were so surprising that the investigators repeated the experiment just to be sure. Investigators fed mice an obesity-inducing diet for 10 weeks. The results soon appeared on the scale: mice that started out weighing on average 25 grams put on about 16 grams. But mice that consumed the same diet ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, December 9, 2014 -- With the holidays around the corner, we're all a little more likely to indulge, especially when it comes to alcohol. While a few extra drinks might be brushed off as holiday cheer, they can actually signal a problem in young adults. That's because the bad habits we pick up in our youth may stay with us later in life, according to a new study from Concordia, in collaboration with the Université de Montréal and University of Massachusetts. Its findings, which were published recently ...

Smaller recurring donations are generally more beneficial to a non-profit than larger, one-time donations, yet non-profits struggle to convince donors to move beyond one-time contributions. According to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, if donors believe that upgrading to a recurring donation will result in a matching donation, many will make the leap. "Imagine you are given the option to upgrade to a recurring donation. Now imagine that the charity will match all donations made that day, if and only if 75% of donors agree to upgrade to a recurring donation. ...

Dinosaurs did it. Human beings and monkey do it. And even birds do it. They walk on two legs. And although humans occupy a special position amongst mammals as they have two legs, the upright gait is not reserved only for man. In the course of evolution many animals have developed the bipedal gait - the ability to walk on two legs. "Birds are moving forward on two legs as well, although they use a completely different technique from us humans," Dr. Emanuel Andrada from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany) says. Human beings keep their upper bodies generally ...

UCL scientists have shown how advanced computer simulations can be used to design new composite materials. Nanocomposites, which are widely used in industry, are revolutionary materials in which microscopic particles are dispersed through plastics. But their development until now has been largely by trial and error. The 'virtual lab' developed using supercomputer simulations greatly improves scientists' understanding of how composite materials are built on a molecular level. They allow the properties of a new material to be predicted based simply on its structure and ...

A new study shows that college students in online courses give better evaluations to instructors they think are men - even when the instructor is actually a woman. "The ratings that students give instructors are really important, because they're used to guide higher education decisions related to hiring, promotions and tenure," says Lillian MacNell, lead author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student in sociology at NC State. "And if the results of these evaluations are inherently biased against women, we need to find ways to address that problem." To address whether ...

Reston, Va. (December 9, 2014) - Cancer therapy can be much more effective using a new way to customize nuclear medicine treatment, researchers say in the December 2014 issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. The process could also be useful for other diseases that could benefit from targeted radiation. Targeted therapy with radiopharmaceuticals--radioactive compounds used in nuclear medicine for diagnosis or treatment--has great potential for the treatment of cancer, especially for cancer cells that have migrated from primary tumors to lymph nodes and secondary organs ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Maybe distraction is not always the enemy of learning. It turns out in surprising Brown University psychology research that inconsistent distraction is the real problem. As long as our attention is as divided when we have to recall a motor skill as it was when we learned it, we'll do just fine, according to the new study. Most learned motor tasks -- driving, playing sports or music, even walking again after injury -- occur with other things going on. Given the messiness of our existence, said lead researcher Joo-Hyun Song, assistant ...

This news release is available in German. Not all boreholes are the same. Scientists of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) used mobile measurement equipment to analyze gaseous compounds emitted by the extraction of oil and natural gas in the USA. For the first time, organic pollutants emitted during a fracking process were measured at a high temporal resolution. The highest values measured exceeded typical mean values in urban air by a factor of one thousand, as was reported in ACP journal. (DOI 10.5194/acp-14-10977-2014) Emission of trace gases by ...

TORONTO - Dec. 9, 2014 (Toronto) - Scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have identified a novel drug target that could lead to the development of better antipsychotic medications. Dr. Fang Liu, Senior Scientist in CAMH's Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, and her team published their results online in the journal Neuron. Current treatment for patients with schizophrenia involves taking medications that block or interfere with the action of the neurotransmitter ...

Hummingbirds rely on their ability to hover in order to feed off the nectar of flowers. It's an incredible feat of flying requiring mind boggling visual processing power, but two University of British Columbia researchers found a glitch in the system, something the tiny birds are powerless to control. The researchers put hovering hummingbirds through a virtual reality experiment that showed the birds can't control their inflight response to some visual stimuli. In a laboratory flight arena, hummingbirds hovered around a plastic feeder while images were projected on ...

As solar panels become less expensive and capable of generating more power, solar energy is becoming a more commercially viable alternative source of electricity. However, the photovoltaic cells now used to turn sunlight into electricity can only absorb and use a small fraction of that light, and that means a significant amount of solar energy goes untapped. A new technology created by researchers from Caltech, and described in a paper published online in the October 30 issue of Science Express, represents a first step toward harnessing that lost energy. Sunlight is ...

An international team of scientists has discovered the earliest known engravings from human ancestors on a 400,000 year-old fossilised shell from Java. The discovery is the earliest known example of ancient humans deliberately creating pattern. "It rewrites human history," said Dr Stephen Munro from School of Archaeology and Anthropology at The Australian National University (ANU). "This is the first time we have found evidence for Homo erectus behaving this way," he said. The newly discovered engravings resemble the previously oldest-known engravings, which are ...

Animals that regulate their body temperature through the external environment may be resilient to some climate change but not keep pace with rapid change leading to potentially disastrous outcomes for biodiversity. A study by the University of Sydney and University of Queensland showed many animals can modify the function of their cells and organs to compensate for changes in the climate and have done so in the past, but the researchers warn that the current rate of climate change will outpace animals' capacity for compensation (or acclimation). The research has just ...

SAN ANTONIO -- Use of anthracycline-based chemotherapy, a common treatment for breast cancer, has negligible cardiac toxicity in women whose tumors have BRCA1/2 mutations -- despite preclinical evidence that such treatment can damage the heart. The findings, to be presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), represent a unique effort between cardiologists and oncologists at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute in Washington to answer a vital clinical question. "Our study was prompted by evidence from ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Dec. 9, 2014 - Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) today announced results from a new study that demonstrated the ability of the myRisk™ Hereditary Cancer test to detect 105 percent more mutations in cancer causing genes than conventional BRCA testing alone. The Company also presented two key studies in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) that show the myChoice™ HRD test accurately predicted response to platinum-based therapy in patients with early-stage TNBC and that the BRACAnalysis® molecular diagnostic test significantly predicted ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- It's widely known that the Earth's average temperature has been rising. But research by an Indiana University geographer and colleagues finds that spatial patterns of extreme temperature anomalies -- readings well above or below the mean -- are warming even faster than the overall average. And trends in extreme heat and cold are important, said Scott M. Robeson, professor of geography in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. They have an outsized impact on water supplies, agricultural productivity and other factors related to human health ...

Off the West Coast of the United States, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water. Researchers found that water off the coast of Washington is gradually warming at a depth of 500 meters, about a third of a mile down. That is the same depth where methane transforms from a solid to a gas. The research suggests that ocean warming could be triggering the ...

A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows that long-term endurance training in a stable way alters the epigenetic pattern in the human skeletal muscle. The research team behind the study, which is being published in the journal Epigenetics, also found strong links between these altered epigenetic patterns and the activity in genes controlling improved metabolism and inflammation. The results may have future implications for prevention and treatment of heart disease, diabetes and obesity. "It is well-established that being inactive is perilous, and that regular ...