"When the discovery was published back in September, we were certain that we had found a Viking ring fortress, but since then there have been intense discussions online and amongst archaeologists about whether we were right. Now we know without doubt that we have found a fortress from the 10th century," says archaeologist Nanna Holm, curator of the Danish Castle Centre. Two carbon-14 dating results have removed all doubt regarding the authenticity of the Viking fortress. The carbon-14 dating was performed by the AMS 14C Dating Centre at the Department of Physics and Astronomy ...

HANOVER, N.H. - Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues have created an artificial intelligence software that uses photos to locate documents on the Internet with far greater accuracy than ever before. The new system, which was tested on photos and is now being applied to videos, shows for the first time that a machine learning algorithm for image recognition and retrieval is accurate and efficient enough to improve large-scale document searches online. The system uses pixel data in images and potentially video - rather than just text -- to locate documents. It learns ...

The climate 150 million years ago of a large swath of the western United States was more complex than previously known, according to new research from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. It's been thought that the climate during the Jurassic was fairly dry in New Mexico, then gradually transitioned to a wetter climate northward to Montana. But based on new evidence, the theory of a gradual transition from a dry climate to a wetter one during the Jurassic doesn't tell the whole story, says SMU paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, lead author on the study. Geochemical ...

You can't catch attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet the diagnosis and treatment of this behavioral condition is spreading like a contagion -- surging as much as tenfold in some countries. Call it an economic and cultural plague, but not necessarily a medical one, says Brandeis professor Peter Conrad. In a recent paper in the journal Social Science and Medicine, Conrad and coauthor Meredith Bergey examined the growth of ADHD in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Brazil. Until recently, North America tallied by far the most ADHD diagnoses, ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Overhunting has been disastrous for elephants, but their forest habitats have also been caught in the crossfire. A first-of-its-kind study led by researchers at the University of Florida shows that the dramatic loss of elephants, which disperse seeds after eating vegetation, is leading to the local extinction of a dominant tree species, with likely cascading effects for other forest life. Their work shows that loss of animal seed dispersers increases the probability of tree extinction by more than tenfold over a 100-year period. "The entire ...

LOS ANGELES (NOV. 17, 2014) - Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have found that injections of cardiac stem cells might help reverse heart damage caused by Duchenne muscular dystrophy, potentially resulting in a longer life expectancy for patients with the chronic muscle-wasting disease. The study results were presented today at a Breaking Basic Science presentation during the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago. After laboratory mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy were infused with cardiac stem cells, the mice showed steady, marked ...

Results of a new study challenge the current consensus in cardiology that peak myocardial edema, or heart muscle swelling, only occurs just after a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. In the study, presented as a Late-Breaking Clinical Trial at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions 2014 and published simultaneously in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), scientists discovered a second wave of swelling and inflammation occurs within a week of a heart attack. The researchers from the Mount Sinai Heart at Icahn School of Medicine ...

The findings of this international collaboration have been published today in Nature Genetics. Progressive myoclonus epilepsies (PME) are rare, inherited, and usually childhood-onset neurodegenerative diseases whose core symptoms are epileptic seizures and debilitating involuntary muscle twitching (myoclonus). Professor Berkovic said this finding of a new gene underlying progressive myoclonus epilepsy is one of the most devastating forms of epilepsy. "For the study, we used modern DNA sequencing technologies, which have revolutionised genetic research of rare, severe ...

Anyone who has struggled with a foggy brain while adjusting to daylight saving time knows first-hand how an out-of-sync circadian clock can impair brain function. Now, by manipulating the circadian clocks of Siberian hamsters, Stanford scientists may have identified a brain structure that disrupts memory when circadian rhythms fall apart, as they often do in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. "What we've been able to show is that the part of the brain that we absolutely know contains the circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), ...

Adding just one gram of turmeric to breakfast could help improve the memory of people who are in the very early stages of diabetes and at risk of cognitive impairment. The finding has particular significance given that the world's ageing population means a rising incidence of conditions that predispose people to diabetes, which in turn is connected to dementia. Early intervention could help to reduce the burden, whether by halting the disease or reducing its impact, said Emeritus Professor Mark Wahlqvist, from the Monash Asia Institute at Monash University. Professor ...

Toddlers and tweens have very different needs, which influence how parents provide for them. The same is true in honey bees, but instead of communicating their needs via language, honey bee larvae emit chemical signals called pheromones that influence the behavior of their caregivers. As larvae age, the diet they're fed changes. So too do the pheromone signals they emit. In a paper published in the advanced online edition of the journal Animal Behaviour, ASU alumna Kirsten Traynor, a research associate with the University of Maryland, Robert E. Page Jr., ASU university ...

Cocaine users complaining of chest pain may have abnormal blood flow in the heart's smallest blood vessels that may not be detected in regular testing, putting these patients at risk for heart complications or death, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. "Cocaine use is unfortunately very common, and we see many emergency room admissions because patients experience chest pain following cocaine use," said Varun Kumar, M.D., lead study author and an internist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago. "But there can be a ...

Adults whose mothers were overweight or obese before pregnancy have a dramatically elevated risk of dying from heart disease or stroke, according to a new study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. "Excess weight among young women of childbearing age has important implications not only for their own health, but for that of their children as well," said Michael Mendelson, M.D., S.M., the study's lead author and a research fellow at the Framingham Heart Study, Boston University and the Boston Children's Hospital. Previous studies had ...

Men who have asymptomatic subclinical vascular disease are more likely to develop erectile dysfunction than men who don't have early stage vascular disease, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. "Erectile function can be a window into men's cardiovascular and overall health," said David I. Feldman, B.S., lead author and research assistant at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. "Erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease commonly coexist." Researchers ...

High trans fat consumption is linked to worse memory among working-age men, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. In a recent study of approximately 1,000 healthy men, those who consumed the most trans fats showed notably worse performance on a word memory test. The strength of the association remained even after taking into consideration things like age, education, ethnicity and depression. "Trans fats were most strongly linked to worse memory, in young and middle-aged men, during their working and career-building ...

Pregnant women with congenital heart disease had very low risks of arrhythmias (irregular heart beat) or other heart-related complications during labor and delivery, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. However, such women were more likely to undergo cesarean section and remain in the hospital longer, researchers said. "We are pleased to find the risk of complications are not as high as expected in women with congenital heart disease," said Robert M. Hayward, M.D., lead study author and a cardiac electrophysiology ...

By expanding the protected area network to 17 percent of land one could triple the present protection levels of terrestrial vertebrates. Globally coordinated protected area network expansion could deliver a result 50 percent more efficient compared to countries looking only at biodiversity within their own area. Land conversion is however fast degrading options for conservation. Protected areas are one of the main tools for halting the ongoing global biodiversity crisis. According to the Aichi Target 11 adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the global ...

WASHINGTON - In a society where women often lead very restricted lives and men are the primary household decision makers, new research suggests women are empowered when men are included in family planning programs. A study, from the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University Medical Center, suggests that addressing the dynamics between husbands and wives can result in women making more financial decisions and having more control over their social interactions, while at the same time meeting their family planning needs. "Our study is one of the first to ...

A research team bringing together José Cohen and Philippe Grimbert (Inserm Unit 955/Université Paris Est Créteil [UPEC] and the Centre for Clinical Investigation - Biotherapies 504 [CIC-BT 504]), and their collaborators at Institut Curie and AP-HP (George Pompidou European Hospital) has succeeded in finding a combination of drugs that reduces the risk of rejection following a skin graft. When tested in mice, this treatment seems effective, since no sign of rejection is observed nearly 30 days after transplantation. These results are published in the American ...

DALLAS - November 18, 2014 - Groundbreaking research from UT Southwestern Medical Center shows that cholesterol efflux capacity (cholesterol efflux), which measures HDL cholesterol function, appears to be a superior indicator of cardiovascular risk and a better target for therapeutic treatments than standard measurements of HDL. Current measurement methods reflect only the circulating levels of HDL and not the functional properties of this lipoprotein. The latest findings appear online today in The New England Journal of Medicine. HDL's key function is the removal of ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (November 17, 2014)--Does soy in the diet help with hot flashes? It does, but only for women whose bodies can produce the soy metabolite equol, reports a study of American women just published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. About 20% to 50% of North American and European women have this ability. The researchers surveyed women from age 45 to 55 in a Seattle, Washington-area healthcare system to find study participants who weren't using hormone therapy and ate soy foods at least three times a week. The participants ...

Hiroshima, Japan--- Associate Professor Akira Shimamoto and Professor Hidetoshi Tahara at the Graduate School of Biomedical & Health Science in Hiroshima University, Professor Koutaro Yokote at the Graduate School of Medicine in Chiba University, Visiting Professor Makoto Goto at the Medical Center East in Tokyo Women's Medical University, and collaborators including the staff at the Cancer Chemotherapy Center in the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, Tottori University, and Keio University established induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from the fibroblasts of Werner ...

Chemists have developed a revolutionary new way to manufacture natural chemicals and used it to assemble a scarce anti-inflammatory drug with potential to treat cancer and malaria. The breakthrough could lead to new and cheaper ways to produce rare drugs in large quantities. "We took small molecules and clipped them together like Lego," said lead researcher Professor Michael Sherburn, from the Research School of Chemistry at The Australian National University (ANU). "The building blocks are carefully designed in such a way that the first reaction generates a product ...

Scientists in Australia have used historic media to measure the decline in Queensland's pink snapper fishery, highlighting a drop of almost 90 per cent in catch rates since the 19th Century. Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at the University of Queensland and the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry examined thousands of newspaper articles dating back to1870 to reveal the historic catch rates for the iconic Queensland fishery. "We found that 19th century recreational fishers would regularly catch hundreds of ...

Case Western Reserve researchers have developed a procedure that restores function to muscles involved in the control of breathing - even when they have been paralyzed for more than a year. The breakthrough offers hope that one day patients with severe spinal cord injuries will be able to breathe again without the assistance of a ventilator. Principal investigator Philippa M. Warren, PhD, presented the results Nov. 17 at Neuroscience 2014, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The research represents a critical step forward in efforts to reverse even long-term ...