Phoenix — Guinea pigs and mice can be replaced with a non-animal skin sensitization method that uses a human-derived skin model, according to a study presented today by the PETA International Science Consortium, Ltd., at the Society of Toxicology's annual meeting. Recent results show that Cyprotex's in vitro skin sensitization assay SenCeeTox® can correctly identify chemicals that cause an allergic response in humans and, unlike many other methods, can predict the potency of the response. This non-animal method uses a three-dimensional, human-derived skin model that accurately ...

Scientists searching for habitable planets beyond Earth shouldn't overlook F-type stars in favor of their more abundant, smaller and cooler cousins, according to new research from University of Texas at Arlington physicists. Stars fall into seven lettered categories according to their surface temperature, but they also differ in other factors such as mass, luminosity and abundance in the universe. Scientists looking for habitable planets typically have focused on the less massive end of the spectrum, where our own G-type sun as well as the even less massive K and M-type ...

The water that surged into the intersection of New York City's Canal and Hudson streets during Hurricane Sandy—to choose just one flood-ravaged locale—was ultimately driven ashore by forces swirling hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic. That simple fact shows not only the scale and power of a tropical cyclone, but the difficulty of modeling and forecasting its potential for coastal flooding on the fine scale needed to most effectively prepare a response. Now, a study led by Professor Harry Wang of William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science demonstrates the ...

NEW YORK (25 March 2014) — A new study has found that women in India who have more education than their husbands, who earn more, or who are the sole earners in their families have a higher likelihood of experiencing frequent and severe intimate partner violence (IPV) than women who are not employed or who are less educated than their spouse. There are two existing theories that aim to predict what happens when a woman has status and resources that are equal to or greater than her husband's. One theory, called bargaining theory, posits that a woman who has more relative ...

An international group including one professor from the Moscow State University proposed the first ever quantitative description of the mechanism responsible for sunspot formation and underlying the Solar activity cycle. Magnetic field helicity is one of the so-called motion invariants in magneto-hydrodynamics. It is a conserved quantity, like energy, describing the degree to which the field lines are "wrapped around themselves". During the last 20 years, scientists realized that conservation of this quantity is even more influential upon magnetic field evolution than ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — Commercial demand is driving high-tech research and development in micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems (MOEMS) for diverse applications such as space exploration, wireless systems, and healthcare. A new special section on Emerging MOEMS Technology and Applications in the current issue of the Journal of Micro/Nanolithography, MEMS, and MOEMS (JM3) gathers recent breakthrough achievements and explains how such innovations in the photonics field are poised to emerge in the marketplace. The journal is published by SPIE, the international society ...

WASHINGTON D.C., March 25, 2014 -- A research team in Spain has the enviable job of testing out new electromechanical gear for potential use in future missions to the "Red Planet." They do it within their Mars environmental simulation chamber, which is specially designed to mimic conditions on the fourth planet from the sun -- right down to its infamous Martian dust. Mars is a key target for future space exploration, thanks to indications that the planet may have either been capable of supporting life in the past or is possibly even supporting it right now within its ...

A Malaysian-Dutch team of biologists have catalogued all 31 species of the tiny, but oh so pretty snail genus Plectostoma from West-Malaysia, Sumatra, and Thailand. Ten species are new to science, but some of those are going extinct as they are being discovered. The study was carried out by PhD student Thor-Seng Liew of Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, and three colleagues. Liew, who is on study leave from Universiti Malaysia Sabah, spent four years studying the distribution, shell shape, and genetics of these minuscule snails. He is still working ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — What makes a person bipolar, prone to manic highs and deep, depressed lows? Why does bipolar disorder run so strongly in families, even though no single gene is to blame? And why is it so hard to find new treatments for a condition that affects 200 million people worldwide? New stem cell research published by scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School, and fueled by the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund, may help scientists find answers to these questions. The team used skin from people with bipolar disorder to derive the first-ever ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – Under new guidelines from the Institute of Medicine, the estimated number of children who are at risk for having insufficient or deficient levels of vitamin D is drastically reduced from previous estimates, according to a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine study. The study, led by Holly Kramer, MD, MPH and Ramon Durazo-Arvizu, PhD, is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism. New Institute of Medicine guidelines say most people get sufficient vitamin D when their blood levels are at or ...

Black and gray markets for computer hacking tools, services and byproducts such as stolen credit card numbers continue to expand, creating an increasing threat to businesses, governments and individuals, according to a new RAND Corporation study. One dramatic example is the December 2013 breach of retail giant Target, in which data from approximately 40 million credit cards and 70 million user accounts was hijacked. Within days, that data appeared -- available for purchase -- on black market websites. "Hacking used to be an activity that was mainly carried out by individuals ...

Lick Observatory's newest telescope, the Automated Planet Finder (APF), has been operating robotically night after night on Mt. Hamilton since January, searching nearby stars for Earth-sized planets. Every night the fully autonomous system checks the weather, decides which stars to observe, and moves the telescope from star to star throughout the night, collecting measurements that will reveal the presence of planets. Its technical performance has been outstanding, making it not only the first robotic planet-finding facility but also one of the most sensitive. The search ...

The invasive brown marmorated stink bug (Halyomorpha halys) is an important pest of fruits and vegetables. To counter them, some home gardeners use pheromone-baited traps that are designed to attract, trap, and kill them. However, new research from entomologists at the University of Maryland suggests that the traps may actually increase stink bug damage to tomatoes. The research will appear in the April issue of Environmental Entomology (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1603/EN13237). The researchers asked 15 gardeners to place stink bug traps at the ends of rows of tomatoes, ...

New Rochelle, NY, March 24, 2014—The curative and therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) offers much promise, as these multipotent cells are currently being tested in more than 300 clinical trials in a range of diseases. A new, easier, and more reliable way to make large quantities of highly potent MSCs could accelerate progress toward their use in regenerative medicine, as described in an article in Stem Cells and Development, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Stem Cells and Development website. Robert ...

When it comes to recognizing faces, humans are extraordinarily skillful. It's no surprise – after all, from the moment humans leave the womb, the infant brains already have a preference for faces, and over the course of a lifetime, the average person sees hundreds of thousands of faces. Among scientists, however, the question of exactly how humans came to possess this amazing ability remains a divisive one, with some researchers claiming our extraordinary abilities result from the operation of mechanisms specialized just for faces, whereas others argue that recognition ...

(Boston)--In a recently to be published study in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, researchers have found the use of the drug allopurinol was associated with a reduced risk of death in hyperuricemic (gout) patients. The study, the first in a general population, has found the overall benefit of allopurinol on survival may outweigh the impact of rare serious adverse effects. Researchers from the Section of Rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) contributed to this study. Gout has been associated with an increased risk of ...

Crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster causes severe defects in the developing hearts of bluefin and yellowfin tunas, according to a new study by a team of NOAA and academic scientists. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, show how the largest marine oil spill in United States history may have affected tunas and other species that spawned in oiled offshore habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Atlantic bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna, and other large predatory ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Throughout the world, there are many different types of people, and their identity can tell a lot about where they live. The type of job they work, the kind of car they drive, and the foods they eat can all be used to predict the country, the state, or maybe even the city a person lives in. The brain is no different. There are many types of neurons, defined largely by the patterns of genes they use, and they "live" in numerous distinct brain regions. But researchers do not yet have a comprehensive understanding of these neuronal types and how ...

Wikipedia lists 65 adjectives that botanists use to describe the shapes of plant leaves. In English (rather than Latin) they mean the leaf is lance-shaped, spear-shaped, kidney-shaped, diamond shaped, arrow-head-shaped, egg-shaped, circular, spoon-shaped , heart-shaped, tear-drop-shaped or sickle-shaped — among other possibilities. How does the plant "know" how to make these shapes? The answer is by controlling the distribution of a plant hormone called auxin, which determines the rate at which plant cells divide and lengthen. But how can one molecule make so many ...

Proteins are vital participants in virtually all life processes, including growth, repair and signaling in cells; catalysis of chemical reactions and defense against infection. For these reasons, proteins can provide critical signposts of health and disease, provided they can be identified and assessed in a clinical setting. Accurately characterizing proteins for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes has been an enormous challenge for the medical community. At the Biodesign Institute's Molecular Biomarkers Laboratory at Arizona State University, research focuses on the ...

Mathematicians at the University of York have joined forces with experimentalists at the University of Leeds to take an important step in discovering how viruses make new copies of themselves during an infection. The researchers have constructed a mathematical model that provides important new insights about the molecular mechanisms behind virus assembly which helps to explain the efficiency of their operation. The discovery opens up new possibilities for the development of anti-viral therapies and could help in the treatment of a range of diseases from HIV and Hepatitis ...

Wrinkling is a common phenomenon for thin stiff film adhered on soft substrate. Various wrinkling phenomenon has been reported previously. Wu Dan, Yin Yajun, Xie Huimin,et al from Tsinghua University proposed a new method to control wrinkling and buckling of thin stiff film on soft substrate. It is found that the curve pattern on the soft substrate has obvious influence on the wrinkling distribution of the thin film/soft substrate. Their work, entitled "Controlling the surface buckling wrinkles by patterning the material system of hard-nano-film/soft-matter-substrate", ...

(NEW YORK, NY, March 24, 2014) – Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormone imbalance that causes infertility, obesity, and excessive facial hair in women, can also lead to severe mental health issues including anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. A study supervised by Columbia University School of Nursing professor Nancy Reame, MSN, PhD, FAAN, and published in the Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, identifies the PCOS complications that may be most responsible for psychiatric problems. While weight gain and unwanted body hair can be distressing, irregular ...

Young children who sleep less eat more, which can lead to obesity and related health problems later in life, reports a new study by UCL researchers. The study found that 16 month-old children who slept for less than 10 hours each day consumed on average 105kcal more per day than children who slept for more than 13 hours. This is an increase of around 10% from 982kcal to 1087kcal. Associations between eating, weight and sleep have been reported previously in older children and adults, but the study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, is the first to directly ...

AUDIO: This is a podcast interview with Professor Schwaeble. Click here for more information. "I am really excited about this landmark discovery. We demonstrate that boosting the innate immune system can have a significant impact on the body's ability to defend itself against life-threatening infections" - Professor Wilhelm Schwaeble from the University of Leicester's Department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation IMAGES AND A PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR SCHWAEBLE ...