Embracing "novel" ecosystems is dangerous, according to a new study by an international team. Novel ecosystems arise when human activities transform biological communities through species invasions and environmental change. They are seemingly ubiquitous, and thus many policymakers and ecologists argue for them to be accepted as the "new normal"—an idea the researchers say is a bad one. In the study, published in the September edition of the academic journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the international team argues that adopting novel ecosystems is based on faulty, ...

Have you ever seen a crowd of people looking off into the distance, perhaps toward a passing biker or up to the top of a building? There's a good chance you looked there, too, instantly, even without paying attention to the individuals in the group. How can we tell where a crowd is looking with so little effort? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Denver have discovered that we rely on a specialized visual process known as "ensemble coding" to perceive where a crowd is looking. Their new study shows that we are able to tell where ...

Ann Arbor, MI, August 18, 2014 – In a new supplement to the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, experts address the state of the science on suicide prevention and provide useful recommendations for research to inform effective suicide prevention. Suicide has been a challenging and perplexing public health issue to study as it has many dimensions and underlying factors. Although much is known about the patterns and potential risk factors of suicide, the national suicide rate does not appear to have dropped over the last 50 years. This groundbreaking ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- How do parents decide whether to vaccinate their child? In a study designed to formally look at the content of parent-targeted communications about the benefits of vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella, Indiana University School of Medicine investigators report that the framing of these messages influences parents' intentions to immunize their children. The investigators report that parents who viewed informational material highlighting direct benefits to their own child were the most likely to subsequently indicate that they would have their baby ...

WASHINGTON — Heterosexual white women are twice as likely as racial or sexual minority women to obtain medical help to get pregnant, according to a recent study published by the American Psychological Association. While income and lack of insurance only partially explained the lower number of racial minority women receiving fertility assistance, lack of insurance appeared to play a crucial role in whether lesbian and bisexual women received medical fertility help, especially in more recent years, according to the nationally representative study published in the APA journal ...

MONTREAL, August 15, 2014 — More than 500 delegates to the EcoHealth 2014 conference have issued a call to action to urgently and collaboratively address the impacts of climate change on the health of humans, animals and the global environment in light of the lack of a truly collective response to date. Working through the International Association for Ecology and Health (IAEH), the 500 delegates from 62 countries, and the larger ecohealth community they reflect, have developed a vision and commitment to action that will bring together what is already being done to address ...

Changes to British Columbia's laws against driving while impaired have reduced fatal crashes as well as ambulance calls and hospital admissions resulting from motor vehicle crashes, a new University of British Columbia study finds. Researchers concluded that harsher penalties for impaired driving and speeding instituted by the B.C. government in September 2010 reduced crashes related to drinking and driving. Automobile crashes declined 21 per cent, crash-related hospital admissions dropped 8 per cent and crash-related ambulance calls fell by 7.2 per cent. Based on ...

Optic nerve transection increased the expression of heat shock protein 72 (HSP72) in the lateral geniculate body, indicating that this protein is involved in the prevention of neuronal injury. Zinc sulfate and quercetin induced and inhibited the expression of HSP72, respectively. In a study reported by Dr. Ning Li and co-workers from the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, China, intraperitoneal injections of zinc sulfate, SP600125 (c-Jun N-terminal kinase inhibitor), or quercetin were performed on retinal ganglion cells in a Wistar rat model of chronic ...

Oxidative stress may cause retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell apoptosis. Nitric oxide and superoxide react to produce peroxynitrite, which, along with its derivatives, are strong oxidants. Cholecystokinin octapeptide-8 (CCK-8) can protect cholinergic neurons against basal forebrain lesion caused by brain injury. Research team at Hebei Province People's Hospital, China led by Dr. Yuan Liu treated human RPE cells with the oxidative stress inducer peroxynitrite, and evaluated the neuroprotective effects of CCK-8. Peroxynitrite triggered apoptosis in these cells, and increased ...

According to new research humble, microscopic organisms can create dripstones in caves. This illustrates how biological life can influence the formation of Earth's geology - and the same may be happening right now on other planets in space. According to traditional textbooks dripstones are created by geological or geochemical processes with no influence from living organisms. But now scientists report that formation of dripstones can be a lot more complex than that: Sometimes microbes are responsible for the formation of these geological features. The researchers from ...

A new study provides an exciting insight into the Late Cretaceous and the diversity and distribution of the toothless 'dragon' pterosaurs from the Azhdarchidae family. The research was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The Azhdarchidan pterosaurs derive their name from the Persian word for dragon - Aždarha. Interestingly, this derived and rather successful group of pterosaurs included some of the largest known flying animals of all times, with a wingspan reaching between 10 and 12 m. 'Dragon' pterosaurs had a worldwide distribution once and were the last ...

DENVER (August 18, 2014) – Municipal zoning regulations may push marijuana dispensaries into low income, minority areas, according to a study just released by the University of Colorado Denver. Published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the leading professional and academic planning resource, the study shows that government regulations will likely cause an inequitable distribution of marijuana business throughout the city. Though the impact of dispensaries to the neighborhoods in which they are located has yet to be understood, the research is clear ...

The hard corals primarily responsible for the construction of coral reefs around the world have attracted the attention of taxonomists for hundreds of years. Despite the important role such corals play in building what are arguably the world's most diverse ecosystems, coral reefs in some parts of the world still hold surprises for modern scientists. An international team of scientists has recently described a new hard coral species, Pachyseris inattesa, from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea. The study, led by the University of Milano-Biccocain collaboration with the King Abdullah ...

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, but mimicking the intricate networks and dynamic interactions that are inherent to living cells is difficult to achieve outside the cell. Now, as published in Science, Weizmann Institute scientists have created an artificial, network-like cell system that is capable of reproducing the dynamic behavior of protein synthesis. This achievement is not only likely to help gain a deeper understanding of basic biological processes, but it may, in the future, pave the way toward controlling the synthesis of both naturally-occurring ...

Under the Coalition Government which came to power in Britain in May 2010, major changes in the community supervision of offenders are underway in England and Wales. Under the new contract for electronic monitoring (EM) (the third since 1999), the government is planning a huge increase in the use of GPS tracking by 2015. Using GPS tracking could well come to be seen as a more reliable and credible way of 'doing' offender management. The government is planning to create the largest and most advanced electronic monitoring (EM) scheme in the world, using combined GPS tracking ...

(NEW YORK, NY, August 18, 2014) – Patients who rely on pacemakers and defibrillators to maintain a normal heart rhythm run the risk of serious health complications if they don't fully understand how the devices work and what to do when they experience an irregular heartbeat. But a study from Columbia University School of Nursing published this month in the Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing found that 40 percent of patients with these devices had little to no ability to understand information about their cardiac health. "As a nurse practitioner, I use every patient encounter ...

Social integration, including strong family ties, can protect one's well-being and even reduce the impact high-risk genes have on health. Scientists call this phenomenon a gene-environment interaction. An Indiana University study focusing on substance abuse, however, found that a three-way interplay of gender, genetics and social integration produced the different outcomes for men and women. The study looked at men and women with a genetic sensitivity to stressful situations. Strong family and community ties were protective for such men, reducing their risk of abusing ...

(Boston)—Probing deeper into the complex decisions that parents and providers face regarding the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, researchers found that though both parties appreciated importance of the HPV vaccine, their personal assumptions surrounding timing of administration relative to onset of sexual activity resulted in decreased vaccination rates. Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) conducted hundreds of interviews to offer new insights into this frequent—and often controversial—clinic room conversation. Their findings and recommendations ...

Feeling that conventional doctors did not take their suffering seriously, women instead sought out hormonal treatments for menopausal symptoms from anti-aging clinicians, according to a Case Western Reserve University study that investigated the appeal of anti-aging medicine. Some women also feared the harmful side effects from conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT) that had shown increased risks for cancer, heart disease and high blood pressure. Yet, they thought that the bioidentical, "natural" hormones their anti-aging doctors prescribed were safe, despite ...

SAN FRANCISCO — While some suggest that flexible work arrangements have the potential to reduce workplace inequality, a new study finds these arrangements may exacerbate discrimination based on parental status and gender. Study author Christin Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at Furman University, analyzed the reactions both men and women received when making flexible work requests — meaning that they either asked to work from home or to work non-traditional hours. Among those who made flexible work requests, men who asked to work from home two days a week ...

SAN FRANCISCO — While previous research has documented the existence of a racial hierarchy within the dating world with white women and men on top, a new study finds that in certain circumstances multiracial daters are actually seen as more desirable than individuals from all other racial groups, including whites. "The most interesting and surprising finding from our study is that some white-minority multiracial daters are, in fact, preferred over white and non-white daters," said Celeste Vaughan Curington, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Mental health experts in the past three decades have emphasized the dangers of post-partum depression for mothers, but a University of Kansas researcher says expanding awareness of several other perinatal mental health conditions is important for all new parents, including fathers. This awareness has become even more critical as "super mom" and "super dad" pressures continue to grow, said Carrie Wendel-Hummell, a KU doctoral candidate in sociology, who will present her study on perinatal mental health disorders at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American ...

SAN FRANCISCO — The "Great Recession" may have put a dent in many older adults' pocketbooks, but a new study, which will be presented at the 109th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, finds that more than 40 percent reported a decrease in "financial strain" between 2006 and 2010. Researcher Lindsay R. Wilkinson, an assistant professor of sociology in Baylor University's College of Arts & Sciences, drew on 5,205 respondents from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine the effect of financial strain on the mental health and use of mood-altering ...

High-intensity exercise can help stable heart transplant patients reach higher levels of exercise capacity, and gain better control of their blood pressure than moderate intensity exercise, investigators report in a new study published in the American Journal of Transplantation. Recent research shows that high-intensity interval exercise—training for a few minutes at close to the maximum heart rate—is safe and more efficient than moderate exercise for improving exercise capacity in different groups of patients with heart disease. Researchers led by Christian Dall, PhD ...

Boston, MA – A new study led by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Rush University Medical Center, reveals how early changes in brain DNA methylation are involved in Alzheimer's disease. DNA methylation is a biochemical alteration of the building blocks of DNA and is one of the markers that indicate whether the DNA is open and biologically active in a given region of the human genome. The study is published online August 17, 2014 in Nature Neuroscience. According to the researchers, this is the first large-scale study employing epigenome-wide association ...