Children and teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder or those who have attention deficit and hyperactivity problems are much more likely to wish to be another gender. So says John Strang of the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, USA, leader of the first study to compare the occurrence of such gender identity issues among children and adolescents with and without specific neurodevelopmental disorders. The paper is published in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. Children between 6 and 18 years old were part of the study. They either had ...

Boston and Baltimore. Miami and Minneapolis. Phoenix and Los Angeles. Fanned across the United States and in locations from coast to prairie to desert, what do these cities have in common? How their human residents manage that icon of America, the urban lawn, or so hypothesized a team of scientists. However, when they conducted a study comparing residential landscapes in these six cities, they discovered that lawn care practices had fewer similarities than they expected. Ecologists Colin Polsky of Clark University in Worcester, Mass., Peter Groffman of the Cary Institute ...

Climate was very much on Genghis Khan's side as he expanded his Mongol Empire across northeastern Asia. That link between Mongolia's climate and its human history echoes down the centuries, according to findings reported in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). But climate may no longer be the boon it was during the latter, wetter part of Genghis Khan's reign. The early years were marked by drought. Mongolia's current drought conditions could have serious consequences for the Asia region's human and other inhabitants. The ...

Tropical Cyclone Hadi is now a remnant low pressure area in the Southern Pacific Ocean. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the storm and captured a visible image of it on March 12. When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Hadi's remnants, the MODIS instrument aboard captured a visible image that showed the strongest thunderstorms associated with the low appeared south of the center of circulation. The center was located near 15.1 south and 156.1 east, about 585 nautical miles/673.2 miles/ 1,083 km west of Vanuatu. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC noted that animated ...

LEBANON, NH (March 12, 2014) – In a Viewpoint published in the March issue of JAMA, Researcher Jeremiah Brown of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice and colleagues, Hal Sox and David Goodman, question whether the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' use of financial penalties is the right tack for changing the behavior of hospitals. The researchers examine the pros and cons of the hospital readmissions reduction policy in the Affordable Care Act as an example of similar CMS initiatives. "Using financial incentives to change practice ...

LOS ANGELES (March 11, 2014) – Researchers in the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute eradicated solid tumors in laboratory mice using a novel combination of two targeted agents. These two synergistic therapies stimulate an immune response, ultimately allowing solid tumors to act as their own cancer-fighting vaccine. The study's findings, published in the journal Cancer Research, are the first to use these combined agents as an immune stimulator and may have the potential to kill cancerous cells in solid tumors, including some of the most aggressive ...

A team of researchers from Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School have discovered a protein complex that disrupts the process known as dedifferentiation (1), known to promote tumor development. Dedifferentiation (reversion) is a process that leads progenitor (2) or mature cells to become 'ectopic neural stem cells' which causes tumors. By detecting this protein complex, Duke-NUS researchers have shed light on a process that inhibits tumor development and gives hope for the discovery of therapies and treatments that target tumor prevention through this pathway. Researchers ...

A research team from Imperial College London has shown that blocking the function of an enzyme known as Hhat slows the growth and spread of pancreatic cancer, by preventing a protein called Hedgehog from stimulating nearby normal cells to help the cancer. The study, funded by the UK research charity Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, examined the role of Hedgehog, whose usual job is to send signals to cells in embryos to divide and grow into the correct body parts. But while Hedgehog usually switches off when the embryo is formed, in many cancers, including pancreatic, ...

Researchers at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) and UNC's School of Education report that teaching independence to adolescents with autism can provide a crucial boost to their chances for success after high school. "We explored many factors that contribute to the poor outcomes people with autism often experience," said Kara Hume, co-principal investigator of FPG's Center on Secondary Education for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (CSESA). "It's clear that teaching independence to students with autism should be a central focus of their ...

New insights into how the human brain responds to chronic pain could eventually lead to improved treatments for patients, according to University of Adelaide researchers. Neuroplasticity is the term used to describe the brain's ability to change structurally and functionally with experience and use. "Neuroplasticity underlies our learning and memory, making it vital during early childhood development and important for continuous learning throughout life," says Dr Ann-Maree Vallence, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute. "The mechanisms ...

Changing the texture and surface characteristics of a semiconductor material at the nanoscale can influence the way that neural cells grow on the material. The finding stems from a study performed by researchers at North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Purdue University, and may have utility for developing future neural implants. "We wanted to know how a material's texture and structure can influence cell adhesion and differentiation," says Lauren Bain, lead author of a paper describing the work and a Ph.D. student in ...

Alpha-synuclein is a principal component of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, which are pathologic hall-marks of Parkinson's disease. Alpha-synuclein is generally considered to play a role in synaptic activity, although its function remains largely unknown. Accumulative evidence has been shown that aggregated extracellular alpha-synuclein fibrils can be internalized in the cells and enhance the intracellular formation of protein inclusions, leading to cell death. Conversely, there is emerging evidence suggesting that alpha-synuclein has also neuroprotective effects. In one ...

Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis is a mouse model of human multiple sclerosis with similar pathology and pathogenesis. Th1 cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis. Therefore, Qun Xue, Fanli Dong and co-workers from the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University in China speculated that programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis. A recent study by these researchers published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 35, 2013) found that the ...

The way we secure digital transactions could soon change. An international team has demonstrated a form of quantum cryptography that can protect people doing business with others they may not know or trust – a situation encountered often on the internet and in everyday life, for example at a bank's ATM. "Having quantum cryptography to hand is a realistic prospect, I think. I expect that quantum technologies will gradually become integrated with existing devices such as smartphones, allowing us to do things like identify ourselves securely or generate encryption keys," ...

Complete regeneration is usually very difficult following peripheral nerve damage, though microsurgical techniques have vastly increased the success rate of surgery to repair the injured nerve. This occurs possibly because of a lack of neurotrophic factors and extracellular matrix in the injured region, which results in a microenvironment that is not optimal for peripheral nerve regeneration. Nerve growth factor (NGF) was the first neurotrophic factor identified in a class of molecules responsible for neuronal survival and differentiation. Consequently, many techniques, ...

Iron overload can lead to cytotoxicity, and it is a risk factor for diabetic peripheral neuropathy. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Prof. Shi Zhao and team conjectured that iron overload-induced neurotoxicity might be associated with oxidative stress and the NF-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2)/ARE signaling pathway. As an in vitro cellular model of diabetic peripheral neuropathy, PC12 cells exposed to high glucose concentration were used in this study. PC12 cells were cultured with ferric ammonium citrate at different concentrations to create iron overload. ...

Over 1,400 species of parasites – viruses, bacteria, fungi, intestinal worms and protozoa – are able to infect humans. In most cases, the right medicine against a parasite cures the patient. If he or she suffers from an infection by two or more species of parasite at the same time, however, it soon becomes more difficult to diagnose and treat. Medication can even exacerbate the medical condition if one pathogen is killed off but the second flourishes. One reason is the little-understood interactions between the parasites that reside in the same host. In a study published ...

Multiple regions in the human genome are reported to be linked to musical aptitude, according to a study published this week in Molecular Psychiatry. The function of the candidate genes implicated in the study ranges from inner-ear development to auditory neurocognitive processes, suggesting that musical aptitude is affected by a combination of genes involved in the auditory pathway. The research was funded by the Academy of Finland. The perception of music starts with specialised hair cells in the inner ear, which transmit sounds as electronic signals through the auditory ...

In a Yale School of Medicine analysis of 96 research trial results published in top journals, almost all had at least one discrepancy between what was reported on the public clinical trial registry clinicaltrials.gov and what was posted in the journal article. "This study raises serious questions about the accuracy of results reporting in both clinical trial registries and publications, and the importance of consistent presentation of accurate results," said Joseph Ross, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and public health at Yale School of Medicine and senior author ...

Valentine's Day has come and gone. But those images of romance are still everywhere : a happy couple holding hands in an eharmony ad, two lovebirds sharing a tender kiss in a Nikon camera commercial. Advertising filled with romantic images, featuring "happy togetherness" in magazines and stores as well as on television and websites might resonate with you if you have a special someone. But if you're single, a new study shows you're not buying. New research from consumer psychologist Lisa Cavanaugh, assistant professor at the USC Marshall School of Business, reveals ...

The malaria parasite is particularly pernicious since it is built to develop resistance to treatments. The lack of new therapeutic approaches also contributes to the persistence of this global scourge. A study led by Didier Picard, professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, describes a new class of molecules targeting the two problems at the same time. Using ultra sophisticated computerised modelling tools, the researchers were successful in identifying a type of candidate molecules toxic for the pathogen, but not for the infected ...

In a new study, fisheries researchers from North Carolina State University found that black sea bass (Centropristis striata) can usually survive the physical trauma that results from being hauled up from deep water then released at the surface. The finding is part of a larger study of the fish's mortality rate, which will inform stock assessments designed to help ensure that the black sea bass fishery is sustainable. Black sea bass are bottom-dwelling fish, and are often caught at depths of greater than 60 feet. When the fish are brought to the surface, the rapid change ...

As part of the BABYDIET study, the scientists compared the composition and interaction of the gut microbiota in children who went on to develop diabetes-specific autoantibodies in their blood with data from children who were autoantibody negative. The BABYDIET study examines the nutritional factors that may influence the risk of diabetes. Similar bacteria – different interactions In the course of the study, the team headed by PD Dr. Peter Achenbach and Professor Anette-Gabriele Ziegler from the Institute of Diabetes Research as well as Dr. David Endesfelder and Dr. ...

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), Olivier Chesneau (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Nice, France) and an international team of collaborators have found that the yellow hypergiant star HR 5171 A [1] is absolutely huge — 1300 times the diameter of the Sun and much bigger than was expected [2]. This makes it the largest yellow star known. It is also in the top ten of the largest stars known — 50% larger than the famous red supergiant Betelgeuse — and about one million times brighter than the Sun. "The new observations also showed that this star has ...

Research from McGill University reveals that the brain's motor network helps people remember and recognize music that they have performed in the past better than music they have only heard. A recent study by Prof. Caroline Palmer of the Department of Psychology sheds new light on how humans perceive and produce sounds, and may pave the way for investigations into whether motor learning could improve or protect memory or cognitive impairment in aging populations. The research is published in the journal Cerebral Cortex. "The memory benefit that comes from performing a ...