Climate change is set to affect the quality of the wines of the Tempranillo grape variety, according to the conclusions of a piece of research conducted by the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development Neiker-Tecnalia, in collaboration with the University of Navarre and the Aula Dei (EEAD) Experimental Station of the National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). Scientists from these bodies have studied the behaviour of the vines in conditions of climate change; in other words, higher temperature, increased presence of CO2 and greater environmental aridity. ...

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy can quantitatively analyze in vivo abnormalities of biochemical metabolism within brain tissue in a noninvasive and non-radioactive manner. Compared with 3.0T magnetic resonance spectroscopy, high-field magnetic resonance spectroscopy (≥ 7.0T) exhibits high spatial resolution and density resolution, microscopic imaging of the living body, and obtains both high scanning resolution and result precision within a shorter scan time, thus providing a higher value in clinical diagnosis. In a recent study reported in the Neural Regeneration ...

Molluscs are invertebrates that make up one of the most numerous groups in the animal kingdom. They are everywhere, from great heights of over 3,000m above sea level to ocean profundities of over 5,000m deep, in polar and tropical waters and they tend to be common elements on coastlines around the world. Within this animal group are found the nudibranchs, characterized among other things, for not having shells and being brightly coloured. This colouring alerts their predators to their toxicity. Within this group, in turn, we can find the Aeolidiidae family. This family ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 30, 2014 – Some have characterized dopamine as the elixir of pleasure because so many rewarding stimuli – food, drugs, sex, exercise – trigger its release in the brain. However, more than a decade of research indicates that when drug use becomes compulsive, the related dopamine release becomes deficient in the striatum, a brain region that is involved in reward and behavioral control. New research now published in Biological Psychiatry from the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam suggests that dopamine release is increased in obsessive-compulsive ...

Asking NHS staff about what affects whether they would recommend their organisation for family and friends is an important source of intelligence for improving quality and safety of care, says a new study. This finding by researchers in the Universities of Leicester, Aberdeen, and Bristol has been published in a paper, 'The friends and family test: a qualitative study of concerns that influence the willingness of English National Health Service staff to recommend their organisation', in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Since 2009, the annual Staff Survey ...

Toronto, ON, Canada, April 30, 2014 – A new study presenting data from 17 cardiac surgical centers in Virginia, representing 100 surgeons and 99% of cardiac operations performed in the state, demonstrates that, even today, significant variations – among surgeons and hospitals - still exist in the performance of mitral valve repair vs replacement for moderate to severe mitral regurgitation. Significant associations were observed between the propensity for MV repair and both institutional and surgeon annual volume, although increasing surgeon volume appears to be the much ...

Toronto, ON, Canada, April 30, 2014 – A new technique that brings CT imaging into the operating room will allow surgeons to precisely demarcate and remove small sub-centimeter lung nodules, leaving as much healthy tissue as possible, according to Raphael Bueno, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. His team is presenting the results of this late-breaking research at the 94th AATS Annual Meeting in Toronto, ON, Canada on April 30, 2014. Lung cancer remains the deadliest cancer and a recent study, the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, indicated that screening ...

UNSW Australia chemists have invented a new type of tiny lab-on-a-chip device that could have a diverse range of applications, including to detect toxic gases, fabricate integrated circuits and screen biological molecules. The novel technique developed by the UNSW team involves printing a pattern of miniscule droplets of a special solvent onto a gold-coated or glass surface. "We use a class of 'green' solvents called ionic liquids, which are salts that are liquid at room temperature. They are non-volatile, so this overcomes one of the main problems in making useful miniaturised ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – A new study has found that children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have disrupted connections between different areas of the brain that are evident on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rfMRI). The results of this research are published online in the journal Radiology. The findings point to the potential of rfMRI to help provide objectively accurate, early diagnosis of a disorder that affects approximately 5 percent of children and adolescents worldwide. ADHD is a disorder characterized by age-inappropriate ...

How do you get a preschooler to help with chores and other household tasks? A new study suggests that adults' word choice can make a big difference. The study, by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, the University of Washington, and Stanford University, appears in the journal Child Development. The researchers carried out two experiments with about one hundred and fifty 3- to 6-year-olds from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds who came from middle- to upper-middle-class homes. In both experiments, an adult experimenter began by talking to ...

Working memory—the ability to hold information in your mind, think about it, and use it to guide behavior—develops through childhood and adolescence, and is key for successful performance at school and work. Previous research with young children has documented socioeconomic disparities in performance on tasks of working memory. Now a new longitudinal study has found that differences in working memory that exist at age 10 persist through the end of adolescence. The study also found that parents' education—one common measure of socioeconomic status—is related to children's ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The oldest sections of transform faults, such as the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) and the San Andreas Fault, produce the largest earthquakes, putting important limits on the potential seismic hazard for less mature parts of fault zones, according to a new study to be presented today at the Seismological Society of America (SSA) 2014 Annual Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. The finding suggests that maximum earthquake magnitude scales with the maturity of the fault. Identifying the likely maximum magnitude for the NAFZ is critical for seismic hazard ...

Babies begin to learn about the connection between pictures and real-life objects early on. A new study has found that by 9 months, babies can learn about an object from a picture of it and can transfer that learning to the real object when they come across it. The study, by researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of South Carolina, appears in Child Development, the journal of the Society for Research in Child Development. "The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant," says Jeanne L. ...

Babies begin to learn about the connection between pictures and real objects by the time they are nine-months-old, according to a new study by scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of South Carolina. The research, published today in Child Development, found that babies can learn about a toy from a photograph of it well before their first birthday. "The study should interest any parent or caregiver who has ever read a picture book with an infant," said Dr Jeanne Shinskey, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway. "For parents ...

New York, NY, April 30, 2014—States made little progress in improving health care access, quality, and outcomes and lowering costs in the five years preceding implementation of the major coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act (2007-2012), according to the Commonwealth Fund's third state health system scorecard. The majority of states declined or failed to improve on two-thirds of the 34 scorecard indicators that could be tracked over time. Wide gaps among states persisted since the last scorecard, with top states sometimes performing two to eight times better ...

Electricity is normally transmitted by means of alternating current, but it is not the only way and not always the best one.In some cases, high voltage direct current (HVDC) is used. In Spain, for example, there is only one direct current line, the one that connects mainland Spain with the Balearic Islands; all the remaining ones transmit electricity by means of alternating current. In fact, "direct current continues to be highly suitable for underwater and underground lines," asserted Marene Larruskain, one of the engineers in the UPV/EHU's GISEL group. Furthermore "less ...

Carbon-based nanostructures such as nanotubes, graphene sheets, and nanoribbons are unique building blocks showing versatile nanomechanical and nanoelectronic properties. These materials which are ordered in the nanoscale, that is, in the dimension of a millionth of millimetre, are promising candidates to envision applications in nanoscale devices, ranging from energy conversion to nano-electronic transistors. A good connection between carbon-based materials and external metallic leads is of major importance in nanodevice performance, an aspect where an important step has ...

To solve a puzzle, you need to recognize shapes, patterns and a particular kind of order. In much the same way, researchers at McGill University have discovered that the 3D shape of a leukemia cell's genome holds a key to solving the puzzle of human diseases. The researchers report their findings in the open access journal Genome Biology. McGill professor Josée Dostie, a researcher in the Faculty of Medicine in the department of Biochemistry, focused on the shape made by the region spanning the Homeobox A (HOXA) genes in human cells -- a set of 11 genes encoding proteins ...

Bumblebees can distinguish between safe and dangerous environments, and are attracted to land on flowers popular with other bees when exposed to perilous situations, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London. The study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that past experience of predation causes bumblebees to join other bees already safely feeding on flowers. Co-author and PhD student Erika Dawson said: "Our experiment shows for the first time that when bees find themselves in these predator-infested environments ...

PITTSBURGH—The robust defenses that yeast cells have evolved to protect themselves from environmental threats hold lessons that can be used to design computer networks and analyze how secure they are, say computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. Environmental "noise" is a key evolutionary pressure that shapes the interconnections within cells, as well as those of neural networks and bacterial/ecological networks, they observe in a paper to be published online April 30 by the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The researchers factored this into an established ...

Researchers at the University of Exeter have found that the probability of a burying beetle winning fights, for the small animal carcasses it needs, depends on a combination of early life experiences and the competition it faces as an adult. These beetles use small dead animals, such as mice and songbirds, to provide food for their young and competition for a carcass can be fierce. Previous work has found that success in such contests depends on how good your early adult life environment was, not just how big you are. However, in many animals food availability can ...

Caltech astronomers have taken unprecedented images of the intergalactic medium (IGM)—the diffuse gas that connects galaxies throughout the universe—with the Cosmic Web Imager, an instrument designed and built at Caltech. Until now, the structure of the IGM has mostly been a matter for theoretical speculation. However, with observations from the Cosmic Web Imager, deployed on the Hale 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, astronomers are obtaining our first three-dimensional pictures of the IGM. The Cosmic Web Imager will make possible a new understanding of galactic ...

SAN DIEGO (April 29, 2014) – Imagine filling a hole in your heart by regrowing the tissue. While that possibility is still being explored in people, it is a reality in salamanders. A recent discovery that newt hearts can regenerate may pave the way to new therapies in people who need to have damaged tissue replaced with healthy tissue. Heart disease is the leading cause of deaths in the United States. Preventative measures like healthful diets and lifestyles help ward off heart problems, but if heart damage does occur, sophisticated treatments and surgical procedures ...

A new study conducted by researchers at Marcus Autism Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University School of Medicine indicates that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more than four times more likely to experience general gastrointestinal (GI) complaints compared with peers, are more than three times as prone to experience constipation and diarrhea than peers, and complain twice as much about abdominal pain compared to peers. The results were reported in the April 28, 2014, online early edition of the journal Pediatrics. While parents ...

The weather system that dropped tornadoes in seven central and southern U.S. states on April 27-28, moved east and generated more tornadoes on April 29. NASA's Aqua satellite gathered temperature data on the thunderstorm cloud tops in the system and found them to be higher in the atmosphere and colder. The tornado outbreak over the evening and overnight hours of April 28-29 is thought to have generated more tornadoes in northern Mississippi and Alabama. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the eastern U.S. early in the morning on April 29 at 07:41 UTC/3:41 a.m. EDT and gathered ...