The strikingly rapid spread of the Tree Bumblebee in Britain could be occurring because the bees readily live alongside humans in towns and villages – according to research from the University of East Anglia. A new study published today shows that Tree Bumblebees are associated with built-up areas and that these areas form a large part of their habitat use. These markedly different habitat and foraging preferences set this species apart from other common British bumblebee species – which could explain how Tree Bumblebees have managed to colonise much of the UK while ...

Policies put into place by major funding agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and to a lesser extent by scientific journals, appear to be meeting the goal of increasing the sharing of scientific resources among life science investigators. As reported in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, 65 percent of surveyed investigators at major U.S. research institutions believed that NIH policies instituted in recent years had markedly improved the sharing of scientific data. But the survey also identified some unexpected problems, including the number of researchers ...

An article released by Social Forces titled, "The Scarring Effects of Primary-Grade Retention? A Study of Cumulative Advantage in the Educational Career" by Megan Andrew explores the effect of scarring in the educational career in the case of primary-grade retention. Just as is the case for labor-market careers, events early in the educational career can leave lasting scars. Through the study, Andrew finds that primary-grade retention has lasting effects on educational attainments well after a student is initially retained: Retaining a child in early primary school reduces ...

Anti-odour clothing may not be living up to its promise, and an ALES researcher is saying it could all be a matter of how the product was tested. In two separate experiments, Human Ecology researcher Rachel McQueen and her team found that some antimicrobial textiles were far more effective at performing their advertised tasks in the lab than in testing on humans. In one experiment, the fabrics were designed to help lower the risk of infection; in the second, the fabric was treated with a silver compound, which can be marketed preventing odour in clothing. "We aren't ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new Oregon State University study of children with autism found that they are more sedentary than their typically-developing peers, averaging 50 minutes less a day of moderate physical activity and 70 minutes more each day sitting. The small study of 29 children, some with autism and some without, showed that children with autism perform as well as their typical peers on fitness assessments such as body mass index, aerobic fitness levels and flexibility. The results warrant expanding the study to a larger group of children, said Megan MacDonald, an ...

As a child in southern California, Ryan Rykaczewski spent a fair amount of time on his grandfather's boat, fishing with him off the Pacific coast near Los Angeles. At the time, he didn't think there was much rhyme or reason to their luck on the water. "Sometimes we'd catch a lot of fish and sometimes we didn't," he says. "I just thought it was chaotic, that we could never understand what was going on." But education changed his mind. Now an oceanographer and assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, he's working to understand the many factors that determine ...

Each year 2.5 million children die worldwide because they do not receive life-saving vaccinations at the appropriate time. Anil Jain, Michigan State University professor, is developing a fingerprint-based recognition method to track vaccination schedules for infants and toddlers, which will increase immunization coverage and save lives. To increase coverage, the vaccines must be recorded and tracked. The traditional tracking method is for parents to keep a paper document. But in developing countries, keeping track of a baby's vaccine schedule on paper is largely ineffective, ...

September 26, 2014 – Decision analysis techniques can help surgeons and patients evaluate alternatives for breast reconstruction—leading to a "good decision" that reflects the woman's preferences and values, according to an article in the October issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The special topic article by Mia K. Markey, PhD, and colleagues of The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, introduces plastic surgeons to the ...

September 26, 2014 – A new standardized assessment provides a useful tool for tracking surgeons' progress as they develop the skills needed to perform robot-assisted microsurgery, reports a study in the October issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). "The Structured Assessment of Robotic Microsurgical Skills (SARMS) is the first validated instrument for assessing robotic microsurgical skills," according to the report by ASPS Member Surgeon Dr Jesse C. Selber of the University of Texas ...

In a paper published this week online in Global Society, researchers with University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Urban Studies and Planning Program, also at UC San Diego, present a bioregional guide that merges place-based (territorial) city planning and ecosystem management along the United States-Mexico border as way to improve human and environmental health. Issues like climate change, economic crisis, natural disasters and disease outbreaks do not stop at national borders, compelling public health officials, academics and researchers to think ...

WASHINGTON (Sept. 29, 2014) — Heart disease and stroke contribute to 30 percent of global deaths, more than all infectious and parasitic diseases combined, and 11 cardiovascular organizations are calling for the United Nations to address prevention of heart disease and other non-communicable diseases. In a statement published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and other cardiology journals, the World Heart Federation's Global Cardiovascular Disease Taskforce—which is comprised of cardiologists and health advocates from the World Heart Federation, African ...

RESEARCHERS at the University of Huddersfield have collaborated with a colleague at a leading Chinese university to produce a detailed appraisal of a complex new welding technique that could be increasingly valuable to modern industry. ‌Professor Andrew Ball (pictured below) and his colleague Dr Fengshou Gu, of the University of Huddersfield's Centre for Efficiency and Performance Engineering, teamed up with Professor Xiaocong He of Kunming University of Science and Technology's (KUST) Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre in order to investigate the technique ...

Alexandria, Va., USA – The International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) have published a paper titled "Global Burden of Periodontitis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Regression." The manuscript, by lead researcher Wagner Marcenes (Queen Mary University of London, Institute of Dentistry, Barts and The London School) is published in the OnlineFirst portion of the IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research (JDR). The purpose of this study was to consolidate all epidemiological data about severe periodontitis and subsequently to generate internally consistent ...

An international team of scientists, involving Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and Head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester, has shown how individual neurons in the human brain react to ambiguous morphed faces. For this, the researchers used images of celebrities, such as Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry, morphed together to create an ambiguous face which test subjects were asked to identify. The study found that for the same ambiguous images, the neurons fired according to the subjective perception by the ...

Tropical Storm Kammuri continues to strengthen on its north-northwestern track through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and NASA's TRMM satellite identified a band of thunderstorms containing heavy rainfall northwest of the storm's center. Meanwhile NASA's Aqua satellite got a look at the entire storm and saw that those bands of storms circled the entire storm. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite flew over the northern half of Tropical Storm Kammuri on Sept. 26 at 1:44 a.m. EDT and the Precipitation Radar instrument saw a strong band of thunderstorms ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) report improved symptoms and health status when they use a hand-held respiratory device called the Lung Flute®, according to a new study by the University at Buffalo. Usually caused by smoking, COPD, which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The Lung Flute, manufactured by Medical Acoustics, (Buffalo), uses sound waves to break up mucus in the lungs. The device allows patients to clear lung mucus simply by blowing into the hand-held respiratory ...

VIDEO: Earth's atmosphere is a complicated dance of molecules. The chemical output of plants, animals and human industry rise into the air and pair off in sequences of chemical reactions. Such... Click here for more information. Earth's atmosphere is a complicated dance of molecules. The chemical output of plants, animals and human industry rise into the air and pair off in sequences of chemical reactions. Such processes help maintain the atmosphere's chemical balance; for ...

WASHINGTON (Sept. 26, 2014)—A new global analysis released today by the National Geographic Society and GlobeScan finds that concern about environmental problems has increased in most countries surveyed, and that more people now expect global warming will negatively affect them during their lifetime than in 2012. Despite this, National Geographic's Greendex, a comprehensive measure of consumer behavior in 65 areas related to housing, transportation, food and consumer goods, shows that sustainable consumer behavior has only grown slowly. Results of the 2014 Greendex, a ...

This news release is available in German. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Vienna (Institute of Inorganic Chemistry) and the Medical University of Vienna (Institute for Cancer Research) has successfully developed a new strategy for reducing the often serious side effects of an important class of modern anticancer drugs (tyrosine kinase inhibitors). The novel drug is supposed to restrict its activity with high selectivity to the malignant tumour. The occurrence of severe side effects and the development of resistance are two of the biggest ...

Young individuals of a species are often more sensitive towards environmental stress than their adult counterparts. Scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel now observed this effect in the sea star Asterias rubens from the Baltic Sea. In a long-term laboratory experiment that was conducted in the framework of the German research network BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification), the researchers simulated three different levels of acidification that could be reached in the Baltic Sea by the uptake of additional carbon dioxide (CO2) within ...

CINCINNATI – New research shows that disrupting the molecular function of a tumor suppressor causes improper formation of a protective insulating sheath on peripheral nerves – leading to neuropathy and muscle wasting in mice similar to that in human diabetes and neurodegeneration. Scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report their findings online Sept. 26 in Nature Communications. The study suggests that normal molecular function of the tumor suppressor gene Lkb1 is essential to an important metabolic transition in cells as peripheral nerves (called ...

NASA's Aqua satellite saw the area of strong thunderstorms with colder cloud tops had grown within the Eastern Pacific Ocean's Tropical Storm Rachel. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the large Tropical Storm Rachel on Sept. 25 at 4:41 p.m. EDT and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument, saw that the extent of colder cloud tops had increased, indicating thunderstorm heights were increasing and it was strengthening. The expansion of those stronger thunderstorms also suggests that the northeasterly wind shear may be relaxing a little. The strongest thunderstorms ...

Last week, at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, MIT researchers unveiled an oval-shaped submersible robot, a little smaller than a football, with a flattened panel on one side that it can slide along an underwater surface to perform ultrasound scans. Originally designed to look for cracks in nuclear reactors' water tanks, the robot could also inspect ships for the false hulls and propeller shafts that smugglers frequently use to hide contraband. Because of its small size and unique propulsion mechanism — which leaves no visible wake — the ...

An interdisciplinary team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has now applied a cutting-edge technique for rapid gene sequencing toward measuring other nanoscopic structures. By passing nanoscale spheres and rods through a tiny hole in a membrane, the team was able to measure the electrical properties of those structures' surfaces. Their findings suggest new ways of using this technique, known as "nanopore translocation," to analyze objects at the smallest scale. The research was led by Marija Drndić, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy ...

Hanover, NH - A study published in the journal Science provides support for a new—and still controversial—understanding of the immune system. The research was conducted by collaborators in the U.S. and Europe, including Robert Cramer, PhD, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at the Geisel School of Medicine and member of the Dartmouth Lung Biology Center, and Kelly Shepherdson, PhD, at the time a graduate student in Cramer's lab. Typically, scientists divide the immune system into two categories: the innate immune response and the adaptive immune response. ...