This news release is available in German. Geophysicists use the SeisSol earthquake simulation software to investigate rupture processes and seismic waves beneath the Earth's surface. Their goal is to simulate earthquakes as accurately as possible to be better prepared for future events and to better understand the fundamental underlying mechanisms. However, the calculations involved in this kind of simulation are so complex that they push even super computers to their limits. In a collaborative effort, the workgroups led by Dr. Christian Pelties at the Department of ...

The paradox of happiness is that chasing it may actually make us less happy, a Stanford researcher says. So how does one find happiness? Effective ways exist, according to new research. One path to happiness is through concrete, specific goals of benevolence – like making someone smile or increasing recycling – instead of following similar but more abstract goals – like making someone happy or saving the environment. The reason is that when you pursue concretely framed goals, your expectations of success are more likely to be met in reality. On the other hand, broad ...

This news release is available in German. The gut microbiota is responsible for many aspects of human health and nutrition, but most studies have focused on "western" populations. An international collaboration of researchers, including researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has for the first time analysed the gut microbiota of a modern hunter-gatherer community, the Hadza of Tanzania. The results of this work show that Hadza harbour a unique microbial profile with features yet unseen in any other human group, supporting ...

A new study based on real-time audio recordings of parents practicing corporal punishment discovered that spanking was far more common than parents admit, that children were hit for trivial misdeeds and that children then misbehaved within 10 minutes of being punished. Advocates of corporal punishment have outlined best practices for responsible spanking. But real-time audio from this study revealed that parents fail to follow the guidelines, said psychologist George Holden, who is lead author on the study and a parenting and child development expert at Southern Methodist ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a mechanism that explains why people with the hepatitis C virus get liver disease and why the virus is able to persist in the body for so long. The hard-to-kill pathogen, which infects an estimated 200 million people worldwide, attacks the liver cells' energy centers – the mitochondria – dismantling the cell's innate ability to fight infection. It does this by altering cells mitochondrial dynamics. The study, published in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Antiretroviral therapy (ART), the primary type of treatment for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), can reduce sexual transmission, prevent illness, and increase longevity and quality of life for patients. However, according to current data, only an estimated 77-percent of U.S patients on ART therapy have suppressed viral loads. This suggests patients' adherence to the current ART treatment regiments is in need of improvement to reduce the viral load and also to lower sexual transmission risk behaviors. Now, new research from faculty affiliated with New York University's ...

Microbes can be highly efficient, versatile and sophisticated manufacturing tools, and have the potential to form the basis of a vibrant economic sector. In order to take full advantage of the opportunity microbial-based industry can offer, though, educators need to rethink how future microbiologists are trained, according to a report by the American Academy of Microbiology. "Industrial microbiology is experiencing a Renaissance; microorganisms make products ranging from the tightly regulated pharmaceuticals industry to large-scale production of commodity chemicals and ...

By solving a long standing scientific mystery, the common saying "you just hit a nerve" might need to be updated to "you just hit a Merkel cell," jokes Jianguo Gu, PhD, a pain researcher at the University of Cincinnati (UC). That's because Gu and his research colleagues have proved that Merkel cells— which contact many sensory nerve endings in the skin—are the initial sites for sensing touch. "Scientists have spent over a century trying to understand the function of this specialized skin cell and now we are the first to know … we've proved the Merkel cell to be a primary ...

New Zealand's pastoral landscapes are some of the loveliest in the world, but they also contain a hidden threat. Many of the country's pasture soils have become enriched in cadmium. Grasses take up this toxic heavy metal, which is then eaten by the cattle and sheep that graze them. The problem is not unique to New Zealand; cadmium-enriched soils being reported worldwide. The concern is that if cadmium concentrations rise to unsafe levels in meat and dairy products, human health and New Zealand's agricultural economy could be jeopardized. That so far hasn't happened. But, ...

Several regions in the south and central Philippines have flood advisories as the remnants of now dissipated Tropical Depression Peipah continue to linger over the country. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite got a look at the remnant clouds from its orbit in space on April 15. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a look at Peipah's remnant clouds on April 15 at 5:44 a.m. EDT. VIIRS collects visible and infrared imagery and global observations of land, atmosphere, cryosphere and oceans. The VIIRS ...

WINSTON-SALEM – April 15, 2014 – Vitamin D deficiency and cognitive impairment are common in older adults, but there isn't a lot of conclusive research into whether there's a relationship between the two. A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center published online ahead of print this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society enhances the existing literature on the subject. "This study provides increasing evidence that suggests there is an association between low vitamin D levels and cognitive decline over time," said lead author Valerie Wilson, ...

After coming ashore on April 11, Tropical Cyclone Ita dropped heavy rainfall over the weekend that caused flooding in many areas of northeastern Australia's state of Queensland. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM gathered data on rainfall that was used to create a rainfall map at NASA. TRMM is a satellite managed by both NASA and JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hal Pierce created a TRMM-based near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA). The TMPA precipitation ...

MADISON, Wis. — Using just a single drop of blood, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has developed a faster, cheaper and more accurate tool for diagnosing even mild cases of asthma. This handheld technology — which takes advantage of a previously unknown correlation between asthmatic patients and the most abundant type of white blood cells in the body — means doctors could diagnose asthma even if their patients are not experiencing symptoms during their visit to the clinic. The team described its findings in the journal Proceedings of the National ...

WASHINGTON, DC, April 15, 2014 — A new study reveals that for adolescent girls, having a romantic relationship play out differently than they imagined it would has negative implications for their mental health. "I found that girls' risk of severe depression, thoughts of suicide, and suicide attempt increase the more their relationships diverge from what they imagined," said the study's author Brian Soller, an assistant professor of sociology and a senior fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. "Conversely, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – University of Missouri researchers have previously shown that a genetic pre-disposition to be more or less motivated to exercise exists. In a new study, Frank Booth, a professor in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, has found a potential link between the genetic pre-disposition for high levels of exercise motivation and the speed at which mental maturation occurs. For his study, Booth selectively bred rats that exhibited traits of either extreme activity or extreme laziness. Booth then put the rats in cages with running wheels and measured how much ...

Montreal, April 15, 2014 — There's no question that mothers want their children to grow up to be good people — but less is known about how they actually help their offspring sort out different types of moral issues. According to a new study published in Developmental Psychology and led by Holly Recchia, assistant professor in Concordia's Department of Education and the Centre for Research in Human Development, many mums talk to their kids in ways that help them understand moral missteps. The study — co-written by Cecilia Wainryb, Stacia Bourne and Monisha Pasupathi ...

Biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in visualizing the movement within plants of a key hormone responsible for growth and resistance to drought. The achievement will allow researchers to conduct further studies to determine how the hormone helps plants respond to drought and other environmental stresses driven by the continuing increase in the atmosphere's carbon dioxide, or CO2, concentration. A paper describing their achievement appears in the April 15 issue of the scientific journal eLife and is accessible at: http://elife.elifesciences.org/lookup/doi/10.7554/elife.01739 ...

A new study from the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry is looking at nurse- and pharmacist-led interventions to improve the standard of care for patients who have suffered minor stroke or transient ischemic attack, also known as "mini stoke." "What we were finding was that six months or 12 months after their stroke, a lot of patients still had uncontrolled blood pressure and uncontrolled cholesterol," said Finlay McAlister (MD '90), lead author of the study. "[This factor] puts the patients at an increased risk of recurrent events, including strokes, heart attacks, amputation ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – If an insect drew a line as it chased its next meal, the resulting pattern would be a tangled mess. But there's method to that mess, says Jane Wang, a Cornell University professor of mechanical engineering and physics, who tries to find simple physical explanations for complex, hardwired animal behaviors. Photo: https://cornell.box.com/tbeetle It turns out the tiger beetle, known for its speed and agility, does an optimal reorientation dance as it chases its prey at blinding speeds. Publishing online April 9 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, ...

Tissue engineering has been used to construct natural oesophagi, which in combination with bone marrow stem cells have been safely and effectively transplanted in rats. The study, published in Nature Communications, shows that the transplanted organs remain patent and display regeneration of nerves, muscles, epithelial cells and blood vessels. The new method has been developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, within an international collaboration lead by Professor Paolo Macchiarini. The technique to grow human tissues and organs, so called tissue engineering, ...

WASHINGTON D.C., April 15, 2014 -- According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the greatest danger to nuclear security comes from terrorists acquiring sufficient quantities of plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) to construct a crude nuclear explosive device. The IAEA also notes that most cases of illicit nuclear trafficking have involved gram-level quantities, which can be challenging to detect with most inspection methods. According to a new study appearing this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, coupling commercially available spectral X-ray ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 15, 2014—Transgender individuals are medically underserved and their healthcare needs incompletely understood in part because they represent a subpopulation whose health is rarely monitored by U.S. national surveillance systems. To address these issues, a new study compared methods of collecting and analyzing data to assess health disparities in a clinical sample of transgender individuals, as reported in an article published in LGBT Health, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the LGBT ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Delivering chemotherapy drugs in nanoparticle form could help reduce side effects by targeting the drugs directly to the tumors. In recent years, scientists have developed nanoparticles that deliver one or two chemotherapy drugs, but it has been difficult to design particles that can carry any more than that in a precise ratio. Now MIT chemists have devised a new way to build such nanoparticles, making it much easier to include three or more different drugs. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers showed ...

When purchasing items online, reading customer reviews is a convenient way to get a real-world account of other people's opinions of the product. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, negative reviews that are offset by a politeness-factor can actually help sell the item. "Most of the research on consumer reviews has been on the content and volume of the message," write authors Ryan Hamilton (Emory University), Kathleen D. Vohs (University of Minnesota), and Ann L. McGill (University of Chicago Booth School of Business). "Our research looks at ...

MADISON – Like rings of a tree, hair can reveal a lot of information about the past. It can tell if a person recently used drugs or an athlete was doping. It can provide information about hormones and expose environmental toxins. And, as a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show in a study of rhesus monkeys, published in the April 2014 edition of the journal Pediatric Research, it can also reveal the womb environment in which an infant formed. It's the first time researchers have used infant hair to examine the hormonal environment to which the fetus ...