WOODS HOLE, Mass.— As forests age, their ability to grow decreases, a new study by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) scientists and colleagues has determined. Since most U.S. forests are maturing from regeneration that began about 100 years ago when extensive clear-cutting occurred, the study suggests the future growth of U.S. forests will decline. "All forests are in succession: They get old, die (due to fire, insects, hurricane, etc.), and regenerate. This paper improves on a fundamental theory in ecosystem development: How a forest evolves over time. It demonstrates ...

The number of emerging economy nations with policies in place to support the expansion of renewable energy has surged more than six-fold in just eight years, from 15 developing countries in 2005 to 95 early this year. Those 95 developing nations today make up the vast majority of the 144 countries with renewable energy support policies and targets in place, says REN21's Renewables 2014 Global Status Report. And the rise of developing world support contrasts with declining support and renewables policy uncertainty and even retroactive support reductions in some European ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Tweaking a protein expressed by most liver cancer cells has enabled scientists to make a vaccine that is exceedingly effective at preventing the disease in mice. Alpha-Fetoprotein, or AFP – normally expressed during development and by liver cancer cells as well – has escaped attack in previous vaccine iterations because the body recognizes it as "self," said Dr. Yukai He, immunologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia Regents University Cancer Center. Liver cancer is among the fastest-growing and deadliest cancers in the United States with ...

Spider silk transmits vibrations across a wide range of frequencies so that, when plucked like a guitar string, its sound carries information about prey, mates, and even the structural integrity of a web. The discovery was made by researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Strathclyde, and Sheffield who fired bullets and lasers at spider silk to study how it vibrates. They found that, uniquely, when compared to other materials, spider silk can be tuned to a wide range of harmonics. The findings, to be reported in the journal Advanced Materials, not only reveal more ...

Scientists have shown how a lung cancer patient's blood sample could be used to monitor and predict their response to treatment – paving the way for personalised medicine for the disease. The recent study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, also offers a method to test new therapies in the lab and to better understand how tumours become resistant to drugs. Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive disease with poor survival and new treatments are desperately needed. In many cases the tumour is inoperable and biopsies are difficult to obtain, giving scientists ...

A study by scientists in Manchester has shown how melanoma drugs can cause the cancer to progress once a patient has stopped responding to treatment. Their findings suggest that using a combination of targeted therapies may be a more effective approach in the clinic. Melanoma is a form of cancer that develops from melanocytes – the pigment-producing cells in skin. Advanced metastatic melanoma – where the cancer has spread throughout the body – is associated with poor survival, so new treatments are urgently needed. In about 50% of melanoma cases, the tumour contains ...

There are only around 500 North Atlantic right whales alive today. In an effort to further protect these critically endangered animals, a recent NOAA regulation required large vessels to reduce speed in areas seasonally occupied by the whales. The policy of notifying--but not necessarily citing--speeding vessels in protected areas was effective in lowering their speeds, helping to protect these magnificent creatures from ship collisions, while keeping punitive fines to mariners to a minimum. A NOAA regulation, instituted in December 2008, requires vessels 65 feet or greater ...

Developing therapies for kidney disease can be made faster by adopting a new, more sensitive definition of kidney disease progression, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association Congress. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a worldwide public health problem, with increasing prevalence, poor outcomes, and high treatment cost. Yet, despite the avail¬ability of simple laboratory tests to identify people with earlier stages of ...

(NEW YORK, NY, June 3, 2014) – Millions of Americans depend on home health care services to recover from surgeries and hospital stays, as well as to manage daily life with chronic conditions. But all too often, evidence-based practices for preventing infections aren't followed when care is provided at home, leaving patients vulnerable to serious and potentially fatal complications. A study by researchers at Columbia University School of Nursing, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, found that unsterile living conditions and untrained caregivers contribute ...

As far back as 1948, Erwin Schrödinger—the inventor of modern quantum mechanics—published the book "What is life?" In it, he suggested that quantum mechanics and coherent ringing might be at the basis of all biochemical reactions. At the time, this idea never found wide acceptance because it was generally assumed that vibrations in protein molecules would be too rapidly damped. Now, scientists at the University of Glasgow have proven he was on the right track after all. Using modern laser spectroscopy, the scientists have been able to measure the vibrational spectrum ...

Researchers at King's College London have discovered how a molecular 'scaffold' which allows key parts of cells to interact, comes apart in dementia and motor neuron disease, revealing a potential new target for drug discovery. The study, published today in Nature Communications, was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Alzheimer's Research UK and the Motor Neurone Disease Association. Researchers looked at two components of cells: mitochondria, the cell 'power houses' which produce energy for the cell; and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) which ...

Controlling the flow of heat through materials is important for many technologies. While materials with high and low thermal conductivities are available, materials with variable and reversible thermal conductivities are rare, and other than high pressure experiments, only small reversible modulations in thermal conductivities have been reported. For the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have experimentally shown that the thermal conductivity of lithium cobalt oxide (LixCoO2), an important material for electrochemical energy storage, ...

Scientists from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre (CNIC) have been able to reproduce, for the first time in human cells, chromosomal translocations associated with two types of cancer: acute myeloid leukaemia and Ewing's sarcoma. The discovery, published today in the journal Nature Communications, opens the door to the development of new therapeutic targets to fight these types of cancer. The study was carried out by Sandra Rodriguez-Perales − from CNIO's Molecular Cytogenetics Group, led ...

Scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark have discovered that children who later develop autism are exposed to elevated levels of steroid hormones (for example testosterone, progesterone and cortisol) in the womb. The finding may help explain why autism is more common in males than females, but should not be used to screen for the condition. Funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the results are published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. The team, led by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and Dr ...

Charlottesville, VA (June 3, 2014). In July 2003 the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) imposed a mandatory maximum 80-hour work-week restriction on medical residents. Before that time residents often worked in excess of 100 hours per week. To investigate whether positive changes in patient outcomes occurred following implementation of the ACGME mandate, four researchers from Minnesota—Kiersten Norby, M.D., Farhan Siddiq, M.D., Malik M. Adil, M.D., and Stephen J. Haines, M.D.—analyzed hospital-based data from three years before (2000-2002) and ...

A new survey of Canadian physicians shows a "significant gap" between optimal practices to detect nutrition problems in hospitalized patients and what action is actually taking place. The survey, conducted by the Canadian Malnutrition Task Force, looked at physician attitudes and perceptions about identifying and treating nutrition issues among hospitalized patients. The startling findings of the survey were published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and External Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral ...

A bacterium causing an epidemic among catfish farms in the southeastern United States is closely related to organisms found in diseased grass carp in China, according to researchers at Auburn University in Alabama and three other institutions. The study, published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, suggests that the virulent U.S. fish epidemic emerged from an Asian source. Since 2009, catfish farming in Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas has been seriously impacted by an emerging strain of Aeromonas hydrophila, ...

Scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have identified a compound, called 2-PMAP, in animal studies that reduced by more than half levels of amyloid proteins in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers hope that someday a treatment based on the molecule could be used to ward off the neurodegenerative disease since it may be safe enough to be taken daily over many years. "What we want in an Alzheimer's preventive is a drug that modestly lowers amyloid beta and is also safe for long term use," says Martin J. Sadowski, MD, PhD, associate professor ...

New Haven, Conn. – An estimated half a million cancers were prevented by colorectal cancer screening in the United States from 1976 to 2009, report researchers from the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale Cancer Center. Their study appears in the journal Cancer. During this more than 30-year time span, as increasing numbers of men and women underwent cancer screening tests — including fecal occult blood testing, sigmoidoscopies, and colonoscopies — colorectal cancer rates declined significantly, the researchers found. The ...

Holidaymakers are being urged to use insect repellent to protect themselves against bites and the diseases they can spread, as trends show travel to tropical countries is rising among Britons. With the World Cup starting in Brazil next week and holiday season about to get under way, scientists from repellent testing facility arctec at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine today launch Bug Off - the first ever Insect Repellent Awareness Day to highlight the issue. They recommend applying repellents containing 20-50% DEET to the skin when in countries with ...

Fetuses are more likely to show left-handed movements in the womb when their mothers are stressed, according to new research. Researchers at Durham and Lancaster universities say their findings are an indicator that maternal stress could have a temporary effect on unborn babies, adding that their research highlights the importance of reducing stress during pregnancy. However, the researchers emphasised that their study was not evidence that maternal stress led to fixed left-handedness in infants after birth. They said that some people might be genetically predisposed ...

New research presented at this year's Euroanaesthesia meeting in Stockholm suggests that gender plays a part in pain experienced after surgery, with men feeling more pain following major surgery while women feel more pain after minor procedures. The study is by Dr Andreas Sandner-Kiesling, Dept of Anaesthesiology & Intensive Care, Medical University of Graz, Austria, and colleagues. "The influence of gender and sexes is a key issue of today's research in medicine. However, current literature in the field of perioperative medicine rarely focuses on this question," says ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – UNC School of Medicine researchers have provided the first quantitative evidence that mucins – the protein framework of mucus – are significantly increased in cystic fibrosis patients and play a major role in failing lung function. The research, published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, shows that a three-fold increase of mucins dramatically increases the water-draining power of the mucus layer. This hinders mucus clearance in the CF lung, resulting in infection, inflammation, and ultimately lung failure. "Our finding suggests that ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers from the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University and three other institutions have taken issue with recent claims that "the case is closed" on whether or not a multivitamin/mineral supplement should be taken by most people to help obtain needed micronutrients. In a correspondence to be published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers reasoned that this type of dietary supplement helps fill nutritional gaps, improves general health, might help prevent chronic disease, will cause no harm and is easily worth the ...

Women age 55 or younger may fare worse than their male counterparts after having a heart attack, according to new research presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2014. Researchers studied records and interviews of 3,501 people (67 percent women) who had heart attacks in the United States and Spain in 2008-12. One year after their heart attack, women were more likely than men to have: Poorer physical functioning Poorer mental functioning Lower quality of life More chest pain Worse physical limitations "Previous ...