Researchers at the University of Kent and East Malling Research have identified a new way of controlling a fungal disease that can have a devastating impact on the UK's valuable cherry and plum crops. Brown rot disease – caused by the agent Monilinia laxa – attacks stone fruit as well as causing blossom wilt and twig canker. Traditionally, this has been controlled through the use of fungicide treatments, but in some cases these are now becoming ineffective. Now researchers from the two organisations have identified a new strategy for controlling the disease, using biological ...

How do new genes arise? Current research shows that so-called "orphan genes" may appear as if by magic as a result of mutations in segments of DNA that previously had no function. Orphan genes were first discovered in the fruit fly but are found in all organisms, including man. Strikingly, up to 30 per cent of the total number of genes in an organism may be orphans and these genes may rapidly acquire functions. Scientists from the Institute of Population Genetics of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna (Vetmeduni) have now investigated the fate of orphan genes. ...

A commonly-used HIV drug has been shown to kill-off the human papilloma virus (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer in a world-first clinical trial led by The University of Manchester with Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) in Nairobi. Drs Ian and Lynne Hampson, from the University's Institute of Cancer Sciences and Dr Innocent Orora Maranga, Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at KNH in Nairobi examined Kenyan women diagnosed with HPV positive early stage cervical cancer who were treated with the antiviral HIV drug lopinavir in Kenya. The study looked at 40 women ...

A paper in the Institution of Engineering and Technology's (IET) journal Electronics Letters reports that the Leeds team has exceeded a 1 Watt output power from a quantum cascade terahertz laser. The new record more than doubles landmarks set by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and subsequently by a team from Vienna last year. Terahertz waves, which lie in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between infrared and microwaves, can penetrate materials that block visible light and have a wide range of possible uses including chemical analysis, security ...

This news release is available in Spanish. In view of the changes that have taken place in Europe,JuleGoikoetxea, a lecturer at the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Social Sciences and Communication, has been conducting research into "the conditions needed for a people to become a democracy or sustain its democratisation process over time."The study has been published in the specialised journal Nationalities Papers. According to Goikoetxea, nation is not synonymous with demos: "The nation is the will, socially and historically articulated, that a group has in order to be a political ...

An international team of scientists has used detailed analysis of ancient and modern DNA to show that the distribution and lack of genetic diversity among modern European beavers is due largely to human hunting. The research, which was led by University of York researcher Professor Michi Hofreiter, provides important new insights into the genetic history of the Eurasian beaver Castor fiber. Crucially, it shows the European beaver has been strongly affected by expanding human populations for many thousands of years. The researchers say that centuries of hunting, rather ...

In a recent survey of small businesses, a University of Cincinnati criminal justice researcher has found that only 16 percent of those that have experienced theft by employees actually reported that theft to the police. That's even though 64 percent of the small businesses surveyed reported experiencing employee theft. These are some of the findings in a survey of small businesses that examined the incidence of employee theft, how often it was reported, the types of goods taken by employees, the types of employees most likely to commit theft, and the reasons the business ...

Until 1931, physicist Albert Einstein believed that the universe was static. An urban legend attributes this change of perspective to when American astronomer Edwin Hubble showed Einstein his observations of redshift in the light emitted by far away nebulae—today known as galaxies. But the reality is more complex. The change in Einstein's viewpoint, in fact, resulted from a tortuous thought process. Now, in an article published in EPJ H, Harry Nussbaumer from the Institute of Astronomy at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, explains how Einstein changed his mind following many encounters ...

New research in Respirology shows that suffers of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can reduce their risk of being hospitalized with severe attacks, by maintaining an exercise regime of walking between three to six kilometers a day. COPD, a term which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, results in breathing difficulties due to long-term lung damage. Severe symptoms (eCOPD), caused by a sudden loss of lung function, can be life threatening. 543 COPD patients were recruited from five Spanish respiratory clinics and their exercise levels were calculated ...

Drinking water with a relatively high concentration of magnesium protects against hip fractures, according to results of a study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. There are considerable variations in the quality of drinking water in Norway. The researchers studied variations in magnesium and calcium levels in drinking water between different areas, as these are assumed to have a role in the development of bone strength. They wanted to examine whether there was a correlation between magnesium and calcium concentrations in drinking water and the incidence ...

Do attractive traits tell us anything about a person's reproductive health? New research in the American Journal of Human Biology reveals a link between Body Mass Index (BMI) and the amount of bacteria colonizing noses. The results show that heavier men harbor more potentially pathogenic species of bacteria in their nose, compared with slimmer, more traditionally attractive men. "According to an evolutionary point of view, traits related to attractiveness are supposed to be honest signals of biological quality," said Dr. Boguslaw Pawlowski. "We analyzed whether nasal ...

In Uganda the prescription of three antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which aim to suppress the virus to prevent disease progression, have resulted in huge reductions in HIV mortality rates. However, disease is not the only scourge in Uganda, and a new study in The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology explores the impact food insecurity may have on treating pregnant women. A U.S-Ugandan research team explored the affect pregnancy and malnutrition can have on the administration of lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) and efavirenz (EFV) drugs among HIV-infected women in Tororo, Uganda. Blood ...

Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) has ravaged the world's largest carnivorous marsupial since it emerged in 1996, resulting in a population decline of over 90%. Conservation work to defeat the disease has including removing infected individuals from the population and new research in Evolutionary Applications explains how this gives us a unique opportunity to understand how human selection alters the evolution of cancerous cells. DFTD is an asexually reproducing clonal cell line, which during the last 16 years has been exposed to negative effects as infected ...

This news release is available in German. Until now, it has been a time-consuming process for a program to arrange pictures in a consistent order. It is even more complex to order them on the basis of visual characteristics. Computer scientists from Saarbrücken have developed a system to arrange pictures into a consistent order. It requires no more than a small number of pre-sorted example pictures. Operators of online portals or museums could use this technique, for example, to arrange complex datasets. So far, if a nature photographer wanted to arrange pictures ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists have pieced together sections of DNA from 12 individual cells to sequence the genome of a bacterium known to live in healthy human mouths. With this new data about a part of the body considered "biological dark matter," the researchers were able to reinforce a theory that genes in a closely related bacterium could be culprits in its ability to cause severe gum disease. Why the dark matter reference? More than 60 percent of bacteria in the human mouth refuse to grow in a laboratory dish, meaning they have never been classified, named or studied. ...

CHICAGO — Discovery and innovation are important to science, but how are they connected to each other, and how can they be fostered to benefit the wider public? Jason Robert, the Lincoln Chair in Ethics and Dean's Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences at Arizona State University discussed that question today (Feb. 16) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. "While most of the people at the AAAS meeting are presenting their research results, we're asking scientists to think harder about what they're doing in their ...

Scientists have made a significant contribution towards the development of a vaccine to prevent malaria. Researchers have tested a preliminary form of a vaccine against the disease, which is spread by the bite of the mosquito and kills more than 600,000 people each year. Until now, developing malaria vaccines has been challenging. A vaccine must incorporate key proteins from the malaria parasites, which will trigger production of antibodies by the immune system. These proteins have a complex, intricate structure that is hard to reproduce. Scientists at the University ...

CHICAGO – Larry Ambrose woke up one night, wandered into his kitchen but couldn't completely read the time on his microwave. A few days later when he noticed his blood pressure was unusually high, he went to the hospital and was diagnosed as having a stroke. Ambrose, like 25 percent of all stroke patients, experienced a cryptogenic stroke, meaning despite numerous tests, physicians were unable to determine a cause. "There were no warning signs and I felt there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening again," said Ambrose, who is 75 years old. "It's a scary feeling." For ...

Many mothers with children on life-sustaining medical devices, such as ventilators and breathing or feeding tubes, suffer physical and psychological distress from the stress of juggling treatments, appointments, therapies and daily family pressures. But researchers from the Case Western Reserve University nursing school found that an intervention, called "Resourcefulness," which teaches moms how to better cope, bolsters the mother's wellbeing and, in turn, benefits the whole family. Findings from a small pilot study of 22 mothers, "Resourcefulness training intervention: ...

Computer scientists at Case Western Reserve University have developed a new tool to search and fetch electronic files that saves users time by more quickly identifying and retrieving the most relevant information on their computers and hand-held devices. Anonymous testers recruited through crowdsourcing preferred the new search tool nearly two-to-one over a keyword-based lookup interface and the most commonly available lookup search interface using Google. Side-by-side comparisons showed the scientists' Conjunctive Exploratory Navigation Interface (CENI), which combines ...

Although trauma, heart and stroke patients benefit from being transferred from a local hospital to a higher-level care facility, it's unclear why patients transferred with non-urgent medical conditions show at least a 30 percent higher death rate than had they stayed put, according to researchers from Case Western Reserve University's nursing school. "We think the answer is somewhere in the medical records," said Andrew Reimer, PhD, RN, KL2 Scholar instructor at the Dorothy Ebersbach Academic Center for Flight Nursing at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne ...

The Federal shutdown may be the most striking evidence to support claims that America's political system is broken, but it is far from the only example. Writing in Governance, acclaimed political scientists Norman Ornstein and Jared Diamond explore if tribalism is at the heart of the problem, or if the U.S. is facing a far greater political crisis. "The state of our overall political process as the most dysfunctional I have seen in over 44 years of watching Washington and American politics up close," writes Norman Ornstein, from the American Enterprise Institute. "If ...

VIDEO: Asian elephants console others who are in distress, using physical touches and vocalizations, finds a study to be published in the open-access journal PeerJ. The findings are the first empirical... Click here for more information. Asian elephants console others who are in distress, using physical touches and vocalizations, finds a study to be published in the open access journal PeerJ. The findings are the first empirical evidence of consolation in elephants, says ...

Whotspot.com a progressive, paradigm shifting, provider of Cloud-managed WiFi products and services has put together 3 new plans to help entrepreneurs "start your own business". These plans can also help existing businesses expand and grow. "Our systems are so simple, anyone can offer controlled, pay-per-use, voucher limited or free wifi at any venue in a matter of minutes. If you can plug in a lamp, you can deploy one of our wifi gateways", states Terry Fagen, President of Whotspot.com. With these 3 new partner programs, anyone can make money in ...

Writer David A Roberts has released a Kickstarter campaign for Mile High, a raunchy comedy series, featuring David Allen. A twenty four year old who has done very well for himself since graduating high school. With a lot of luck and help from his friends, David managed to fumble his way into a highly successful business that he started near the end of his junior year. Now, six years later, David has a problem. A recent law passed by the state of Colorado now threatens his livelihood. The voters passed legalizing marijuana and his clients will no longer need his services ...