CHICAGO – What role does pre-existing vulnerabilities play for people who experience a climate shock? Does it amplify the effects of the climate shock or is effect negligible? Four Arizona State University archaeologists are looking into this as part of an international team examining how people can be most resilient to climate change when it comes to food security. The group questioned whether vulnerability to food shortages prior to a climate shock – not the actual experience of the food shortage – is related to the scale of impact of that shock. They found a strong ...

CHICAGO --- Joan Chiao, assistant professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, will discuss her research "Cultural and Neural Basis of Empathy" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago. Her presentation is part of the symposium "Physiological and Cultural Foundations of Human Social Behavior" to be held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15 in Grand Ballroom E of the Hyatt Regency Chicago. The session will focus on recent findings in social neurosciences and ...

CHICAGO --- Robert Gordon, the Stanley G. Harris Professor in the department of economics in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, will present "Long-Term Unemployment, Shrinking Participation and Future Economic Growth" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago. His presentation is part of the symposium "Will the Workplace of Tomorrow Have Any Workers? Computing, Productivity and Jobs" to be held from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 15 in the Water Tower room at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. In ...

Mashed, smashed and fried, Americans love potatoes, but only a few varieties are grown in much of North American agriculture. In South America, where potatoes originated, more than 5,000 varieties continue to exist. A Penn State geographer is gathering all the information he can about the agrobiodiversity of these uniquely adapted tubers with an eye toward sustainability of this fourth largest food crop worldwide. "In the U.S. we rely primarily on 10 to 12 types of potatoes total," said Karl Zimmerer, department head and professor of geography. "In fact, mostly we use ...

The weakly electric black ghost knifefish of the Amazon basin has inspired Northwestern University's Malcolm MacIver and an interdisciplinary team of researchers to develop agile fish robots that could lead to a vast improvement in underwater vehicles used to study fragile coral reefs, repair damaged deep-sea oil rigs or investigate sunken ships. MacIver will discuss the research at a press briefing, "Robots from Nature: Making Mechanical Animals," to be held at 1 p.m. CST Saturday, Feb. 15, in Vevey Room 3 of the Swissôtel Chicago. The briefing is part of the American ...

Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues recently developed detailed plans to transform the energy infrastructure of New York, California and Washington states from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable resources by 2050. On Feb. 15, Jacobson will present a new roadmap to renewable energy for all 50 states at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago. The online interactive roadmap is tailored to maximize the resource potential of each state. Hovering a cursor over California, for example, reveals ...

Research on urban neighborhoods must take into account differences among cities and rely on some techniques that have not been used extensively by sociologists studying neighborhood effects, according to Mario Small, professor of sociology at the University of Chicago. Small, who is also dean of UChicago's Division of the Social Sciences, studies urban neighborhoods and has studied the diversity of experiences for people living in poor neighborhoods in cities across the country. Studying only a few neighborhoods extensively fails to capture important differences, ...

Is biodiverse agriculture an anachronism? Or is it a vital part of a food-secure future? Given the need to feed an estimated 2.4 billion more people by the year 2050, the drive toward large-scale, single-crop farming around the world may seem inexorable. But there's an important downside to this trend, argues Timothy Johns, Professor of Human Nutrition at McGill University in Montreal, in a paper to be presented Saturday, Feb. 15, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago. Diets for most people around the world are becoming ...

February 12, 2014 -- In the first study to look at the consequences of anti-gay prejudice for mortality, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals who lived in communities with high levels of anti-gay prejudice have a shorter life expectancy of 12 years on average compared with their peers in the least prejudiced communities. "The results of this study suggest a broadening of the consequences of prejudice to include premature death," noted the study's lead author, Mark Hatzenbuehler, PhD, ...

Ronan, a California sea lion at Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, became an Internet sensation last year when UCSC scientists published a paper describing her ability to bob her head in time with rhythmic sounds and music in a variety of tempos (see video). Ronan is the first non-human mammal convincingly shown to be able to keep the beat. Her range and versatility in matching different beats is impressive, according to Peter Cook, who began working with Ronan as a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz. Cook, now a postdoctoral fellow at ...

Cambridge UK, Feb 10, 2014: This key session will bring African experts in person to Chicago to report on how agricultural biotechnology is starting to have a real impact on the crucial smallholder farming sector in particular. However, the session will also warn that this fledgling bioscience revolution needs to be carefully nurtured. According to moderator Sir Brian Heap, African economies are now among the fastest growing in the world. "While many of the world's farmers have benefitted from advances in bioscience, African farmers and citizens could possibly benefit the ...

In an age of specialization, building networks of outstanding scientists, engineers and clinicians is helping the development of creative solutions to complex societal needs. But how do you successfully surmount the barriers between disparate disciplines? Northwestern University professor Chad Mirkin is no stranger to the challenges of building diverse teams. He is the founding director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN), a flourishing institute that brings together more than 190 faculty researchers from 25 different disciplines. Mirkin will discuss ...

Larry Smarr, a physicist whose work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on calculating black hole collisions led him to champion a federal commitment to dramatically enhance U.S. computing power – which in turn led to the development of NCSA Mosaic, the precursor to web browsers – was named today as the first 2014 recipient of the Golden Goose Award. The Golden Goose Award honors researchers whose federally funded research may not have seemed to have significant practical applications at the time it was conducted but has resulted in major economic or other ...

Missouri's 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law, which required all handgun purchasers to obtain a license verifying that they have passed a background check, contributed to a sixteen percent increase in Missouri's murder rate, according to a new study from researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. The study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Journal of Urban Health, finds that the law's repeal was associated with an additional 55 to 63 murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012. State-level murder data for ...

CHICAGO – An engineer works in the lab on a promising research project. He follows all the rules, works with the materials available to him and produces quality work. He never lies, cheats or steals. His research eventually results in a new technological innovation. Everybody wins. But five or 10 years down the road, a byproduct of that new technology proves to be harmful to the environment. What if this unintended consequence could have been easily avoided had the engineer made a simple change in his research process? While it may be difficult to foresee, the work ...

African-Americans spend more time than any other group getting to work and in some cases spend about 15 minutes more a day than whites commuting, according to research by Virginia Parks, associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. That can be a 25 percent increase over an average urban two-way commute of about an hour, she found, based on a study of 2011 U.S. Census Bureau data. "Because of racial segregation, blacks spend more time getting to work. For low wage workers, the difference is seven minutes each way when compared ...

[TORONTO,Canada, Feb 18, 2014] – A protein that has been known until recently as part of a complex communication network within the cell also plays a direct role in regulating sugar metabolism, according to a new study published in the journal Science Signaling (February 18, 2014). Cell growth and metabolism are tightly controlled processes in our cells. When these functions are disturbed, diseases such as cancer and diabetes occur. Mohamed Soliman, a PhD candidate at the Lunenfeld Tanenbaum Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital, found a unique role for the p66Shc ...

When a pandemic spreads, health officials must quickly formulate a strategy to limit infections and deaths. That requires sifting through massive amounts of data in a short amount of time and organizing medical personnel who may have little information on the pandemic. To help coordinate a rapid response to pandemics, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta has designed software that combines biological data on the pandemic with demographic data of the at-risk population so that health officials can develop a game plan to limit the pandemic's spread. ...

Racism as a social and scientific concept is reshaped and reborn periodically through the ages and according to a Penn State anthropologist, both medical and scientific researchers need to be careful that the growth of genomics does not bring about another resurgence of scientific racism. "What we are facing is a time when genomic knowledge widens and gene engineering will be possible and widespread," said Nina Jablonski, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. "We must constantly monitor how this information on human gene diversity is used and interpreted. Any belief ...

CHICAGO --- James N. Druckman has conducted extensive research on the effects of the politicization of science, which occurs when political interests shape the presentation of scientific facts to fit distinct models of "reality." A paper on this research will be presented during a symposium held from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Grand Ballroom A in the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Druckman, the Payson S. Wild Professor in the department of political science at the Weinberg College of ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study provides evidence that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is highly prevalent in people with multiple sclerosis (MS), and it suggests that OSA may be a contributor to the fatigue that is one of the most common and debilitating symptoms of MS. Results show that one-fifth of MS patients surveyed in a large tertiary MS practice carried a diagnosis of OSA, and more than half were found to have an elevated risk for OSA based on a validated screening tool. Further analysis showed that OSA risk was a significant predictor of fatigue severity, even after ...

Pour sand from a bucket and it flows like a liquid, but stand on it and it supports weight like a solid. This unusual behavior is a property of granular materials, and it is one of the reasons Heinrich Jaeger, the William J. and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago, has chosen to focus on these types of materials in his research. Jaeger will present a lecture on "Granular Matter: From Basic Questions to New Concepts and Applications," at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The talk ...

Boston, MA – Toxic chemicals may be triggering the recent increases in neurodevelopmental disabilities among children—such as autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and dyslexia—according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The researchers say a new global prevention strategy to control the use of these substances is urgently needed. The report will be published online February 15, 2014 in Lancet Neurology. "The greatest concern is the large numbers of children who are affected by toxic damage ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — People with multiple sclerosis (MS) might assume that the fatigue they often feel just comes with the territory of their chronic neurological condition. But a new University of Michigan study suggests that a large proportion of MS patients may have an undiagnosed sleep disorder that is also known to cause fatigue. And that disorder – obstructive sleep apnea – is a treatable condition. In the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, researchers from the U-M Health System's Sleep Disorders Center report the results of a study involving ...

PHILADELPHIA – Eating foods that contain vitamin C may reduce your risk of the most common type of hemorrhagic stroke, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014. Vitamin C is found in fruits and vegetables such as oranges, papaya, peppers, broccoli and strawberries. Hemorrhagic stroke is less common than ischemic stroke, but is more often deadly. The study involved 65 people who had experienced an intracerebral hemorrhagic stroke, or a blood vessel rupture ...