China, from 2015 the world's biggest economy, is its worst polluter already now. It has not yet, but will be most probably climbing the top position also with regards the aggregate contribution to climate change (historical emission residues included), called the climate debt. At the same time, it is the largest victim of environmental change, and the leading country in cleaning-up the environmental mess - the government has taken bold steps towards improvement. Could the largest polluter become the world's last best hope for establishing a global ecological civilisation? ...

Before Tropical Storm Cristina intensified into a hurricane, NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead and gathered data that showed areas of heavy rainfall were occurring within. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) upgraded the third tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean to tropical storm status and named it Cristina on June 10 at 0300 UTC (8 p.m. PDT). Earlier that morning at 1238 UTC (5:38 a.m. PDT), the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite flew over the depression and gathered rainfall data that hinted that the storm was intensifying. At NASA's ...

Space is not empty. A wind of charged particles blows outwards from the Sun, carrying a magnetic field with it. Sometimes this solar wind can break through the Earth's magnetic field. Researchers at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) in Uppsala now have an answer to one of the questions about how this actually occurs. When two areas with plasma (electrically charged gas) and magnetic fields with different orientations collide, the magnetic fields can be "clipped off" and "reconnected" so that the topology of the magnetic field is changed. This magnetic reconnection ...

Your memory for that last bite of a steak or chocolate cake may be more influential than memory for the first bite in determining when you want to eat it again, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Our memories for foods are often vivid, especially when we experience foods that are terrifyingly bad or delightfully good. The findings from this research shed light on how memories for food are formed and how they guide our decisions about how soon we're willing to eat a food again. "Research has ...

A new study from Uppsala University demonstrates that elderly humans carrying a common variant of the fat mass and obesity gene FTO also have a shifted endocrine balance. Low blood concentrations of the satiety hormone leptin and high blood concentrations of the hunger promoting hormone ghrelin makes carriers of the FTO gene put on weight. The findings are published in the journal Diabetes. In the Prospective Investigation of the Vasculature in Uppsala Seniors, researchers from Uppsala University and the University of Umeå used data from 985 elderly participants (50% ...

Nearly half a million people with diabetes end up in emergency rooms around the U.S. every year due to the seizures and other consequences of dropping or spiking blood-sugar levels associated with the disease. To help prevent serious complications, scientists have now developed a new glucose-sensing protein that could one day be part of an implantable, 24-7 monitoring device. They describe the protein in the journal ACS Chemical Biology. Sylvia Daunert and colleagues note that scientists have been working on new ways to track glucose levels. Most patients with diabetes ...

11 June 2014 – Sodium intake around the world continues to be of concern1 and public health authorities hypothesise that it may be linked with cardiovascular disease risk2. In an effort to identify ways to reduce the amount of sodium consumed and provided in the food supply, the American Heart Association brought together over 100 key stakeholders and thought leaders at a special conference in June 2013. Proceedings from the conference were published in the May 2014 edition of Circulation3. Among the top priorities identified by the group were increasing consumer understanding ...

The war on drugs could get a boost with a new method that analyzes sewage to track levels of illicit drug use in local communities in real time. The new study, a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., was published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology and could help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots and monitor whether anti-drug measures are working. Kurunthachalam Kannan and Bikram Subedi note that to date, most methods to estimate drug use in the U.S. are based on surveys, crime statistics and drug seizures by law enforcement. But much illegal drug ...

One of the important tasks for quantum physics researchers and engineers is designing more sensitive instruments to study the tiny fields and forces that govern the world we live in. The most precise measuring instruments devised to date, such as atomic clocks or gravitational wave detectors, are interferometric in nature and operate according to the laws of quantum mechanics. As with all quantum objects, photons – the basic building blocks of light - display a "wave-particle" duality. Interferometers exploit the wave-like behaviour of photons to measure a signal, known ...

Traumatic brain injuries from sports, recreational activities, falls or car accidents are the leading cause of death and disability in children and adolescents. While previously it was believed that the window for brain recovery was at most one year after injury, new research from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published online today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Neurology shows cognitive performance can be improved to significant degrees months, and even years, after injury, given targeted brain training. "The after-effects ...

The potential value of turning the nation's freeways into "smart transportation systems" is enormous. Equipping the nation's concrete arteries with a nervous system of computers and sensors that directly control on-ramp signals to keep traffic moving smoothly can substantially reduce travel times, fuel consumption and air pollution, not to mention improve road safety. In California alone the economic penalty of traffic congestion has been estimated at $400 million in extra costs and $3.5 million in lost wages every day. The tightly integrated computing and networking ...

A team of European scientists has now extended a previous biophysical model to investigate elongated growth within biological tissues by describing the evolution over time of the shape of a fruit fly's wing. They found the aspect ratio of the typical biological shapes may exhibit a maximum at finite time and then decrease. For sufficiently large tissues, the shape is expected to approach that of a disk or sphere. These findings have been reported by Carles Blanch-Mercader from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues, in a paper published in EPJ E. They provide ...

This news release is available in German. Large shell structures made of concrete or stone are hardly ever built any more. The reason is that their construction requires large, expensive supporting structures. At the Vienna University of Technology, a completely new construction method has been developed, which does not require any timber structures at all: a flat concrete slab hardens on the ground, and then an air cushion below the plate is inflated, bending the concrete and quickly forming a sustainable shell. Even large event halls could be built this way. In ...

How neurons are created and integrate with each other is one of biology's greatest riddles. Researcher Dietmar Schmucker from VIB-KU Leuven unravels a part of the mystery in Science magazine. He describes a mechanism that explains novel aspects of how the wiring of highly branched neurons in the brain works. These new insights into how complex neural networks are formed are very important for understanding and treating neurological diseases. Neurons, or nerve cells It is estimated that a person has 100 billion neurons, or nerve cells. These neurons have thin, elongated, ...

The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) assessed current study results on the benefit of a test for human papillomavirus (HPV) and examined whether its first assessment from January 2012 is still valid. The rapid report published by the Institute on 11 June 2014 answers this question with "yes". IQWiG still sees indications that precursors of cervical cancer can be detected and treated earlier and consequently tumours occur less often in women who underwent this testing. HPV testing is not reimbursed by SHI funds In screening for cervical cancer, ...

Neiker-Tecnalia, in collaboration with the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, has in recent years been studying the high water stress tolerance of hybrids of the Radiata Pine (Pinus radiata X Pinus attenuata). These trees appear to be a very interesting alternative for the forestry sector in view of the modifications ecosystems are undergoing and will be undergoing as a result of climate change. To obtain new specimens of these trees in a rapid, productive way, the Basque Institute for Agricultural Research and Development, Neiker-Tecnalia, and SCION –the New Zealand ...

On the island of Java, in Indonesia, the silvery gibbon, an endangered primate, lives in the rainforests. In a behavior that's unusual for a primate, the silvery gibbon sings: It can vocalize long, complicated songs, using 14 different note types, that signal territory and send messages to potential mates and family. Far from being a mere curiosity, the silvery gibbon may hold clues to the development of language in humans. In a newly published paper, two MIT professors assert that by re-examining contemporary human language, we can see indications of how human communication ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 11, 2014 – There are currently only two FDA-approved medications for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the United States. Both of these medications are serotonin uptake inhibitors. Despite the availability of these medications, many people diagnosed with PTSD remain symptomatic, highlighting the need for new medications for PTSD treatment. The renin-angiotensin system has long been of interest to psychiatry. Some of the first drugs targeting this system were the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin ...

This news release is available in German. They are invisible, but perfectly suited for analysing liquids and gases; infrared laser beams are absorbed differently by different molecules. This effect can for instance be used to measure the oxygen concentration in blood. At the Vienna University of Technology, this technique has now been miniaturized and implemented in the prototype for a new kind of sensor. Specially designed quantum cascade lasers and light detectors are created by the same production process. The gap between laser and detector is only 50 micrometres. ...

This news release is available in German. Larvae of the marine bristle worm Platynereis dumerilii orient themselves using light. Early in their development, these larvae swim towards the light to use surface currents for their dispersal. Older larvae turn away from the light and swim to the sea floor where they develop into adult worms. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen have discovered that this change in the behavioural response to light is coupled to different neuronal systems underlying the eyes. The scientists have reconstructed ...

Foaling in horses is extremely fast. Labour and the active part of foaling, resulting in delivery of the foal, take 10 to 20 minutes and are considerably shorter than giving birth in humans or in cows. Is this brief period stressful for the animals or are horses more relaxed than humans when giving birth? This issue has been addressed by Christina Nagel and colleagues, who closely observed 17 foalings at the Brandenburg State Stud in Neustadt (Dosse), Germany, as well as recording electrocardiograms before, during and after foaling. The researchers also took samples of ...

This news release is available in German. Occasionally, two different plant species interbreed with each other in nature. This usually causes problems since the genetic information of both parents does not match. But sometimes nature uses a trick. Instead of passing on only half of each parent's genetic material, both plants transmit the complete information to the next generation. This means that the chromosome sets are totted up. The chromosomes are then able to find their suitable partner during meiosis, a type of cell division that produces an organism's reproductive ...

Alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use is very widespread among youths in Spain compared to the majority of European countries, according to the latest data from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. An international team, led by the European Institute of Studies on Prevention (IREFREA) with headquarters in Mallorca, together with other European and Spanish universities (Oviedo, Santiago de Compostela and Valencia), has analysed the role that parents play at the time of determining the risk of their children using alcohol, tobacco and cannabis in six ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified the evolutionary origins of human herpes simplex virus (HSV) -1 and -2, reporting that the former infected hominids before their evolutionary split from chimpanzees 6 million years ago while the latter jumped from ancient chimpanzees to ancestors of modern humans – Homo erectus – approximately 1.6 million years ago. The findings are published in the June 10 online issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. "The results help us to better understand how these viruses evolved and found ...

OTTAWA, Ontario – June 11, 2014 –The results of a national research project to assess breastfeeding knowledge, confidence, beliefs, and attitudes of Canadian physicians are available today in the Journal of Human Lactation. "Physicians' attitudes and recommendations are known to directly impact the duration that a mom breastfeeds," said Dr. Catherine Pound, pediatrician and lead author of the study at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO). "Worldwide healthcare organizations readily promote the benefits of breastfeeding, and yet now we find a gap exists where ...