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Science5 Jun 2014

Investors' risk tolerance decreases with the stock market, MU study finds

COLUMBIA, Mo — As the U.S. economy slowly recovers many investors remain wary about investing in the stock market. Now, Michael Guillemette, an assistant professor of personal financial planning in the University of Missouri College of Human Environmental Sciences, analyzed investors' "risk tolerance," or willingness to take risks, and found that it decreased as the stock market faltered. Guillemette says this is a very counterproductive behavior for investors who want to maximize their investment returns. "At its face, it seems fairly obvious that investors would be ...

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Earth Science5 Jun 2014

What a 66-million-year-old forest fire reveals about the last days of the dinosaurs

This news release is available in French. As far back as the time of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, forests recovered from fires in the same manner they do today, according to a team of researchers from McGill University and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. During an expedition in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, the team discovered the first fossil-record evidence of forest fire ecology - the regrowth of plants after a fire - revealing a snapshot of the ecology on earth just before the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The researchers also found evidence that ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

University of Toronto biologists pave the way for improved epilepsy treatments

TORONTO, ON – University of Toronto biologists leading an investigation into the cells that regulate proper brain function, have identified and located the key players whose actions contribute to afflictions such as epilepsy and schizophrenia. The discovery is a major step toward developing improved treatments for these and other neurological disorders. "Neurons in the brain communicate with other neurons through synapses, communication that can either excite or inhibit other neurons," said Professor Melanie Woodin in the Department of Cell and Systems Biology at the ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Use of gestures reflects language instinct in young children

Young children instinctively use a "language-like" structure to communicate through gestures, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, led by the University of Warwick, shows that when young children are asked to use gestures to communicate, their gestures segment information and reorganize it into language-like sequences. This finding suggests that children are not just learning language from older generations — their own preferences in communication may have shaped how languages ...

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Technology5 Jun 2014

Overcoming barriers to successful use of autonomous unmanned aircraft

WASHINGTON -- While civil aviation is on the threshold of potentially revolutionary changes with the emergence of increasingly autonomous unmanned aircraft, these new systems pose serious questions about how they will be safely and efficiently integrated into the existing civil aviation structure, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report identifies key barriers and provides a research agenda to aid the orderly incorporation of unmanned and autonomous aircraft into public airspace. "There is little doubt that over the long run the potential benefits ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Scripps Florida scientists unravel the molecular secret of short, intense workouts

JUPITER, FL, June 5, 2014 – In the last few years, the benefits of short, intense workouts have been extolled by both researchers and exercise fans as something of a metabolic panacea capable of providing greater overall fitness, better blood sugar control and weight reduction—all of it in periods as short as seven minutes a few times a week. Now, in a new study, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) confirm that there is something molecularly unique about intense exercise: the activation of a single protein. The study, published ...

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Social Science5 Jun 2014

Interactive teaching methods help students master tricky calculus

The key to helping students learn complicated math is to understand how to apply it to new ideas and make learning more interactive, according to a new study by UBC researchers. Pre-class assignments, small group discussions and clicker quizzes improve students' ability to grasp tricky first-year calculus concepts. Students taught in such active-engagement classes were 10 per cent more likely to understand key concepts on subsequent quizzes, according to the study published The International Journal on Mathematics Education. This was true even when compared to students ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Early palliative support services help those caring for patients with advanced cancer

Dartmouth researchers have found that those caring for patients with advanced cancer experienced reduced depression and felt less burdened by caregiving tasks when palliative support services were offered soon after the patient's diagnosis. They presented their findings at the American Society of Clinical Oncologist (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago on June 3, 2014. "Family caregivers are a crucial part of the patient care team. Because the well-being of one affects the well-being of the other, both parties benefit when caregivers receive palliative care," said senior ...

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Physics5 Jun 2014

A new way to make laser-like beams using 1,000x less power

ANN ARBOR – With precarious particles called polaritons that straddle the worlds of light and matter, University of Michigan researchers have demonstrated a new, practical and potentially more efficient way to make a coherent laser-like beam. They have made what's believed to be the first polariton laser that is fueled by electrical current as opposed to light, and also works at room temperature, rather than way below zero. Those attributes make the device the most real-world ready of the handful of polariton lasers ever developed. It represents a milestone like none ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Stem cells found to play restorative role when affecting brain signaling process

Putnam Valley, NY. (June 5, 2014) – A study by a Korean team of neuroscientists has concluded that when mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs; multipotent structural stem cells capable of differentiation into a variety of cell types) are transplanted into the brains of mice modeled with Alzheimer's disease (AD), the cells stimulate neural cell growth and repair in the hippocampus, a key brain area damaged by AD. The finding could lead to improved AD therapies. The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation and is currently freely available on-line as an ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Research shows compassion and euthanasia don't always jibe

New research from Case Western Reserve University found that compassion can produce counterintuitive results, challenging prevailing views of empathy's effects on moral judgment. To understand how humans make moral choices, researchers asked subjects to respond to a variety of moral dilemmas, for instance: Whether to stay and defend a mortally wounded soldier until he dies or shoot him to protect him from enemy torture and enable you and five other soldiers to escape unharmed. Leading research has said people make choices based on a struggle within their brains between ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Alcohol-related terms can increase aggression

New psychology research shows that exposing people to alcohol-related words can influence aggressive behaviour in ways similar to actually consuming alcohol. Researchers found however that this aggressive behaviour occurred when people were subjected to provocation in a way that was not a clear-cut insult. Although it has been long known that drinking alcohol can increase aggression, a team of five psychologists, including Dr Eduardo Vasquez of the University of Kent in the UK and others from two US universities, demonstrated in two experiments that participants exhibited ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Future heat stroke treatment found in dental pulp stem cells

Putnam Valley, NY. (June 5, 2014) – Scientists in Taiwan have found that intravenous injections of stem cells derived from human exfoliated deciduous tooth pulp (SHED) have a protective effect against brain damage from heat stroke in mice. Their finding was safe and effective and so may be a candidate for successfully treating human patients by preventing the neurological damage caused by heat stroke. The study is published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation and is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT1100Tseng. ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Science Elements podcast highlights chemistry for search-and-rescue missions

The June feature of Science Elements, the American Chemical Society's (ACS') weekly podcast series, shines the spotlight on devices that use chemistry to locate people trapped in collapsed buildings. The episode is available at http://www.acs.org/scienceelements. Every second counts when people are trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building. As survivors breathe in a confined space, oxygen levels go down and carbon dioxide levels go up, a potentially lethal combination. People also can have severe injuries from the falling walls and other debris. In the episode, ...

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Environment5 Jun 2014

State of wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate research

RIVERSIDE, Calif.—Scientists know that wildland fire emissions play a significant role in the global carbon cycle and that its principal component – carbon dioxide – is a primary driver of climate change. But predicting and quantifying the effects of potential future emissions is a difficult process requiring the integration of complex interactions of climate, fire, and vegetation. The current state of knowledge, critical knowledge gaps, and importance of fire emissions for global climate and terrestrial carbon cycling is the focus of nine science syntheses published in ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Team demonstrates continuous terahertz sources at room temperature

Imagine a technology that could allow us to see through opaque surfaces without exposure to harmful x-rays, that could give us the ability to detect harmful chemicals and bio-agents from a safe distance, and that could enable us to peer so deeply into space that scientists could better understand the formation of the universe. All of these scenarios are possible with terahertz radiation, electromagnetic waves with lengths that fall between microwaves and infrared light. However, the potential of terahertz waves has yet to be reached because they are difficult to generate ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Race could be a factor in head and neck cancer survival rates, MU researchers find

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The national survival rates for African-Americans diagnosed with head and neck cancer have not improved in the last 40 years despite advances in the treatment and management of the disease, University of Missouri School of Medicine researchers have found in a new study. More than 52,000 men and women in the United States currently are living with head and neck cancer. Using data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and Ends Results (SEER) program, MU researchers under the guidance of Mosharraf Hossain, M.D., assistant professor ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Can mice mimic human breast cancer? MSU study says 'yes'

Scientists have routinely used mice to replicate aspects of human breast cancer in an effort to find a cure to the most common type of cancer among women. But how effective are these preclinical models in actually mimicking the disease and giving scientists the ability to develop real comparisons? Eran Andrechek, a physiology professor in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University, has discovered that many of the various models used in breast cancer research can replicate several characteristics of the human disease, especially at the gene level. The ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Design of self-assembling protein nanomachines starts to click

A route for constructing protein nanomachines engineered for specific applications may be closer to reality. Biological systems produce an incredible array of self-assembling, functional protein tools. Some examples of these nanoscale protein materials are scaffolds to anchor cellular activities, molecular motors to drive physiological events, and capsules for delivering viruses into host cells. Scientists inspired by these sophisticated molecular machines want to build their own, with forms and functions customized to tackle modern-day challenges. The ability to ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Study discovers the downside of African-American success stories

African-Americans such as Brown University President Ruth Simmons, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, and of course President Barack Obama have reached the pinnacle of success in historically white domains. But a new study finds there is a downside to African-American success stories: these positive examples prompt white Americans to think less successful African-Americans simply need to apply more effort to achieve their own success. The findings are reported in the paper, "If He Can Do It, So Can They: Exposure to Counterstereotypically Successful Exemplars Prompts Automatic ...

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Environment5 Jun 2014

Has solar activity influence on the Earth's global warming?

A recent study demonstrates the existence of significant resonance cycles and high correlations between solar activity and the Earth's averaged surface temperature during centuries. This provides a new clue to reveal the phenomenon of global warming in recent years. Their work, entitled "Periodicities of solar activity and the surface temperature variation of the Earth and their correlations" was published in CHINESE SCIENCE BULLETIN (In Chinese) 2014 No.14 with the co-corresponding authors of Dr. Zhao Xinhua and Dr. Feng Xueshang from State key laboratory of space weather, ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Gestures research suggests language instinct in young children

Young children instinctively use a 'language-like' structure to communicate through gestures. Research led by the University of Warwick suggests when young children are asked to use gestures to communicate, their gestures segment information and reorganise it into language-like sequences. This suggests that children are not just learning language from older generations, their preference for communication has shaped how languages look today. Dr Sotaro Kita from Warwick's Department of Psychology led the study with Dr Zanna Clay at the University of Neuchatel, Ms Sally ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Understanding active pharmaceutical ingredients

Active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), is the term used to refer to the biologically active component of a drug product (e.g. tablet, capsule). Drug products are usually composed of several components. The aforementioned API is the primary ingredient. Other ingredients are commonly known as "excipients" and these substances are always required to be biologically safe, often making up a variable fraction of the drug product. The procedure for optimizing and compositing this mixture of components used in the drug is known as "formulation". For example, if the API is a solid ...

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Medicine5 Jun 2014

Bloodstream infections reduced through better central line care at three hospitals

Anaheim, Calif., June 5, 2014 – Whether through the use of alcohol-containing caps or basic cleaning of the injection port of the central line, infection preventionists at three hospitals are finding successful ways to stop germs from entering central line catheters and causing bloodstream infections in patients. A trio of abstracts, to be presented on June 7 at the 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), addresses the challenge of keeping bacteria from entering the bloodstream through a central line, a ...

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Science5 Jun 2014

Molecular self-assembly scales up from nanometers to millimeters

To ensure the survival of Moore's law and the success of the nanoelectronics industry, alternative patterning techniques that offer advantages beyond conventional top-down patterning are aggressively being explored. Can self-assembly based technologies offer advantages beyond conventional top-down lithography approaches? A joint effort of the Aalto University of Helsinki, the Politecnico di Milano, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has now demonstrated that it is possible to align molecular self-assemblies from nanometers to millimeters without the intervention ...

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