PRINCETON, N.J.—Affluent individuals and business corporations already have vastly more influence on federal government policy than average citizens, according to recently released research by Princeton University and Northwestern University. This research suggests that the Supreme Court's continuing attack on campaign finance laws is further increasing the political clout of business firms and the wealthy. Martin Gilens, professor of politics at Princeton, and Benjamin I. Page, Gordon Scott Fulcher Professor of Decision Making, of Northwestern University used a unique ...

Providence, RI---Your financial advisor calls you up to suggest a new investment scheme. Drawing on 20 years of data, he has set his computer to work on this question: If you had invested according to this scheme in the past, which portfolio would have been the best? His computer assembled thousands of such simulated portfolios and calculated for each one an industry-standard measure of return on risk. Out of this gargantuan calculation, your advisor has chosen the optimal portfolio. After briefly reminding you of the oft-repeated slogan that "past performance ...

Two new species of weakly electric fishes from the Congo River basin are described in the open access journal ZooKeys. One of them, known from only a single specimen, is named "Petrocephalus boboto." "Boboto" is the word for peace in the Lingala language, the lingua franca of the Congo River, reflecting the authors' hope for peace in troubled Central Africa. On a 2010 field trip to the Congo River of Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the riverside village of Yangambi-Lokélé, French ichthyologist Sébastien Lavoué of the Taiwan Institute of Oceanography and American ...

KANSAS CITY, MO - As multicellular creatures go, planaria worms are hardly glamorous. To say they appear rudimentary is more like it. These tiny aquatic flatworms that troll ponds and standing water resemble brown tubes equipped with just the basics: a pair of beady light-sensing "eyespots" on their head and a feeding tube called the pharynx (which doubles as the excretory tract) that protrudes from a belly sac to suck up food. It's hard to feel kinship with them. But admiration is another thing, because many planaria species regenerate in wondrous ways—namely, when ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 10, 2014—In early fetal development, skin wounds undergo regeneration and healing without scar formation. This mechanism of wound healing later disappears, but by studying the fetal stem cells capable of this scarless wound healing, researchers may be able to apply these mechanisms to develop cell-based approaches able to minimize scarring in adult wounds, as described in a Critical Review article published in Advances in Wound Care, a monthly publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers and an Official Journal of the Wound Healing Society. ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 10, 2014—Men are three to four times more likely to get bladder cancer than women. The possible causes for this greater risk among men, the importance of early and accurate diagnosis, and the scope of available and emerging surgical, chemotherapeutic, and immunotherapeutic approaches for treating bladder cancer in men are the focus of a comprehensive Review article in Journal of Men's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Men's Health website. Coauthors R. ...

Ruminant cows and sheep account for a major proportion of the methane produced around the world. Currently around 20 percent of global methane emissions stem from ruminants. In the atmosphere methane contributes to the greenhouse effect – that's why researchers are looking for ways of reducing methane production by ruminants. Comparatively little is known about the methane production of other animal species – but one thing seems to be clear: Ruminants produce more of the gas per amount of converted feed than other herbivores. The only other animal group that regularly ...

The willingness of decision makers to take risks increases when they play games of chance with money won earlier. Risk taking also rises when they have the opportunity to compensate for earlier losses by breaking even. This outcome was demonstrated by Dr. Kaisa Hytönen, a Finnish Aalto University researcher in neurofinance, together with her international colleagues. There are frequently various linkages between financial decisions: the circumstances accompanying the decision are rarely completely independent of each other. Both profits and losses, for example, on the ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In U.S. cities, it's not just what you do, but also your address that can determine whether you will get HIV and whether you will survive. A new paper in the American Journal of Public Health illustrates the effects of that geographic disparity – which tracks closely with race and poverty – and calls for an increase in geographically targeted prevention and treatment efforts. "People of color are disproportionately impacted, and their risk of infection is a function not just of behavior but of where they live and the testing and treatment ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 10, 2014 – Two new studies published this week in Biological Psychiatry shed light on the propensity for habit formation in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). These studies suggest that a tendency to develop habits, i.e., the compulsive component of the disorder, may be a core feature of the disorder rather than a consequence of irrational beliefs. In other words, instead of washing one's hands because of the belief that they are contaminated, some people may develop concerns about hand contamination as a consequence of a recurring urge to wash ...

Researchers at the Department of Applied Physics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, in Xi'an, China, are engaged in revealing the mysteries of solidification process and the development of new materials using self-designed experimental instrument which can simulate the space environment such as containerless state. Solidification mechanism is of great importance to better understand the relationship between solidification process and microstructure evolution, so that we can follow them to design and prepare new materials which can meet the application requirements. Dr. ...

A NEW strategy to help young people find jobs that pay fair wages, accompanied by high quality training and better career opportunities, has been developed by a University of Huddersfield professor. Outlined in a specially-commissioned research report, it is beginning to catch the attention of policy-makers throughout the UK. After conducting years of funded research into the challenges that face young people dubbed NEET – meaning that they are not in employment, education or training – Professor Robin Simmons has devised the concept of a Youth Resolution designed to ...

WORCESTER, Mass. – New research from scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School shows that fruit flies are secretly harboring the biochemistry needed to glow in the dark —otherwise known as bioluminescence. The key to activating this latent ability is a novel synthetic analog of D-luciferin developed at UMMS. The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that the inherent biochemistry needed for bioluminescence is more common than previously thought. Synthetic luciferins can unmask latent enzymatic ...

Marine scientists keen on finding patterns of coral decline and persistence in gradually warming oceans have a complex challenge: how to save reefs containing the most diversity with limited resources. In the Western Indian Ocean, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Warwick, the ARC Centre for Excellence of Coral Reef Studies, Simon Fraser University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and other groups have found that the corals of the Mozambique Channel should be a priority for protection as climate change continues to threaten ...

The world's reefs are hotbeds of biological diversity, including over 4,500 species of fish. A new study shows that the ancestors of these fish colonized reefs in two distinct waves, before and after the mass extinction event about 66 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. Reef fish represent one of the largest and most diverse assemblages of vertebrates, according to Samantha Price, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Evolution and Ecology at UC Davis. Price is first author on a paper describing the work, published April 2 in the journal Proceedings ...

Scientists at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have shed light on one of the most common of ailments – the runny nose. Your respiratory tract is under constant attack and the nose is the first line of defense. Often, especially as the weather warms, the assault comes from allergens, which cause the body to fight off a perceived threat. Infections, too, are a problem. But millions of people get a runny nose and have difficulty breathing without an allergic attack or infection. What many people call the sniffles, scientists refer to as "non-allergic rhinitis." Although ...

Maintaining stability in the face of rapid change and growth, and proactively partaking in cooperative global ties in science and technology fields will be key in helping China become an innovation-based economy, according to Denis Simon, vice provost for International Strategic Initiatives at Arizona State University. One of the world's leading experts on science, technology and innovation in China, Simon recently hosted an ASU conference that focused on the evolving role of science and technology in China's international relations. Supplemented with strategic investments ...

UT Arlington and Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital are investigating whether bone grown from the body's own stem cells can replace traditional types of bone grafting. The process, which has been successful in previous lab experiments, uses biodegradable polymer scaffolding material and bone morphogenetic protein, or BMP, which was inserted into the abdomen of mice to attract stem cells that in turn produced bone. BMPs are proteins known to promote bone growth. The research is detailed in a new paper, "Tissue Engineering Bone Using Autologous Progenitor Cells in ...

LOS ANGELES — Concerns about climate change and its impact on the world around us are growing daily. New scientific studies at the La Brea Tar Pits are probing the link between climate warming and the evolution of Ice Age predators, attempting to predict how animals will respond to climate change today. The La Brea Tar Pits are famous for the amazing array of Ice Age fossils found there, such as ground sloths, mammoths, and predators like saber-toothed cats and powerful dire wolves. But the climate during the end of the Ice Age (50,000-11,000 years ago) was unstable, ...

Heroin abuse can damage many brain areas, including the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus of the midbrain, the ventral tegmental area, and nucleus accumbens. Persistent use of heroin induced irreversible damage to the nervous system. To verify the relationship between acupuncture, neurotrophic factor expression and brain cell structural changes, a research team from Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in China established a rat model of heroin relapse using intramuscular injection of increasing amounts of heroin. During the detoxification period, rat models received acupuncture ...

The boldest black-lined rainbowfish are those that are born in the wild. Also more fearless are those that analyze information both sides of their brains. This is the conclusion of Australian researchers Culum Brown and Anne-Laurence Bibost from Macquarie University, in a study published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. The preference to analyze and react to information with either the left or right hemisphere of the brain is called cerebral lateralization, and is widespread among vertebrates. Lateralization is seen in the preference of humans ...

In 10% of human tumors there is a family history of hereditary disease associated with mutations in identified genes. The best examples are the cases of polyps in the large intestine associated with the APC gene and breast cancer associated with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. In the remaining 90% of cases are believed to have an increased risk of developing cancer in relation to genetic variants less powerful but more often, for example, doubles the risk of having a tumor that lacks this small change, called polymorphism. In the last decade, hundreds of studies have been conducted ...

A trip to the veterinarian may prove fatal to a horse, even if it is not necessary to put the animal down. In Europe if the horse is found to be ataxic, which is most often due to the disease 'wobbler syndrome', the horse is likely to be put down immediately. If a horse suffers from this disease, putting it down can be a necessity, as the animal can be dangerous to ride and handle. But now new research from the University of Copenhagen and the Royal Veterinary College in the UK shows marked disagreement among experts about when a horse is ataxic and severity of the ataxia. ...

University of Adelaide researchers have found that women on antidepressant medication are more successful at breastfeeding their babies if they keep taking the medication, compared with women who quit antidepressants because of concerns about their babies' health. These results have been presented this week at the 18th Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) Annual Conference in Perth. Using data from the Danish National Birth Cohort in Denmark, researchers in the University of Adelaide's Robinson Research Institute studied the outcomes of 368 women who ...

Dr. Yuhong Zhao and co-workers from Sun Yat-sen University in China explored the projection of nestin+ neurons to the olfactory bulb and the time course of nestin+ neurons in the medial septum-diagonal band of Broca in adult rats during injury recovery after olfactory nerve transection. These researchers observed that all nestin+ neurons were double-labeled with ChAT in the medial septum-diagonal band of Broca. Approximately 53.6% of nestin+ neurons were projected to the olfactory bulb and co-labeled with fast blue. A large number of nestin+ neurons were not present in ...