This news release is available in German. Music can be soothing or stirring, it can make us dance or make us sad. Blood pressure, heartbeat, respiration and even body temperature – music affects the body in a variety of ways. It triggers especially powerful physical reactions in pregnant women. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig have discovered that pregnant women compared to their non-pregnant counterparts rate music as more intensely pleasant and unpleasant, associated with greater changes in blood pressure. Music ...

The Skunk Fire which began as a lightning strike on Saturday, April 19 is currently 31,167 acres large including fire growth and back burns.The fire continues to move in a north westerly direction and an easterly direction towards ponderosa pine forest. South and North side of the fire is contained. The terrain for this fire is steep with scattered boulders making firefighting more difficult. The entire fire is currently 44% contained and full containment is expected by Friday, May 23, according to Inciweb.org. The National Weather Service has forecast maximum temperatures ...

Boosting a key immune process called autophagy with interferon gamma (IFN-γ) could help clear a lethal bacterial infection in cystic fibrosis, a new study suggests. The work, led by a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and published in PLoS One in May, offers new information about immune function in patients with the disease. Cystic fibrosis, CF for short, is caused by a malfunction in the CFTR gene, which is responsible for transporting chloride and water across cell membranes. In people with the disease, cells that line the passageways ...

A recent study into the biomechanics of the necks of ants – a common insect that can amazingly lift objects many times heavier than its own body – might unlock one of nature's little mysteries and, quite possibly, open the door to advancements in robotic engineering. A small group of engineers at The Ohio State University combined laboratory testing and computational modeling conducted at the Ohio Supercomputer Center to determine the relationship between the mechanical function, structural design and material properties of the Allegheny mound ant (Formica exsectoides). ...

WASHINGTON D.C., May 20, 2014 -- The long life of lithium ion batteries makes them the rechargeable of choice for everything from implantable medical devices to wearable consumer electronics. But lithium ion batteries rely on liquid chemistries involving lithium salts dissolved in organic solvents, creating flame risks that would be avoided if the cells were completely solid-state. Now a team of researchers at Tohoku University in Japan has created a new type of lithium ion conductor for future batteries that could be the basis for a whole new generation of solid-state ...

Website privacy policies are almost obligatory for many online services, but for anyone who reads these often unwieldy documents, trust in the provider is more commonly reduced than gained, according to US researchers. Almost every commercial website, social network, search engine and banking site has a privacy policy. Indeed, these and countless other sites that scrape personal information via forms, logins and tracking cookies are obliged by law in some parts of the world to post a document online giving details of how they protect any personal data you give the site ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 20, 2014—Studies have identified mobile phones and related devices as sources of metal sensitization and potential causes of allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). Despite efforts to control allergen release in phones, many phones on the market release levels of metals, such as nickel and chromium, which are sufficient to induce ACD, according to an article in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio— Scientists delivered a mostly negative forecast for how climate change will affect Ohioans during the next year or so, and well beyond. Researchers report that the projected increase in precipitation and the associated runoff will likely lead to a larger-than-average bloom of harmful blue-green algae in Lake Erie this summer. In addition, the development of an El Niño over the Pacific later this year may result in a very dry 2015 in Ohio. But Ohio may fare better than its neighbors in one respect: While drought and high temperatures are expected to shrink ...

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have uncovered a molecule in an animal model that acts as a key player in establishing the organization of the auditory system. The molecule, a protein known as Bmp7, is produced during embryonic development and acts to help sensory cells find their ultimate position on the tonotopic map, which is the fundamental principle of organization in the auditory system. The tonotopic map groups sensory cells by the sound frequencies that stimulate them. The study is the first to identify one of the molecular mechanisms that determines ...

This news release is available in French. One company's trash can be another's treasure. Take Marmite. Made from a by-product of commercial beer production, the yeast-based spread has topped toast throughout the Commonwealth for decades. By recuperating the waste product from one company, another was able to thrive. Environmental concerns are at the forefront of government policy, so the time is right for companies worldwide to adopt this type of resource exchange, known as industrial symbiosis (IS). A new study by Concordia University researcher Raymond Paquin ...

VIDEO: Cockrell School of Engineering assistant professor Donglei (Emma) Fan and her mechanical engineering team have built the fastest, smallest nanomotor to date. The team's nanomotor could enable controlled drug delivery... Click here for more information. Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have built the smallest, fastest and longest-running tiny synthetic motor to date. The team's nanomotor is an important step toward ...

A program aimed at reducing behavior problems in order to boost academic achievement has improved performance in math and reading among low-income kindergartners and first graders, according to a study by researchers at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Their findings, which appear in the Journal of Educational Psychology, point to the value of well-designed interventions to improve education, the study's authors say. "Supporting young low-income children so they can reach their potential in the classroom and beyond ...

In a basement lab on BYU's campus, mechanical engineering professor Julie Crockett analyzes water as it bounces like a ball and rolls down a ramp. This phenomenon occurs because Crockett and her colleague Dan Maynes have created a sloped channel that is super-hydrophobic, or a surface that is extremely difficult to wet. In layman's terms, it's the most extreme form of water proof. Engineers like Crockett and Maynes have spent decades studying super-hydrophobic surfaces because of the plethora of real-life applications. And while some of this research has resulted in ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A team of international researchers has sequenced the genome of the Nevada dampwood termite, providing an inside look into the biology of the social insect and uncovering new genetic targets for pest control. Michael Scharf, a Purdue University professor of entomology who participated in the collaborative study, said the genome could help researchers develop control strategies that are more specific than the broad-spectrum chemicals conventionally used to treat termite infestations. "The termite genome reveals many unique genetic targets that can ...

This news release is available in German. Leipzig. For several decades scientists have been trying to come up with an explanation for the formation of the enigmatic, vegetation-free circles frequently found in certain African grassland regions. Now researchers have tested different prevailing hypotheses as to their respective plausibility. For the first time they have carried out a detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of these fairy circles – and discovered a remarkably regular and spatially comprehensive homogenous distribution pattern. This may best be explained ...

Research conducted at the University of Granada has shown that the cyclical phenomena that affect the environment, like climate change, in the atmosphere-ocean dynamic and, even, disturbances to planetary orbits, have existed since hundreds of millions of year ago and can be studied by analysing fossils. This is borne out by the palaeontological data analysed, which have facilitated the characterization of irregular cyclical paleoenvironmental changes, lasting between less than 1 day and up to millions of years. Francisco J. Rodríguez-Tovar, Professor de Stratigraphy ...

Computer simulations play an increasingly important role in the description and development of new materials. Yet, despite major advances in computer technology, the simulations in statistical physics are typically restricted to systems of up to a few 100,000 particles, which is many times smaller than the actual material quantities used in typical experiments. Researchers therefore use so-called finite-size corrections in order to adjust the results obtained for comparatively small simulation systems to the macroscopic scale. A team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg ...

In theory, the laws of physics are absolute. However, when it comes to the laws of thermodynamics—the science that studies how heat and temperature relate to energy—there are times where they no longer seem to apply. In a paper recently published in EPJ B, Robert Adamietz from the University of Augsburg, Germany, and colleagues have demonstrated that a theoretical model of the environment's influence on a particle does not violate the third law of thermodynamics, despite appearances to the contrary. These findings are relevant for systems at the micro or nanometer scale ...

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2014 – To keep your new car looking sleek and shiny for years, factories need to make certain that the coats of paint on it are applied properly. But ensuring that every coat of paint—whether it is on a car or anything else—is of uniform thickness and quality is not easy. Now researchers have developed a new way to measure the thickness of paint layers and the size of particles embedded inside. Unlike conventional methods, the paint remains undamaged, making the technique useful for a variety of applications from cars to artifacts, cancer detection ...

A substance that comes from pine bark is a potential source for a new treatment of melanoma, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. Current melanoma drugs targeting single proteins can initially be effective, but resistance develops relatively quickly and the disease recurs. In those instances, resistance usually develops when the cancer cell's circuitry bypasses the protein that the drug acts on, or when the cell uses other pathways to avoid the point on which the drug acts. "To a cancer cell, resistance is like a traffic problem in its circuitry," ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 20, 2014) – School-based influenza vaccine programs have the potential to reach many children at affordable costs and with parental support, but these programs are limited by low rates of reimbursement from third-party payers, according to recently published study results by researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. A school-based flu vaccine program in the Denver Public Schools was effective at reaching nearly one-third of the students, but billing and reimbursement issues posed significant problems for administrators of the program. "The ...

Researchers at Western University (London, Canada) have shown how the bacteria primarily responsible for causing strep throat can be used to fight colon cancer. By engineering a streptococcal bacterial toxin to attach itself to tumour cells, they are forcing the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer. Kelcey Patterson, a PhD Candidate at Western and the lead author on the study, showed that the engineered bacterial toxin could significantly reduce the size of human colon cancer tumours in mice, with a drastic reduction in the instances of metastasis. By using ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Parents – especially those of overweight children – give schools a failing grade for efforts to encourage healthy habits that combat childhood obesity, according to a new poll from the University of Michigan. According to the latest University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, parents with at least one overweight child (25 percent of all parents in the poll) were more likely to give schools a failing grade of D or F for obesity-related efforts than parents of normal-weight children. Parents of overweight ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- The use of simulation techniques in medical education, such as lifelike mannequins and computer systems, results in improved patient care, better outcomes and other benefits, according to a study led by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher. William C. McGaghie, PhD, and colleagues analyzed 23 medical education studies that measured the effects of simulation-based mastery learning (SBML). A qualitative synthesis of these studies found that SBML improved outcomes in four areas: the educational laboratory, patient care practices, ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The patient and caregiver-centered Aging Brain Care program, developed by researchers at the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research, is attracting nationwide interest for its ability to improve health outcomes and quality of care for those with cognitive impairment while dramatically lowering costs to patients and health care systems. On May 22 and 23, a team of physicians and nurse managers from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will visit Indianapolis and Lafayette, ...