The elusive progenitor cells that give rise to innate lymphoid cells—a recently discovered group of infection-fighting white blood cells—have been identified in fetal liver and adult bone marrow of mice, researchers from the University of Chicago report early online in the journal Nature. Innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) are among the first components of the immune system to confront certain pathogens. They have a critical function at mucosal barriers—locations such as the bowel or the lung—where the body comes in direct contact with the environment. Yet they went undetected ...

Parabolic troughs and dry-cooled towers deliver similar value for concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, despite different solar profiles, a new report by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has found. The report, "Estimating the Performance and Economic Value of Multiple Concentrating Solar Power Technologies in a Production Cost Model," found that the value of delivered energy of dry-cooled tower and parabolic trough CSP plants, integrated with thermal energy storage, are quite similar. CSP with thermal energy storage is a unique source of ...

TORONTO, ON, February 11, 2014 — Women with BRCA-related breast cancer who have a double mastectomy are nearly 50 per cent less likely to die of breast cancer within 20 years of diagnosis compared to women who have a single mastectomy, according to a new study led by Women's College Hospital's Kelly Metcalfe. The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, suggest a double mastectomy may be an effective first-line treatment for women with early-stage breast cancer who carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic mutation. The BRCA1/2 genes belong to a class of genes that ...

Severe skin reactions during radiation therapy could be prevented by applying a thin transparent silicone dressing to the skin from the first day of treatment, clinical research from New Zealand shows. Although many skincare products have been tested in clinical trials over the years, until now none have been able to completely prevent severe skin reactions, says senior lecturer Dr Patries Herst of University of Otago Wellington's Department of Radiation Therapy. Dr Herst and her team of radiation therapists, oncology nurses and medical physicists have completed five ...

Social insects, which usually have specialized behavioral groups (also called castes), are important models for social evolution and behavior researches. How division of labor in insect societies is regulated is an outstanding question and not fully understood yet. However, in many social insect species, experimental control over important factors that regulate division of labor, such as genotype and age, is limited. In a study published online on February 6th in Current Biology, researchers from Rockefeller University and BGI-Shenzhen have sequenced the genome of the queenless ...

Common infections are associated with a significantly higher chance of stroke in children, but routine vaccinations may help decrease risk, according to preliminary research (abstract 39) presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. "The protective association of routine vaccination against childhood stroke provides a widely available means of prevention, and this information can easily be dispersed by pediatric healthcare providers," said Nancy Hills, Ph.D., M.B.A., lead researcher and assistant professor of neurology at the University ...

Parents and healthcare professionals must be aware that children can have strokes and be prepared to respond to symptoms, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. As in adults, warning signs of stroke in children are: sudden weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg; sudden difficulty in speaking; sudden problems in seeing; sudden difficulty walking; dizziness; or sudden onset of headache. Researchers interviewed 28 parents whose child had a stroke about factors that contributed to delayed arrival to ...

Cocaine greatly increases ischemic stroke risk in young adults within 24 hours of use, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. Ischemic strokes occur when a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain becomes blocked, preventing a continuous supply of blood to the brain. "We set out to understand what factors contribute to stroke risk in young adults," said Yu-Ching Cheng, Ph.D., research scientist at Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland ...

Stroke hospitalization and death rates may rise and fall with changes in environmental temperature and dew point, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. "Weather is not something people would typically associate with stroke risk; however, we've found weather conditions are among the multiple factors that are associated with stroke hospitalizations," said Judith H. Lichtman, Ph.D., M.P.H., study author and an associate professor in Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Conn. Researchers ...

In 1832 Charles Darwin disembarked from HMS Beagle in Bahia Blanca, Argentina where he travelled by land to Buenos Aires. In Bahia Blanca, Darwin collected several fossils of large mammals along with many other living organisms, including several insects. More than 180 years later on Darwin's birthday, February 12, scientists name after him a long lost but new to science beetle genus and species from this collection. The beetle was discovered and described by Dr. Stylianos Chatzimanolis, an entomologist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA as a new genus ...

A new study disputes the effectiveness of mortality as a measure of the quality of care provided by hospitals to stroke patients. The paper – which was simultaneously presented today at the International Stroke Conference in San Diego and published in the journal Stroke – found that use of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders differ widely between hospitals and that this variation can significantly skew a hospital's quality "ranking" based on mortality. "With mortality increasingly being used as a marker for the quality of care provided to stroke patients, it is essential ...

Birds that hoard food for a rainy day better be sure that there are no great tits around to spy on where they hide their reserve of seeds and nuts. So says Anders Brodin and Utku Urhan of the University of Lund in Sweden, who found that great tits can remember the position of such hideaways up to 24 hours after seeing it cached. Interestingly, even though great tits share this mental ability with well-known hoarders such as crows and jays, they do not store up food themselves. The findings appear in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Observations ...

London (February 12, 2014)—New data from the field in Central Africa shows that between 2002 and 2013, 65 percent of forest elephants were killed. They are being poached, for their ivory, at a shocking 9 percent per year. This new data marks an update to an earlier paper in the online journal PLOS ONE on the status of forest elephants across Central Africa, published by the same scientists. Many organisations collaborated in the study which covered 80 sites, in five countries, over the twelve years of data collection. The earlier paper, published in 2013, already had ...

How strongly do two dissolved analytes react with each other? Such information is of paramount importance not only in chemistry and molecular biology, but also in medicine or pharmacy, where it is used, i.a., to determine optimal drug doses. A method developed in the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw will allow for determining diffusion coefficients of analytes in fluids and equilibrium constants of reactions – quickly, at low cost, and most importantly: universally. In many medical therapies, a prerequisite for efficient treatment ...

Scientists have identified genetic traits in cattle that might allow farmers to breed livestock with increased resistance to bovine tuberculosis (TB). The study, which compared the genetic code of TB-infected animals with that of disease-free cattle, could help to impact on a disease that leads to major economic losses worldwide. The research, led by the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, has identified a number of genetic signatures associated with TB resistance in the cows that remained unaffected. The study builds on previous research by The Roslin Institute, ...

One 15-minute focused-breathing meditation may help people make smarter choices, according to new research from researchers at INSEAD and The Wharton School. The findings are published in the February issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People have trouble cutting their losses: They hold on to losing stocks too long, they stay in bad relationships, and they continue to eat large restaurant meals even when they're full. This behavior, often described as "throwing good money after bad," is driven by what behavioral scientists ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Fear is primal. In the wild, it serves as a protective mechanism, allowing animals to avoid predators or other perceived threats. For humans, fear is much more complex. A normal amount keeps us safe from danger. But in extreme cases, like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), too much fear can prevent people from living healthy, productive lives. Researchers are actively working to understand how the brain translates fear into action. Today, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announce the discovery of a new neural circuit in the ...

White rhinoceros may be extinct in twenty years with the current poaching rates. The loss of this megaherbivore is in itself a tragedy, but it may also have tremendous effects on the ecosystems they now live in. The white rhino (Ceratotherium simum), and other megaherbivores, are key drivers of ecosystem functioning because they´re not controlled by predation. A new study by Joris Cromsigt and Mariska te Beest, published in Journal of Ecology, highlights the role of the white rhino in the savannah ecosystems. Earlier empirical studies on the ecosystem impact of megaherbivores ...

Whether lifting weights in a gym or just walking around the block, exercise has many benefits, such as helping people lose weight and build stronger muscles. Some studies suggest that it may reduce the risk of developing cancer and other diseases. Researchers now report in ACS' Journal of Proteome Research that moderate, long-term physical activity appears to improve cardiovascular health in mice by targeting the heart cells' powerhouses — the mitochondria. Eduard Sabidó, Francisco Amado and colleagues explain that despite the well-documented benefits of exercise, the ...

Astronomers know that while large stars can end their lives as violently cataclysmic supernovae, smaller stars end up as planetary nebulae – colorful, glowing clouds of dust and gas. In recent decades these nebulae, once thought to be mostly spherical, have been observed to often emit powerful, bipolar jets of gas and dust. But how do spherical stars evolve to produce highly aspherical planetary nebulae? In a theoretical paper published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a University of Rochester professor and his undergraduate student ...

Researchers at Grand Valley State University's Annis Water Resources Institute are learning more about the impact invasive zebra mussels and native aquatic insect larvae have on the risk of algae blooms in two West Michigan lakes. The results of the research will be published in the journal Oikos. Postdoctoral researcher Geraldine Nogaro and AWRI director Alan Steinman studied the impact that invasive zebra mussels and native chironomid larvae have on nutrient releases in Muskegon Lake and Bear Lake. While studying the mussels, Nogaro and Steinman noted that filter feeding ...

In today's search for renewable energy sources, researchers are turning to the hi-tech, from solar and hydrogen fuel cells, and the very low-tech. The latest example of a low-tech alternative comes from an age-old industry: paper. A new study, appearing in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels, reveals a sustainable way to turn the huge amounts of waste from paper production into solid fuel with the added bonus of diverting the sludge from overflowing landfills. Chinnathan Areeprasert, Peitao Zhao and colleagues note that making paper, from debarking and chipping wood to the final ...

New research from the University of Adelaide shows that the state of South Australia has a higher rate of deaths from extreme cold compared with the northern European nation of Sweden. The study, by a team from the University's School of Medical Sciences, analyzed forensic cases of hypothermia deaths from 2006-2011 in both South Australia and Sweden. The results show that South Australia had a rate of 3.9 deaths for every 100,000 people, compared with Sweden's 3.3 deaths per 100,000. In total, there were 62 fatal cases of hypothermia in South Australia and 296 cases ...

An international team of scientists from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (China) and the Forest Herbarium (BKF - Thailand) discovered a new species of Stone Oak in the Ton Pariwat Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand. This isolated sanctuary is popular for its rich bird- and wildlife such as the Blue-banded Kingfisher and Whitehanded Gibbons, as well for its rare and beautiful flora like Rafflesia's - known to hold some of the largest flowers on earth. The wildlife sanctuary covers a region of low-lying forested mountains and is located in the middle of a fascinating ...

Scientists report that they have developed a novel compound that appears to protect mice against developing movement problems associated with Parkinson's disease (PD). The research, which could one day in the future translate into a therapy that could halt the progression of PD and thereby prevent the symptoms of the disease, appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Onyou Hwang, Ki Duk Park and colleagues explain that PD, which affects an estimated 4 million to 10 million people worldwide, is a progressive movement disorder with no known cure. It often starts ...