DURHAM, N.C. -- During a normal conversation, your brain is constantly adjusting the volume to soften the sound of your own voice and boost the voices of others in the room. This ability to distinguish between the sounds generated from your own movements and those coming from the outside world is important not only for catching up on water cooler gossip, but also for learning how to speak or play a musical instrument. Now, researchers have developed the first diagram of the brain circuitry that enables this complex interplay between the motor system and the auditory ...

New research from the University of East Anglia has shown that females can maximise the genetic quality of their offspring by being promiscuous. Researchers studied red junglefowl (the wild ancestor of the domestic chicken) in a collaborative project with the University of Oxford, Stockholm University and Linköping University. Findings published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveal that mating with different males helps females produce offspring that are more resistant to diseases. This is down to 'cryptic female choice' -- where an internal ...

Frontiers in Physiology Not a bat choice: echolocation works better than eyesight, even under adequate light A new study in Frontiers in Physiology shows for the first time that bats catch insects by sonar as it is far more efficient than using vision, even during twilight. Bats have eyes and may not have evolved their ultrasonic sonar from the earliest time of their existence on earth. Approximately 1000 species of bats use sonar to detect prey, despite showing considerable variation in the preferred size of their prey and their mode of hunting. But why? Many bats ...

Electronic devices with touchscreens are ubiquitous, and one key piece of technology makes them possible: transparent conductors. However, the cost and the physical limitations of the material these conductors are usually made of are hampering progress toward flexible touchscreen devices. Fortunately, a research collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University has shown a new a way to design transparent conductors using metal nanowires that could enable less expensive — and flexible — touchscreens. The research was conducted by graduate student ...

A visible image of Tropical Storm Toraji was captured on Sept. 3 at 02:10 UTC/Sept. 2 at 10:10 p.m. is it continued moving north past eastern China and approached southern Japan. The image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite. The image showed strong thunderstorms wrapped around the center of the tropical storm. Bands of thunderstorms wrapping into the center from the north extended over Kyushu. Kyushu is the third largest island of Japan and is farthest southwest of Japan's four main ...

A lot of things happen over a holiday weekend, and while people in the United States were celebrating Labor Day weekend, the Eastern Pacific Ocean's Tropical Storm Kiko came and went. Satellite data captured Tropical Storm Kiko's birth on Sept. 1 and saw its remnants weakening on Sept. 3. As Kiko dissipates, another low pressure system is forming near the southwestern coast of Mexico. NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured the life of Kiko from the time it became Tropical Depression 11 on Aug. 31. The depression formed about 500 miles/805 km west-southwest of the southern ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 3, 2013 – Low-income communities have particular problems getting adequate fruits and vegetables because of limited access to supermarkets and farmers markets. A new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center shows that community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs may be a feasible approach for providing fresh fruits and vegetables to under-resourced communities. Lead author Sara A. Quandt, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest Baptist, said that CSAs, which link consumers to a local farm's produce over a growing ...

LA JOLLA, CA----Proteins are the chief actors in cells, carrying out the duties specified by information encoded in our genes. Most proteins live only two days or less, ensuring that those damaged by inevitable chemical modifications are replaced with new functional copies. In a new study published August 29 in Cell, a team led by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have now identified a small subset of proteins in the brain that persist for longer, even more than a year, without being replaced. These long-lived ...

Fires burned throughout Bolivia in late August. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on August 31, 2013. Red outlines indicate areas where MODIS has detected high surface temperatures associated with actively burning fires. In many places, the smoke from these blazes is thick enough to completely hide the land surface below from the satellite sensor's view. In general, the smoke plumes blow toward the west and northwest. Wildfires can occur naturally in Bolivia, but the widespread burning ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have found a way to resynchronize cardiac motion following a heart attack using stem cells. Scientists implanted engineered stem cells, also known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, into damaged regions of mouse hearts following a heart attack. This regenerative approach successfully targeted the origin of abnormal cardiac motion, preventing heart failure. The findings appear in the September issue of the Journal of Physiology. MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video resources, including interviews with Drs. Terzic and Yamada, are available ...

FORENSICS – Mass grave detection . . . Families of thousands of victims of social violence may gain closure, and killers may receive appropriate punishment, because of a suite of technologies able to locate clandestine graves. While investigators can find some graves, perhaps hundreds of thousands remain undiscovered. Researchers at the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Center and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing a method to discover graves using sensors, onboard satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. [Contact: Ron Walli, (865) 576-0226; wallira@ornl.gov] BIOENERGY ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) have found that among obese people who had lost considerable weight, those with high insulin levels--a marker of insulin resistance in the body--were the most likely to experience better blood vessel function following the weight loss. These findings appear online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Obesity has emerged as one of the most critical health care problems in the U.S. and worldwide with nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population currently ...

Big global questions face us, among them: How will we feed a growing global population without ruining the soil and polluting freshwater? Or meet our burgeoning energy demands while curbing the greenhouse gas emissions that fuel rising sea levels, flooding, drought, disease and wildfire? And what can we do to stem the extinction of thousands of other species that share the planet with us? These daunting "environmental" problems are not only in the domain of ecologists and environmental scientists. Other natural scientists, social, behavioral and economic researchers, ...

September 3, 203 - Any parent will tell you that there is no simple recipe for raising a child. Being a parent means getting hefty doses of advice – often unsolicited – from others. But such advice often fails to consider a critical factor: the child. A new review of dozens of studies involving more than 14,600 pairs of twins shows that children's genetics significantly affect how they are parented. "There is a lot of pressure on parents these days to produce children that excel in everything, socially and academically," says Reut Avinun of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ...

West Orange, NJ. August 30, 2013. The September issue of the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine focuses on, "The Changing Face of Spinal Cord Injury," the theme for the 2013 meeting of the Academy of Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Professionals. Research articles address topics in urology, neuroscience, rehabilitation psychology, physiology, gastroenterology, and infectious disease. The conference dates are September 2-4 at Bally's Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Conference abstracts are available for free download at: http://tinyurl.com/n95jnoy The issue's lead article is a state-of-the-art ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- When it comes to public access, the tree of life has holes. A new study co-authored by University of Florida researchers shows about 70 percent of published genetic sequence comparisons are not publicly accessible, leaving researchers worldwide unable to get to critical data they may need to tackle a host a problems ranging from climate change to disease control. Scientists are using the genetic data to construct the largest open-access tree of life as part of the National Science Foundation's $5.6-million Assembling, Visualizing and Analyzing ...

Memphis, Tenn. – Providing families with diabetic children access via pager to a transport team improves outcomes and efficiency, according to a recent study performed at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital and The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). The study, "Real-time Support of Pediatric Diabetes Self-care by a Transport Team," was reported online ahead of print in Diabetes Care, the world's leading journal for clinical diabetes research and published by the American Diabetes Association. Brandi E. Franklin, PhD, assistant professor in the UTHSC College ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Spool-like proteins called histones play a crucial role in packaging the nearly seven feet of DNA found in most human cells. A new study shows that a group of histones that are thought to behave the same way actually are functionally distinct proteins. The findings by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) indicate that replication-dependent histone isoforms can have distinct cellular functions, and that changes in expression of the ...

Hashtag #doyouknowwhoswatchingyou? A new study from USC researchers sampled more than 15 million tweets, showing that some Twitter users may be inadvertently revealing their location through updates on the social media channel. The study, which appears in the current issue of the International Journal of Geoinformatics, provides important factual data for a growing national conversation about online privacy and third-party commercial or government use of geo-tagged information. "I'm a pretty private person, and I wish others would be more cautious with the types of ...

An international group of researchers from the University of Minnesota, Argonne National Laboratory and Seoul National University have discovered a groundbreaking technique in manufacturing nanostructures that has the potential to make electrical and optical devices smaller and better than ever before. A surprising low-tech tool of Scotch Magic tape ended up being one of the keys to the discovery. The research is published today in Nature Communications, an international online research journal. Combining several standard nanofabrication techniques—with the final addition ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 3, 2013) – Clay, an abundant and cheap natural material, is a key ingredient in a supercapacitor that can operate at very high temperatures, according to Rice University researchers who have developed such a device. The Rice group of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan reported today in Nature's online journal, Scientific Reports that the supercapacitor is reliable at temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius (392 degrees Fahrenheit) and possibly beyond. It could be useful for powering devices for use in extreme environments, such as oil drilling, the ...

MADISON, Wis. — Once every 30 years or so, or roughly one Saturnian year, a monster storm rips across the northern hemisphere of the ringed planet. In 2010, the most recent and only the sixth giant storm on Saturn observed by humans began stirring. It quickly grew to superstorm proportions, reaching 15,000 kilometers (more than 9,300 miles) in width and visible to amateur astronomers on Earth as a great white spot dancing across the surface of the planet. Now, thanks to near-infrared spectral measurements taken by NASA's Cassini orbiter and analysis of near-infrared ...

London (Wednesday 04 September 2013). Having a tattoo can reduce your chance of getting a job, but it depends on where the tattoo is, what it depicts and if the job involves dealing with customers, new research says. Dr Andrew R. Timming told the British Sociological Association conference on work, employment and society in Warwick today [Wednesday 4 September] that employers were prone to view tattoos negatively. Dr Timming, of the School of Management at the University of St Andrews, said he had spoken to 15 managers involved in hiring staff about their reaction to ...

London (Wednesday 04 September 2013). Having a degree or other qualifications is no protection against under-employment in Britain, new research shows. The British Sociological Association's conference on work, employment and society in Warwick heard today [Wednesday 4 September] that qualified women were more likely to be under-employed than unqualified ones. Qualified men were just as likely to be under-employed as unqualified ones. Dr Surhan Cam, of School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, said that as working hours were cut during the economic slowdown, ...

Many American parents yell or shout at their teenagers. A new longitudinal study has found that using such harsh verbal discipline in early adolescence can be harmful to teens later. Instead of minimizing teens' problematic behavior, harsh verbal discipline may actually aggravate it. The study, from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan, appears in the journal Child Development. Harsh verbal discipline happens when parents use psychological force to cause a child to experience emotional pain or discomfort in an effort to correct ...