People with schizophrenia often misinterpret what they see and experience in the world. New research provides insight into the brain mechanisms that might be responsible for this misinterpretation. The study from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro - at McGill University and McGill University Health Centre, reveals that certain errors in visual perception in people with schizophrenia are consistent with interference or 'noise' in a brain signal known as a corollary discharge. Corollary discharges are found throughout the animal kingdom, from bugs ...

Lyme disease, if not treated promptly with antibiotics, can become a lingering problem for those infected. But a new study led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has some brighter news: Once infected with a particular strain of the disease-causing bacteria, humans appear to develop immunity against that strain that can last six to nine years. The finding doesn't give people who have already had the disease license to wander outside DEET-less, however. At least 16 different strains of the Lyme disease bacterium have been shown to infect humans in the United ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Members of the media and others often have attributed violence in video games as a potential cause of social ills, such as increased levels of teen violence and school shootings. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that media acceptance of video game violence has increased as video game technology has improved over time. Greg Perreault, a doctoral student at the MU School of Journalism, examined the coverage of violent video games throughout the 1990s by GamePro Magazine, the most popular video game news magazine during that time period. Perreault ...

URBANA, Ill. - Many food-insecure families also struggle to afford basic non-food household goods, such as personal care, household, and baby-care products, according to a new University of Illinois study published in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. "These families often make trade-offs with other living expenses and employ coping strategies in an effort to secure such household items as toilet paper, toothpaste, soap, or disposable diapers. What's more, nearly three in four low-income families have cut back on food in the past year in order to afford these ...

In the ongoing search for new materials for fuel cells, batteries, photovoltaics, separation membranes, and electronic devices, one newer approach involves applying and managing stresses within known materials to give them dramatically different properties. This development has been very exciting, says MIT associate professor of nuclear science and engineering Bilge Yildiz, one of the pioneers of this approach: "Traditionally, we make materials by changing compositions and structures, but we are now recognizing that strain is an additional parameter that we can change, ...

The molecular details of how zinc, an essential trace element of human metabolism, interacts with the enzyme caspase-3, which is central to apoptosis or cell death, have been elucidated in a new study led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University. The study is featured on the cover of the April issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie's International Edition. Dysregulation of apoptosis is implicated in cancer and neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer's disease. Zinc is known to affect the process by inhibiting the activity of caspases, which are important ...

This news release is available in German. Although Neanderthals are extinct, fragments of their genomes persist in modern humans. These shared regions are unevenly distributed across the genome and some regions are particularly enriched with Neanderthal variants. An international team of researchers led by Philipp Khaitovich of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai, China, show that DNA sequences shared between modern humans and Neanderthals are specifically ...

Men who started smoking regularly before the age of 11 had sons who, on average, had 5-10kg more body fat than their peers by the time they were in their teens, according to new research from the Children of the 90s study at the University of Bristol. The researchers say this could indicate that exposure to tobacco smoke before the start of puberty may lead to metabolic changes in the next generation. The effect, although present, was not seen to the same degree in daughters. Many other factors, including genetic factors and the father's weight, were taken into account ...

In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of environmental engineers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin found that infants are exposed to high levels of chemical emissions from crib mattresses while they sleep. Analyzing the foam padding in crib mattresses, the team found that the mattresses release significant amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), potentially harmful chemicals also found in household items such as cleaners and scented sprays. The researchers studied samples of polyurethane foam and polyester foam padding ...

The idea that a good diet means a healthy population with lower health costs only holds true when it comes to emergency care, a study shows. Researchers from Monash University, the National Defense Medical Centre, Taiwan, and the National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan, found that although men and women aged over 65 years who ate healthily had shorter stays in hospital, they were strong users of other medical services. In fact, they tended to make greater use of outpatient services, preventive care and dental care than those who did not follow a healthy eating regime. Emeritus ...

Sliding speed and ice temperature affect the surface friction of ice more than had previously been thought. The thermodynamic model developed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland research scientists shows that under certain conditions ice warms and melts when an item of material slides across its surface. The ice then becomes more slippery. Conversely, the friction coefficient can rise a hundredfold when sliding speed reduces and the temperature drops. Among other potential uses, the model can be employed in developing road and runway maintenance, and tyres, footwear ...

Endurance sport does not only change the condition and fitness of muscles but also simultaneously improves the neuronal connections to the muscle fibers based on a muscle-induced feedback. This link has been discovered by a research group at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. The group was also able to induce the same effect through raising the protein concentration of PGC1α in the muscle. Their findings, which are also interesting in regard to muscle and nerve disorders such as muscle wasting and ALS, have been published in the current issue of the journal ...

New research reveals that consuming two or more cups of coffee each day reduces the risk of death from liver cirrhosis by 66%, specifically cirrhosis caused by non-viral hepatitis. Findings in Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, show that tea, fruit juice, and soft drink consumption are not linked to cirrhosis mortality risk. As with previous studies heavy alcohol use was found to increase risk of death from cirrhosis. A 2004 report from The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each ...

A new approach to studying solar panel absorber materials has been developed by researchers in France, Acta Cryst. (2014). B70, 390. The technique could accelerate the development of non-toxic and readily available alternatives to current absorbers in thin film based solar cells. The development of solar panel materials that are both non-toxic and made from readily available elements rather than rare and precious metals is a priority in developing a sustainable technology. Sulfide materials containing the relatively common metals copper, tin and zinc, so called kesterites, ...

Researchers worldwide continue search for better luminescent materials for OLED manufacturing. Two new compounds with europium complexes developed at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw display in their class record high luminescence efficiencies in red, and their properties enable faster, low cost manufacturing of thin OLED films. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw developed two new materials with record high luminescence efficiency. The compounds were ...

Organisers of flower festivals are being forced to adapt to increasingly early first blooming dates in spring, according to a study by a Coventry University academic which is shortly due to be published in the journal Climate Research. Professor Tim Sparks, an environmental science expert, focused on the changes made to the timing of the popular Thriplow Daffodil Weekend in Cambridgeshire since it started in 1969 and compared them to the dates of first bloom, concluding that it has been forced to bring its dates forward by 26 days over its 46 year history. The early ...

Chicago (April 2, 2014)—A surgical collaborative of hospitals across Florida resulted in broad improvement in the state, helping most hospitals significantly improve, according to a new study published today in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Using the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®), the Florida Surgical Care Initiative (FSCI) was able to reduce complications by 14.5 percent. The study looks at a 15-month period from March 2011 to July 2012 in which it estimates that the program averted 165 complications, ...

The distance between the two electrode tips can greatly influence the parameters used for recording compound nerve action potentials. To investigate the optimal parameters for these recordings in the rat median nerve, Prof. Jie Lao and colleagues from HuaShan Hospital, Fudan University in China dissociated the nerve using different methods and compound nerve action potentials were orthodromically or antidromically recorded with different electrode spacings. Compound nerve action potentials could be consistently recorded using a method in which the middle part of the median ...

When planting seedlings of desert plants in the desert area under no irrigation condition, why the survival rate is so low and the growth is so poor? A recent research using desert plant Haloxylon ammodendron discovered that high desert surface temperature (≥50oC) is a major limiting factor under numerous desert habitats. It provides a novel idea for ecological control measures of desert. Professor MA Hao and his group from Nanjing Agricultural University and Xinjiang Agricultural University found this phenomenon and set out to tackle this problem. After several years ...

Dispersions of carbon nanotubes with liquid crystals have attracted much interest because they pave the way for creating new materials with added functionalities. Now, a study published in EPJ E by Marina Yakemseva and colleagues at the Nanomaterials Research Institute in Ivanovo, Russia, focuses on the influence of temperature and nanotube concentration on the physical properties of such combined materials. These findings could have implications for optimising these combinations for non-display applications, such as sensors or externally stimulated switches, and novel ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 2, 2014–Recent mass killings at schools, movie theaters, political rallies, and races, whether in the U.S., Norway, or elsewhere around the globe, have generally been perpetrated by young males 15-30 years of age. In a provocative Roundtable Discussion published in the preview issue of Violence and Gender, a new peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, a multidisciplinary expert panel explores the possible reasons for high incidence of these crimes, especially in the U.S., and the motives of the young male perpetrators. The ...

Results of EORTC trial 10994 appearing in the Annals of Oncology show that pathological complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy is an independent predictive factor of favorable clinical outcomes in all molecular subtypes of breast cancer. Professor Hervé Bonnefoi of the Institut Bergonié Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Bordeaux and coordinator of this study says, "An analysis such as the EORTC's was needed to consider breast cancer heterogeneity. Until recently, a link between pathological complete response and excellent prognosis had only been shown for some ...

Philadelphia, April 2, 2014 – Clinical Therapeutics features a special report in its March issue focusing on the science and policy leading up to the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) preliminary steps toward restricting industrially produced trans fatty acids, or trans fat, at the federal level. "Trans fat is a compelling topic for Clinical Therapeutics to examine, because although it directly impacts human health, it also cues up controversy in multiple disciplines, including economics and politics," said John G. Ryan, Dr.PH., Topic Editor for Endocrinology and ...

Reinforcing concrete with steel bars is a very common practice in construction. The industrial engineer and researcher Aimar Orbe-Mateo (UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country) has studied the possible use of a material that is normally used for other applications for these tasks: concrete reinforced with steel fibres.What the study shows is that this material has certain advantages over conventional reinforced concrete; among others, it is less prone to cracking, and it can be used for purposes like the manufacture of cylindrical holding tanks. According to Aimar Orbe-Mateo, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Mindfulness is always personal and often spiritual, but the meditation experience does not have to be subjective. Advances in methodology are allowing researchers to integrate mindfulness experiences with brain imaging and neural signal data to form testable hypotheses about the science — and the reported mental health benefits — of the practice. A team of Brown University researchers, led by junior Juan Santoyo, will present their research approach at 2:45 p.m on Saturday, April 5, 2014, at the 12th Annual International Scientific ...