This news release is available in German. This is the best-preserved fossil find yet from the early era of our genus. The particularly interesting aspect is that it displays a combination of features that were unknown to us before the find. The skull, found in Dmanisi by anthropologists from the University of Zurich as part of a collaboration with colleagues in Georgia funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, has the largest face, the most massively built jaw and teeth and the smallest brain within the Dmanisi group. It is the fifth skull to be discovered ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Meteorologists often use information about warm and cold fronts to determine whether a tornado will occur in a particular area. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that the temperature of the Pacific Ocean could help scientists predict the type and location of tornado activity in the U.S. Laurel McCoy, an atmospheric science graduate student at the MU School of Natural Resources, and Tony Lupo, professor and chair of atmospheric science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, surveyed 56,457 tornado-like events from 1950 ...

Alexandria, VA - The Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding at the American Geosciences Institute has released a landmark report on the status of Earth Science education in U.S. middle and high schools, describing in detail significant gaps between identified priorities and lagging practice. The report, "Earth and Space Sciences Education in U.S. Secondary Schools: Key Indicators and Trends," offers baseline data on indicators of the subject's status since the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in April 2013. Establishing clear aims ...

Montreal combo plate cuts weight and health risks in obese individuals High-intensity interval training combined with Mediterranean diet counselling 'supersizes' heart health Montreal − Lifestyle programs focused on high-intensity interval ...

Overnight dialysis boosts kidney health -- while reducing risk of heart disease Treatment shows promise for improving artery function Montreal– Receiving dialysis at home while sleeping not only improves kidney health and quality of life for ...

High blood pressure during pregnancy could elevate the risk of a future stroke Women with this pregnancy complication may benefit from blood pressure monitoring to avoid longer-term risks, researchers say Montreal – High blood pressure during ...

Contact: Kim Newman sciencenews@einstein.yu.edu 718-430-3101 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Helene Guss hguss@montefiore.org 718-920-4011 Montefiore Medical Center Miscarriage perceptions vs. reality: Public understanding not in sync with facts National survey brings miscarriage misconceptions out into the open, rescue karyotyping provides critical information about causes of miscarriage NEW YORK (October 16, 2013) – The majority of Americans inaccurately believe miscarriage is rare and misunderstand its causes, creating an often isolating and guilt-ridden ...

Chicago(October 16, 2013): Traumatic injuries can be more severe for older adults, yet they often do not get the right level of care, according to a study appearing in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Instead of going to a trauma center, many elderly patients end up in facilities without specialized expertise in trauma care that can treat all of their injuries. The top cause of traumatic injuries for elderly patients is an unintentional fall, according to the National Trauma Data Bank of the American College of Surgeons (ACS).1 Such ...

NEW YORK (October 16, 2013) -- A research team from Weill Cornell Medical College and The Rockefeller University has identified a bacterium it believes may trigger multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic, debilitating disorder that damages myelin forming cells in the brain and spinal cord. Their study, published in PLoS ONE, is the first to identify the bacterium, Clostridium (C.) perfringens type B, in humans. The scientists say their study is small and must be expanded before a definitive connection between the pathogen and MS can be made, but they also say their findings ...

Skin-related laser procedures such as hair removal remain one of the most popular elective types of laser surgery performed in the United States today. To meet demand, more non-physicians are performing these procedures than ever before. A study published online Oct. 16 in JAMA Dermatology found that lawsuits related to procedures when non-physicians are operating the laser are increasing, particularly outside of a traditional medical setting. "Procedures performed by untrained individuals, particularly in non-medical settings, are more likely to result in litigation," ...

LA JOLLA, CA----With the flick of a light switch, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies can change the shape of a protein in the brain of a mouse, turning on the protein at the precise moment they want. This allows the scientists to observe the exact effect of the protein's activation. The new method, described in the October 16 issue of the journal Neuron, relies on specially engineered amino acids----the molecules that make up proteins----and light from an LED. Now that it has been shown to work, the technique can be adapted to give researchers control ...

Humans aren't the only species that knows how to carry on polite conversation. Marmoset monkeys, too, will engage one another for up to 30 minutes at a time in vocal turn-taking, according to evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 17. "We were surprised by how reliably the marmoset monkeys exchanged their vocalizations in a cooperative manner, particularly since in most cases they were doing so with individuals that they were not pair-bonded with," says Asif Ghazanfar of Princeton University. "This makes what we found much more similar ...

An international team of astronomers has found the most distant gravitational lens yet — a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy. But it also poses a mystery: lenses of this kind should be exceedingly rare. Given this and other recent finds, astronomers either have been phenomenally lucky — or, more likely, they have underestimated substantially the number of small, very young ...

Modest increases in marketing and outreach to local communities can increase the amount of physical activity that occurs in parks, providing a cost-effective way to potentially improve a community's health, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The project, which examined 50 parks across Los Angeles, found that simple interventions such as increased signage boosted physical activity by 7 to 12 percent over the study period in relation to parks that did not make changes. The findings are published online by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "The study ...

A new study has discovered profound abnormalities in brain activity in a group of retired American football players. Although the former players in the study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers. Previous research has found that former American football players experience higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The new findings, published in Scientific Reports, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have connected very rare and precise duplications and deletions in the human genome to their complex disease consequences by duplicating them in zebrafish. The findings are based on detailed studies of five people missing a small fragment of their genome and suffering from a mysterious syndrome of craniofacial features, visual anomalies and developmental delays. When those patient observations were coupled to analyses of the anatomical defects in genetically altered zebrafish embryos, the researchers were able to identify the contribution ...

Between 2000 and 2010 in the United States the number of donor eggs used for in vitro fertilization increased, and outcomes for births from those donor eggs improved, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the International Federation of Fertility Societies joint annual meeting. During the past several decades, the number of live births to women in their early 40s in the United States has increased steadily. The prevalence of oocyte (egg) donation ...

A study of 69,000 Medicare patient records led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows that people with spine compression fractures who undergo operations to strengthen back bones with cement survive longer and have shorter overall hospital stays than those who stick with bed rest, pain control and physical therapy. Although so-called interventional augmentation procedures were initially more expensive than conservative medical management of the fractures, the researchers say the former were associated with lower in-hospital mortality and increased survival compared with non-operative ...

AURORA, Colo. (Oct. 17, 2013) - The results of a recent study show kids that are home-schooled are leaner than kids attending traditional schools. The results challenge the theory that children spending more time at home may be at risk for excessive weight gain. The study was published in the journal Obesity and conducted by researchers from University of Colorado's Anschutz Health and Wellness Center (AHWC) and University of Alabama at Birmingham. It looked at both home-schooled and traditionally-schooled children between the ages of seven and 12 in Birmingham. Participants ...

WASHINGTON – Americans with similar temperaments are so likely to live in the same areas that a map of the country can be divided into regions with distinct personalities, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. People in the north-central Great Plains and the South tend to be conventional and friendly, those in the Western and Eastern seaboards lean toward being mostly relaxed and creative, while New Englanders and Mid-Atlantic residents are prone to being more temperamental and uninhibited, according to a study published online ...

When financial gain depends on cooperation, we might expect that people would put aside their differences and focus on the bottom line. But new research suggests that people's racial biases make them more likely to leave money on the table when a windfall is not split evenly between groups. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "It has been suggested that race bias in economic decisions may not occur in a market where discrimination is costly, but these findings provide the first evidence that this ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Video-based teaching helps teens with autism learn important social skills, and the method eventually could be used widely by schools with limited resources, a Michigan State University researcher says. The diagnosis rate for Autism Spectrum Disorder for 14- to 17-year-olds has more than doubled in the past five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet previous research has found very few strategies for helping adolescents with autism develop skills needed to be successful, especially in group settings. "Teaching ...

According to a new study, high long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid content in blood may lower the risk of small brain infarcts and other brain abnormalities in the elderly. The study was published in Journal of the American Heart Association. In the Cardiovascular Health Study in the USA, 3,660 people aged 65 and older underwent brain scans to detect so called silent brain infarcts, or small lesions in the brain that can cause loss of thinking skills, dementia and stroke. Scans were performed again five years later on 2,313 of the participants. Research shows ...

What do pigs, jellyfish and zebrafish have in common? It might be hard to discern the connection, but the different species are all pieces in a puzzle. A puzzle which is itself part of a larger picture of solving the riddles of diseases in humans. The pig, the jellyfish and the zebrafish are being used by scientists at Aarhus University to, among other things, gain a greater understanding of hereditary forms of diseases affecting the nervous system. This can be disorders like Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, autism, epilepsy and the motor neurone disease ALS. In ...

Alpine plants that survived the Ice Ages in different locations still show accrued differences in appearance and features. These findings were made by botanists from the University of Basel using two plant species. So far, it was only known that the glacial climate changes had left a «genetic fingerprint» in the DNA of alpine plants. During the Ice Ages the European Alps were covered by a thick layer of ice. Climate fluctuations led to great changes in the occurrences of plants: They survived the cold periods in refugia on the periphery of the Alps which they then repopulated ...