SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 20, 2013) — Scientists today reported a possible basis for why food-restricted animals show increased susceptibility to drugs of abuse. This association has puzzled researchers since it was first observed more than three decades ago. Senior author Michael Beckstead, Ph.D., from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, said the team found that dopamine neurons in a brain region called the substantia nigra fire bursts more than twice as frequently in chronically food-restricted mice. Cocaine significantly enhanced ...

People usually feel good when they make a charitable donation, but they feel even better if they make the donation directly to someone they know or in a way that builds social connection. Research to be published in the International Journal of Happiness and Development investigates for the first time how social connection helps turn generous behavior into positive feelings on the part of the donor. Lara Aknin of Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and Harvard Business School, Massachusetts, ...

One of the most promising types of solar cells has a few drawbacks. A scientist at Michigan Technological University may have overcome one of them. Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin, flexible, easy to make and very good at turning sunshine into electricity. However, a key ingredient is one of the most expensive metals on the planet: platinum. While only small amounts are needed, at $1,500 an ounce, the cost of the silvery metal is still significant. Yun Hang Hu, the Charles and Caroll McArthur Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has developed a new, inexpensive ...

MIAMI – August 20, 2013 -- A new computer simulation conducted at the University of Bristol (UB) and University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science has revealed the epic, ocean-spanning journeys travelled by millimetre-sized coral larvae through the world's seas. The study, published in Global Ecology and Biogeography, is the first to recreate the oceanic paths along which corals disperse globally, and will eventually aid predictions of how coral reef distributions may shift with climate change. Coral reefs are under increasing threat ...

Genetics may play a role in how people's taste receptors send signals, leading to a wide spectrum of taste preferences, according to Penn State food scientists. These varied, genetically influenced responses may mean that food and drink companies will need a range of artificial sweeteners to accommodate different consumer tastes. "Genetic differences lead to differences in how people respond to tastes of foods," said John Hayes, assistant professor, food science and director of the sensory evaluation center. Based on the participants' genetic profile, researchers were ...

A recent study by members of the Children's Oncology Group reports results of a large trial showing that children whose leukemia cells have amplification of a portion of chromosome 21 may require more aggressive treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) than children without this gene amplification. "This helps identify patients who need more therapy than they may otherwise get," says Stephen Hunger, MD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and director of the Center ...

Flight safety experts studying recent high-profile plane crashes found sudden autopilot disconnection to be a design flaw that creates unnecessary emergencies by surprising pilots during critical, high-workload episodes. "The sudden disengagement of autopilot is analogous to a pilot suddenly throwing up his or her hands and blurting to the copilot, 'Your Plane!'" says Eric E. Geiselman, lead author of a recently published two-article Ergonomics in Design series, "Flight Deck Automation: Invaluable Collaborator or Insidious Enabler" (July issue) and "A Call for Context-Aware ...

A new hypothesis concerning a crucial step in the anthrax infection process has been advanced by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. The research teams have explored the behavior of the toxins that rapidly overwhelm the body as the often-fatal disease progresses. Their findings suggest a new possible mechanism by which anthrax bacteria deliver the protein molecules that poison victims. Anthrax is easily weaponized; the findings could ...

A new report* by biometric researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) uses data from thousands of frequent travelers enrolled in an iris recognition program to determine that no consistent change occurs in the distinguishing texture of their irises for at least a decade. These findings inform identity program administrators on how often iris images need to be recaptured to maintain accuracy. For decades, researchers seeking biometric identifiers other than fingerprints believed that irises were a strong biometric because their one-of-a-kind ...

PHILADELPHIA – In 2005, the Institute of Medicine, surveying the outlook for the growing number of American cancer survivors, first described the idea of a survivorship care plan: a roadmap for the group of patients, today numbering nearly 12 million, who are beginning new lives as cancer survivors. Care plans aims to arm cancer survivors with a customized road map for their lives as cancer survivors: tips for follow-up screenings, information about possible late effects of their therapies, and pointers on fertility or financial issues they may face in the future. The ...

Researchers have long known that high levels of a specific protein in human cells are linked to tumor growth – but no one has fully understood how. Now, a groundbreaking discovery by UC Davis graduate student Kateryna Feoktistova and Assistant Professor Christopher Fraser illuminates the way that the protein, eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF4E), acts upon cancer-promoting messenger RNA molecules. When translated, this type of mRNA can trigger the runaway cell replication that results in malignancies. Published in the August 13 edition of the Proceedings of the National ...

The ancient cycad lineage has been around since before the age of the dinosaurs. More recently, cycads also co-existed with large herbivorous mammals, such as the ice age megafauna that only went extinct a few tens of thousands of years ago. Cycads that are living today have large, heavy seeds with a fleshy outer coating that suggests they rely on large bodied fruit-eating animals to disperse their seeds. Yet there is little evidence that they are eaten and dispersed by today's larger-bodied animals, such as emus or elephants. If these plants are adapted for dispersal ...

Tropical Storm Pewa weakened temporarily while facing adverse atmospheric conditions in the Northwestern Pacific, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured the storm in infrared light. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Pewa on Aug. 20 at 01:47 UTC/9:47 p.m. EDT, Aug. 19 as it weakened. The coldest cloud top temperatures and strongest storms were confined to a small area around the storm's center and in a band of thunderstorms northeast of the center. Cloud top temperatures in both of ...

The Central Pacific Ocean has generated a third tropical depression this year and NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an image of Tropical Depression 03C far to the west of Hawaii. NOAA's GOES-West satellite imagery from Aug. 20 at 1200 UTC/8 a.m. EDT showed a rounded tropical depression about 1,310 miles/2,105 km west of Lihue, Hawaii. The GOES image was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The GOES image shows the strongest thunderstorms around the depression's center. The depression was centered near 19.5 north ...

Tropical Storm Trami may not be making landfall in the Philippines, but it was close enough to bring heavy rainfall when combined with monsoon rains. NASA's Aqua satellite captured those extensive rains in an infrared image when it passed overhead from space. Tropical Storm Trami enhanced rainfall from the monsoon, and caused flooding in the northern Philippines, including Manila, the capital city. The northern Philippines were hit with two nights of heavy rainfall, but Trami is now moving to the northwest and away from the northern Philippines. According to reports from ...

This fall, NASA's Operation IceBridge will base its annual Antarctic campaign out of National Science Foundation's McMurdo Station, a change from the mission's previous four campaigns that were based in Punta Arenas, Chile. By switching bases of operations, IceBridge will be able to expand its reach by measuring parts of Antarctica previously unavailable to the mission. "Antarctica is a big place and there are many science targets for us to hit," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA headquarters, Washington. This change comes after nearly a year of planning ...

Berkeley -- A new theory by fluid dynamics experts at the University of California, Berkeley, shows how "zombie vortices" help lead to the birth of a new star. Reporting today (Tuesday, Aug. 20) in the journal Physical Review Letters, a team led by computational physicist Philip Marcus shows how variations in gas density lead to instability, which then generates the whirlpool-like vortices needed for stars to form. Astronomers accept that in the first steps of a new star's birth, dense clouds of gas collapse into clumps that, with the aid of angular momentum, spin ...

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 570 miles per second, which is a fairly ...

PISCATAWAY, NJ – People with alcohol dependence may be more genetically susceptible to certain types of eating disorders, and vice-versa, according to a study in the September issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. In a study of nearly 6,000 adult twins, researchers found that common genetic factors seemed to underlie both alcoholism and certain eating disorder symptoms—namely, binge eating and purging habits, such as self-induced vomiting or laxative abuse. Genes appeared to explain 38 percent to 53 percent of the risk of developing those disorders. "This ...

Part of the risk for alcohol dependence is genetic, and the same is true for eating disorders. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found it's likely some of the same genes are involved in both. In the September issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, the researchers report that people with alcohol dependence may be more genetically susceptible to certain types of eating disorders and vice versa. "In clinical practice, it's been observed that individuals with eating disorders also have high rates of alcohol abuse ...

HUNTSVILLE, TX (09/21/13) -- Weapons were involved in 40 percent of domestic violence cases in Houston, and researchers discovered distinct patterns on when and where each type of weapon was used, according to a recent study at Sam Houston State University. The study, "Profiling weapon use in domestic violence: Multilevel analysis of situational and neighborhood factors," was based on 9,450 detailed reports of domestic violence cases that occurred in 2005 throughout Houston, the nation's fourth largest city. While the majority of cases – 60 percent -- reported the use ...

New York, NY, August 21, 2013—An estimated 7.8 million of the 15 million young adults who were enrolled in a parent's health plan last year likely would not have been eligible for this coverage without the health reform law's dependent coverage provision, according to a new Commonwealth Fund survey. However, the survey also found that only 27 percent of young adults were aware of the state health insurance marketplaces that are launching October 1. Moreover, millions of low-income young adults are at risk of remaining uninsured if the states they live in choose not to expand ...

On the Monday following a big football game, fans of the losing team seem to load up on saturated fats and sugars, whereas supporters of the winning team opt for healthier foods, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Although prior studies had shown that sport outcomes influence reckless driving, heart attacks, and even domestic violence, no one had examined how they influence eating," says Yann Cornil, researcher at INSEAD Business School and lead author of the study. By comparing the ...

August 21, 2013—The HIV/AIDS epidemic is changing in unexpected ways in countries around the world, showing that greater attention and financial investment may be needed in places where the disease has not reached epidemic levels, according to a new study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of disease burden in 21 countries concentrated in four regions: Eastern and Southern Africa, Central Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. In another seven countries, it's the second leading ...

This news release is available in French. While children of all ages will be heading back to school in a few days, a new study from the Université de Montréal may encourage their parents to return to the classroom themselves ... at least for a few evenings! The results of a study in developmental psychology published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies show that the How-to Parenting Program improves the mental health of children. "Did you know that certain ways of talking to your child are more effective? Certain ways of listening make a real difference?" These ...