Researchers at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, have demonstrated that the degree to which a gene related to vitamin D action is switched on or off, when measured at birth, predicts bone density of the child at four years of age. In the study, 230 boys and girls were assessed at 4 years as part of the Southampton Women's Survey (SWS), a large ongoing mother-offspring cohort. The children visited the Osteoporosis Centre at Southampton General Hospital for measurement of their bone size and density using a DXA scanner. The researchers were ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Decision-making by a surrogate for a family member who is unable to make medical decisions is more complicated than decision-making by patients themselves, according to a study from the Regenstrief Institute, Indiana University Center for Aging Research and the Charles Warren Fairbanks Center for Medical Ethics of Indiana University Health. The researchers found that family decision-makers considered the cognitively impaired patient's wishes and interests. But they also took into account their own needs and preferences. Factors influencing surrogate ...

LONDON, ON – What are some of the most troubling numbers in mental health? Six to 10 -- the number of years it can take to properly diagnose a mental health condition. Dr. Elizabeth Osuch, a Researcher at Lawson Health Research Institute and a Psychiatrist at London Health Sciences Centre and the Department of Psychiatry at Western University, is helping to end misdiagnosis by looking for a 'biomarker' in the brain that will help diagnose and treat two commonly misdiagnosed disorders. Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), otherwise known as Unipolar Disorder, and Bipolar Disorder ...

NEW YORK -- A study spearheaded by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Minnesota has shown that the world's largest owl -- and one of the rarest -- is also a key indicator of the health of some of the last great primary forests of Russia's Far East. The study found that Blakiston's fish owl relies on old-growth forests along streams for both breeding and to support healthy populations of their favorite prey: salmon. The large trees provide breeding cavities for the enormous bird, which has a two-meter (six-foot) wingspan. And when these dead, massive ...

Just how stars and black holes in the Universe are able to form from rotating matter is one of the big questions of astrophysics. What we do know is that magnetic fields figure prominently into the picture. However, our current understanding is that they only work if matter is electrically well conductive -- but in rotating discs this isn't always the case. Now, a new publication by Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf physicists in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters shows how magnetic fields can also cause turbulences within "dead zones," thus making an important ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Three elements commonly found at elevated levels in an Appalachian river polluted by runoff from mountaintop coal mining have distinctive chemistries that can be traced back to their source, according to a Duke University-led study. The distinctive chemistries of sulfur, carbon and strontium provide scientists with new, more accurate ways to track pollution from mountaintop mining sites and to distinguish it from contamination from other sources. "Essentially, we found that these elements have unique isotopic fingerprints, meaning we can use them as ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Despite taking a tailored risk assessment tool that factors in family history and personal habits, nearly 20 percent of women did not believe their breast cancer risk, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Most of the women who didn't believe their risk numbers said they did not feel it took into account their family history of cancer or their personal health habits. The tool did ask relevant questions about the individual's family and personal history. "If people don't believe their risk numbers, it ...

This news release is available in German. Astronomers have discovered a magnetar at the centre of our Milky Way. This pulsar has an extremely strong magnetic field and enables researchers to investigate the direct vicinity of the black hole at the heart of the galaxy. An international team of scientists headed by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn have, for the first time, measured the strength of the magnetic field around this central source and were able to show that the latter is fed by magnetic fields. These control the inflow of mass into the ...

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed a new material to make smart windows even smarter. The material is a thin coating of nanocrystals embedded in glass that can dynamically modify sunlight as it passes through a window. Unlike existing technologies, the coating provides selective control over visible light and heat-producing near-infrared (NIR) light, so windows can maximize both energy savings and occupant comfort in a wide range of climates. "In the US, we spend about a quarter of our total ...

Extreme weather and climate events like storms, heavy precipitation and droughts and heat waves prevent the update of 3 giga-tonnes of carbon by the global vegetation. A team of scientists under the lead of Markus Reichstein, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, investigated the effect of extremes on the carbon cycle from the terrestrial ecosystem perspective for the first time. In the current issue of Nature (14th of August 2013), they use Earth observation methods and numerical models to show that especially extreme droughts lead ...

Preschool children who showed less ability to estimate the number of objects in a group were 2.4 times more likely to have a later mathematical learning disability than other young people, according to a team of University of Missouri psychologists. Parents may be able to help their children develop their skills at approximating group sizes by emphasizing numerals while interacting with young children. "Lacking skill at estimating group size may impede a child's ability to learn the concept of how numerals symbolize quantities and how those quantities relate to each other," ...

The damage scientists expect climate change to do to crop yields can differ greatly depending on which type of model was used to make those projections, according to research based at Princeton University. The most dire scenarios can loom large in the minds of the public and policymakers, yet neither audience is usually aware of how the model itself influenced the outcome, the researchers said. The report in the journal Global Change Biology is one of the first to compare the agricultural projections generated by empirical models — which rely largely on field observations ...

Medical testimonials on the Internet and elsewhere present powerful personal stories and useful information, but they can also be dangerous to your health if distracting, irrelevant information leads to inappropriate treatment decisions, say researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Distracted by Details: Narrative Influence Following Conflicting Stories" was published in July in the journal Media Psychology. Authors were Joseph P. Simons, a 2013 Ph.D. graduate in social psychology, and Melanie C. Green, assistant professor of psychology, in UNC's ...

WASHINGTON D.C. August 14, 2013 -- What happens to renewable energy programs in a country that gets whacked by a full-scale debt crisis, like the one that struck Greece beginning in 2009 -- do the programs whither and die in the winds of austerity? And how do people view such programs when many of them can't afford to heat their houses? The answers to these two questions are actually linked, according to a new analysis in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, which is produced by AIP Publishing. Renewable energy programs, particularly solar, may be more ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Researchers at the University of North Carolina and the National Institutes for Health have defined the role of the protein vinculin in enabling cell movement. In a paper published in the Journal of Cell Biology, Sharon Campbell, PhD, professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Clare Waterman of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health showed that cell mobility occurs through the interactions between the protein vinculin and the cytoskeletal lattice ...

The Ecological Society of America's first online-only Special Issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment showcases prescribed burns around the globe, some of them drawing on historical practices to manage forests and grasslands in fire-prone regions. The Online Special Issue looks at fire practices in the United States, Australia, southern Europe, South Africa and South America. One review article focuses on the cooperative efforts of US ranchers in the Great Plains using fire to beat back juniper encroachment on native grasslands. Another features traditional ...

Financial incentives can be a very effective tool in encouraging employees to lose weight at companies that offer their workers those types of programs, research from a University of Texas at Arlington economics assistant professor shows. Joshua Price, a UT Arlington assistant professor of economics, teamed with Cornell University Professor John Cawley to perform a case study on an employer-sponsored program that offered financial incentives for weight loss. The study was accepted for publication in The Journal of Health Economics and was featured recently on its website. ...

Athens, Ga. – Researchers at the University of Georgia are developing a new treatment technique that uses nanoparticles to reprogram immune cells so they are able to recognize and attack cancer. The findings were published recently in the early online edition of ACS Nano. The human body operates under a constant state of martial law. Chief among the enforcers charged with maintaining order is the immune system, a complex network that seeks out and destroys the hordes of invading bacteria and viruses that threaten the organic society as it goes about its work. The ...

MADISON, Wis. — Children who are exposed to lead are nearly three times more likely to be suspended from school by the 4th grade than children who are not exposed, according to a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study funded jointly by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Wisconsin Partnership Program Education and Research Committee. "Students who are suspended from school are at greater risk of dropping out, twice as likely to use tobacco, and more likely to engage in violent behavior later in life," says first author Michael Amato, a doctoral candidate in ...

LA JOLLA, CA ---- Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered a powerful mechanism by which viruses such as influenza, West Nile and Dengue evade the body's immune response and infect humans with these potentially deadly diseases. The findings may provide scientists with an attractive target for novel antiviral therapies. Published in the August issue of the journal Cell Host and Microbe, the findings describe a novel mechanism that this group of so-called "enveloped viruses" uses to disarm the host's innate immune response. The mechanism ...

University of Washington geographer Kam Wing Chan is in China this week, explaining how that country can dismantle its 55-year-old system that limits rural laborers from moving to and settling in cities and qualifying for basic social benefits. It's an idea that he says makes economic and moral sense. China's "hukou" household registration system was established in 1958 as a way of maintaining cheap farm labor to grow food for urban dwellers. Ever since, rural residents wanting to move to urban areas must receive permission from the police – and with it, the right to ...

In a rare opportunity to directly compare plant communities in the same area now with a survey taken 50 years ago, a University of Arizona-led research team has provided the first on-the-ground evidence that Southwestern plants are being pushed to higher elevations by an increasingly warmer and drier climate. The findings confirm that previous hypotheses are correct in their prediction that mountain communities in the Southwest will be strongly impacted by an increasingly warmer and drier climate, and that the area is already experiencing rapid vegetation change. In ...

University of Arizona scientists have discovered an unknown mechanism that establishes polarity in developing nerve cells. Understanding how nerve cells make connections is an important step in developing cures for nerve damage resulting from spinal cord injuries or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. In a study published on Aug. 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UA doctoral student Sara Parker and her adviser, assistant professor of cellular and molecular medicine Sourav Ghosh, report that the decision which will be the "plus" ...

For a new study in the Journal of Animal Science, researchers evaluated how different levels of selenium affect the immune system of adult horses. According to the researchers, the effects of selenium supplementation on the immune system have been evaluated in other species but not extensively in horses. Dr. Laurie Lawrence, animal science professor at the University of Kentucky, said the amount of selenium in soil and forages varies across the United States. She said that they wanted to know whether horses grazing pasture that was marginal in selenium would react differently ...

A study by Johns Hopkins researchers shows that a fifth of U.S. neurologists appear unaware of serious drug safety risks associated with various anti-epilepsy drugs, potentially jeopardizing the health of patients who could be just as effectively treated with safer alternative medications. The findings suggest that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs a better way to communicate information to specialists about newly discovered safety risks, the researchers say, since the warnings are in many cases not getting through to doctors making important prescribing decisions. ...