Forests have a limited capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study from Northern Arizona University. The study, available online in the journal New Phytologist, aimed to explore how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide could alter the carbon and nitrogen content of ecosystems. By performing tests on subtropical woodland plots over an 11-year period, the researchers found that ecosystem carbon uptake was not significantly increased by the high CO2 treatment—in contrast to expectations. While plants did contain more carbon when CO2 levels were ...

The global study was led by University of Melbourne and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology today. The study involved about 2,500 women from Europe, North America and Australia who have inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2, the breast cancer susceptibility genes, and who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. About one-third of these women were placed on tamoxifen. Tamoxifen has been used for decades to treat breast cancer and has recently been shown to prevent breast cancers in many women. Until now, there has been ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Pregnant women regularly consume food and beverages containing toxins believed to pose potential risks to developing fetuses, according to researchers at the University of California in Riverside and San Diego, suggesting that health care providers must do more to counsel their patients about the dangers of hidden toxins in the food supply. In a peer-reviewed study published in the July issue of Nutrition Journal — "Consumption habits of pregnant women and implications for developmental biology: a survey of predominantly Hispanic women in California" ...

Preliminary studies by Dr. Zhihong Chen and colleagues from Chengde Medical College have shown that sericin might improve aberrant Akt signaling, decrease heme oxygenase-1 expression in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex, and reduce the apoptosis of hippocampal neurons in diabetic rats, thus protecting the nervous system. Recently, it is reported that the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor 1 axis undergoes abnormal changes in diabetes mellitus, which aggravate the disease progression and trigger complications. To improve diabetes mellitus and its chronic complications, ...

Breast cancer survivors who have extensive surgery are four times more likely to develop the debilitating disorder arm lymphoedema, a QUT study has found. The findings in a new paper Incidence of unilateral arm lymphoedema after breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the prestigious journal The Lancet Oncology, reveal the invasiveness of surgery to treat breast cancer increases the risk of developing arm lymphoedema. Lead author of the study Tracey DiSipio, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said women who had undergone ...

Griffith University researchers have taken part in an international study which has discovered a fast but accurate means of identifying changes to the biodiversity of a region. And the secret lies in crushed up insect "soup". Traditionally, many thousands of hours have been spent by researchers gathering, classifying and recording insects and animals in order to understand the natural ecology of a region. Any changes to the biodiversity of that area could then be determined only by more labour-intensive collecting and recording. Research published today in the journal ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Trying to explain riding a bike is difficult because it is an implicit memory. The body knows what to do, but thinking about the process can often interfere. So why is it that under certain circumstances paying full attention and trying hard can actually impede performance? A new UC Santa Barbara study, published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, reveals part of the answer. There are two kinds of memory: implicit, a form of long-term memory not requiring conscious thought and expressed by means other than words; and explicit, another kind ...

Though one might think the brains of people who develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) possess building blocks of the disease absent in healthy brains, for most sufferers, this is not true. Every human brain contains the ingredients necessary to spark AD, but while an estimated 5 million Americans have AD – a number projected to triple by 2050 – the vast majority of people do not and will not develop the devastating neurological condition. For researchers like Subhojit Roy, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Departments of Pathology and Neurosciences at the University of ...

This image was taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile — the best place in the southern hemisphere for astronomical observing. But even without the help of telescopes like the VLT, a glance towards the southern constellation of Dorado (The Swordfish or Dolphinfish [1]) on a clear, dark night reveals a blurry patch which, at first sight, appears to be just like a cloud in the Earth's atmosphere. At least, this may have been explorer Ferdinand Magellan's first impression during his famous voyage to the southern hemisphere in 1519. Although ...

Johns Hopkins biophysicists have discovered that full activation of a protein ensemble essential for communication between nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord requires a lot of organized back-and-forth motion of some of the ensemble's segments. Their research, they say, may reveal multiple sites within the protein ensemble that could be used as drug targets to normalize its activity in such neurological disorders as epilepsy, schizophrenia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. A summary of the results, published online in the journal Neuron on Aug. 7, shows that ...

LA JOLLA, CA – August 7, 2013 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have decoded an important molecular signal that guides the development of a key region of the brain known as the neocortex. The largest and most recently evolved region of the brain, the neocortex is particularly well developed in humans and is responsible for sensory processing, long-term memory, reasoning, complex muscle actions, consciousness and other functions. "The mammalian neocortex has a distinctive structure featuring six layers of neurons, and our finding helps explain how this ...

New research shows that as culture has evolved over the last two centuries – with increasing urbanization, greater reliance on technology, and widespread availability of formal education – so has human psychology. The findings are forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "This research shows that there has been a two-century long historical shift towards individualistic psychological functioning adapted to an urban environment and away from psychological functioning adapted to a rural environment," says psychological ...

A new UCLA analysis of words used in more than 1.5 million American and British books published between 1800 and 2000 shows how our cultural values have changed. The increase or decrease in the use of certain words over the past two centuries — a period marked by growing urbanization, greater reliance on technology and the widespread availability of formal education — reveals how human psychology has evolved in response to major historical shifts, said Patricia Greenfield, a distinguished professor of psychology at UCLA and the author of the study. For instance, ...

In Syria's largest city, Aleppo, damage to buildings and infrastructure steadily increased over a ten-month period ending in May 2013, according to a new analysis by AAAS of high-resolution satellite images. Virtually all of the destruction appears to be in rebel-controlled or contested areas, and a substantial amount is in Aleppo's Ancient City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Aleppo has been the site of ongoing conflict since July 2012. Since then, the city has experienced a nearly constant rate of damage to its physical structures, at about three incidents per day on ...

Researchers at Warwick Medical School have identified the key role played by a team of proteins in the process of mitosis. Working out how to control them may give scientists a way to destroy cancerous cells. The study, led by Professor Steve Royle and published in The Journal of Cell Biology, highlights the role of a newly identified team of proteins, TACC3-ch-TOG-clathrin, in forming inter-microtubule bridges that stabilise the kinetochore fibres (K-fibres) used in mitosis. When a cell divides, it produces a mitotic spindle which then makes sure that the chromosomes ...

A number of studies in which patients with lesions to frontal pre-motor areas are included have identified deficits in action comprehension. In addition, imaging studies have revealed the activation of brain areas associated with perception or action during tasks involving reading of words with related semantic meaning. For example, the mere passive reading of action verbs such as kick, pick and lick has been found to activate areas of the sensory-motor cortex associated with the legs, hands and face, respectively. To investigate the semantic processing of Chinese radicals ...

Studies have shown that calpain participates in gentamicin-, neomycin- and kanamycin-induced inner ear cell apoptosis. Cisplatin has been shown to be an anticancer drug. However, cisplatin can lead to severe ototoxicity, induce cochlear cell apoptosis, and result in hearing decrease or loss, which limits the application of cisplatin in a clinical setting to a certain degree. A recent study by Liang Chang and colleagues from Jinzhou Central Hospital established a BALB/c mouse model of cisplatin-induced ototoxicity to detect the susceptibility to cisplatin-induced ototoxicity. ...

A team of researchers led by Prof. Young-Tae Chang from National University of Singapore and Prof. Yoon-Kyoung Cho from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Korea, developed a fluorescent caffeine detector and a detection kit that lights up like a traffic light when caffeine is present in various drinks and solutions. The research work was published in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) on July 23, 2013. Caffeine drinks are ubiquitous and it would be unimaginable for many of us to go a day without caffeine. But certainly one begins to ...

Once a James Bond fantasy, diamond-based lasers are now becoming a reality. Ground-breaking research is harnessing the unique properties of diamonds to develop a new generation of lasers that could lead to many benefits, from better treatment of skin complaints and diabetes-related eye conditions to improved pollution monitoring and aeronautical engineering. A University of Strathclyde team has developed a new type of high-performance, ultra-versatile Raman laser* that harnesses diamonds to produce light beams with more power and a wider range of colours than current ...

Increases in population size may lead to a breakdown in social trust, according to Jordan Smith from North Carolina State University in the US. As local populations grow, local elected officials and national news media become less trusted, compared with friends and family, local churches and civic institutions. This 'trust deficit' has implications for long-term environmental and community planning. Smith's study is published online in Springer's journal Human Ecology. Smith studied three southern Appalachian mining communities during a period of change, amid growing ...

Physicists have, for the first time, now built a theoretical construct of beams made of twisted atoms. These findings by Armen Hayrapetyan and colleagues at Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg in Germany are about to be published in EPJ D. These so-called atomic Bessel beams can, in principle, have potential applications in quantum communication as well as in atomic and nuclear processes. The concept for twisted atom beams stems from a similar approach with twisted photon beams, which are currently used as optical tweezers, for instance. It was later extended to twisted ...

Scientists have developed a new understanding of how turbulence works, which could help to optimise vehicle performance and save billions in global energy costs. Dr Ati Sharma, a senior lecturer in aerodynamics and flight mechanics at the University of Southampton, has been working in collaboration with Beverley McKeon, professor of aeronautics and associate director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to build models of turbulent flow. Recently, they developed a new and improved way of predicting the composition ...

Quasars are active black holes -- primarily from the early universe. Using a special method where you observe light that has been bent by gravity on its way through the universe, a group of physics students from the Niels Bohr Institute have observed a quasar whose light has been deflected and reflected in six separate images. This is the first time a quasar has been observed with so many light reflections. The results are published in the scientific journal, Astrophysical Journal. INFORMATION: Article in Astrophysical Journal: http://stacks.iop.org/0004-637X/773/146 For ...

To understand how solar cells heal themselves, look no further than the nearest tree leaf or the back of your hand. The "branching" vascular channels that circulate life-sustaining nutrients throughout leaves and hands serve as the inspiration for solar cells that can restore themselves efficiently and inexpensively. In a new paper, North Carolina State University researchers Orlin Velev and Hyung-Jun Koo show that creating solar cell devices with channels that mimic organic vascular systems can effectively reinvigorate solar cells whose performance ...

One of the rare scientific reports on the rarest form of lightning -- ball lightning -- describes better ways of producing this mysterious phenomenon under the modern laboratory conditions needed to explain it. The new study on a phenomenon that puzzled and perplexed the likes of Aristotle 2,300 years ago and Nikola Tesla a century ago appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry A. C. Michael Lindsay and colleagues explain that ball lightning consists of a floating, glowing ball that may drift eerily through the sky and then explode violently, sometimes injuring ...