August 2, 2013 / Kiel. How is vital oxygen supplied to the tropical ocean? For the first time, oceanographers at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel were able to make quantitative statements regarding this question. They showed that about one third of the oxygen supply in these areas is provided by turbulent processes, such as eddies or internal waves. The study, conducted in the framework of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 754 "Climate-Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean", was just published in the international journal Biogeosciences. In ...

Burning incense, a popular cultural practice in Arabian Gulf countries and elsewhere, generates indoor air pollutants that may cause inflammation in human lung cells, say researchers in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Hazard assessment of United Arab Emirates (UAE) incense smoke" appears in the August 2013 issue of Science of the Total Environment. Rebecca Cohen, master's student in environmental sciences and engineering (ESE); her adviser, Kenneth G. Sexton, now retired ESE research assistant professor; ...

TORONTO, ON – University of Toronto Engineering professor Ben Hatton is turning to nature to find a way to cut down on the energy leaks from windows. In an article in Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells, Hatton and his colleagues at Harvard University describe a novel process to cut down on heat loss during the winter and keep buildings cool during the summer. Their "bio-inspired approach to thermal control for cooling (or heating) building window surfaces" calls for attaching optically clear, flexible elastomer sheets, bonded to regular glass window panes. The elastomer ...

Why can't the pine snakes cross the road? Hint: New Jersey traffic might have something to do with it. Drexel University students will bring to light these and other findings about the plight, perils and peculiarities of the Northern Pine Snake in several presentations and posters at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting next week (ESA 2013), based on their research with Dr. Walt Bien's Laboratory of Pinelands Research in the New Jersey Pinelands. Northern pine snakes are charismatic ambassadors for the Pinelands National Reserve, an ecologically important ...

SAN ANTONIO -- Children's perceptions of living with asthma may differ significantly from their caregivers' perceptions, which means both should be interviewed when they visit the doctor's office, a new study from UT Kids San Antonio and the Center for Airway Inflammation Research (cAIR) shows. The study analyzed the agreement between 79 children and their caregivers on health-related quality-of-life questionnaires. The children ranged in age from 5 to 17. Fifty-three were classified as having acute asthma and 26 had refractory, or treatment-resistant, asthma. Include ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Within sight of the Trans-Canada Highway, a team of ecologists with the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University set out on foot for a nearby site where they'd strung wire snags to catch the fur of passing bears. In the short distance they walked, with Canada's busiest transportation artery paralleling a prime patch of buffalo berries in the Bow River bottomland, the team spotted five grizzly bears, including a sow with two cubs. Since counting and genetically identifying bears was critical for Mike Sawaya, Tony Clevenger and Steven ...

WASHINGTON -- The United States lags behind other international plans to evaluate obesity prevention efforts, and the country needs to know whether these efforts are having their intended impact, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The committee that wrote the report concluded that more systematic and routine evaluations could help determine how well obesity prevention programs and policies are being implemented and which interventions work best. The committee also recommended specific national and community plans for evaluation of obesity prevention efforts. ...

The Eastern Pacific Ocean has kicked into high gear on Aug. 2 and NOAA's GOES-15 satellite is watching Hurricane Gil and two developing tropical low pressure areas on both sides of Gil. NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured a very active Eastern Pacific ocean on Aug. 2 at 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT) with one hurricane and two developing tropical low pressure areas. System 91E is farthest west and approaching the Central Pacific, while Hurricane Gil and System 90E trail behind to the east. The GOES-15 infrared image was created at NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A new Florida State University study has found that adolescent boys who are hurt in just two physical fights suffer a loss in IQ that is roughly equivalent to missing an entire year of school. Girls experience a similar loss of IQ after only a single fighting-related injury. The findings are significant because decreases in IQ are associated with lower educational achievement and occupational performance, mental disorders, behavioral problems and even longevity, the researchers said. "It's no surprise that being severely physically injured results ...

JUPITER, FL – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have described findings that could enable the development of more effective drugs for addiction with fewer side effects. The study, published in the August 2, 2013 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, showed in a combination of cell and animal studies that one active compound maintains a strong bias towards a single biological pathway, providing insight into what future drugs could look like. The compound examined in the study, known as 6'- guanidinonaltrindole (6'-GNTI), targets ...

HONOLULU -- People who were repeatedly bullied throughout childhood and adolescence were significantly more likely to go to prison than individuals who did not suffer repeated bullying, according to a new analysis presented at the American Psychological Association's 121st Annual Convention. Almost 14 percent of those who reported being bullied repeatedly from childhood through their teens ended up in prison as adults, compared to 6 percent of non-victims, 9 percent of childhood-only victims, and 7 percent of teen-only victims, the study found. When comparing rates of ...

HONOLULU – People who feel isolated are more inclined to make risker financial decisions for bigger payoffs, according to new research presented at the American Psychological Association's 121st Annual Convention. In a presentation entitled "Effects of Social Exclusion on Financial Risk-Taking," Rod Duclos, PhD, assistant professor of marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, described several experiments and a field survey that found the more often people felt excluded, the more they chose the longer odds for bigger lottery payoffs, took greater ...

Washington, DC (August 1, 2013) — Ultrasound treatments may prevent acute kidney injury that commonly arises after major surgery, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that this simple and noninvasive therapy may be an effective precaution for patients at risk. Acute kidney injury, an abrupt decline in kidney function, is an increasingly prevalent and potentially serious condition in hospitalized patients. Sometimes acute kidney injury arises after major surgery because the ...

With sea ice at its lowest point in 1,500 years, how might ecological communities in the Arctic be affected by its continued and even accelerated melting over the next decades? In a review article in the journal Science, to be published on 2 August 2013, Eric Post, a Penn State University professor of biology, and an international team of scientists tackle this question by examining relationships among algae, plankton, whales, and terrestrial animals such as caribou, arctic foxes, and walrus; as well as the effects of human exploration of previously inaccessible parts of ...

To make decisions, we need to estimate the value of sensory stimuli and motor actions, their "goodness" and "badness." We can imagine that good and bad are two ends of a single continuum, or dimension, of value. This would be analogous to the single dimension of light intensity, which ranges from dark on one end to bright light on the other, with many shades of gray in between. Past models of behavior and learning have been based on a single continuum of value, and it has been proposed that a particular group of neurons (brain cells) that use dopamine as a neurotransmitter ...

Washington, DC—Researchers reviewed the likelihood of continued changes to the terrestrial climate, including an analysis of a collection of 27 climate models. If emissions of heat-trapping gases continue along the recent trajectory, 21st century mean annual global warming could exceed 3.6 °F ( 2 °C) over most terrestrial regions during 2046 to 2065 and 7.2 °F (4 °C) during 2081-2100. If warming occurs at this pace, it will probably be the most rapid large climate change in the last 65 million years. The review, published in the August 2 issue of Science, was conducted ...

Two women have the same genetic mutation – an abnormal BRCA1 gene that puts them both at much higher-than-average risk for breast cancer – but only one woman develops the disease. Why? Michigan State University genetic scientists have begun to understand the mechanisms behind the phenomena. "It's been known for a while that genetic mutations can modify each other," explained Ian Dworkin, MSU associate professor of zoology. "And we also know that the subtle differences in an individual's genome – what scientists call wild type genetic background -- also affects how mutations ...

BERKELEY — Shifts in climate are strongly linked to human violence around the world, with even relatively minor departures from normal temperature or rainfall substantially increasing the risk of conflict in ancient times or today, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. The results, which cover all major regions of the world and show similar patterns whether looking at data from Brazil, China, Germany, Somalia or the United States, were published today (Thursday, Aug. 1) in the journal Science. By ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam — two individuals who passed down a portion of their genomes to the vast expanse of humanity — are known as our most recent common ancestors, or MRCAs. But many aspects of their existence, including when they lived, are shrouded in mystery. Now, a study led by the Stanford University School of Medicine indicates the two roughly overlapped during evolutionary time: from between 120,000 to 156,000 years ago for the man, and between 99,000 and 148,000 years ago for the woman. "Previous research has indicated that ...

Monash University researchers have brought next generation energy storage closer with an engineering first - a graphene-based device that is compact, yet lasts as long as a conventional battery. Published today in Science, a research team led by Professor Dan Li of the Department of Materials Engineering has developed a completely new strategy to engineer graphene-based supercapacitors (SC), making them viable for widespread use in renewable energy storage, portable electronics and electric vehicles. SCs are generally made of highly porous carbon impregnated with a ...

LA JOLLA, CA – August 1, 2013 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have achieved the first efficient chemical synthesis of ingenol, a highly complex, plant-derived compound that has long been of interest to drug developers for its anticancer potential. The achievement will enable scientists to synthesize a wide variety of ingenol derivatives and investigate their therapeutic properties. The achievement also sets the stage for the efficient commercial production of ingenol mebutate, a treatment for actinic keratosis (a common precursor to non-melanoma skin ...

Scientists have identified a molecule that enables starfish to carry out one of the most remarkable forms of feeding in the natural world. A starfish feeds by first extending its stomach out of its mouth and over the digestible parts of its prey, such as mussels and clams. The prey tissue is partially digested externally before the soup-like "chowder" produced is drawn back into its 10 digestive glands. The researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and the University of Warwick have discovered a neuropeptide -- a molecule which carries signals between neurons -- ...

A Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infection is one that can affect the digestive system and most commonly affects people staying in hospital. It is not generally a problem for healthy people but may infect those on antibiotics with an imbalance of 'good bacteria' in the gut. A research paper published today, 2nd August 2013, in BMC Infectious Diseases has for the first time identified a unique four-point test using easily measurable clinical variables which can be used to accurately predict the death risk to patients from C. diff. Accurate prediction means that those ...

Temperature-driven changes alter outbreak patterns of tea tortrix -- an insect pest -- and may shed light on how temperature influences whether insects emerge as cohesive cohorts or continuously, according to an international team of researchers. These findings have implications for both pest control and how climate change may alter infestations. "While the influence of temperature on individual-level life-history traits is well understood, the impact on population-level dynamics, such as population cycles or outbreak frequency is less clear," the researchers report in ...

Athens, Ga. – Climate change is affecting the spread of infectious diseases worldwide, according to an international team of leading disease ecologists, with serious impacts to human health and biodiversity conservation. Writing in the journal Science, they propose that modeling the way disease systems respond to climate variables could help public health officials and environmental managers predict and mitigate the spread of lethal diseases. The issue of climate change and disease has provoked intense debate over the past decade, particularly in the case of diseases ...