PITTSBURGH—Popular social media site Twitter may eventually resemble a broadcast medium like television or radio, with users reading messages written by celebrities and corporations rather than writing their own "tweet" messages of up to 140 characters, suggests a new study coauthored by Andrew T. Stephen, assistant professor of business administration and Katz Fellow in Marketing in the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration. In one of the first studies to use social media as a laboratory for social ...

New research published by an international team of psychologists has shown that people can suppress incriminating memories and thereby avoid detection in brain activity guilt detection tests. Such tests, which are commercially available in the USA and are used by law enforcement agencies in several countries, including Japan and India, are based on the logic that criminals will have specific memories of their crime stored in their brain. Once presented with reminders of their crime in a guilt detection test, it is assumed that their brain will automatically and uncontrollably ...

Go to about any public square, and you see pigeons pecking at the ground, always in search of crumbs dropped by a passerby. While the pigeons' scavenging may seem random, new research by psychologists at the University of Iowa suggest the birds are capable of making highly intelligent choices, sometimes with problem-solving skills to match. The study by Edward Wasserman and colleagues centered on the "string task," a longstanding, standard test of intelligence that involves attaching a treat to one of two strings and seeing if the participant (human or animal) can reel ...

Radiation oncology research received 197 grants, totaling only 1.6 percent ($85.5 million) of the $5.4 billion in cancer research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013, according to a study available online and in the June 1, 2013, print issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). The study reviewed the more than 50,000 grants funded by the NIH, totaling $30.9 billion. Investigation revealed 952 ...

An international trial has provided surgeons with a formula which predicts when brain haemorrhage patients need surgery for the best outcome. Brain haemorrhage affects some 4 million patients a year worldwide and the trial, run from Newcastle University, will help to ensure the best treatment is given at the right time. David Mendelow, Professor of Neurosurgery at Newcastle University and honorary consultant within the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, who ran the trials, has devised a formula published today in The Lancet online which will allow surgeons to ...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have found that a genetic rogue element produced by sequences until recently considered 'junk DNA' could promote cancer progression. The researchers, led by Dr Cristina Tufarelli, in the School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health Sciences, discovered that the presence of this faulty genetic element — known as chimeric transcript LCT13 — is associated with the switching off of a known tumour suppressor gene (known as TFPI-2) whose expression is required to prevent cancer invasion and metastasis. Their findings, published online ...

Calls to lift protections for the iconic Hawaiian green sea turtle may be premature, according to a new study led by a Stanford researcher. Although the number of Hawaiian green sea turtles has increased since 1978 when the species was listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, the population may still be only a fraction of historic levels, the research shows. "It's critical to compare the animal's population level to its historic abundance, not just to recent levels," said study coauthor John N. "Jack" Kittinger, an early career fellow at Stanford's Center for Ocean ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (May 29, 2013) – Experimental genetic techniques may one day provide plastic and reconstructive surgeons with an invaluable tool—the ability to promote growth of the patient's own tissues for reconstructive surgery. A review of recent progress toward developing effective gene therapies for use in "regenerative surgery" appears in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the END ...

When assessing information presented by the tobacco industry, the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and regulatory bodies in other countries, should be aware that they are dealing with companies with a long history of intentionally misleading the public. They therefore should actively protect their public-health policies on smoking from the commercial interests of the tobacco industry and not consider the industry as a stakeholder, concludes a study by experts from the US and Germany published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The researchers, led by Stanton ...

Treatments for depression that don't involve antidepressant drugs but rather focus on different forms of talking therapy (referred to as psychotherapeutic interventions) are all beneficial, with no one form of therapy being better than the others, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. These findings are important as they suggest that patients with depression should discuss different forms of non-drug therapy with their doctors and explore which type of psychotherapy best suits them. The researchers, led by Jürgen Barth ...

Women who have mental health disorders around the time of birth are more likely to have previously experienced domestic violence, according to a study by UK researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The researchers, led by Louise Howard from King's College London, found that high levels of symptoms of perinatal* depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder were linked to having experienced domestic violence either during pregnancy, the past year, or over a woman's lifetime. The researchers (also the authors of the published study) reached these ...

Recent reduction in the use of antibiotic growth promoters in animal feeds has resulted in a dramatic increase in the severe poultry disease - necrotic enteritis. New research suggests that the disease, which is costing the worldwide poultry industry an estimated £600 million a year, could be prevented by immunisation with a vaccine that is being developed at the University of Exeter. Professor Richard Titball of the University of Exeter said: "Necrotic enteritis is a major concern for the poultry farming industry worldwide and poultry producers are waiting for this ...

A new study, published 28 May in the open access journal PLOS Biology, has revealed the potential importance of rare species in the functioning of highly diverse ecosystems. Using data from three very different ecosystems—coral reefs, tropical forests and alpine meadows—a team of researchers led by David Mouillot at the University of Montpellier 2, France, has shown that it is primarily the rare species, rather than the more common ones, that have distinct traits involved in unique ecological functions. As biodiversity declines, these unique features are therefore particularly ...

Ithaca, N.Y.--A novel disease in songbirds has rapidly evolved to become more harmful to its host on at least two separate occasions in just two decades, according to a new study. The research provides a real-life model to help understand how diseases that threaten humans can be expected to change in virulence as they emerge. "Everybody who's had the flu has probably wondered at some point, 'Why do I feel so bad?'" said Dana Hawley of Virginia Tech, the lead author of the study to be published in PLOS Biology on May 28, 2013. "That's what we're studying: Why do pathogens ...

EPFL researchers have detected microplastic pollution in one of Western Europe's largest lakes, Lake Geneva, in large enough quantities to raise concern. While studies in the ocean have shown that these small bits of plastic can be harmful to fish and birds that feed on plankton or other small waterborne organisms, the full extent of their consequences in lakes and rivers is only now being investigated. The study, which is being extending under a mandate by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, was published in the latest issue of the journal Archives des Sciences. ...

There is a higher risk of death for patients who have elective surgery later in the week and at the weekend, compared with those earlier in the week, a paper published today on bmj.com suggests. Previous research has suggested a significantly higher risk of death if admitted as an emergency patient at the weekend compared with a weekday. Plus, other papers have described the "weekend effect". Researchers offer two potential explanations for this: poorer quality of care at the weekend (which can be attributed to staffing levels and / or less senior / experienced staff) ...

Trusted organisations, such as the NHS and some UK royal colleges, profit by selling commercial advertisers access to pregnant women through promotions such as Bounty bags. On bmj.com today, GP Margaret McCartney says these potential conflicts of interests are unacceptable. For example, she describes how a commercial company was offered access to mothers through adverts and editorial content in 'Baby and You' – a magazine being set up by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which it plans to give for free to pregnant women. The college receives £90,000 ...

This news release is available in German. Wild great apes are widely infected with malaria parasites. Yet, nothing is known about the biology of these infections in the wild. Using faecal samples collected from wild chimpanzees, an international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin has now investigated the effect of the animals' age on malaria parasite detection rates. The data show a strong association between age and malaria parasite positivity, with significantly lower ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of System 92E, a tropical low pressure area that is ripe for development into a tropical depression and tropical storm, as it continues to develop near to southwestern Mexico. System 92E may organize more and become Tropical Storm Barbara later on May 28 as it continues organizing near the southwestern Mexican coast. When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over System 92E on May 28 at 07:17 UTC (3:17 a.m. EDT), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard Aqua captured an infrared image of the storm. AIRS measured cloud top ...

VIDEO: Kinesin and dynein motors carrying the Alzheimer's protein APP travel on microtubule tracks in a single axon in the nerve of a fruit fly larva. This video shows the motors'... Click here for more information. BUFFALO, N.Y. — Imagine if you could open up your brain and look inside. What you would see is a network of nerve cells called neurons, each with its own internal highway system for transporting essential materials between different parts of the cell. When ...

LOS ANGELES – A research team jointly led by scientists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of California, Los Angeles, have enhanced a device they developed to identify and "grab" circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, that break away from cancers and enter the blood, often leading to the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. If more studies confirm the technology's effectiveness, the NanoVelcro Chip device could enable doctors to access and identify cancerous cells in the bloodstream, which would provide the diagnostic information needed to create ...

The widespread disappearance of stromatolites, the earliest visible manifestation of life on Earth, may have been driven by single-celled organisms called foraminifera. The findings, by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI); Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the University of Connecticut; Harvard Medical School; and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, were published online the week of May 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Stromatolites ("layered rocks") are structures made of calcium carbonate and shaped by ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Lawrence Livermore scientists have discovered and demonstrated a new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide while generating carbon-negative hydrogen and producing alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification. The team demonstrated, at a laboratory scale, a system that uses the acidity normally produced in saline water electrolysis to accelerate silicate mineral dissolution while producing hydrogen fuel and other gases. The resulting electrolyte solution was shown to be significantly elevated in hydroxide concentration ...

Some people seem to pick up a second language with relative ease, while others have a much more difficult time. Now, a new study suggests that learning to understand and read a second language may be driven, at least in part, by our ability to pick up on statistical regularities. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Some research suggests that learning a second language draws on capacities that are language-specific, while other research suggests that it reflects a more general capacity for learning ...

Dr. Jung-Mo Ahn, associate professor of chemistry at The University of Texas at Dallas, has designed and synthesized a novel small molecule that might become a large weapon in the fight against prostate cancer. In a study published online May 28 in the journal Nature Communications, Ahn and his colleagues at UT Southwestern Medical Center describe the rational design of the molecule, as well as laboratory tests that show its effectiveness at blocking the cancer-promoting function of proteins called androgen receptors. Androgen receptors are found inside cells and have ...