NEW YORK -- Using data from the world's ecosystems and predictions of how climate change will impact them, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, and Stanford University have produced a roadmap that identifies the world's most vulnerable and least vulnerable areas in the Age of Climate Change. The authors say the vulnerability map will help governments, environmental agencies, and donors identify areas where to best invest in protected area establishment, restoration efforts, and other conservation activities so as to have the ...

Spare a thought for American doctors and their partners: because of long working hours and dedication to their work, they seem to have more squabbles over home and family responsibilities than people in most other professions. This constant struggle to balance work and home life are felt especially by those whose life partners also work, or by female physicians, younger doctors and physicians at academic medical centers. It manifests as burnout, depression and lower levels of satisfaction about their quality of life. This is according to Liselotte Dyrbye of the Mayo Clinic ...

(Boston) -- Antihistamines are a group of medications that are used to treat various conditions, including allergies and nausea and vomiting. Some antihistamines require a prescription, but most are available over-the-counter (OTC), and both prescription and OTC antihistamines are often used by women during pregnancy. Until recently, little information was available to women and their health care providers on the possible risks and relative safety of these medications in pregnancy, particularly when it came to specific birth defects. A new study from Boston University's ...

Tropical Storm Manuel was soaking southwestern Mexico while Tropical Storm Ingrid was soaking eastern Mexico on Sept. 16. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Manuel and the AIRS instrument captured infrared data that showed powerful thunderstorms were dropping heavy rainfall. However, Manuel's interaction with land caused the storm to dissipate on Sept. 16. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Manuel on Sept. 16 at 0841 UTC/4:41 a.m. EDT and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument looked at the storm in infrared light. That data was used to create ...

Despite fractional openings in North Korea, such as the reopening of the Kaesong industrial zone on Monday, there is little chance of any improvement in the "catastrophic human rights situation" under the head of state, Kim Jong-un, according to scholarly valuation. "Unnoticed by the regime, information from abroad contradicting the state propaganda is in fact presently leaking into the country via mobile phones, radios and DVDs, and the joint North and South Korean industrial park at Kaesong will also mean more outside contact. But this will not improve the human rights ...

NAIVASHA, KENYA (16 SEPTEMBER 2013)—Kenyan farmers and agriculture officials need to prepare for a possible geographic shift in maize production as climate change threatens to make some areas of the country much less productive for cultivation while simultaneously making others more maize-friendly, according to a new report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). The report, released today by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture ...

The stage is now set for superconductivity to branch out and meet some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. This is according to a topical review `Superconductivity and the environment: a Roadmap', published today, 16 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Superconductor Science and Technology, which explains how superconducting technologies can move out of laboratories and hospitals and address wider issues such as water purification, earthquake monitoring and the reduction of greenhouse gases. Lance Cooley, a guest editor of the article who is based at ...

Scientists have discovered a 'cosmic factory' for producing the building blocks of life, amino acids, in research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team from Imperial College London, the University of Kent and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that when icy comets collide into a planet, amino acids can be produced. These essential building blocks are also produced if a rocky meteorite crashes into a planet with an icy surface. The researchers suggest that this process provides another piece to the puzzle of how life was kick-started ...

New research has revealed that more ice leaves Antarctica by melting from the underside of submerged ice shelves than was previously thought, accounting for as much as 90 per cent of ice loss in some areas. Iceberg production and melting causes 2,800 cubic kilometres of ice to leave the Antarctic ice sheet every year. Most of this is replaced by snowfall but any imbalance contributes to a change in global sea level. For many decades, experts have believed that the most important process responsible for this huge loss was iceberg calving - the breaking off of chunks ...

European scientists, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE)'s Faculty of Medicine in the context of the GEUVADIS project, today present a map that points to the genetic causes of differences between people. The study, published in Nature and Nature Biotechnology, offers the largest-ever dataset linking human genomes to gene activity at the level of RNA. Understanding how each person's unique genome makes them more or less susceptible to disease is one of the biggest challenges in science today. Geneticists study how different genetic profiles affect ...

Cancer tumors almost never share the exact same genetic mutations, a fact that has confounded scientific efforts to better categorize cancer types and develop more targeted, effective treatments. In a paper published in the September 15 advanced online edition of Nature Methods, researchers at the University of California, San Diego propose a new approach called network-based stratification (NBS), which identifies cancer subtypes not by the singular mutations of individual patients, but by how those mutations affect shared genetic networks or systems. "Subtyping is ...

Researchers at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute have reported the first experimental evidence that supports the theory that a soccer ball-shaped nanoparticle commonly called a buckyball is the result of a breakdown of larger structures rather than being built atom-by-atom from the ground up. Technically known as fullerenes, these spherical carbon molecules have shown great promise for uses in medicine, solar energy, and optoelectronics. But finding applications for these peculiar structures has been difficult because no one knows exactly how they are formed. Two ...

Tropical forests speed their own recovery, capturing nitrogen and carbon faster after being logged or cleared for agriculture. Researchers working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama think the discovery that trees "turn up" their ability to capture or "fix" nitrogen from the air and release it into the soil as the forest makes a comeback has far-reaching implications for forest restoration projects to mitigate global warming. "This is the first solid case showing how nitrogen fixation by tropical trees directly affects the rate of carbon recovery after ...

Two researchers at UCL Computer Science and the University of Gdansk present a new method for determining the amount of entanglement – a quantum phenomenon connecting two remote partners, and crucial for quantum technology - within part of a one-dimensional quantum system. In their paper, published this week in Nature Physics, Dr Fernando Brandão (UCL Computer Science) and Dr Michał Horodecki (Institute for Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Gdansk) demonstrate when the correlation between particles in a sample reduces exponentially with distance, ...

A unique housing arrangement between a specific group of tree species and a carbo-loading bacteria may determine how well tropical forests can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a Princeton University-based study. The findings suggest that the role of tropical forests in offsetting the atmospheric buildup of carbon from fossil fuels depends on tree diversity, particularly in forests recovering from exploitation. Tropical forests thrive on natural nitrogen fertilizer pumped into the soil by trees in the legume family, a diverse group that includes ...

STANFORD, Calif. — A pair of studies by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine has identified a molecular pathway — a series of interaction among proteins — involved in the development of diabetes. Furthermore, they have found that a drug already approved for use in humans can regulate the pathway. The findings will be published online Sept. 15 in two articles in Nature Medicine. The studies, done in mice, identify a previously unexpected link between a low-oxygen condition called hypoxia and the ability of cells in the liver to respond to insulin. ...

The plate tectonic theory has been primarily developed in three stages. (1) From continental drift and seafloor spreading to oceanic subduction, laying a physical foundation of the plate tectonic theory. This was achieved by the recognitions that continents would be assembled to build a supercontinent Pangea with subsequent breakup to yield the present configuration, lithospheric plates buoyantly move on the asthenospheric mantle, and oceanic crust is subducted along trenches into the mantle. (2) From oceanic subduction to continental subduction and collision orogeny, with ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- As public-health officials continue to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers are trying to predict how climate change will impact the disease, which infected an estimated 219 million people in 2010 and is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide among children under age 5. But projections of future malaria infection have been hampered by wide variation in rainfall predictions for the region and lack of a malaria-transmission model that adequately describes the effects of local rainfall on mosquitoes, which breed and mature in ephemeral pools ...

Phobias — whether it's fear of spiders, clowns, or small spaces — are common and can be difficult to treat. New research suggests that watching someone else safely interact with the supposedly harmful object can help to extinguish these conditioned fear responses, and prevent them from resurfacing later on. The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that this type of vicarious social learning may be more effective than direct personal experience in extinguishing fear responses. "Information about ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (September 13, 2013) – Prescribing of strong opioid medications for non-cancer pain in the United States has nearly doubled over the past decade, reports a study in the October issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. At the same time, prescribing of non-opioid pain relievers has been stable or declined, according to the new research by Dr G. Caleb Alexander of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues. Dr Alexander comments, "There is an epidemic of prescription ...

Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) and Keshan disease (KD) are major endemic diseases in China. Postgraduate Xi Wang et al., under the guidance of Professor Xiong Guo from the Institute of Endemic Diseases of the Faculty of Public Health, Medicine College of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Key Laboratory of Environment and Gene Related Diseases in Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Trace Elements and Endemic Diseases of Health Ministry, set out to tackle these two endemic diseases. After several years of innovative research, they have made significant progress in determining the ...

Augusta, Ga. – Dr. David Pollock has a simple message for fellow hypertension researchers: think endothelin. In a country where better than 30 percent of adults have high blood pressure and 50-75 percent of those have salt-sensitive hypertension, he believes the powerful endothelin system, which helps the body eliminate salt, should not be essentially ignored. However, the research and clinical world focus on suppressing a better-known system, which prompts the body to hold onto salt, said Pollock, Chief of the Section of Experimental Medicine at the Medical College ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Getting treatment for a common sleep problem may do more than help you sleep better – it may help you look better over the long term, too, according to a new research study from the University of Michigan Health System and Michigan Technological University. The findings aren't just about "looking sleepy" after a late night, or being bright-eyed after a good night's rest. It's the first time researchers have shown specific improvement in facial appearance after at-home treatment for sleep apnea, a condition marked by snoring and breathing interruptions. ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that people with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are perceived to appear more alert, more youthful and more attractive after at least two months of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy. "This study showed that independent human raters – both medical personnel and members of the community – can perceive improved alertness, attractiveness, and youthfulness in the appearance of sleepy patients with obstructive sleep apnea, after they have been compliant with use of CPAP at home," said lead author and principal investigator Ronald ...

Eastern Canada is now expecting some winds and rain from Tropical Depression Gabrielle as it transfers its energy to a cold front. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Gabrielle that showed some very cold cloud top temperatures and strong thunderstorms around its center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument called AIRS that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Depression Gabrielle on Sept. 13 at 06:29 UTC/2:29 a.m. EDT. The AIRS image showed a circular area of very high, cold cloud top temperatures surrounding ...