Communities in nature are likely to be a lot more sensitive to change than previously thought, according to a new study at Rice University. The study, which appears this week in Nature Communications, shows that scientists concerned about human influence on the biosphere need to take a deeper look at how altering the dynamics of a population -- for example, by removing large members of a species through overfishing -- can have measurable consequences, said Rice ecologist Volker Rudolf. "Natural communities are increasingly altered through human impact, and ecologists ...

New research shows that a class of materials being eyed for the next generation of computers behaves asymmetrically at the sub-atomic level. This research is a key step toward understanding the topological insulators that may have the potential to be the building blocks of a super-fast quantum computer that could run on almost no electricity. Scientists from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory contributed first-principles calculations and co-authored the paper "Mapping the Orbital Wavefunction of the Surface States in 3-D Topological Insulators," ...

It's a common driving predicament: As you approach the intersection, the light is yellow. Do you hit the brakes or face a red light camera fine? Some municipalities engineer their traffic signals to force drivers into this situation in an effort to generate revenue from the cameras. Professors at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have analyzed this issue to determine if traffic control measures intended to boost red light revenue—such as shortening yellow light time or increasing the speed limit on a street—compromise safety. The study by professors Lee Han, ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B) and Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (JGR-D). In this release: 1. An earthquake in Japan caused large waves in Norwegian fjords 2. Disposal of Marcellus Shale fracking waste caused earthquakes in Ohio 3. The Arctic is especially sensitive to black carbon emissions from within the region 4. A new metric to help understand Amazon rainforest precipitation 5. Detailed analysis shows ...

Women are less likely to take part in corporate crime and fraud even though more women now work in corporations and serve at higher levels of those organizations, according to a team of sociologists. The researchers examined a database of recent corporate frauds and found that women typically were not part of the conspiracy. When women did play a role, it was rarely a significant one. "There has been this view for awhile that women are no more moral than men and that once there was more gender equality in the workforce, there would be more females involved in corporate ...

Investigators at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, are applying artificial intelligence to the analysis of professional soccer and, in one application of the automated technique, have discovered a strategic error often made by coaches of visiting teams. The common wisdom that teams should "win at home and draw away" has encouraged coaches to play less aggressively when their teams are on the road, said Patrick Lucey, a Disney researcher who specializes in automatically measuring human behavior. Yet the computer analysis suggests that it is this defensive-oriented strategy, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – In two recently published peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst describes how regulators came to adopt the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, which was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk assessment. He also offers further evidence to support his earlier assertions that two geneticists deliberately suppressed evidence to prevent the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) from considering an alternative, threshold model, for ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2013—Light traveling in a vacuum is the Universe's ultimate speed demon, racing along at approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Now scientists have found an effective new way to put a speed bump in light's path. Reported today in The Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, researchers from France and China embedded dye molecules in a liquid crystal matrix to throttle the group velocity of light back to less than one billionth of its top speed. The team says the ability to slow light in this manner may one day lead to new technologies ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 13, 2013 – Better batteries, catalysts, electronic information storage and processing devices are among potential benefits of an unexpected discovery made by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists using samples isolated from the atmosphere. Researchers at the Department of Energy lab learned that key surface properties of complex oxide films are unaffected by reduced levels of oxygen during fabrication – an unanticipated finding with possible implications for the design of functional complex oxides used in a variety of consumer products, said ...

URBANA, Ill. – With little research on how nutrition affects reproductive performance in dairy cows, it is generally believed that a cow needs a higher energy intake before calving. Research by University of Illinois scientists challenges this accepted wisdom. Animal sciences researcher Phil Cardoso said that this line of research was the result of an "accident." Students in animal sciences professor James Drackley's group compared cows fed before calving with diets containing the recommended energy levels to cows fed reduced energy diets. They found that the cows fed ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The everyday physical activities of an isolated group of forager-farmers in central Bolivia are providing valuable information about how industrialization and its associated modern amenities may impact health and wellness. Studying short-term spikes in the testosterone levels of Tsimane men, UC Santa Barbara anthropologists Ben Trumble and Michael Gurven have found that the act of chopping down trees –– a physically demanding task that is critical to successful farming and food production –– results in greater increases in testosterone than ...

PHILADELPHIA —Prostate cancer aggressiveness may be established when the tumor is formed and not alter with time, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Researchers found that after the introduction of widespread prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening, the proportion of patients diagnosed with advanced-stage cancers dropped by more than six-fold in 22 years, but the proportion diagnosed with high Gleason grade cancers did not change substantially. This suggests that low-grade prostate cancers do ...

Corals can survive the early stages of their development even under the tough conditions that rising carbon emissions will impose on them says a new study from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. Globally, ocean acidification remains a major concern and scientists say it could have severe consequences for the health of adult corals, however, the evidence for negative effects on the early life stages of corals is less clear cut. Dr Andrew Baird, Principal Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, ...

Genetic testing by DNA Barcoding, has revealed which species are sold under the commercial term 'ray wings' in Ireland and the UK. The blonde ray, given the lowest rating for sustainability in the marine conservation society's good fish guide, was the most widely sold. Samples from the only retailer to label products as originating from more sustainable sources demonstrated high levels of mislabelling, substituted by more vulnerable species. Therefore, consumers cannot make informed purchasing decisions. The research was conducted at the University of Salford and University ...

BOSTON (August 13, 2013, 10 am EDT) -- A gene variant strongly associated with development of type 2 diabetes appears to interact with a Mediterranean diet pattern to prevent stroke, report researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and from the CIBER Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutriciόn in Spain. Their results , published online today in Diabetes Care, are a significant advance for nutrigenomics, the study of the linkages between nutrition and gene function and their impact on human health, particularly ...

A new study reports that the incidence of ischemic stroke—the most common type of stroke, caused by a clot in the blood vessels of the brain—among non-Hispanic Whites and Mexican Americans over age 60 has declined over the past decade. Most concerning, however, is that the increased relative burden of stroke comparing Mexican Americans and non-Hispanic Whites has not changed at all in the last decade. Overall, Mexican Americans suffer much more, 34%, from this disease than non-Hispanic Whites. Findings are published in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 13, 2013 – When mice ate a diet of 25 percent extra sugar – the mouse equivalent of a healthy human diet plus three cans of soda daily – females died at twice the normal rate and males were a quarter less likely to hold territory and reproduce, according to a toxicity test developed at the University of Utah. "Our results provide evidence that added sugar consumed at concentrations currently considered safe exerts dramatic adverse impacts on mammalian health," the researchers say in a study set for online publication Tuesday, Aug. 13 in the journal ...

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 13, 2013 – For the first time, a mouse heart was able to contract and beat again after its own cells were stripped and replaced with human heart precursor cells, said scientists from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, reported online today in Nature Communications, show the promise that regenerating a functional organ by placing human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells – which could be personalized for the recipient – in a three-dimensional scaffold could have for transplantation, drug testing models and understanding heart ...

Ottawa researchers have developed unique virus-derived particles that can kill human blood cancer cells in the laboratory and eradicate the disease in mice with few side effects. The study is published in Blood Cancer Journal by co-senior authors Drs. David Conrad and John Bell of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa (uOttawa). While Dr. Bell and his colleagues have been investigating replicating viruses for the treatment of solid cancers for many years, with very promising results, this is the first major success they have had treating ...

1. A new strategy that cripples the ability of the dengue virus to escape the host immune system has been discovered by A*STAR's Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN). This breakthrough strategy opens a door of hope to what may become the world's first universal dengue vaccine candidate that can give full protection from all four serotypes of the dreadful virus. This research done in collaboration with Singapore's Novartis Institute of Tropical Diseases (NITD) and Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology is published in the Plos Pathogens journal, and is also supported ...

A study investigating the function of the recently discovered enhancer RNA molecules may open new avenues for gene therapy. According to the study researchers, altering the production and function of these molecules could affect the expression of genes and, in consequence, possibly also the progression of various diseases. Published in the prestigious Molecular Cell on 8 August, the study was carried out in collaboration between the University of California, San Diego and the University of Eastern Finland. Besides promoters located in the beginning of genes, gene expression ...

Neural stem cells transplanted into tumor-bearing rats can hinder tumor cell growth and prolife-ration; however, the mechanism remains unclear. Abnormal activation of the Ras/Raf/Mek/Erk signaling cascade plays an important role in glioma. Inhibition of this aberrant activity could effectively hinder glioma cell proliferation and promote cell apoptosis. To investigate the mechanism of glioblastoma treatment by neural stem cell trans-plantation with respect to the Ras/Raf/Mek/Erk pathway, Hua Li and team from the 476 Hospital of Chinese PLA observed Raf-1, Erk and Bcl-2 ...

High-resolution multilayer X-ray computer tomography and 3.0T superconducting magnetic resonance myelography are known to obtain a more complete and continuous two-dimensional original data. Three-dimensional reconstruction nerve models are classically obtained from two-dimensional images of "visible human" frozen sections. However, because of the flexibility of nerve tissues and small color differences compared with surrounding tissues, the integrity and validity of nerve tissues can be impaired during milling. Jiaming Fu and colleagues from the 98 Hospital of Chinese ...

The conventional method for repair of peripheral nerve injury is autogenous nerve grafting, but sources of autogenous nerve are limited. Furthermore, neurological deficits in the donor site and painful neuroma can occur following surgery. The use of allogeneic nerve grafts is limited because of host immune rejection. As reported, tensile stress and tensile strain directly affect the quality of nerve regeneration after bridging nerve defects by poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) conduit transplantation and autogenous nerve grafting for sciatic nerve injury. A new study published ...

Studying the expression of genes that are dependent on vitamin D makes it possible to identify individuals who will benefit from vitamin D supplementation, shows a University of Eastern Finland study published recently in PLoS One. Population-based studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency may increase the risk for chronic diseases and weaken the body's immune system. In the present study carried out at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, the study participants were given a daily dose of either 40 or 80 micrograms of vitamin D, or a placebo, over a course of ...