Southerners are generally not as trusting as people who live in other parts of the country, but trusting people are more likely to cooperate in recycling, buying green products and conserving water, a new Baylor University study shows. "A lot of researchers have reported trust as kind of a cure-all for protecting the environment through cooperation. Southerners are just as willing, but less trusting," said lead author Kyle Irwin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. "The question our study raised was that if trust isn't a catalyst for ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 31, 2013 – Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types. "These cells can be obtained through a simple, non-invasive low-cost approach that avoids surgical procedures," said Yuanyuan Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of regenerative medicine and senior researcher on the project. Reporting online ...

Homeless young women may be at greater risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than homeless young men because of the structure of their social groups and friendships, according to new research from UC San Francisco. The findings underscore how the social networks of homeless youth can be highly influential, affecting their participation in risky and protective behaviors. The study examined the relationship between STI rates and the characteristics of the social networks of 258 homeless young people ages 15 to 24 in San Francisco. The youth were surveyed ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that exposure to stress in the first few days of life increases stress responses, anxiety and the consumption of palatable "comfort" foods in adulthood. "Comfort foods" have been defined as the foods eaten in response to emotional stress, and are suggested to contribute to the obesity epidemic. Hormonal responses to chronic stress in adulthood seem ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, found that aging elicits changes in taste preferences and that such changes appear to be independent of taste nerve activity. In humans and animals aging decreases dietary and energy requirements and it is generally believed that reduced consumption is related to alterations in taste preference. However, the mechanisms underlying an age-induced shift in taste ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that feeding behavior and preferences may be shaped very early during development, even during fetal life. Newborns of different species react to the sweet taste demonstrating facial expressions of pleasure, such as licking (tongue protusions) and thumb sucking. These "hedonic" responses are related to brain activity in regions that respond to pleasure ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, shows that eating a junk-food diet during pregnancy changes the development of the opioid signalling pathway in the baby's brain and permanently alters the way this system operates after birth. Opioids are chemicals which are released when we eat foods that are high in fat and sugar, and that are responsible for causing the release of another 'feel good' chemical, ...

José Domingo Villarroel, a researcher at the Teacher Training College in Bilbao (UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country) has studied the capacity to differentiate between living and non-living beings and how this relates to environmental awareness. 118 girls and boys between the ages of 4 and 7 from public primary schools in Plentzia, Urduliz and Sopelana participated in the research and were interviewed by Villarroel himself. He himself says that the work was very laborious, "but enjoyable and what is more, the results were very striking." Each interview consisted ...

OAKLAND, Calif., July 30, 2013 — Patients with diabetes who take certain types of medications to lower their blood sugar sometimes experience severe low blood sugar levels, whether or not their diabetes is poorly or well controlled, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente and Yale University School of Medicine. The finding, published in the current online issue of Diabetes Care, challenges the conventional wisdom that hypoglycemia is primarily a problem among diabetic patients with well-controlled diabetes (who have low average blood sugar levels). Low blood sugar ...

A JOLLA, Calif., July 30, 2013 — One major hallmark of cancer cells is their ability to survive under stressful conditions. A new study spearheaded by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute reveals how a promising anticancer compound called SMIP004 specifically kills prostate cancer cells by compromising their ability to withstand environmental stress. The study, recently published in Oncotarget, uncovers novel mechanisms of anticancer activity and could lead to the development of more effective therapies for advanced and hard-to-treat forms of prostate ...

New Australian research suggests that a small dose of testosterone directed solely to the liver stimulates protein synthesis, likely preventing muscle loss and wasting, and potentially promoting muscle growth. The researchers believe they have developed a safe and effective treatment for men and women, that could prevent the muscle wasting associated with many chronic diseases and with ageing. Dr Vita Birzniece and Professor Ken Ho, from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, showed in healthy postmenopausal women that a small dose of the male hormone testosterone ...

Whenever we have to acquire new knowledge under stress, the brain deploys unconscious rather than conscious learning processes. Neuroscientists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have discovered that this switch from conscious to unconscious learning systems is triggered by the intact function of mineralocorticoid receptors. These receptors are activated by hormones released in response to stress by the adrenal cortex. The team of PD Dr Lars Schwabe from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, together with colleagues from the neurology department at the university clinic ...

This news release is available in German. Materials that have the ability to switch between being good conductors and being good insula-tors are considered good potential candidates for electronic building blocks – for use in transis-tors, for example. The iron oxide magnetite is the best known representative of this class of ma-terials. At low temperatures, magnetite has insulating properties; at high temperatures, the oxide is a good conductor. This switching mechanism however happens so quickly that it's been im-possible until now to fully grasp it on an atomic ...

This news release is available in German. Does psychotherapy via the Internet work? For the first time, clinical researchers from the University of Zurich have studied whether online psychotherapy and conventional face-to-face therapy are equally effective in experiments. Based on earlier studies, the Zurich team assumed that the two forms of therapy were on a par. Not only was their theory confirmed, the results for online therapy even exceeded their expectations. Six therapists treated 62 patients, the majority of whom were suffering from moderate depression. The ...

TORONTO, July 30, 2013-About nine months after suffering a stroke, the patient noticed that words written in a certain shade of blue evoked a strong feeling of disgust. Yellow was only slightly better. Raspberries, which he never used to eat very often, now tasted like blue – and blue tasted like raspberries. High-pitched brass instruments—specifically the brass theme from James Bond movies—elicited feelings of ecstasy and light blue flashes in his peripheral vision and caused large parts of his brain to light up on an MRI. Music played by a euphonium, a tenor-pitched ...

Modern digital macro photographic equipment allows everybody to shoot marvellous pictures of very small-sized living organisms, including insects. Easy access to the internet facilitates allows the daily upload of thousands of high quality insect pictures to photo sharing websites. This new phenomenon can be considered a democratic revolution in the study of biodiversity. Insect macro-photographs may be useful to illustrate online visual guides and identification keys , such as the BugGuide and Canadian Journal of Arthropod identification, or complement specialized biodiversity ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A new study has found that online tools, access to experimental data and other services provided through "cyberinfrastructure" are helping to accelerate progress in earthquake engineering and science. The research is affiliated with the National Science Foundation's George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), based at Purdue University. NEES includes 14 laboratories for earthquake engineering and tsunami research, tied together with cyberinfrastructure to provide information technology for the network. The cyberinfrastructure ...

If you hear an owl hooting at dusk, don't expect to catch the flute-like song of a Veery nearby. This North American thrush has probably also heard the hoots, and is singing much less to ensure that it does not become an owl's next meal. Research by Kenneth Schmidt of Texas Tech University and Kara Loeb Belinsky of Arcadia University in the US, published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, provides insights into just how eavesdropping between predators and prey around dusk may be shaping communication in birds. The study is the first to use the ...

July 30, 2013, Boston, Mass. -- Sun-drenched rooms make for happy residents, but large glass windows also bring higher air-conditioning bills. Now a bioinspired microfluidic circulatory system for windows developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University could save energy and cut cooling costs dramatically -- while letting in just as much sunlight. The same circulatory system could also cool rooftop solar panels, allowing them to generate electricity more efficiently, the researchers report in the July 29 online ...

Washington, DC, July 30, 2013 – A moderate increase in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) at one hospital can lead to a nearly 3 percent increase in VRE in every other hospital in that county, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). VRE is one of the most common bacteria that cause infections in healthcare facilities. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Pittsburgh Supercomputing ...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Taxing sugary beverages may help reduce calories, but the health benefits may be offset as consumers substitute other unhealthy foods, according to a joint study by researchers at RTI International, Duke University, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The study, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, found that the reduction in sugary beverages due to a soda tax would likely lead consumers to substitute those calories by increasing their calorie, salt and fat intake from untaxed foods and beverages. "Instituting ...

College Park, Md. –New research out of the University of Maryland School of Public Health shows that exercise may improve cognitive function in those at risk for Alzheimer's by increasing the efficiency of brain activity associated with memory. Memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease is one of the greatest fears among older Americans. While some memory loss is normal and to be expected as we age, a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, signals more substantial memory loss and a greater risk for Alzheimer's, for which there currently is no cure. The ...

The deadly condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), which afflicts up to 150,000 Americans each year, may be reversible by using an inhalable gene therapy, report an international team of researchers led by investigators at the Cardiovascular Research Center at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In their new study, reported in the July 30 issue of the journal Circulation, scientists demonstrated that gene therapy administered through a nebulizer-like inhalation device can completely reverse PAH in rat models of the disease. In the lab, researchers ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B). In this release: 1. Atmospheric rivers linked to severe precipitation in Western Europe 2. Warming climate increases rainfall extremes 3. Carbon fertilization increased arid region leaf cover over past 20 years 4. Understanding the complexities of volcanoes that erupt just once 5. Revealing the early seafloor spreading history between India and Australia 6. Independent observations corroborate ...

HOUSTON – (July 30, 2013) – New research at Rice University shows how water makes it practical to form long graphene nanoribbons less than 10 nanometers wide. And it's unlikely that many of the other labs currently trying to harness the potential of graphene, a single-atom sheet of carbon, for microelectronics would have come up with the technique the Rice researchers found while they were looking for something else. The discovery by lead author Vera Abramova and co-author Alexander Slesarev, both graduate students in the lab of Rice chemist James Tour, appears online ...