Leaders of the major world religions can play a key role in preserving biological diversity. A new study carried out by ecologists at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), among others, indicates that if the world's religious leaders wished to bring about a change, they would be ideally positioned to do so. – Our study investigates how the various religions are distributed around the world and how they overlap areas that are important for global biological diversity, says Grzegorz Mikusinski, a researcher at SLU who directs the project. Our analysis indicates ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 5, 2013 – We live in the most exciting and unsettling period in the history of psychiatry since Freud started talking about sex in public. On the one hand, the American Psychiatric Association has introduced the fifth iteration of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, DSM-V, representing the current best effort of the brightest clinical minds in psychiatry to categorize the enormously complex pattern of human emotional, cognitive, and behavioral problems. On the other hand, in new and profound ways, neuroscience and genetics research in psychiatry ...

ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan researchers today released seven technical reports that together form the most comprehensive Michigan-focused resource on hydraulic fracturing, the controversial natural gas and oil extraction process commonly known as fracking. The studies, totaling nearly 200 pages, examine seven critical topics related to the use of hydraulic fracturing in Michigan, with an emphasis on high-volume methods: technology, geology and hydrogeology, environment and ecology, public health, policy and law, economics, and public perceptions. While considerable ...

A new approach to calculating the cost of damage caused by flooding is to be presented at the International Conference of Flood Resilience: Experiences in Asia and Europe at the University of Exeter this week. The methodology combines information on land use with data on the vulnerability of the area to calculate the cost of both past and future flooding events. Climate change, along with increased building on flood plains, has led to both a greater likelihood and a higher impact of flooding across the globe. The method has already been employed to estimate the damage ...

Tropical Depression 12E formed off the southwestern coast of Mexico at 5 a.m. EDT on Sept. 5. Just 40 minutes before, NASA's TRMM satellite passed overhead and saw some "hot towers" around the center, indicating that the low pressure area that was previously known as System 99E would strengthen. A "hot tower" is a tall cumulonimbus cloud that reaches at least to the top of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. It extends approximately nine miles (14.5 km) high in the tropics. The hot towers in Tropical Depression 12E were reaching heights of 15 km/9.3 miles ...

A new watermarking technology based on a system akin to the permutation rules used to solve the numeral puzzles known as Sudoku has been developed by computer scientists in Malaysia. Writing in the International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing the team reports how their system could resist attempts to "crop" the watermark in more than nine times out of ten cases. Images, photos and graphics on the web are easy pickings for plagiarists and those who might ignore copyright rules. Photographers and others often add a watermark to their images to reduce the risk of ...

Details of a survey of middle and high school student attitudes to cyberbullying and online safety will be published in the International Journal of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments. The analysis of the results shows that many children are bullied and few understand internet safety. Stacey Kite, Robert Gable and Lawrence Filippelli of the Johnson & Wales University, in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, surveyed more than 4200 students about their knowledge of potential risks, appropriate use, and their behaviors on the internet and social networking sites, ...

One hour before midnight Eastern Daylight Time on Sept. 4, Tropical Depression 7 strengthened into Tropical Storm Gabrielle just 70 miles south of Ponce, Puerto Rico. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured the development and NASA's GOES Project created an animation that showed the developing storm. VIDEO: This GOES-East series of animations from Sept. 1 through Sept. 5 shows the development of Tropical Depression 7 into Tropical Storm Gabrielle near Puerto Rico (lower right). ...

New Rochelle, NY -- Among a group of women with symptoms of angina who were tested for a suspected coronary blockage, nearly 3 times as many black women as white women died of heart disease. The study determined whether differences in the women's angina symptoms could affect the risk of death in these two groups, and the researchers report their findings in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. Jo-Ann Eastwood, ...

People who were deprived of one night's sleep purchased more calories and grams of food in a mock supermarket on the following day in a new study published in the journal Obesity, the official journal of The Obesity Society. Sleep deprivation also led to increased blood levels of ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger, on the following morning; however, there was no correlation between individual ghrelin levels and food purchasing, suggesting that other mechanisms—such as impulsive decision making—may be more responsible for increased purchasing. Researchers in Sweden ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University chemical engineer has discovered that a new member of the ultrathin materials family has great potential to improve electronic and thermal devices. Vikas Berry, William H. Honstead professor of chemical engineering, and his research team have studied a new three-atom-thick material -- molybdenum disulfide -- and found that manipulating it with gold atoms improves its electrical characteristics. Their research appears in a recent issue of Nano Letters. The research may advance transistors, photodetectors, sensors and thermally ...

Research from North Carolina State University identified factors that cause construction site managers to schedule more time than necessary for specific tasks. Understanding these factors and whether they can be reduced or eliminated could help the industry complete construction projects more quickly. At issue is a construction planning concept called a time buffer. A time buffer is the difference between how long it should take to accomplish a task based on optimum productivity, and how long you think it will take in the real world. On any job, things can go wrong; bad ...

Researchers have found that apoptosis, a natural process of programmed cell death, can reactivate latent herpesviruses in the dying cell. The results of their research, which could have broad clinical significance since many cancer chemotherapies cause apoptosis, was published ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. Human herpesviruses (HHV) are linked to a range of childhood and adult diseases, including chickenpox, mononucleosis, cold sores, and genital sores, and are of a particular concern for patients who are immunosuppressed due cancer or AIDS. Some HHV types ...

During his time in Daniel Morse's lab at the University of California Santa Barbara, USA, PhD student Daniel DeMartini has seen many Doryteuthis opalescens squid pass through the lab's doors. These squid provide DeMartini with a steady supply of the iridocyte cells that are responsible for the squid's shimmering opal-like markings. Iridocytes are found in many cephalopods, but what makes those of D. opalescens so special is their ability to adapt and produce a rainbow of different colours from the same cell. Most iridocytes are found in patches across the squid's body but ...

WASHINGTON, DC (September 5, 2013) -- A new analysis by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) examines the relationship between health information laws and health system improvements for children and adolescents under Medicaid's Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit. EPSDT ensures comprehensive coverage of children's health care needs, and its benefits are of particular importance for children and adolescents with physical and mental health conditions that can lead to lifelong ...

One-time entry authentication methods, such as passwords, iris scanners and fingerprint recognition are fine for simple entry whether to a protected building or a private web page. But, a continuous biometric system is needed in some circumstances such as authenticating drivers of vehicles carrying valuable commodities and money, and even public transport vehicles and taxis. Now, such a system based on scanning the driver's brain waves described in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Biometrics could make hijacks of such vehicles a thing of the past. Isao ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 4, 2013—Despite tens of thousands of studies in the literature on the thyroid gland, thyroid hormone, and thyroid disease, lack of standardization in study design makes it difficult to compare the results and apply them to the development of improved diagnostic and treatment approaches. A new report from the American Thyroid Association's Taskforce on Approaches and Strategies to Investigate Thyroid Hormone Economy includes 70 specific recommendations and accompanying commentaries on a range of topics. The report is available free online on the ...

Researchers in China have developed a mathematical model that could help engineers design a flexible vehicle-arrest system for stopping cars involved in criminal activity or terrorism, such as suspect car bombers attempting break through a check point, without wrecking the car or killing the occupants. Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Vehicle Design, Pak Kin Wong and colleagues in the Department of Electromechanical Engineering at the University of Macau, in Taipa, Macao, explain how common vehicle-arrest systems used by law enforcement, ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In May 2009, the Mars rover Spirit cracked through a crusty layer of Martian topsoil, sinking into softer underlying sand. The unexpected sand trap permanently mired the vehicle, despite months of remote maneuvering by NASA engineers to attempt to free the rover. The mission mishap may have been prevented, says MIT's Karl Iagnemma, by a better understanding of terramechanics — the interaction between vehicles and deformable terrain. Iagnemma says scientists have a pretty good understanding of how soils interact with vehicles that weigh more than 2,000 ...

Two leading neurology researchers have proposed a theory that could unify scientists' thinking about several neurodegenerative diseases and suggest therapeutic strategies to combat them. The theory and backing for it are described in Nature. Mathias Jucker and Lary Walker outline the emerging concept that many of the brain diseases associated with aging, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are caused by specific proteins that misfold and aggregate into harmful seeds. These seeds behave very much like the pathogenic agents known as prions, which cause mad cow disease, ...

A joint Harvard-Smithsonian study released today in the journal PLOS ONE reveals how much -- and how little -- Northeastern forests have changed after centuries of intensive land use. A hike through today's woods will reveal the same types of trees that a colonial settler would have encountered 400 years ago. But the similarities end there. Jonathan Thompson, research associate at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and lead author of the new study, explains, "If you only looked at a tree species list, you'd have the impression that Northeast forests haven't ...

A quarter of the mature female tiger sharks plying the waters around the remote coral atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands decamp for the populated Main Hawaiian Islands in the late summer and fall, swimming as far as 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) according to new research from University of Florida and the University of Hawaii. Their report is scheduled for publication in the November 2013 issue of Ecological Society of America's journal Ecology. The authors' manuscript is available as a preprint. "When we think of animal migrations, we tend to think of all individuals ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Overgrazing by millions of sheep and goats is the primary cause of degraded land in the Mongolian Steppe, one of the largest remaining grassland ecosystems in the world, Oregon State University researchers say in a new report. Using a new satellite-based vegetation monitoring system, researchers found that about 12 percent of the biomass has disappeared in this country that's more than twice the size of Texas, and 70 percent of the grassland ecosystem is now considered degraded. The findings were published in Global Change Biology. Overgrazing accounts ...

An international team of scientists, including University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital Colorado researchers, has discovered a new disease related to an inability to process Vitamin B12. The disorder is rare but can be devastating. "Some people with rare inherited conditions cannot process vitamin B 12 properly," says CU researcher Tamim Shaikh, PhD, a geneticist and senior author of a paper about the new disease. "These individuals can end up having serious health problems, including developmental delay, epilepsy, anemia, stroke, psychosis and ...

URBANA, Ill. - Because weanling pigs do not tolerate great quantities of soybean meal in the diet, alternative sources of protein must be used. Blood products, such as blood meal and plasma protein, are common ingredients in weanling pig diets and are considered high-quality sources of amino acids. Researchers at the University of Illinois have determined the amino acid digestibility of five blood products produced in the U.S. to provide swine producers with guidance for the use of these products in formulating diets. "Blood meal usually is considered a good source of ...