What allows certain plants to survive freezing and thrive in the Canadian climate, while others are sensitive to the slightest drop in temperature? Those that flourish activate specific genes at just the right time -- but the way gene activation is controlled remains poorly understood. A major step forward in understanding this process lies in a genomic map produced by an international consortium led by scientists from McGill University and the University of Toronto and published online today in the journal Nature Genetics. The map, which is the first of its kind ...

Spawning droughts, floods, and other weather disturbances world-wide, the El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) impacts the daily life of millions of people. During El Niño, Atlantic hurricane activity wanes and rainfall in Hawaii decreases while Pacific winter storms shift southward, elevating the risk of floods in California. The ability to forecast how ENSO will respond to global warming thus matters greatly to society. Providing accurate predictions, though, is challenging because ENSO varies naturally over decades and centuries. Instrumental records are too short ...

WASHINGTON, DC—An estimated two-thirds of all Americans are overweight or obese and many find it difficult to lose weight and keep it off. They've tried fad diets, exercise programs, diet pills and other methods but the battle continues. Now, a new study suggests that watching an avatar model weight-loss behavior in a virtual community might help some women shed pounds in the real world. "This pilot study showed that you don't have to be a gamer to use virtual reality to learn some important skills for weight loss," said Melissa Napolitano, PhD, an associate professor ...

The American Thoracic Society has released an official statement on the ethical and health policy considerations surrounding adult and pediatric controlled organ donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD), the recovery of organs after cessation of circulation from patients with severe neurological, neuromuscular or pulmonary disease for whom decisions are made to forego additional life-prolonging treatments. The ATS developed the statement with input from the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, ...

The World Health Organization's new HIV treatment guidelines, released today at the 2013 International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference, include new antiretroviral (ARV) therapy (ART) recommendations for HIV-infected children, and will mean that more children will be on better treatments. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) applauds the new guidelines and, with Cipla Ltd. and other partners, is expediting the development of urgently needed 4-in-1 ARVs adapted for babies and toddlers with HIV, to be delivered by 2015. The new 2013 WHO Consolidated Guidelines ...

A biomarker reflecting expression levels of two genes in tumor tissue may be able to predict which women treated for estrogen-receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer should receive a second estrogen-blocking medication after completing tamoxifen treatment. In their report being published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center investigators describe finding that the HOXB13/IL17BR ratio can indicate which women are at risk for cancer recurrence after tamoxifen and which are most likely to benefit from continuing ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that healthy adults with late bedtimes and chronic sleep restriction may be more susceptible to weight gain due to the increased consumption of calories during late-night hours. In the largest, most diverse healthy sample studied to date under controlled laboratory conditions, results show that sleep-restricted subjects who spent only four hours in bed from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. for five consecutive nights gained more weight than control subjects who were in bed for 10 hours each night from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. The study found an overall increase ...

IMMUNE systems of endangered Galapagos sea lions are in overdrive because of harmful activity by people, reveal scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The study shows that Galapagos sea lions (Zalophus wollebaeki) are more prone to starvation because of exposure to human influences like pets and pollution. These can impair the level of their immunity, making them less able to hunt and more likely to go hungry when food is scarce. This research is published today (28th June) in the journal PLOS ONE. Conservationists spent more than eighteen months ...

PHILADELPHIA - A new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Naval Health Research Center has shown military service members who have trouble sleeping prior to deployments may be at greater risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety once they return home. The new study, published in the July 2013 edition of the journal SLEEP, found that pre-existing insomnia symptoms conferred almost as a large of a risk for those mental disorders as combat exposure. "Understanding environmental and behavioral ...

Investigators at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, have developed an automated technique for analyzing the patterns of play of field hockey teams, providing a new tool for coaches and commentators who must make sense of mountains of video and other game data. Because players constantly change roles during the flow of play – a left winger switching temporarily with a right winger, or vice versa – the researchers found that focusing on player roles, rather than the identity of an individual, was best for detecting the tactics, strategy and style of play for each team. The ...

Elderly cardiac patients prescribed heart medications for 60 days or more after leaving hospital have four times the odds of adhering to the drug regime than patients prescribed the same medications for 30 days, according to research conducted at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and Women's College Hospital (WCH). The study, published today in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, found longer initial prescriptions when leaving hospital are associated with long-term adherence in elderly patients. The findings suggest prescriptions covering a longer ...

June 28, 2013 - Divorce has a bigger impact on child-parent relationships if it occurs in the first few years of the child's life, according to new research. Those who experience parental divorce early in their childhood tend to have more insecure relationships with their parents as adults than those who experience divorce later, researchers say. "By studying variation in parental divorce, we are hoping to learn more about how early experiences predict the quality of people's close relationships later in life," says R. Chris Fraley of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ...

Synthetic biology researchers at Northwestern University, working with partners at Harvard Medical School, have for the first time synthesized ribosomes -- cell structures responsible for generating all proteins and enzymes in our bodies -- from scratch in a test tube. Others have previously tried to synthesize ribosomes from their constituent parts, but the efforts have yielded poorly functional ribosomes under conditions that do not replicate the environment of a living cell. In addition, attempts to combine ribosome synthesis and assembly in a single process have ...

In recent years, illegal cooking oil incident led to the serious food safety risks and the negative social repercussions. Professor HE Yujian and his group from College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences establish two rapid and convenient colorimetric detections of illegal cooking oils based on phase transfer technology. This work could be helpful for the rapid and on-site detection of illegal cooking oil. Their work, entitled "Rapid colorimetric detection of illegal cooking oils based on phase transfer technology", will be ...

With the help of phylogenetic analysis, scientists describe three new fungus species from New Zealand. The new species belong to the widespread genus Gymnopus, part of the Omphalotaceae family, the most famous representative of which, the Shiitake mushroom, is the favorite of many. The study was published in the open access journal Mycokeys. Gymnopus imbricatus, G. ceraceicola and G. hakaroa can be recognized by their strong, unpleasant odor when crushed. The smell produced by these species is most commonly described as rotting cabbage or garlic. The species grow in colonies ...

Cattle grazing and clean water can coexist on national forest lands, according to research by the University of California, Davis. The study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, is the most comprehensive examination of water quality on National Forest public grazing lands to date. "There's been a lot of concern about public lands and water quality, especially with cattle grazing," said lead author Leslie Roche, a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences. "We're able to show that livestock grazing, public recreation and the provisioning ...

In the late spring, the 4000 elk of the Clarks Fork herd leave crowded winter grounds near Cody, Wyoming, following the greening grass into the highlands of the Absaroka Mountains, where they spend the summer growing fat on vegetation fed by snowmelt. It's a short trip (40-60 kilometers) by migratory standards, and by modern standards, uncommonly free of roads, fences, metropolitan areas, and other human-built barriers. But it crosses an important human boundary: the border into Yellowstone National Park. The costs of migrating to the high green pastures have lately outstripped ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Predicted increases in temperature and drought in the coming century may make it more difficult for conifers such as ponderosa pine to regenerate after major forest fires on dry, low-elevation sites, in some cases leading to conversion of forests to grass or shrub lands, a report suggests. Researchers from Oregon State University concluded that moisture stress is a key limitation for conifer regeneration following stand-replacing wildfire, which will likely increase with climate change. This will make post-fire recovery on dry sites slow and uncertain. ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - A Loyola University Medical Center study suggests that a procedure to treat acid reflux could help prevent chronic rejection in lung transplant patients. The study also found that certain proteins found in lung fluid can help predict whether a patient's transplanted lung is more likely to fail. Results are published in the July, 2013 issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Authors are P. Marco Fisichella, MD, FACS (first author), Christopher S. Davis, MD, MPH; Erin Lowery, MD, MS; Luis Ramirez, BS; Richard L. Gamelli, MD, FACS and Elizabeth ...

UPTON, NY-In chemical reactions, left and right can make a big difference. A "left-handed" molecule of a particular chemical composition could be an effective drug, while its mirror-image "right-handed" counterpart could be completely inactive. That's because, in biology, "left" and "right" molecular designs are crucial: Living organisms are made only from left-handed amino acids. So telling the two apart is important-but difficult. Now, a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Ohio University has developed a new, simpler ...

This may look like a tangle of squiggly lines, but you're actually looking at a molecular machine called a ribosome. Its job is to translate DNA sequences into proteins, the workhorse compounds that sustain you and all living things. The image is also a milestone. It's the first time the atom-by-atom structure of the ribosome has been seen as it's attached to a molecule that controls its motion. That's big news if you're a structural biologist. But there's another way to look at this image, one that anyone who's suffered a bacterial infection can appreciate. The image ...

JUPITER, FL, June 28, 2013 – For the first time, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified small molecules that allow for complete control over a genetic defect responsible for the most common adult onset form of muscular dystrophy. These small molecules will enable scientists to investigate potential new therapies and to study the long-term impact of the disease. "This is the first example I know of at all where someone can literally turn on and off a disease," said TSRI Associate Professor Matthew Disney, whose new research ...

Psittacosaurus, the 'parrot dinosaur' is known from more than 1000 specimens from the Cretaceous, 100 million years ago, of China and other parts of east Asia. As part of his PhD thesis at the University of Bristol, Qi Zhao, now on the staff of the Institute for Vertebrate Paleontology in Beijing, carried out the intricate study on bones of babies, juveniles and adults. Dr Zhao said: "Some of the bones from baby Psittacosaurus were only a few millimetres across, so I had to handle them extremely carefully to be able to make useful bone sections. I also had to be sure ...

A new study from researchers at Uppsala University and University of Havana uses mathematic modeling and experiments on ants to show that a group is capable of developing flexible resource management strategies and characteristic responses of its own. The results are now published in Physical Review Letters. Group-living animals are led to regulate their activity and to make decisions on how to manage resources, under the action of a variety of environmental stimuli and of their intrinsic interactions. The latter are typically cooperative, in the sense that the activity ...

Sophie Holles, a PhD researcher at the University of Bristol and one of the study's authors, said: "Natural underwater sound is used by many animals to find suitable habitat, and traffic noise is one of the most widespread pollutants. If settlement is disrupted by boat traffic, the resilience of habitats like reefs could be affected." Sound travels better underwater than in air and reefs are naturally noisy places: fish and invertebrates produce feeding and territorial sounds while wind, waves and currents create other background noise. Boats can be found around all ...