The sounds of different languages may have been shaped by the geography of the places where they are spoken, according to research published June 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Caleb Everett from the University of Miami. Everett compared the sounds used in about 600 languages across the world with the regions they were commonly spoken, and found a strong correlation between high altitude and spoken languages that included consonant sounds produced with an intense burst of air, called ejective consonants. Ejectives are absent in the English language, but were ...

The teeth of a kangaroo and other extinct marsupials reveal that southeastern Queensland 2.5-5-million-years ago was a mosaic of tropical forests, wetlands and grasslands and much less arid than previously thought. The chemical analysis of tooth enamel that suggests this diverse prehistoric habitat is published June 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Shaena Montanari from the American Museum of Natural History and colleagues from other institutions. The carbon isotope ratios present in these fossil teeth revealed that the extinct kangaroo ate plants similar to ...

VIDEO: A loggerhead turtle encounters a plastic bag while swimming in open water. Click here for more information. Loggerhead turtles use visual cues to find gelatinous prey to snack on as they swim in open waters, according to research published June 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Tomoko Narazaki and colleagues from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Tracking underwater movements with 3D loggers and National Geographic Crittercams, the researchers found the turtles ...

Weakly electric fish spend their lives bathed in their own internally generated mild electric field, interpreting perturbations in the field as objects pass through and when communicating with members of their own species through high frequency electric 'chirps'. Rüdiger Krahe, from McGill University, Canada, says, 'These fish are very cryptic and hard for us to understand because we don't have this electric sense'. Electric fish actively produce their weak electric fields; they are not a passive by-product of other physiological functions. In fact, these weak electric ...

OAKLAND, Calif., June 12 —Girls between 9 and 12 years of age with higher-than-average levels of bisphenol-A (BPA) in their urine had double the risk of being obese than girls with lower levels of BPA, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the journal PLOS ONE. "This study provides evidence from a human population that confirms the findings from animal studies — that high BPA exposure levels could increase the risk of overweight or obesity," said De-Kun Li, MD, PhD, principal investigator of the study and a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist ...

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that detects the telltale signs of multiple sclerosis in finer detail than ever before – providing a more powerful tool for evaluating new treatments. The technique analyzes the frequency of electro-magnetic waves collected by an MRI scanner, instead of the size of those waves. Although analyzing the number of waves per second had long been considered a more sensitive way of detecting changes in tissue structure, the math needed to create usable images had ...

ANN ARBOR—In findings that could help overcome a major technological hurdle in the road toward smaller and more powerful electronics, an international research team involving University of Michigan engineering researchers, has shown the unique ways in which heat dissipates at the tiniest scales. A paper on the research is published in the June 13 edition of Nature. When a current passes through a material that conducts electricity, it generates heat. Understanding where the temperature will rise in an electronic system helps engineers design reliable, high-performing ...

Bremerhaven, 12 June 2013. In collaboration with an international team of researchers, scientists at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, have sequenced the genome of the calcified alga Emiliania huxleyi and have found an explanation for the enormous adaptive potential and global distribution of this unicellular alga. As the researchers report in an online prepublication of the scientific journal Nature, the microalga's "trick" is genetic diversity. It has a particularly large so-called pan-genome which means that the unicellular ...

The researchers base their findings on over 1300 ten to 15 year old non-smokers whose exposure to tobacco advertising and subsequent behaviour were monitored over a period of 2.5 years. In 2008, the children, who were pupils at 21 public schools in three different regions of Germany, were asked how often they had seen particular ads. These included images for six of the most popular cigarette brands in Germany and eight other products, such as chocolate, clothes, mobile phones, and cars. In 2011, 30 months later, they were asked the same question, as well as how ...

But it also seems to boost the number of short journeys taken by bus, which might otherwise have been cycled or walked, the findings show. The researchers wanted to assess the public health impact of giving teens in London free bus travel. The scheme was introduced for 12 to 16 year olds in 2005, and for 17 year olds in 2006. They therefore used data from the London Area Transport Survey and London Travel Demand Surveys to calculate the number of journeys made in London—as well as distance and principal mode of travel—before (2001-4) and after (2005-9) the scheme ...

To World War II soldiers, "The White Cliffs of Dover" was a morale-boosting song that lifted spirits in dark times. To geographers, the white cliffs mark the point at which England is closest to continental Europe. To scientists, the white cliffs are towering structures made of the chalky, white shells that envelop the single-celled photosynthetic alga known as Emiliania huxleyi. "Ehux" is a coccolithophore, with an exoskeleton made of calcium carbonate. Even though the process by which the alga's "armor" forms releases carbon dioxide, Ehux can trap as much as 20 percent ...

The lack of hard data on the safety and effectiveness of a wide range of drugs in pregnancy has hindered the treatment of pregnant women, contributing to a doubling of deaths amongst mums-to-be with an underlying health problem over the past 20 years, argues an editorial in the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB). It's time to include pregnant women in drug trials so that they can get the medical treatment they need, says DTB. In the absence of reliable information on the pros and cons of treatment during pregnancy, and haunted by the spectre of thalidomide, doctors ...

AUDIO: Dr. Caleb Everett talks about, and gives examples of, ejective sounds used in speech at higher altitudes. Click here for more information. CORAL GABLES, FL (June 12, 2013) -- Language is formed by giving meaning to sounds and stringing together these meaningful expressions to communicate feelings and ideas. Until recently most linguists believed that the relationship between the structure of language and the natural world was mainly the influence of the environment ...

The deep biosphere—the realm of sediments far below the seafloor—harbors a vast ecosystem of bacteria, archaea, and fungi that are actively metabolizing, proliferating, and moving, according a new study by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of Delaware (UD). "This is the first molecular evidence for active cell division in the deep biosphere," says Orsi. Previous studies and models had suggested cells were alive, but whether the cells were actually dividing or not had remained elusive. The finding of so much activity in the ...

Patients with more timely access to GP appointments make fewer visits to accident and emergency departments, suggests a study published today. In the largest analysis of its kind to date, researchers at Imperial College London related A&E attendance figures in England to responses from a national survey of patients' experience of GP practices in 2010-11. One question of this survey asked patients whether they had been able to see a GP within two weekdays when they had last tried. GP practices whose patients reported more timely access to appointments had lower rates ...

The number of children admitted to hospital for problems related to obesity in England and Wales quadrupled between 2000 and 2009, a study has found. Nearly three quarters of these admissions were to deal with problems complicated by obesity such as asthma, breathing difficulties during sleep, and complications of pregnancy, rather than obesity itself being the primary reason. Researchers at Imperial College London looked at NHS statistics for children and young people aged five to 19 where obesity was recorded in the diagnosis. In 2009 there were 3,806 children admitted ...

Pre-treatment scans of brain activity predicted whether depressed patients would best achieve remission with an antidepressant medication or psychotherapy, in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. "Our goal is to develop reliable biomarkers that match an individual patient to the treatment option most likely to be successful, while also avoiding those that will be ineffective," explained Helen Mayberg, M.D., of Emory University, Atlanta, a grantee of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health. Mayberg and colleagues report on their findings in JAMA ...

Smaller than a speck of dust, Emiliania huxleyi plays an outsized role in the world's seas. Ranging from the polar oceans to the tropics, these free-floating photosynthetic algae remove carbon dioxide from the air, help supply the oxygen that we breathe, and form the base of marine food chains. When they proliferate, their massive turquoise blooms are visible from space. Now scientists have discovered one of the keys to E. huxleyi's success. A seven-year effort by 75 researchers from 12 countries to map its genome has revealed a set of core genes that mix and match with ...

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have measured a significant and potentially pivotal difference between the brains of patients with an inherited form of Alzheimer's disease and healthy family members who do not carry a mutation for the disease. Researchers have known that amyloid beta, a protein fragment, builds up into plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. They believe the plaques cause the memory loss and other cognitive problems that characterize the disease. Normal brain metabolism produces different forms of amyloid beta. The ...

Water in the Earth's crust and upper mantle may not play such an important role as a lubricant of plate tectonics as previously assumed. This is a result geoscientists present in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature (13/06/2013) after the examination of water in the mineral olivine. Laboratory experiments over the past three decades have suggested the presence of water greatly weakens the mechanical strength of the mineral olivine, a key component of the Earth's upper mantle. In a recent study led by the Bayerisches Geoinstitut in Bayreuth, the Secondary ...

Slowdowns in the transport and delivery of nutrients, proteins and signaling molecules within nerve cells may contribute to the development of the neurodegenerative disorder ALS, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. The researchers showed how a genetic mutation often associated with inherited ALS caused delays in the transport of these important molecules along the long axons of neurons. Their findings were published in the online journal PLOS ONE on June 12. Motor neurons are among the longest cells in the human body—some ...

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have developed an easier and more effective method for inserting genes into eye cells that could greatly expand gene therapy to help restore sight to patients with blinding diseases ranging from inherited defects like retinitis pigmentosa to degenerative illnesses of old age, such as macular degeneration. Unlike current treatments, the new procedure – which takes a little as 15-minutes – is surgically non-invasive, and it delivers normal genes to difficult-to-reach cells throughout the entire retina. Over the last ...

Mammals possess the remarkable ability to regenerate a lost fingertip, including the nail, nerves and even bone. In humans, an amputated fingertip can sprout back in as little as two months, a phenomenon that has remained poorly understood until now. In a paper published today in the journal Nature, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center shed light on this rare regenerative power in mammals, using genetically engineered mice to document for the first time the biochemical chain of events that unfolds in the wake of a fingertip amputation. The findings hold promise for ...

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta recently published their findings that rats with restricted growth in the womb, causing low birth weights when born, were most susceptible to developing age-related vision loss, compared to their normal weight counterparts. The research team members say additional work needs to be done to see if this same link exists in people, and if it does, doctors will need to better monitor vision concerns in adults who were born with a low birth weight. "The consequence of our findings is that we are providing evidence for the need ...

LIVERMORE, Calif.-- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have broken the record for tracking the movement and concentration of carbon dioxide in a geologic formation using the world's deepest Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) system. The research provides insight into the effects of geological sequestration to address the impact of greenhouse gases. The team led by LLNL's Charles Carrigan obtained time lapse electrical resistivity images during the injection of more than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) more than 10,000 feet deep in an oil ...