MIAMI –April 9, 2013 – Many terrestrial animals are frequently observed scavenging on other animals– whether it is a hyena stealing a lion kill in the Serengeti or a buzzard swooping down on a dead animal. However, documenting this sort of activity in the oceans is especially difficult, and often overlooked in marine food web studies. In a new study published in PLOS ONE titled, "White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) scavenging on whales and its potential role in further shaping the ecology of an apex predator," Captain Chris Fallows from Apex Expeditions collaborated ...

A 2011 record-breaking algae bloom in Lake Erie was triggered by long-term agricultural practices coupled with extreme precipitation, followed by weak lake circulation and warm temperatures, scientists have discovered. The researchers also predict that, unless agricultural policies change, the lake will continue to experience extreme blooms. "The factors that led to this explosion of algal blooms are all related to humans and our interaction with the environment," says Bruce Hamilton, program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research ...

Chicago (April 10, 2013)—A major challenge facing today's health care community is to find ways to lower costs without compromising clinical quality. Taking that challenge to task, researchers at Medstar Health and Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington DC, report success in using a concept called "value-based analysis," which simultaneously measures quality and cost and addresses inefficiencies in care. The researchers applied a value-based analysis approach to implementing a single best practice for preventing deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in surgical patients ...

Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, performing a variety of essential functions such as DNA replication, catabolizing reactions, and responding to stimuli. The complete set of proteins expressed in an organism at a given time, under defined conditions, is known as the proteome. While the genome of an organism remains relatively stable, the proteome is remarkably dynamic, varying from cell to cell and even within a single cell and changing rapidly in response to developmental and environmental cues. Proteomics is a powerful technique for examining the structure ...

Your brain knows it's time to cook when the stove is on, and the food and pots are out. When you rush away to calm a crying child, though, cooking is over and it's time to be a parent. Your brain processes and responds to these occurrences as distinct, unrelated events. But it remains unclear exactly how the brain breaks such experiences into "events," or the related groups that help us mentally organize the day's many situations. A dominant concept of event-perception known as prediction error says that our brain draws a line between the end of one event and the start ...

Humans could learn a thing or two from turtles, and scientists who have just sequenced the first turtle genome uncovered clues about how people can benefit from the shelled creatures' remarkable longevity and ability to survive for months without breathing. Understanding the natural mechanisms turtles use to protect their heart and brain from oxygen deprivation may one day improve treatments for heart attack and stroke, the researchers said. UCLA conservation biologist and lead author Brad Shaffer collaborated with the Genome Institute at Washington University in ...

ANN ARBOR—Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a new potential therapeutic target for lowering cholesterol that could be an alternative or complementary therapy to statins. Scientists in the lab of David Ginsburg at the Life Sciences Institute inhibited the action of a gene responsible for transporting a protein that interferes with the ability of the liver to remove cholesterol from the blood in mice. Trapping the destructive protein where it couldn't harm receptors responsible for removing cholesterol preserved the liver cells' capacity to clear ...

Think of a stereotypical salesperson and you're likely to conjure up someone who's extraverted, gregarious, and assertive. But a new study reveals that "ambiverts," people who are neither introverted nor extraverted but who fall somewhere in between, tend to be the most effective salespeople. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Researcher Adam Grant of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania was driven to explore the relationship between sales and personality traits after realizing there ...

In a study published recently in the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, WSU Ph.D. student Zavin Nazaretian and David M. Merolla, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, found that a method called "capping" — which only allows survey respondents to represent a maximum of three incidents per crime type regardless of how many incidents they report — undercounted violent crime by 87 percent and household crime by 36 percent. Capping is a common methodological practice used in most victimization surveys. The researchers ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- If you've ever stood on a hill during a rainstorm, you've probably witnessed landscape evolution, at least on a small scale: rivulets of water streaming down a slope, cutting deeper trenches in the earth when the rain turns heavier. It's a simple phenomenon that scientists have long believed applies to large-scale landforms as well — that is, rivers cut faster into mountains that receive heavier precipitation. It's thought that if rainfall patterns influence how rivers cut into rock, over time, the cumulative erosion and its effects on rock deformation ...

The certification of seafood as "sustainable" by the nonprofit Marine Stewardship Council is too lenient and discretionary, a study by a consortium of researchers has found. "When consumers want sustainable fish there are two options to meet the demand: fisheries can become more sustainable or the definition of sustainable can be watered down to be practically meaningless—with MSC seafood, the definition has been repeatedly watered down," said Jennifer Jacquet, a clinical assistant professor in New York University's Environmental Studies Program and one of 11 authors ...

New research reveals that advanced fibrosis is a significant predictor of mortality in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), largely brought about by cardiovascular causes. NAFLD alone was not associated with increased mortality according to findings published in the April issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. With super-sized portions, sugary soft drinks and physical inactivity, obesity is on the rise and showing no sign of slowing. Studies report that the prevalence of obesity has doubled in the ...

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated the mechanism of action of gossypin, a naturally-occurring substance found in fruits and vegetables, as a treatment for melanoma, which causes the majority of deaths from skin cancer. "We identified gossypin as a novel agent with dual inhibitory activity towards two common mutations that are the ideal targets for melanoma treatment," said Texas Biomed's Hareesh Nair, Ph.D. At the moment, there is no single therapeutic agent or combination regimen available to treat all melanomas, of which about 76,000 new cases are diagnosed ...

Virginia Tech scientists have provided new evidence that biofilms — bacteria that adhere to surfaces and build protective coatings — are at work in the survival of the human pathogen Salmonella. One out of every six Americans becomes ill from eating contaminated food each year, with over a million illnesses caused by Salmonella bacteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Finding out what makes Salmonella resistant to antibacterial measures could help curb outbreaks. Researchers affiliated with the Fralin Life Science Institute discovered that ...

A recent study has shown that bottom-dwelling goosefish, also known as monkfish, prey on dovekies, a small Arctic seabird and the smallest member of the puffin family. To understand how this deep-water fish finds a shallow-feeding bird in offshore waters, researchers looked at when, where, and how these animals were most likely to be in the same place at the same time. Remains of fourteen dovekie were recovered from the stomachs of 14 goosefish caught during the winters between 2007 and 2010. The goosefish were captured in gillnets deployed at depths between 275 and 495 ...

A simple in-home training program for caregivers can give children of AIDS patients a better shot at prosperity by improving their early-childhood development, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher. Michael Boivin, MSU associate professor in the departments of Psychiatry, and of Neurology and Ophthalmology, conducted the research in Uganda, where about one million children have lost at least one parent to AIDS -- an unlucky club that adds another member every 14 seconds. With deceased or gravely ill parents who often work long hours in ...

BOSTON (April 10, 2013) – The ongoing dance between a virus and its host distinctly shapes how the virus evolves. While human adenoviruses typically cause mild infections, recent reports have described newly characterized adenoviruses that can cause severe, sometime fatal, human infections. Researchers from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School, Provincial Laboratory for Public Health, School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center report a systems ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 10, 2013—New classes of drugs that can silence specific genes, such as small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), offer great therapeutic potential. But the specific delivery of siRNAs to target cells to exert their effects remains a significant challenge. A novel nanoparticle-based approach that enables more efficient delivery of siRNA drugs is presented in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available on the Nucleic Acid Therapeutics website (http://www.liebertpub.com/nat). Compared ...

It may seem counter-intuitive to take health advice from a marketing professor, but when it comes to analyzing consumer data and its relationship to managing health issues such as diabetes, one University of Alberta researcher may have the right prescription. In a paper recently published in the Journal of Marketing, Alberta School of Business professor Yu Ma uncovered information that has implications for health-care professionals, marketers and consumers alike. He says the data on consumer spending contain streams of information showing that decisions consumers make ...

Topological insulators (TIs) are an exciting new type of material that on their surface carry electric current, but within their bulk, act as insulators. Since the discovery of TIs about a decade ago, their unique characteristics (which point to potential applications in quantum computing) have been explored theoretically, and in the last five years, experimentally. But where in theory, the bulk of TIs carry no current, in the laboratory, impurities and disorder in real materials means the bulk is, in fact, conductive. This has proven an obstacle to experimentation with ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Many factors — including climate change, overfishing or loss of food supply — can push a wild animal population to the brink of collapse. Ecologists have long sought ways to measure the risk of such a collapse, which could help wildlife and fishery managers take steps to protect endangered populations. Last year, MIT physicists demonstrated that they could measure a population's risk of collapse by monitoring how fast it recovers from small disturbances, such as a food shortage or overcrowding. However, this strategy would likely require many years of ...

Functional loss of limb control in individuals with spinal cord injury or stroke can be caused by interruption of the neural pathways between brain and spinal cord, although the neural circuits located above and below the lesion remain functional. An artificial neural connection that bridges the lost pathway and connects brain to spinal circuits has potential to ameliorate the functional loss. Yukio Nishimura, Associate Professor of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan, and Eberhard Fetz, Professor and Steve Perlmuter, Research Associate Professor at ...

A novel study shows women who undergo surgical treatment for endometriosis have a lower risk of developing ovarian cancer. According to results published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, a journal of the Nordic Federation of Societies of Obstetrics and Gynecology, hormonal treatments for endometriosis did not lower ovarian cancer risk. Endometriosis is a common, and often painful, gynecological disease where tissue normally found inside the uterus, grows elsewhere in the body. According to the World Health Organization this estrogen-dependent disease ...

A comprehensive marine biodiversity observation network could be established with modest funding within 5 years, according to an expert assessment published in the May 2013 issue of BioScience. Such a network would fill major gaps in scientists' understanding of the global distribution of marine organisms, which are under unprecedented threat from climate change, pollution, habitat destruction, and overfishing. The network would help resolve conflicts over ocean management and identify threats such as invasions by exotic species before they became obvious, according to ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- With ocean life facing unprecedented threat from climate change, overfishing, pollution, invasive species and habitat destruction, a University of Florida researcher is helping coordinate national efforts to monitor marine biodiversity. Humans depend on the ocean for food, medicine, transportation and recreation, yet little is known about how these vast ecosystems spanning 70 percent of the Earth's surface are functioning and changing. Following a workshop sponsored by U.S. federal agencies in 2010, researchers at eight institutions have proposed ...