Toronto, CANADA – Non-musicians who speak tonal languages may have a better ear for learning musical notes, according to Canadian researchers. Tonal languages, found mainly in Asia, Africa and South America, have an abundance of high and low pitch patterns as part of speech. In these languages, differences in pitch can alter the meaning of a word. Vietnamese, for example, has eleven different vowel sounds and six different tones. Cantonese also has an intricate six-tone system, while English has no tones. Researchers at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research ...

### About the University of Massachusetts Medical School The University of Massachusetts Medical School, one of the fastest growing academic health centers in the country, has built a reputation as a world-class research institution, consistently producing noteworthy advances in clinical and basic research. The Medical School attracts more than $250 million in research funding annually, 80 percent of which comes from federal funding sources. The mission of the Medical School is to advance the health and well-being of the people of the commonwealth and the world through ...

LAFAYETTE - Tiny sea creatures no bigger than a thumbtack are being credited for playing a key role in helping provide healthy habitats for many kinds of seafood, according to a new study by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and U.S. Geological Survey. The little crustacean "grazers," some resembling tiny shrimp, are critical in protecting seagrasses from overgrowth by algae, helping keep these aquatic havens healthy for native and economically important species. Crustaceans are tiny to very large shelled animals that include crab, shrimp, and lobster. The ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Despite the unimaginable energy produced during large impacts on the Moon, those impacts may not wipe the mineralogical slate clean, according to new research led by Brown University geoscientists. The researchers have discovered a rock body with a distinct mineralogy snaking for 18 miles across the floor of Copernicus crater, a 60-mile-wide hole on the Moon's near side. The sinuous feature appears to bear the mineralogical signature of rocks that were present before the impact that made the crater. The deposit is interesting because ...

When surveying in the Upper Basin of the Grand Canyon National Park in April 2011, University of Cincinnati faculty and students discovered a previously unknown 17-room subterranean pueblo that likely dates back to the 12th century. For UC anthropology graduate student Ryan Washam, that find – in which he took part – helped spark his current research in how federal agencies are conducting archaeological and environmental protection and preservation efforts in a time of tight budgets. Washam, 23, of Florence, Ky., will present a case study of protection and preservation ...

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – Millions of adults are exposed to traumatic events each year. Shortly after exposure many experience symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) such as flashbacks, emotional numbing and difficulty sleeping. Despite this high rate of exposure, little is known about the effectiveness of treatments aimed at preventing and relieving posttraumatic stress symptoms that adults may experience after such events, according to researchers at the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center. The article, published online today by the American Journal ...

MADISON — As the shapes of galaxies go, the spiral disk — with its characteristic pinwheel profile — is by far the most pedestrian. Our own Milky Way, astronomers believe, is a spiral. Our solar system and Earth reside somewhere near one of its filamentous, swept-back arms. And nearly 70 percent of the galaxies closest to the Milky Way are spirals, suggesting they have taken the most ordinary of galactic forms in a universe with billions of galaxies. But despite their common morphology, how galaxies like ours get and maintain their characteristic arms has proved to ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 2, 2013—The seizures that affect people with temporal-lobe epilepsy usually start in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. But they are often able to involve other areas outside the temporal lobe, propagating via anatomically and functionally connected networks in the brain. New research findings that link decreased brain cell concentration to altered functional connectivity in temporal-lobe epilepsy are reported in an article in Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article ...

Our emotional responses to the stresses of daily life may predict our long-term mental health, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychological scientist Susan Charles of the University of California, Irvine and colleagues conducted the study in order to answer a long-standing question: Do daily emotional experiences add up to make the straw that breaks the camel's back, or do these experiences make us stronger and provide an inoculation against later distress? Using data from two national ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Everyday, news reports detail the impact of the deficiencies in the nation's mental health care services. Even more startling, a survey from the University of Michigan reveals that many adults across the U.S. believe children and teens have extremely limited or no access to appropriate mental health care services. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation commissioned the National Voices Project to facilitate a five year study to gauge opportunities available for children and teens at the local level in communities across the U.S. Officials at the National Voices ...

PITTSBURGH—Beekeepers and researchers nationally are reporting growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides may be killing off bumblebees. Now, research at the University of Pittsburgh points toward another potential cause: metal pollution from aluminum and nickel. Published in the journal Environmental Pollution, the Pitt study finds that bumblebees are at risk of ingesting toxic amounts of metals like aluminum and nickel found in flowers growing in soil that has been contaminated by exhaust from vehicles, industrial machinery, and farming equipment. The ...

Research from the University of Cincinnati shows that perhaps the ancient Puebloans weren't as into the maize craze as once thought. Nikki Berkebile, a graduate student in anthropology in UC's McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, has been studying the subsistence habits of Puebloans, or Anasazi, who lived on the southern rim of the Grand Canyon in the late 11th century. Traditional ethnographic literature indicates these ancient American Indians were heavily dependent on maize as a food source, but Berkebile isn't so sure about that. "I'm trying to assess sustainable ...

CHICAGO --- Lifetime risk for heart failure is similar for blacks and whites and higher than expected for both groups -- ranging from 20 to 45 percent -- according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study. "This is a bad news scenario for both race groups," said Northwestern Medicine researcher Mark Huffman, M.D., the first author of the study. "With lifetime risks this high, heart failure prevention is paramount for all Americans." Huffman is an assistant professor in preventive medicine and medicine-cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and ...

The University of Cincinnati's mastery of ancient Maya mysteries continues with new research from professor of biological sciences David Lentz. UC faculty have been involved in multiple research projects concerning ancient Maya culture for more than a decade. This latest Maya study from Lentz focuses on Cerén, a farming village that was smothered under several meters of volcanic ash in the late sixth century. Lentz will present his research, "The Lost World of the Zapotitan Valley: Cerén and its Paleoecological Context," at the 78th annual meeting of the Society for ...

ORLANDO, Fla., April 2, 2013 – Many recent studies have suggested that obesity is associated with chronic inflammation in fat tissues. Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have discovered that an imbalance between an enzyme called neutrophil elastase and its inhibitor causes inflammation, obesity, insulin resistance, and fatty liver disease. This enzyme is produced by white blood cells called neutrophils, which play an important role in the body's immune defense against bacteria. The researchers found that obese humans and mice have ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A team of UC Davis scientists has found that a product resulting from a metabolized omega-3 fatty acid helps combat cancer by cutting off the supply of oxygen and nutrients that fuel tumor growth and spread of the disease. The scientists report their discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The groundbreaking study was a collaboration among multiple UC Davis laboratories and Harvard University. The metabolite is epoxy docosapentaenoic acid (EDP), an endogenous compound produced by the human body from the omega-3 ...

When we imagine drama playing out between predators and prey, most of us picture stealthy lions and restless gazelle, or a sharp-taloned hawk latched on to an unlucky squirrel. But Ben Baiser, a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Forest and lead author of a new study in Oikos, thinks on a more local scale. His inter-species drama plays out in the humble bogs and fens of eastern North America, home to the carnivorous pitcher plant, Sarracenia purpurea. "It's shocking, the complex world you can find inside one little pitcher plant," says Baiser. A pitcher plant's work ...

One often ignored consequence of global climate change is that the Northern Hemisphere is becoming warmer than the Southern Hemisphere, which could significantly alter tropical precipitation patterns, according to a new study by climatologists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, Seattle. Such a shift could increase or decrease seasonal rainfall in areas such as the Amazon, sub-Saharan Africa or East Asia, leaving some areas wetter and some drier than today. "A key finding is a tendency to shift tropical rainfall northward, ...

Irvine, Calif., April 2, 2013 – Our emotional responses to the stresses of daily life may predict our long-term mental health, according to a new study led by a UC Irvine psychologist. The research, which appears online in the journal Psychological Science, suggests that maintaining emotional balance is crucial to avoiding severe mental health problems down the road. Susan Charles, UC Irvine professor of psychology & social behavior, and her colleagues conducted the study in order to answer a long-standing question: Do everyday irritations add up to make the straw that ...

A team of researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a highly scalable computer code that promises to dramatically cut both research times and energy costs in simulating seismic hazards throughout California and elsewhere. The team, led by Yifeng Cui, a computational scientist at SDSC, developed the scalable GPU (graphical processing units) accelerated code for use in earthquake engineering and disaster management through regional earthquake ...

AMHERST, Mass. – New recommendations by a National Research Council (NRC) expert panel on green and sustainable building performance could lead to a revolution in building science by creating the first large building performance database, says panel member Paul Fisette, a nationally recognized sustainable building expert at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Fisette and six other NRC panel members were asked to consider whether nearly 500,000 structures owned by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) worldwide are being operated as sustainably and as efficiently ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A study to examine driver behavior in permitted left turns has identified what researchers call an "alarming" level of risk to pedestrians crossing the street – about 4-9 percent of the time, drivers don't even bother to look and see if there are people in the way. As opposed to a "protected" left turn, in which a solid green arrow gives a driver the complete right of way in a left-turn lane, a "permitted" left turn is often allowed by a confusing hodgepodge of signals, and drivers may have to pick their way through narrow windows of oncoming traffic. This ...

Targeting cholesterol metabolism in the eye might help prevent a severe form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), one of the most common causes of blindness in older Americans, according to indications in a study in mice, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Cholesterol build-up in arteries and veins, or atherosclerosis, occurs as a natural consequence of aging. Likewise, in AMD, cholesterol is known to accumulate in the eye, within deposits called drusen. The study, published in Cell Metabolism, shows that large cells called macrophages ...

Although bladder cancer is the sixth most common form of cancer in the U.S. and the most expensive to treat, the basic method that doctors use to treat it hasn't changed much in more than 70 years. An interdisciplinary collaboration of engineers and doctors at Vanderbilt and Columbia Universities intends to change that situation dramatically. Headed by Nabil Simaan, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt, the team has developed a prototype telerobotic platform designed to be inserted through natural orifices – in this case the urethra – that can provide ...

PHILADELPHIA — Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors may be a novel treatment strategy for patients with cancer that has become resistant to the commonly used chemotherapy drug cisplatin, according to data from a preclinical study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Cisplatin is one of the most widely used conventional, anticancer chemotherapy drugs," said Guido Kroemer, M.D., Ph.D., professor at University Paris Descartes in Paris, France. "Unfortunately, most patients respond only transiently to cisplatin therapy ...