A unique housing arrangement between a specific group of tree species and a carbo-loading bacteria may determine how well tropical forests can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to a Princeton University-based study. The findings suggest that the role of tropical forests in offsetting the atmospheric buildup of carbon from fossil fuels depends on tree diversity, particularly in forests recovering from exploitation. Tropical forests thrive on natural nitrogen fertilizer pumped into the soil by trees in the legume family, a diverse group that includes ...

STANFORD, Calif. — A pair of studies by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine has identified a molecular pathway — a series of interaction among proteins — involved in the development of diabetes. Furthermore, they have found that a drug already approved for use in humans can regulate the pathway. The findings will be published online Sept. 15 in two articles in Nature Medicine. The studies, done in mice, identify a previously unexpected link between a low-oxygen condition called hypoxia and the ability of cells in the liver to respond to insulin. ...

The plate tectonic theory has been primarily developed in three stages. (1) From continental drift and seafloor spreading to oceanic subduction, laying a physical foundation of the plate tectonic theory. This was achieved by the recognitions that continents would be assembled to build a supercontinent Pangea with subsequent breakup to yield the present configuration, lithospheric plates buoyantly move on the asthenospheric mantle, and oceanic crust is subducted along trenches into the mantle. (2) From oceanic subduction to continental subduction and collision orogeny, with ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- As public-health officials continue to fight malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers are trying to predict how climate change will impact the disease, which infected an estimated 219 million people in 2010 and is the fifth leading cause of death worldwide among children under age 5. But projections of future malaria infection have been hampered by wide variation in rainfall predictions for the region and lack of a malaria-transmission model that adequately describes the effects of local rainfall on mosquitoes, which breed and mature in ephemeral pools ...

Phobias — whether it's fear of spiders, clowns, or small spaces — are common and can be difficult to treat. New research suggests that watching someone else safely interact with the supposedly harmful object can help to extinguish these conditioned fear responses, and prevent them from resurfacing later on. The research, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicates that this type of vicarious social learning may be more effective than direct personal experience in extinguishing fear responses. "Information about ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (September 13, 2013) – Prescribing of strong opioid medications for non-cancer pain in the United States has nearly doubled over the past decade, reports a study in the October issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. At the same time, prescribing of non-opioid pain relievers has been stable or declined, according to the new research by Dr G. Caleb Alexander of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues. Dr Alexander comments, "There is an epidemic of prescription ...

Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) and Keshan disease (KD) are major endemic diseases in China. Postgraduate Xi Wang et al., under the guidance of Professor Xiong Guo from the Institute of Endemic Diseases of the Faculty of Public Health, Medicine College of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Key Laboratory of Environment and Gene Related Diseases in Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Trace Elements and Endemic Diseases of Health Ministry, set out to tackle these two endemic diseases. After several years of innovative research, they have made significant progress in determining the ...

Augusta, Ga. – Dr. David Pollock has a simple message for fellow hypertension researchers: think endothelin. In a country where better than 30 percent of adults have high blood pressure and 50-75 percent of those have salt-sensitive hypertension, he believes the powerful endothelin system, which helps the body eliminate salt, should not be essentially ignored. However, the research and clinical world focus on suppressing a better-known system, which prompts the body to hold onto salt, said Pollock, Chief of the Section of Experimental Medicine at the Medical College ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Getting treatment for a common sleep problem may do more than help you sleep better – it may help you look better over the long term, too, according to a new research study from the University of Michigan Health System and Michigan Technological University. The findings aren't just about "looking sleepy" after a late night, or being bright-eyed after a good night's rest. It's the first time researchers have shown specific improvement in facial appearance after at-home treatment for sleep apnea, a condition marked by snoring and breathing interruptions. ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that people with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are perceived to appear more alert, more youthful and more attractive after at least two months of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy. "This study showed that independent human raters – both medical personnel and members of the community – can perceive improved alertness, attractiveness, and youthfulness in the appearance of sleepy patients with obstructive sleep apnea, after they have been compliant with use of CPAP at home," said lead author and principal investigator Ronald ...

Eastern Canada is now expecting some winds and rain from Tropical Depression Gabrielle as it transfers its energy to a cold front. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Gabrielle that showed some very cold cloud top temperatures and strong thunderstorms around its center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument called AIRS that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Depression Gabrielle on Sept. 13 at 06:29 UTC/2:29 a.m. EDT. The AIRS image showed a circular area of very high, cold cloud top temperatures surrounding ...

Fish skin is unique in that it lacks keratin, the fibrous protein found in mammalian skin that provides a barrier against the environment. Instead, the epithelial cells of fish skin are in direct contact with the immediate environment: water. Similarly, the epithelial cells that line the gastrointestinal tract are also in direct contact with their immediate milieu. "I like to think of fish as an open gut swimming," said J. Oriol Sunyer, a professor in the the Department of Pathobiology of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine. Building on this ...

NASA and NOAA satellites have been tracking the progression of low pressure System 93L through the Caribbean Sea and into the southwestern Gulf of Mexico over a week's time, and it became Tropical Storm Ingrid mid-day on Sept. 13. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured an image of Ingrid's center over the Bay of Campeche. NOAA's GOES-East satellite sits in a fixed orbit and covers weather over the eastern U.S. and Atlantic Ocean, providing imagery continuously. NASA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created an image of Tropical Storm ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Before there was life on Earth, there were molecules. A primordial soup. At some point a few specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication, scientists agree, kick-started a biochemical process that would lead to the first organisms. But exactly how that happened — how those molecules began replicating — has been one of science's enduring mysteries. Now, research from UNC School of Medicine biochemist Charles Carter, PhD, appearing in the September 13 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers an intriguing new view on how ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Eden Steven, a physicist at Florida State University's MagLab facility, discovered that simple methods can result in surprising and environmentally friendly high-tech outcomes during his experiments with spider silk and carbon nanotubes, the results of which are now published in the online research journal Nature Communications. "If we understand basic science and how nature works, all we need to do is find a way to harness it," Steven said. "If we can find a smart way to harness it, then we can use it to create a new, cleaner technology." Steven ...

Friday the thirteenth is known for being unlucky and residents along Mexico's eastern and western coast are experiencing that feeling as a result of newborn Tropical Depression 13E in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and newborn Tropical Storm Ingrid in the Gulf of Mexico. Both storms formed during the morning of Sept. 13. Both storms were captured on one infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite, and both storms have the potential to drop as much as 20 inches of rain. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument called AIRS that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured ...

MADISON — In synthetic chemistry, making the best possible use of the needed ingredients is key to optimizing high-quality production at the lowest possible cost. The element rhodium is a powerful catalyst — a driver of chemical reactions — but is also one of the rarest and most expensive. In addition to its common use in vehicle catalytic converters, rhodium is also used in combination with other metals to efficiently drive a wide range of useful chemical reactions. Chemists' efforts to study the inner workings of dirhodium metal complex reactions have been hindered ...

PHILADELPHIA — The reasons behind why it often takes people several weeks to feel the effect of newly prescribed antidepressants remains somewhat of a mystery – and likely, a frustration to both patients and physicians. Julie Blendy, PhD, professor of Pharmacology, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania; Brigitta Gunderson, PhD, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Blendy lab, and colleagues, have been working to find out why and if there is anything that can be done to shorten the time in which antidepressants kick in. "Our goal is to find ways ...

The cyclic wobble of the Earth on its axis controls the production of a nutrient essential to the health of the ocean, according to a new study in the journal Nature. The discovery of factors that control this nutrient, known as "fixed" nitrogen, gives researchers insight into how the ocean regulates its own life-support system, which in turn affects the Earth's climate and the size of marine fisheries. Researchers from Princeton University and the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) report that during the past 160,000 years nitrogen fixation rose and fell in ...

For five years, a scientific expedition tried reaching Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in a remote, wind-ridden corner of Antarctica. The obstacles to get to the ice shelf were extreme, but the science goal was simple: to measure how fast the sea was melting the 37-mile long ice tongue from underneath by drilling through the ice shelf. The international team, led by NASA's emeritus glaciologist Robert Bindschadler and funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, had to abort their mission in 2007 due to logistical challenges after becoming the first people to ever ...

La Jolla, CA----In the past few years, as imaging tools and techniques have improved, scientists have been working tirelessly to build a detailed map of neural connections in the human brain---- with the ultimate hope of understanding how the mind works. But determining how cells in the brain are physically connected is only the first clue for decoding our perceptions and behaviors. We also need to know the precise routes that information takes in the brain in a given context. Now, publishing their results September 8 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers at ...

Dr. Jixiang Ren and team from the Affiliated Hospital to Changchun University of Chinese Medicine proposed a therapeutic principle for Poxue Huayu and Tianjing Busui (i.e., breaking blood stasis, replenishing essence). The researchers established cerebral hemorrhage rat models which were intragastrically administered 5, 10, 20 g/kg Poxue Huayu and Tianjing Busui Decoction, supplemented with Hirudo, raw rhubarb, raw Pollen Typhae, gadfly, Fructrs Trichosanthis, Radix Notoginseng, Rhizoma Acori Talarinowii, and glue of tortoise plastron, once a day, for 14 consecutive days. ...

Clinical literature and animal experiments have shown that prenatal alcohol exposure in utero, especially during the early stages of pregnancy, can cause fetal alcohol syndrome. The pharmacological and toxicological mechanisms of ethanol are considered to be related to the effects of ceramide. As an important signal transduction molecule, ceramide participates in a variety of cellular transduction pathways and can modulate cell cycle, cellular differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis. A recent study, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 23, 2013), ...

Autophagy is a highly conserved process through the evolution of species, from eukaryotic microorganisms to humans. Bulky cytoplasmic contents, organisms (bacteria, viruses) and soluble proteins are degraded by autophagy and reused for the synthesis of new molecules. This process is generally induced by a change of environmental conditions, such as nutrient deprivation, oxidative stress and ultraviolet radiation. However, it has also been associated with normal procedures like development, differentiation and defence against pathogens. In spite of offering protection to ...

As health care reform takes shape in the U.S., vast amounts of attention have been given to the fact that more and more people with pre-existing illnesses will have access to professional care to relieve their physical and emotional suffering. Far less public attention has been given to the nurses and physicians who provide that care, and the authors of a recent study say there is evidence that many already experience serious "moral distress" that may interfere with their own health and their efforts on behalf of seriously ill and dying patients. "Studies and case histories ...