Language is a uniquely human ability. The average person's vocabulary consists of about thirty thousand words, although there are individual differences in the ability to learn a new language. It has long been believed that language acquisition depends on the integration of the information between motor and auditory representation of words in the brain, but the neural mechanisms that lie behind learning new words remained unclear. Now, a study made by researchers from the group of Cognition and Brain Plasticity at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) ...

(Boston) - In a Special Report in the current issue of Circulation, Boston Medical Center cardiothoracic surgeon Harold Lazar, MD, has found that off-pump coronary artery bypass graft (OPCAB) surgery has failed to show any significant improvement in short-term morbidity or mortality as compared to the traditional on-pump coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. He recommends that the technique be abandoned, unless surgeons who perform off-pump surgery can show that their own results are as good as results reported with the traditional on-pump surgery. During off-pump ...

The Yarlung-Tsangpo River in southern Asia drops rapidly through the Himalaya Mountains on its way to the Bay of Bengal, losing about 7,000 feet of elevation through the precipitously steep Tsangpo Gorge. For the first time, scientists have direct geochemical evidence that the 150-mile long gorge, possibly the world's deepest, was the conduit by which megafloods from glacial lakes, perhaps half the volume of Lake Erie, drained suddenly and catastrophically through the Himalayas when their ice dams failed at times during the last 2 million years. "You would expect that ...

HOUSTON – (July 22, 2013) – Rice University nanotechnology researchers have unveiled a solar-powered sterilization system that could be a boon for more than 2.5 billion people who lack adequate sanitation. The "solar steam" sterilization system uses nanomaterials to convert as much as 80 percent of the energy in sunlight into germ-killing heat. The technology is described online in a July 8 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. In the paper, researchers from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) show two ways that solar steam ...

Forest fires are burning north and east of Russia's Irkutsk Oblast. The Irkutsk Oblast is located in southeastern Siberia in the basins of Angara, Lena, and Nizhnyaya Tunguska Rivers. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the area and captured an image showing multiple forest fires and smoke plumes. Some of the places affected by the smoke include Cokhchuolu, Ust'ye-Chony, Skysykatakh, and Chernyshevskiy along the Vilyuy River. These appear to be recreational areas. South of the Vilyuy River is the town of Mirny. It is known for having the world's largest diamond mine. ...

Forest fires continue to plague the hot, dry western part of the United States this summer. In Idaho, several fires were spotted by NASA's Aqua satellite on July 20, 2013. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. The Lodgepole Fire was detected at noon on Saturday, July 20. Local fire resources were dispatched to the scene where aggressive fire suppression efforts were put into place. The fire is currently burning in lodge pole pine and dispersed Douglas fir. Currently 650 acres have burned and the cause of this fire is under investigation. The ...

In Indonesia, land-clearing blazes dot the countryside. Fires for clearing land have been outlowed for all but the smallest landowners, but the "slash-and-burn" practice still persists despite cloaking Southeast Asia in toxic pollution for weeks. Better and more available satellite technology is helping identify culprits behind land-clearing blazes in Indonesia. Unprecedented levels of air pollution in Singapore and Malaysia in June led to respiratory illnesses, school closings, and grounded aircraft. This year it was so bad that in some affected areas there was a 100 ...

Hamilton, ON (July 22, 2013) – Financial incentives for Ontario surgeons are likely a key factor driving greater use of laparoscopic colon cancer surgery, says a study led by a McMaster University surgeon. The research, published online by the Annals of Surgical Oncology, found that between 2002 and 2009 there was an increase in laparoscopic versus traditional open techniques for colon and rectal cancer surgery. These increases were associated with only minimal decreases in how long patients stayed in hospital after surgery and no changes in the survival of patients. ...

We know that breastfeeding has a positive impact on child development and health —including protection against illness. Now researchers from Tel Aviv University have shown that breastfeeding could also help protect against Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the most commonly diagnosed neurobehavioral disorder in children and adolescents. Seeking to determine if the development of ADHD was associated with lower rates of breastfeeding, Dr. Aviva Mimouni-Bloch, of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Head of the Child Neurodevelopmental ...

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a new chemical reaction that has the potential to lower the cost and streamline the manufacture of compounds ranging from agricultural chemicals to pharmaceutical drugs. The reaction resolves a long-standing challenge in organic chemistry in creating phenolic compounds from aromatic hydrocarbons quickly and cheaply. Phenolic compounds, or phenols, are broadly used as disinfectants, fungicides and drugs to treat many ailments such as Parkinson's disease. Creating a phenol seems deceptively simple. All it ...

A recent study published in the July issue of the Journal of Immunology helps explain why some humans contract bacterial super-infections like pneumonia with influenza. The research was led by Le Bonheur Pediatrician-in-Chief Jon McCullers, MD – an infectious disease specialist who is also chair of the Department of Pediatrics for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and adjunct faculty at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. "It's been known that the influenza virus does something to suppress host immune function, which can facilitate development of deadly ...

The Rancho Fire started 2 miles north of Lebec, CA on July 19, 2013 at approximately noon. While the fire originally started on Kern County jurisdiction, by the evening, it had burned into Los Padres National Forest. The fire has burned 722 acres and is 92% contained. Containment of the fire is expected on July 24, 2013. There are currently 337 resources assigned to the Rancho Fire, including 14 crews, 10 engines, 1 water tender and 2 helicopters. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution ...

A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has designed new compounds that mimic those naturally used by the body to regulate blood pressure. The most promising of them may literally be the key to controlling hypertension, switching off the signaling pathways that lead to the deadly condition. Published online this month in Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, the scientists studied the properties of the peptide called catestatin that binds nicotinic acetylcholine receptors found in the nervous system, and developed a pharmacophore model of its active centers. ...

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Want to go to graduate school? Your weight could determine whether or not you receive an offer of admission. The study by Bowling Green State University Ph.D. candidates Jacob Burmeister and Allison Kiefner; Dr. Dara Musher-Eizenman, a professor of developmental psychology; and Dr. Robert Carels, an associate professor of clinical psychology, appeared in the May edition of the journal Obesity. "Weight Bias in Graduate School Admissions" found that applicants with a high body mass index (BMI) were less likely to be offered admission after an in-person ...

LA JOLLA - Dennis O'Leary of the Salk Institute was the first scientist to show that the basic functional architecture of the cortex, the largest part of the human brain, was genetically determined during development. But as it so often does in science, answering one question opened up many others. O'Leary wondered what if the layout of the cortex wasn't fixed? What would happen if it were changed? In the August issue of Nature Neuroscience, O'Leary, holder of the Vincent J. Coates Chair of Molecular Neurobiology at Salk, and Andreas Zembrzycki, a postdoctoral researcher ...

TORONTO, ON – Improving vaccination rates against the human papillomavirus (HPV) in boys is key to protecting both men and women, says new research from University of Toronto Professor Peter A. Newman from the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. HPV has been linked to anal, penile and certain types of throat cancers in men. Since the virus is also responsible for various cancers in women, vaccinating boys aged 11 to 21 will play a crucial role in reducing cancer rates across the sexes. "HPV is the single most common sexually transmitted infection," says Newman, ...

A research team led by scientists from the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco has identified circuitry in the brain that drives compulsive drinking in rats, and likely plays a similar role in humans. The scientists found they could reduce compulsive drinking in rats by inhibiting key neural pathways that run between the prefrontal cortex, which is involved with higher functions such as critical thinking and risk assessment, and the nucleus accumbens, a critical area for reward and motivation. The authors noted ...

Climate data can help predict some crop failures several months before harvest, according to a new study from an international team, including a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Scientists found that in about one-third of global cropland, temperature and soil moisture have strong relationships to the yield of wheat and rice at harvest. For those two key crops, a computer model could predict crop failures three months in advance for about 20 percent of global cropland, according to the study, published July 21 in Nature Climate ...

In a twist on "survival of the fittest," researchers have discovered that evolution is driven not by a single beneficial mutation but rather by a group of mutations, including ones called "genetic hitchhikers" that are simply along for the ride. These hitchhikers are mutations that do not appear to have a role in contributing to an organism's fitness and therefore its evolution, yet may play an important role down the road. Researchers from Princeton University found in a study of 1,000 generations of adaptation in 40 yeast populations that about five to seven specific ...

Complications of diabetes, hypertension, asthma, and other preventable conditions are more likely to land former prisoners in the hospital, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the July 22 online issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. According to the study, about one in 70 former inmates are hospitalized for an acute condition within seven days of release, and one in 12 by 90 days, a rate much higher than the general population. "The period immediately after release has a high risk of an event requiring hospitalization, indicating a potential target for improving ...

Washington, DC—A team of researchers has for the first time mapped the above ground carbon density of an entire country in high fidelity. They integrated field data with satellite imagery and high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data to map the vegetation and to quantify carbon stocks throughout the Republic of Panama. The results are the first maps that report carbon stocks locally in areas as small as a hectare (2.5 acres) and yet cover millions of hectares in a short time. The system has the lowest demonstrated uncertainty of any carbon-counting ...

PHILADELPHIA - Overturning a commonly-held belief that cities are inherently more dangerous than suburban and rural communities, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found that risk of death from injuries is lowest on average in urban counties compared to suburban and rural counties across the U.S. The new study, which appears online ahead of print in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, found that for the entire population, as well as for most age subgroups, the top three ...

WASHINGTON — Large cities in the U.S. are significantly safer than their rural counterparts, with the risk of injury death more than 20 percent higher in the country. A study to be published online tomorrow in Annals of Emergency Medicine upends a common perception that urban areas are more dangerous than small towns ("Safety in Numbers: Are Major Cities the Safest Places in the U.S.?"). "Cars, guns and drugs are the unholy trinity causing the majority of injury deaths in the U.S.," said lead study author Sage Myers, MD, MSCE, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, ...

PerFluoroAlkyl Substances (PFASs) and precursor compounds have been used in a wide variety of commercial and industrial products over the past six decades. Applications include water and oil repellent coatings, e.g. for textiles, paper products, carpets and food packaging, pharmaceuticals and surfactants in cleaning products and fire-fighting foams. PFASs are highly resistant to chemical, thermal and biological degradation. PFASs and their precursor compounds have shown a dramatic increase and dispersal around the world over the past four decades. An increasing amount ...

Expert ballet dancers seem to glide effortlessly across the stage, but learning the steps is both physically and mentally demanding. New research suggests that dance marking — loosely practicing a routine by "going through the motions" — may improve the quality of dance performance by reducing the mental strain needed to perfect the movements. The new findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that marking may alleviate the conflict between the cognitive and physical aspects of dance practice, allowing ...