Picture two residential beach communities on the New Jersey shore: Bay Head and Mantoloking, which sit side-by-side in Ocean County on a narrow barrier island that separates the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay. Before Hurricane Sandy landed on Oct. 29, 2012, a motorist traveling north on Ocean Avenue would seamlessly travel through Mantoloking into Bay Head, noticing few changes in residential development, dunes, beaches, and shoreline. The difference was hidden under the sand. A forgotten, 1,260-meter seawall buried beneath the beach helped Bay Head weather Sandy's ...

Toronto -- Scientists from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have discovered rare genetic changes that may be responsible for the onset of schizophrenia. Several of these same genetic lesions had previously been found to have causal links to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This discovery gives new support to the notion that multiple rare genetic changes may contribute to schizophrenia and other brain disorders. This discovery also suggests that clinical DNA (genome-wide microarray) testing may be useful in demystifying one of the most complex and stigmatized ...

Dogs can learn, retain and replay actions taught by humans after a short delay. According to a new study by Claudia Fugazza and Adám Miklósi, from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, this deferred imitation provides the first evidence of dogs' cognitive ability to both encode and recall actions. The research is published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. Domestic dogs are particularly keen on relying on human communication cues. They learn by observing humans and are easily influenced by humans in learning situations. Living in human social groups may have favored ...

Research published in the journal Science (5th July 2013) shows that allowing land use to be determined purely by agricultural markets results in considerable financial and environmental costs to the public. While the research has looked specifically at the UK, the same methods could be applied to any area of the world with similar results for many countries. Land use in most of Europe is dominated by agriculture. Nearly half the total annual value of EU agriculture is based on public financial support surpassing 70%, 40% and 30% in the case of Ireland, UK and Spain, respectively ...

After nearly 25 years of searching, three scientists have finally found Waldo. No, not the loveable bespectacled character in children's picture books, but rather an unusual clam discovered off the coast of California and British Columbia. Paul Valentich-Scott from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, and Diarmaid Ó Foighil from the University of Michigan, Museum of Zoology first began discussing this unusual clam back in 1989. Valentich-Scott discovered his strange specimens off the coast of Santa Barbara and Morro Bay, California, while Ó Foighil uncovered his ...

Taking moderate-intensity exercise three times a week during the second and third trimester of pregnancy halves the risk of having a high birth weight newborn (babies with macrosomia, that is, weighing over 4 kilos) and, therefore, the risk of needing a caesarean delivery. These findings come from research led by Rubén Barakat of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Alejandro Lucía of the European University of Madrid, and Jonatan Ruiz of the University of Granada. Together with Sports Science graduates, they ran a series of programmed training sessions for a sample ...

The real-life CIA copied outlandish gadgets from Goldfinger and From Russia With Love, according to a University of Warwick analysis of declassified letters and interviews revealing the bond between Ian Fleming and Allen Dulles. However the relationship between the former CIA director and the spy thriller writer went far deeper than raiding the novels for technological inspiration. Through Dulles, the agency actively leaned on the British author to paint it in more positive light at a time when US film-makers, authors and journalists were silent about the activities ...

Researchers at the University of Basel have successfully developed artificial organelles that are able to support the reduction of toxic oxygen compounds. This opens up new ways in the development of novel drugs that can influence pathological states directly inside the cell. The results have been published in the Journal Nano Letters. Free oxygen radicals are produced either as metabolic byproduct, or through environmental influences such as UV-rays and smog. Is the concentration of free radicals inside the organism elevated to the point where the antioxidant defense ...

Imagine a transportation system where vehicles communicate directly with each other in real time, giving drivers warnings about traffic delays, allowing a single driver to control multiple vehicles or routing vehicles around hazardous road conditions. Those are all aspects of the "intelligent transportation" concept. And researchers have developed a model to improve the clarity of the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) transmissions needed to make that concept a reality. "The model helps us understand how the V2V signals are distorted," says Dr. Dan Stancil, head of North Carolina ...

SAN ANTONIO (July 16, 2013) — New research from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio indicates that eating a modest amount of walnuts can protect against prostate cancer. The study is described in the journal Cancer Investigation. Researchers at the UT Health Science Center injected immune-deficient mice with human prostate cancer cells. Within three to four weeks, tumors typically start to grow in a large number of these mice. The study asked whether a walnut-enriched diet versus a non-walnut diet would be associated with ...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va., July 16, 2013 – Beginning with early colonists who landed in the New World loaded with dreams, grit and perhaps the continent's first alien forest pests, and continuing today with the expansion of global trade, the northeastern United States has been ground zero for damaging non-native forest pest invasions. In a study recently published on-line in the journal Diversity and Distributions, U.S. Forest Service researchers Andrew Liebhold, Laura Blackburn, Susan Frankel and partners used spatial data to demonstrate that the distribution of invasive forest ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- A decade ago there was little doctors could do to help a patient with advanced-stage melanoma. Now it seems each week yields important new discoveries about the deadly skin cancer. "I've been doing this for 30 years, and now is by any measure the most exciting time for melanoma research," said Brian Nickoloff, director of the Nicholas V. Perricone, M.D., Division of Dermatology and Cutaneous Sciences at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine. In the research journal Laboratory Investigation, Nickoloff and colleagues outline ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Knowing what type of lung cancer a patient has is critical to determine which drug will work best and which therapies are safest in the era of personalized medicine. Key to making that judgment is an adequate tumor specimen for the pathologist to determine the tumor's histology, a molecular description of a tumor based on the appearance of cells under a microscope. But not all specimens are perfect, and are sometimes so complex that a definitive diagnosis presents a challenge. Scientists at the Universities of North Carolina and Utah have developed ...

Medicines that are personally tailored to your DNA are becoming a reality, thanks to the work of U.S. and Chinese scientists who developed statistical models to predict which drug is best for a specific individual with a specific disease. "Traditional medicine doesn't consider mechanistic drug response," said Rongling Wu, director of the Center for Statistical Genetics and professor of public health sciences within the division of biostatistics and bioinformatics at the Penn State College of Medicine. "We want to look at how an individual person responds to an individual ...

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who receive high-quality early intervention benefit developmentally regardless of the treatment model used -- a surprising result that may have important implications for special-education programs and school classrooms across the country. "This is the first study designed to compare long-standing comprehensive treatment models for young children with ASD," said Brian Boyd, a fellow at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- A team of MIT researchers has succeeded in carrying out the first systematic investigation of the factors that control boiling heat transfer from a surface to a liquid. This process is crucial to the efficiency of power plants and the cooling of high-power electronics, and could even lead to improvements in how vehicles travel through water. The research deals with a key transition point known as the critical heat flux, or CHF, a value of heat transfer, per unit time and area, where a surface's heat-transfer characteristics suddenly change: For example, ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – Several companies sell genetic testing directly to consumers, but little research has been done on how consumers experience such tests. The tests have raised questions about the validity and accuracy of the information provided to consumers – especially without the involvement of a qualified health care professional. Now, a study lead by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher is providing insight into how a diverse sample of primary care patients experience genetic testing. Lead researcher Katherine Wasson, PhD, MPH, and colleagues ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Cell therapies may stop or reverse the pain and disability of degenerative disc disease and the loss of material between vertebrae, according to Duke University scientists. The health conditions affect thousands of Americans. To use cell therapies, however, scientists have to keep the cells alive, synthesize the appropriate replacement material and get it to the right place in a patient's spine. With newly made biomaterials from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, that goal could be closer. In a proof-of-concept study published online in the journal ...

A chemical analysis of oil sheens found floating recently at the ocean's surface near the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster indicates that the source is pockets of oil trapped within the wreckage of the sunken rig. Both the Macondo well and natural oil seeps common to the Gulf of Mexico were confidently ruled out. Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) used a recently-patented method to fingerprint the chemical makeup of the sheens and to estimate the location of the source based on the ...

Supraglacial lakes – bodies of water that collect on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet – lubricate the bottom of the sheet when they drain, causing it to flow faster. Differences in how the lakes drain can impact glacial movement's speed and direction, researchers from The City College of New York (CCNY), University of Cambridge and Los Alamos National Laboratory report in "Environmental Research Letters." "Knowledge of the draining mechanisms allows us to improve our understanding of how surface melting can impact sea-level rise, not only through the direct contribution ...

People with pre-diabetes who lose roughly 10 percent of their body weight within six months of diagnosis dramatically reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next three years, according to results of research led by Johns Hopkins scientists. The findings, investigators say, offer patients and physicians a guide to how short-term behavior change may affect long-term health. "We have known for some time that the greater the weight loss, the lower your risk of diabetes," says study leader Nisa Maruthur, M.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor in the Division ...

A chemical analysis indicates that the source of oil sheens recently found floating at the ocean's surface near the site of the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill is pockets of oil trapped within the wreckage of the sunken rig. First reported to the U.S. Coast Guard by multinational oil and gas company BP in September 2012, the oil sheens raised public concern that the Macondo well, which was capped in July 2010, might be leaking. However, both the Macondo well and the natural oil seeps common to the Gulf of Mexico were confidently ruled out, according to researchers ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Premenopausal women who aren't interested in sex and are unhappy about this reality have distinctive blood flow patterns in their brains in response to explicit videos compared to women with normal sexual function, researchers report. A study of 16 women – six with normal sexual function and 10 with clear symptoms of dysfunction – showed distinct differences in activation of brain regions involved in making and retrieving memories, and determining how attentive they are to their response to sexual stimuli, researchers report in the journal Fertility and ...

The American health care system may be missing a golden opportunity to curtail sexually transmitted infections in communities, according to a new study of offenders following release from the justice system. Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute presented findings at the STI & AIDS World Congress in Vienna, Austria, July 14 to 17, showing that individuals released from the justice system have a high risk of contracting an sexually transmitted infection within the first year. Sarah E. Wiehe, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics ...

HOUSTON -- (July 16, 2013) -- Using carpets of aligned carbon nanotubes, researchers from Rice University and Sandia National Laboratories have created a solid-state electronic device that is hardwired to detect polarized light across a broad swath of the visible and infrared spectrum. The research is available online from the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Nano. "Detecting polarized light is extremely useful," said Rice's Junichiro Kono, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of physics and astronomy. "Many animals and insects can see polarized ...