Theoretically, hydropower can step in when wind turbines go still, but barriers to this non-polluting resource serving as a backup are largely policy- and regulation-based, according to Penn State researchers. "We have a very clear realization that we need to make energy systems more sustainable," said Seth A. Blumsack, assistant professor of energy policy. "We want to reduce the environmental footprint -- carbon dioxide and conventional pollutants." Americans also expect to have the system continue to work exactly as it is without blackouts and with low cost electricity. ...

This news release is available in German. Hungry people are often difficult to deal with. A good meal can affect more than our mood, it can also influence our willingness to take risks. This phenomenon is also apparent across a very diverse range of species in the animal kingdom. Experiments conducted on the fruit fly, Drosophila, by scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have shown that hunger not only modifies behaviour, but also changes pathways in the brain. Animal behaviour is radically affected by the availability and amount ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 25, 2013) — Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have demonstrated that a protein called caspase-2 is a key regulator of a signaling pathway that leads to cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. The findings, made in a mouse model of Alzheimer's, suggest that inhibiting this protein could prevent the neuronal damage and subsequent cognitive decline associated with the disease. The study was published this month in the online journal Nature Communications. One of the earliest events in Alzheimer's is disruption of the brain's synapses ...

June 25, 2013 — New lines of engineered bacteria can tailor-make key precursors of high-octane biofuels that could one day replace gasoline, scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School report in the June 24 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The same lines can also produce precursors of pharmaceuticals, bioplastics, herbicides, detergents, and more. "The big contribution is that we were able to program cells to make specific ...

The Colorado River provides water for more than 30 million people, including those in the fast-growing cities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Increasing demand for that water combined with reduced flow and the looming threat of climate change have prompted concern about how to manage the basin's water in coming decades. In the past five years, scientific studies estimated declines of future flows ranging from 6 percent to 45 percent by 2050. A paper by University of Washington researchers and co-authors at eight institutions across the West aims to explain this ...

Students who consistently receive individualized reading instruction from first through third grade become better readers than those who don't, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. These findings come after a three-year study that followed several hundred Floridian students, who received varying amounts of individualized instruction, from first to third grade. "Our results show that children need sustained, effective instruction from first through third grade if they are going to become ...

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have developed an unprecedented approach to restore nitric oxide (NO) to donated blood, a breakthrough that could dramatically reduce harmful effects from transfusions. Jonathan Stamler, MD, and colleagues from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and from Duke University Medical Center describe their findings in the June 24 issue of PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Stamler and his colleagues report that restoring blood levels of NO in animals ...

Jamie K. Teer, Ph.D., assistant member of the Cancer Biology and Evolution Program at Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues have developed a new streamlined method to rapidly identify the genetic changes in small protein fragments unique to melanoma cancer cells. These fragments can be used as targets for tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes that have been shown to reduce cancerous lesions. The new approach is outlined in an article published online by Nature Medicine in May. A previous phase 2 clinical trial showed substantial regression of metastatic lesions in up to 70 ...

The largest investigation to date has found a dramatic increase in the number of hospitalizations for children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) during the past decade in the United States. The new study, published online and scheduled for the August 2013 print issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine, found a 65 percent increase in IBD hospital discharges from 2000 to 2009. The number increased from 11,928 discharges in 2000 to 19,568 discharges in 2009. IBD refers to a group of inflammatory conditions of the colon and small intestine. The major types of ...

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Lab has announced a world record of 31.1% conversion efficiency for a two-junction solar cell under one sun of illumination. NREL Scientist Myles Steiner announced the new record June 19 at the 39th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in Tampa, Fla. The previous record of 30.8% efficiency was held by Alta Devices. The tandem cell was made of a gallium indium phosphide cell atop a gallium arsenide cell, has an area of about 0.25 square centimeters and was measured under the AM1.5 global spectrum at 1,000 W/m2. It ...

Improving care for depression in low-income communities -- places where such help is frequently unavailable or hard to find -- provides greater benefits to those in need when community groups such as churches and even barber shops help lead the planning process, according to a new study. When compared to efforts that provided only technical support to improve depression care, a planning effort co-led by community members from diverse services programs further improved clients' mental health, increased physical activity, lowered their risk of becoming homeless and decreased ...

WASHINGTON -- Diluted bitumen has no greater likelihood of accidental pipeline release than other crude oils, says a new report from the National Research Council. The committee that wrote the report found that diluted bitumen has physical and chemical properties within the range of other crude oils and that no aspect of its transportation by pipeline would make it more likely than other crude oils to cause an accidental release. The committee was not asked to address whether the consequences of a diluted bitumen release differ from those of other crude oils. Bitumen ...

DEERFIELD, IL—During the Permian era, the Earth was dominated by a single supercontinent called Pangea – "All-Earth". Animal and plant life dispersed broadly across this land, as documented by identical fossil species found on multiple modern continents. But a new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology supports the idea that there was an isolated desert in the middle of Pangea with a fauna all its own. Roaming this desert in what is now northern Niger was a very distinctive creature known as a pareiasaur. Pareiasaurs were large, herbivorous reptiles ...

Task Force Recommendation: Screen All Baby Boomers and High-risk Patients for Hep C The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in persons at high risk for infection and one-time screening for all adults born between 1945 and 1965. Up to 3.9 million people in the United States are infected with HCV, a virus that can cause inflammation, permanent liver damage, and cancer. The most significant risk factor for HCV infection is past or current injection drug use. Receiving a blood transfusion before ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers say they now know what allows some Western corn rootworms to survive crop rotation, a farming practice that once effectively managed the rootworm pests. The answer to the decades-long mystery of rotation-resistant rootworms lies – in large part – in the rootworm gut, the team reports. The findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Differences in the relative abundance of certain bacterial species in the rootworm gut help the adult rootworm beetles feed on soybean leaves and tolerate the plant's defenses a little ...

The clues that parents give toddlers about words can make a big difference in how deep their vocabularies are when they enter school, new research at the University of Chicago shows. By using words to reference objects in the visual environment, parents can help young children learn new words, according to the research. It also explores the difficult-to-measure quality of non-verbal clues to word meaning during interactions between parents and children learning to speak. For example, saying, "There goes the zebra" while visiting the zoo helps a child learn the word "zebra" ...

Gene mutations that cause cell signaling networks to go awry during embryonic development and lead to major birth defects may also cause subtle disruptions in the brain that contribute to psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder, according to new research by UC San Francisco scientists. Over the past several years, researchers in the laboratory of psychiatrist Benjamin Cheyette, MD, PhD, have shown that mice with mutations in a gene called Dact1 are born with a range of severe malformations, including some reminiscent of spina bifida in ...

This may be because family doctors tend to attribute women's - rather than men's - initial symptoms to harmless causes, such as bacterial infections, and some women therefore have to visit their GP several times before they get referred to a specialist, say the researchers. Currently, survival rates for kidney and bladder cancer in England show that fewer women than men live for five years after diagnosis. The researchers looked at the numbers of patients diagnosed with kidney and bladder cancers in England between 2009 and 2010. They used data from the National Audit ...

The findings are based on changes in the social class of two groups of individuals born in 1958 (17,419 people) and in 1970 (16,771 people). The researchers asked each of the children's mums, when their child was five or seven years old, whether they had breastfed him/her. They then compared people's social class as children - based on the social class of their father when they were 10 or 11 - with their social class as adults, measured when they were 33 or 34. Social class was categorised on a four-point scale ranging from unskilled/semi-skilled manual to professional/managerial. ...

BOSTON -- A new study by an international team led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists provides the first statistically-based guidelines for determining whether a stem cell transplant is appropriate for older patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) – the most common blood disorders in people over 60 years of age, and frequently a precursor for leukemia. Using mathematical models to analyze hundreds of MDS cases from around the world, the researchers found reduced intensity transplants of donor stem cells are advisable for patients aged 60-70 who have higher-risk ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —When working a cold case, smart investigators try something new. By taking a novel approach to nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – a blending of four techniques – scientists have been able to resolve a key interaction between two proteins that could never be observed before. They report on their findings the week of June 24, 2013 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The interaction the team became the first to describe is nearly universal across all of life. A protein machines called a chaperone takes hold ...

DURHAM, NC -- Homeowners living within one kilometer of shale gas wells appear to be at higher risk of having their drinking water contaminated by stray gases, according to a new Duke University-led study. Duke scientists analyzed 141 drinking water samples from private water wells across northeastern Pennsylvania's gas-rich Marcellus shale basin. Their study documented not only higher methane concentrations in drinking water within a kilometer of shale gas drilling -- which past studies have shown -- but higher ethane and propane concentrations as well. Methane ...

VIDEO: Researchers from Brown University modeled the stickiness of cells associated with sickle cell anemia. The models suggest that squishy SS2 cells are more likely to get stuck to vessel walls... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Using powerful computer models, researchers from Brown University have shown for the first time how different types of red blood cells interact to cause sickle cell crisis, a dangerous blockage of blood flow in capillaries ...

Postmenopausal hormone therapy with conjugated equine estrogens (CEEs) was not associated with overall sustained benefit or risk to cognitive function when given to women ages 50 to 55 years, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS) demonstrated that postmenopausal hormone therapy with CEEs, when prescribed to women 65 years and older, caused deficits in global and domain-specific cognitive functioning. The Women's Health Initiative Memory Study of Younger Women ...

Hospital performance on publicly reported conditions (acute myocardial infarction [heart attack], congestive heart failure, and pneumonia), may potentially be used as a signal of overall hospital mortality rates, according to a study by Marta L. McCrum, M.D., of Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues. (Online First) Using national Medicare data from 2,322 acute care hospitals, the authors examined whether mortality -rates for publicly reported medical conditions are correlated with hospitals' overall performance. The sample included 6,670,859 hospitalizations ...