"You don't know what you've got 'til it's collapsed." That's how University of Guelph integrative biologists might recast a line from an iconic folk tune for their new research paper warning about the perils of ecosystem breakdown. Their research, published today as the cover story in Nature, suggests farmers and resource managers should not rely on seemingly stable but vulnerable single-crop monocultures. Instead they should encourage more kinds of plants in fields and woods as a buffer against sudden ecosystem disturbance. Based on a 10-year study, their paper also ...

Researchers have found a genetic variant that doubles the likelihood that people will have calcium deposits on their aortic valve. Such calcification, if it becomes severe, can cause narrowing or a blockage of the aortic valve, a condition called aortic stenosis. The study is the first large-scale, genome-wide association study to uncover a genetic link to aortic valve calcification. An article detailing the findings is published in the February 7, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study's lead investigators — from Johns Hopkins, Harvard University, ...

LA JOLLA, CA – February 6, 2013 – We take it for granted that our chromosomes won't stick together, yet this kind of cellular disaster would happen constantly were it not for a protein called TRF2. Now, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered key details of how TRF2 performs this crucial chromosome-protecting function. The finding represents a significant advance in cell biology and also has implications for our understanding of cancer and the aging process. "Cells tend to interpret their chromosome ends as sites of DNA damage, and without ...

Montreal, February 7th, 2013 – Researchers have discovered a gene associated with a form of cholesterol that increases the risk of developing aortic stenosis, the most common form of heart valve disease, by more than half. This international study, involving the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), is the first of its kind to uncover a genetic link with aortic valve disease – a condition that affects more than 5 million people in North America. The results of the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, point to the first ...

Older bikers are up to three times as likely to be seriously injured in a crash as younger motor bike enthusiasts, indicates US research published online in Injury Prevention. The findings are a cause for concern, because of the increasing popularity of motor bike ownership among older adults, and their increasing tendency to be involved in a crash, warn the authors. In the US, the percentage of bikers over the age of 50 has more than doubled from just over 1 in 10 in 1990 to 1 in 4 in 2003, while the average age of those involved in a motorbike crash has been steadily ...

One in every 20 cases of the serious condition of pregnancy, pre-eclampsia, may be linked to increased levels of the air pollutant ozone during the first three months, suggests a large study published in the online journal BMJ Open. Mothers with asthma may be more vulnerable, the findings indicate. Pre-eclampsia is characterised by raised blood pressure and the presence of protein in the urine during pregnancy. It can cause serious complications, if left untreated. The authors base their findings on almost 121,000 singleton births in Greater Stockholm, Sweden, between ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Recently, large studies have identified some of the genetic basis for important common diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, but most of the genetic contribution to them remains undiscovered. Now researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by biostatistician Andrea Foulkes have applied sophisticated statistical tools to existing large databases to reveal substantial new information about genes that cause such conditions as high cholesterol linked to heart disease. Foulkes says, "This new approach to data analysis provides opportunities ...

A team led by Vanderbilt University investigators has discovered two new genes – both coding for the signaling protein calmodulin – associated with severe early-onset disorders of heart rhythm. The findings, reported online Feb. 6 in the journal Circulation, expand the list of culprits that can cause sudden cardiac death and may point to new therapeutic approaches. Nearly two decades of research have identified more than 25 genes in which mutations can increase risk for life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, said Alfred George, Jr., M.D., chief of the Division of Genetic ...

MINNEAPOLIS/SAINT PAUL (February 6, 2013) – Researchers at the University of Minnesota have uncovered a human enzyme responsible for causing DNA mutations found in the majority of breast cancers. The discovery of this enzyme – called APOBEC3B – may change the way breast cancer is diagnosed and treated. The findings from a team of researchers led by Reuben Harris, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysics and also a researcher at the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, are published in the latest edition of Nature. "We ...

WASHINGTON, DC – Despite dire predictions in the wake of the economic crisis, donations to health projects in developing countries appear to be holding steady, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. After reaching a historic high of $28.2 billion in 2010, development assistance for health dropped in 2011 and recovered in 2012. The strong growth in spending from the GAVI Alliance and UNICEF counterbalanced declines in health spending among other donors. The new findings are being announced ...

An automated supernova hunt is shedding new light on the death sequence of massive stars—specifically, the kind that self-destruct in Type IIn supernova explosions. Digging through the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) data archive housed at the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), astronomers have found the first causal evidence that these massive stars shed huge amounts of material in a "penultimate outburst" before final detonation as supernovae. A focused search ...

The climate is getting warmer, and sea levels are rising – a threat to island nations. As a group of researchers lead by colleagues from the University of Bonn found out, at the same time, tiny single-cell organisms are spreading rapidly through the world's oceans, where they might be able to mitigate the consequences of climate change. Foraminifera of the variety Amphistegina are stabilizing coastlines and reefs with their calcareous shells. The study's results have now appeared in the international online journal "PLOS ONE." Countless billions of tiny, microscopic ...

Pasadena, CA—Type II supernovae are formed when massive stars collapse, initiating giant explosions. It is thought that stars emit a burst of mass as a precursor to the supernova explosion. If this process were better understood, it could be used to predict and study supernova events in their earliest stages. New observations from a team of astronomers including Carnegie's Mansi Kasliwal show a remarkable mass-loss event about a month before the explosion of a type IIn supernova. Their work is published on February 7 in Nature. Several models for the supernova-creation ...

TORONTO, Feb. 6, 2013—A popular class of drugs commonly used to treat sleep and mood symptoms continues to be frequently prescribed despite being known to have potentially life-threatening side effects. Previous studies have linked benzodiazepines – a medication class that may be used in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to treat symptoms of insomnia, depression, anxiety and shortness of breath – with adverse outcomes, but until now there has been little information on how frequently it's prescribed or who is using it. COPD, also known as emphysema or chronic ...

LIBREVILLE, GABON (February 6, 2013): The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that a national park, once home to Africa's largest forest elephant population, has lost a staggering 11,100 individuals due to poaching for the ivory trade. The shocking figures come from Gabon's Minkebe Park, where recent surveys of areas within the park revealed that two thirds of its elephants have vanished since 2004. The majority of these losses have probably taken place in the last five years. Gabon contains over half of Africa's forest elephants, with a population estimated ...

Until a child's bones have fully matured (in girls, typically by age 14; in boys, age 16), an injury to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL)—the primary, stabilizing ligament of the knee joint—requires special consideration, treatment and care to ensure appropriate healing and to prevent long-term complications. According to a review article in the February 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), ACL injuries once were considered rare in children and adolescents. However, the number of ACL injuries in young athletes is on the ...

A young woman in Tokyo pays 243,000 Yen for a Louis Vuitton suitcase emblazoned with the company's iconic monogram. A continent away, another woman purchases the same suitcase at the company's store on New York's 5th Avenue for the equivalent price in dollars, $3000. Why? What motivates their purchases? And, do those motivations hinge on their location? That is precisely what Professor Jaehee Jung and her collaborators at universities in 9 other countries sought to answer. Their findings published recently in the journal, Psychology & Marketing, compared consumers' ...

The next advance in weather forecasting may not come from a new satellite or supercomputer, but from a device in your pocket. University of Washington atmospheric scientists are using pressure sensors included in the newest smartphones to develop better weather forecasting techniques. "With this approach we could potentially have tens or hundreds of thousands of additional surface pressure observations, which could significantly improve short-term weather forecasts," said Cliff Mass, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. Owners of certain new Android smartphones and ...

Psychological well-being has been linked to many important life outcomes, including career success, relationship satisfaction, and even health. But it's not clear how feelings of well-being change as we age, as different studies have provided evidence for various trends over time. A new report published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveals that self-reported feelings of well-being tend to increase with age, but that a person's overall level of well-being depends on when he or she was born. Psychological scientist ...

A tiny capsule invented at a UCLA lab could go a long way toward improving cancer treatment. Devising a method for more precise and less invasive treatment of cancer tumors, a team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a degradable nanoscale shell to carry proteins to cancer cells and stunt the growth of tumors without damaging healthy cells. In a new study, published online Feb. 1 in the peer-reviewed journal Nano Today, a group led by Yi Tang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and ...

A closer look at personalized or point-of-care healthcare was the focus of a recent international conference in India organized and chaired by NJIT Distinguished Professor Atam Dhawan. The IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) International Special Topic Conference in point-of-care healthcare technologies, broadcast around the world, focused on topics ranging from 21st century medicine with new smart cross-and trans-disciplinary technologies to how wireless communications will change how physicians care for patients. "The last century witnessed a ...

As fibers go, there's never been anything quite like spider silk. Stretch it. Bend it. Soak it. Dry it out. Spider silk holds up. It is five times stronger than steel and can expand nearly a third greater than its original length and snap right back like new. Ounce-for-ounce spider silk is even stronger than Kevlar, the man-made fiber used in bulletproof vests. It would be understandable to think that science knows all there is to know about the remarkable physics of spider silk, but the truth is far from that. Now, using a long-known-but-underutilized spectroscopy technique, ...

To emphasize, the HTL process accepts all biomasses from modern society – sewage sludge, manure, wood, compost and plant material along with waste from households, meat factories, dairy production and similar industries. It is by far the most feedstock flexible of any liquid fuel producing process, including pyrolysis, bio-ethanol, gasification with Fischer-Tropsch or catalytic upgrading of different vegetable or agro-industrial residual oils, and does not carry higher costs than these. Hydrothermal liquefaction is basically pressure cooking, but instead of cooking the ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The peaks of the Himalayas are a modern remnant of massive tectonic forces that fused India with Asia tens of millions of years ago. Previous estimates have suggested this collision occurred about 50 million years ago, as India, moving northward at a rapid pace, crushed up against Eurasia. The crumple zone between the two plates gave rise to the Himalayas, which today bear geologic traces of both India and Asia. Geologists have sought to characterize the rocks of the Himalayas in order to retrace one of the planet's most dramatic tectonic collisions. Now ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Preserving genetically diverse local crops in areas where small-scale farms are rapidly modernizing is possible, according to a Penn State geographer, who is part of an international research project investigating the biodiversity of maize, or corn, in hotspots of Bolivia, Peru and Mexico. Hotspots are areas where cultivation of peaches and other non-traditional crops has exploded over the past decade, noted Karl Zimmerer, professor and head of the Department of Geography, and where small-scale farms are often female-run and have been previously ...