Coral reefs build their structures by both producing and accumulating calcium carbonate, and this is essential for the maintenance and continued vertical growth capacity of reefs. An international research team has discovered that the amount of new carbonate being added by Caribbean coral reefs is now significantly below rates measured over recent geological timescales, and in some habitats is as much as 70% lower. Coral reefs form some of the planet's most biologically diverse ecosystems, and provide valuable services to humans and wildlife. However, their ability to ...

Boston, MA—Most weight-loss plans center around a balance between caloric intake and energy expenditure. However, new research has shed light on a new factor that is necessary to shed pounds: timing. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), in collaboration with the University of Murcia and Tufts University, have found that it's not simply what you eat, but also when you eat, that may help with weight-loss regulation. The study will be published on January 29, 2013 in the International Journal of Obesity. "This is the first large-scale prospective study ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The "July Effect" -- the notion that the influx of new residents and fellows at teaching hospitals each July makes that the worse time of year to be a patient -- seems to be a myth, according to new Mayo Clinic research that examined nearly 1 million hospitalizations for patients undergoing spine surgery from 2001 to 2008. Among those going under the knife, researchers discovered that the month surgery occurred had an insignificant impact on patient outcomes. In addition, no substantial "July Effect" was observed in higher-risk patients, those admitted ...

BOSTON – A patient's relationship with his or her doctor has long been considered an important component of healing. Now, in a novel investigation in which physicians underwent brain scans while they believed they were actually treating patients, researchers have provided the first scientific evidence indicating that doctors truly can feel their patients' pain – and can also experience their relief following treatment. Led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter (PiPS) at Beth Israel Deaconess ...

Scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered the signaling pathway whereby a master regulator of cancer cell proteins – known as Src – leads to ovarian cancer progression when exposed to stress hormones. The researchers report in the current issue of Nature Communications that beta blocker drugs mitigate this effect and reduce cancer deaths by an average of 17 percent. Src (pronounced "sarc," short for sarcoma) is a proto-oncogene – a normal gene that can become an oncogene due to increased expression – involved in the regulation of ...

FAIRFAX, Va.—The first outcome-based guidelines for interventional treatment of acute ischemic stroke—providing recommendations for rapid treatment—will benefit individuals suffering from brain attacks, often caused by artery-blocking blood clots. Representatives from the Society of Interventional Radiology and seven other medical societies created a multispecialty and international consensus on the metrics and benchmarks for processes of care and technical and clinical outcomes for stroke patients. In February, the guidelines will be published first in SIR's Journal ...

This press release is available in German. Found in flat screens, solar modules, or in new organic light-emitting diode (LED) displays, transparent electrodes have become ubiquitous. Typically, they consist of metal oxides like In2O3, SnO2, ZnO and TiO2. But since raw materials like indium are becoming more and more costly, researchers have begun to look elsewhere for alternatives. A new review article by HZB scientist Dr. Klaus Ellmer, published in the renowned scientific journal Nature Photonics, is hoping to shed light on the different advantages and disadvantages ...

This press release is available in German. Many different tissues and organs form from pluripotent stem cells during embryonic development. To date it had been known that these processes are controlled by transcription factors for specific tissues. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, in collaboration with colleagues at MIT and the Broad Institute in Boston, have now been able to demonstrate that RNA molecules, which do not act as templates for protein synthesis, participate in these processes as well. The scientists knocked down ...

As influenza spreads through the northern hemisphere winter, Dr Linda Wakim and her colleagues in the Laboratory of Professor Jose Villadangos from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, believe they have a new clue to why some people fight infections better than others. The lab has been investigating the 'defensive devices' contained within the T- cells that are located on exposed body surfaces such as skin and mucosal surfaces to ward off infection. T-cells detect cells infected with viruses and kill ...

Detecting sexual selection in the fossil record is not impossible, according to scientists writing in Trends in Ecology and Evolution this month, co-authored by Dr Darren Naish of the University of Southampton. The term "sexual selection" refers to the evolutionary pressures that relate to a species' ability to repel rivals, meet mates and pass on genes. We can observe these processes happening in living animals but how do palaeontologists know that sexual selection operated in fossil ones? Historically, palaeontologists have thought it challenging, even impossible, ...

Dr Tim Peterson, from the School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne has offered new theories that will lead to a deeper knowledge of how water catchments behave during wet and dry years. His research was published recently in the leading international hydrology journal "Water Resources Research" and was selected by the American Geophysical Union as a highlight of the society's 13 international journals. Dr Peterson's work shows that some catchments have a finite resilience to wet and dry years because they have two steady states. The traditionally held view ...

OAKLAND, Calif., January 29 — HIV-positive patients have a higher incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Specifically, basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas occur more than twice as often among HIV-positive individuals compared to those who are HIV-negative. The study cohort of 6,560 HIV-positive and almost 37,000 HIV-negative subjects was drawn from members of Kaiser Permanente Northern California from 1996 to 2008. Overall, HIV-positive ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – The hazards of breathing outdoor air in some Chinese cities have been well-documented. Now a University at Buffalo study confirms that breathing indoor air also carries significant cancer risks, especially for Chinese women. The UB study, published online this month, in the journal Cancer Causes & Control, found that indoor air pollution that generates fine particulate matter is a key contributor to the high rates of lung cancer among Chinese women, despite the fact that few of them smoke. The research found indoor particulate matter levels that are ...

In three to six months of life, this genetic alteration in mice –similar to that occurred in human– causes a rapid degeneration in the lower limbs to death for cardiac arrest. For the first time in the world, researchers at the Center for Biomedical Research of the University of Granada have created mice with a genetic mutation inducing a deficiency in the coenzyme Q10, a rare mitochondrial disease prevailingly affecting children. These mutant mice –which lack the Coq9 gene– will be "a valuable tool for the study and treatment of metabolic encephalopathies and neuromuscular ...

Spending many hours in centre-based child care does not lead to more aggression and disobedience in children, according to a new study using data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Data from 72,000 mothers and their children, including siblings, were obtained from MoBa. Using questionnaires, mothers were asked about aggression and obedience at both 18 and 36 months and the amount of time their children spent in child care. In addition to comparing children from different families, the researchers compared siblings who had different amounts of child ...

Amsterdam, January 29, 2013 – A paper published in the February issue of Computers & Geosciences, describes a case study in which an earth-observing satellite tool, the Tool for High-Resolution Observation Review (THOR), using minimal coding effort, is converted into a practical web-based application, THOR-Online. In addition, a 3D visualization technique is also described in this paper. Initially only operable from a desktop computer, with the approach outlined in the study, THOR is now accessible online from NASA's Precipitation Processing System website. This allows ...

In an article about to be published in EPJ Plus, Daan Frenkel from the University of Cambridge, UK, outlines the many pitfalls associated with simulation methods such as Monte Carlo algorithms or other commonly used molecular dynamics approaches. The context of this paper is the exponential development of computing power in the past 60 years, estimated to have increased by a factor of 1015, in line with Moore's law. Today, short simulations can reproduce a system the size of a bacterium. The author outlines diverse examples of issues arising when seemingly simple simulation ...

More powerful gene-sequencing tools have increasingly been uncovering disease secrets in DNA within the cell nucleus. Now a research team is expanding those rapid next-generation sequencing tests to analyze a separate source of DNA—within the genes inside mitochondria, cellular power plants that, when abnormal, contribute to complex, multisystem diseases. The study team, headed by a specialist in mitochondrial medicine at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), adapted next-generation sequencing to simultaneously analyze the whole exome (all the protein-coding ...

One year after his last treatment, a six-year-old boy with recurrent neuroblastoma is in complete remission for his high-risk metastatic cancer. Doctors reported this case study in the January 2013 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which was funded in part by a joint grant from the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, Pierce Phillips Charity and Solving Kids' Cancer. Current treatments for high-risk neuroblastoma patients include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, stem cell transplant, and immunotherapy. Less than half of the children ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A protein associated with neuron damage in people with Alzheimer's disease is surprisingly useful in promoting neuron growth in the lab, according to a new study by engineering researchers at Brown University. The findings, in press at the journal Biomaterials, suggest a better method of growing neurons outside the body that might then be implanted to treat people with neurodegenerative diseases. The research compared the effects of two proteins that can be used as an artificial scaffold for growing neurons (nerve cells) from the ...

(Boston)- A new Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study has found that low-income and minority parents/guardians were receptive toward vaccinating boys against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). However, racial/ethnic differences emerged in attitudes regarding school-entry mandates. The findings appear online in the journal Clinical Pediatrics. Although low-income and minority men have higher rates of oral HPV infection and are more likely to suffer from HPV-related diseases including penile, anal and oral cancers, few studies have examined parental attitudes after ...

DETROIT – Trying to find just the right balance of time spent in meetings and time performing tasks is a tough problem for managers, but a Wayne State University researcher believes the behavior of ants may provide a useful lesson on how to do it. Using computer simulations derived from the characteristics of ants seeking food, Kai Yang, Ph.D., professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a mathematical model-based methodology to estimate the optimal amount of time spent to develop a product, as well as the cost, in overlapped ...

This press release is available in German. A collection of historical documents from a major project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will be made publicly available over the next several months and years. On 25 January 2013, German radio broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk will launch a 'documentary audio edition' entitled Die Quellen sprechen ('The Sources Speak'). The series of 16 episodes, to be broadcast on radio and made available online, will present hundreds of letters, diary entries, decrees, orders, newspaper reports ...

PHILADELPHIA – HIV patients who participated in an intervention that helped them identify barriers to taking their drugs properly and develop customized coping strategies took a significantly greater amount of their prescribed doses than those receiving standard care, according to a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results, published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, may point to a new strategy to improve adherence to medications for many other conditions. "Nonadherence to medical therapy is a silent ...

Thanks to cultural evolution, male Savannah sparrows are changing their tune, partly to attract "the ladies." According to a study of more than 30 years of Savannah sparrows recordings, the birds are singing distinctly different songs today than their ancestors did 30 years ago – changes passed along generation to generation, according to a new study by University of Guelph researchers. Integrative biology professors Ryan Norris and Amy Newman, in collaboration with researchers at Bowdoin College and Williams College in the U.S., analyzed the songs of male Savannah ...