Shenzhen, China, March 11, 2013- BGI Tech Solutions Co., Ltd., also referred to as "BGI Tech", introduced today its novel assembly solution for facilitating heterozygous genomes research. This marks another technological breakthrough for BGI in heterozygous genome assembly after the completed genome sequencing of oyster, diamondback moth and pear. The availability of a reference genome for a species is the cornerstone for the in-depth understanding of its biological secrets and commercial values. However, a major obstacle that prevents scientists to easily crack the genome ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —A scientific survey of more than 1,600 gun retailers in the U.S. has found that gun buyers frequently try to make illegal purchases and that gun retailers take a dim view of fellow sellers who engage in illegal activity — regardless of whether they are actively breaking the law or simply looking the other way. The survey, conducted in 2011 by Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, is believed to be the first scientific study of a large group of gun retailers to determine ...

Researchers of five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers - the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon - for robotics tasks and robot learning. With the development of the RoboEarth Cloud Engine the team continues their work towards creating an Internet for robots. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge ...

For years, researchers have developed thin films of bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) – which converts heat into electricity or electricity to cooling – on top of gallium arsenide (GaAs) to create cooling devices for electronics. But while they knew it could be done, it was not clear how – because the atomic structures of those unlikely pair of materials do not appear to be compatible. Now researchers from North Carolina State University and RTI International have solved the mystery, opening the door to new research in the field. "We've used state-of-the-art technology to solve ...

Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study based on a 30-year record of land surface and newly improved satellite data sets. An international team of university and NASA scientists examined the relationship between changes in surface temperature and vegetation growth from 45 degrees north latitude to the Arctic Ocean. Results show temperature and vegetation growth at northern latitudes now resemble those found 4 degrees to 6 degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 1982. "Higher ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have described what may be a newly identified disease that appears to explain some cases of widespread chronic pain and other symptoms in children and young adults. Their report that will appear in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics, and has received early online release, finds that most of a group of young patients seen at the MGH for chronic, unexplained pain had test results indicating small-fiber polyneuropathy, a condition not previously reported in children. The MGH investigators call this new syndrome juvenile-onset ...

In recent years, a body of pub­li­ca­tions in the micro­bi­ology field has chal­lenged all pre­vious knowl­edge of how antibi­otics kill bac­teria. "A slew of papers came out studying this phe­nom­enon, sug­gesting that there is a gen­eral mech­a­nism of killing by antibi­otics," said Kim Lewis, Northeastern Uni­ver­sity Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor in the Depart­ment of Biology and director of Northeastern's Antimi­cro­bial Dis­covery Center. The stan­dard thinking at the time was that the three main classes of bac­te­ri­cidal antibi­otics each had a unique way of killing ...

The current international climate policy framework is mainly based on the national and regional level of macroscopic carbon emissions data, such as the regional per capita carbon emissions are often used as the indicator to measure the fairness of carbon emission rights. However, the per capita emissions based on regional macro data can not accurately reveal the low carbon emissions of the poor within the region, and cover up the emission differences among people intra-country and intra-region, the household carbon emission data based on field surveys could compensate for ...

In a long-term study, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Margraf, Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the RUB, investigated the psychological effects of plastic surgery on approximately 550 patients in cooperation with colleagues from the University of Basel. Patients demonstrated more enjoyment of life, satisfaction and self-esteem after their physical appearance had been surgically altered. The results of the world's largest ever study on this issue are reported by the researchers in the journal "Clinical Psychological Science". The aim of the ...

Extensive shell fishing and sewerage discharge in river estuaries could have serious consequences for the rare Icelandic black-tailed godwits that feed there. But it is the males that are more likely to suffer, according to new research from the University of East Anglia. Research published today in the journal Ecology and Evolution reveals very different winter feeding habits between the sexes. Both males and females mainly consume bivalve molluscs, sea snails and marine worms, probing vigorously into soft estuary mud with their long beaks. But the study shows that ...

Drinking just two cups of coffee a day is associated with the risk of low birth weight. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have conducted a study on 59,000 women in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Expectant mothers who consume caffeine, usually by drinking coffee, are more likely to have babies with lower birth weight than anticipated, given their gestational age. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, conducted a study on 59,000 pregnant Norwegian women in collaboration with the Norwegian ...

This press release is available in German. Immune system B cells play a crucial role in the defence of pathogens; when they detect such an intruder, they produce antibodies that help to combat the enemy. They concurrently and continuously improve these molecules to more precisely recognize the pathogens. A team of scientists with participation of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) has discovered that during this process the cells are able to advance their own evolution themselves by increasing the selection pressure through previously-produced antibodies. ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (March 11, 2013) - Patients with neck injuries incur increased health and social costs—which also affect their spouses and may begin years before the initial injury, reports a study in the March 1 issue of Spine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Some individuals and families seem more susceptible to experiencing socioeconomic consequences of neck injury, according to the new research by Dr Poul Jennum of University of Copenhagen and colleagues. Particularly for patients who develop chronic ...

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) led by Professor Loh Kian Ping, Head of the Department of Chemistry at the NUS Faculty of Science, has successfully altered the properties of water, making it corrosive enough to etch diamonds. This was achieved by attaching a layer of graphene on diamond and heated to high temperatures. Water molecules trapped between them become highly corrosive, as opposed to normal water. This novel discovery, reported for the first time, has wide-ranging industrial applications, from environmentally-friendly degradation ...

AMHERST, Mass. – For hundreds of years, naturalists and scientists have identified new species based on an organism's visible differences. But now, new genetic techniques are revealing that different species can show little, to no visible differences. In a just-published study, evolutionary biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) combine traditional morphological tests plus genetic techniques to describe new species. Groups of morphologically similar organisms that show very divergent genetics are generally ...

Many Europeans are fretting these days over what they eat, and whether horse meat might have adulterated their pork chops. Food fraud has been dominating headlines globally - calling for new policies in law enforcement and more robust methods for successful food identification and authentication. As companies and manufacturers resort to fraudulent practices to extract more cash from the gullible public, it is estimated that up to 7% of the consumer supply chain contains hidden ingredients (i.e. – not disclosed on the label). And while all too often policymakers seem oblivious ...

These findings are the result of a new study carried out at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. In the study, women who took folic acid supplements from four weeks before conception to eight weeks into pregnancy had a 40 per cent lower risk of giving birth to children with childhood autism (classic autism). "It appears that the crucial time interval is from four weeks before conception to eight weeks into pregnancy," states Pål Surén, MD and doctoral fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The study is based on the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort ...

Peer support groups show promise for combating the debilitating stigma that surrounds epilepsy in much of the developing world, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University medical student. The researchers report in the journal Epilepsy and Behavior that young people with the disease felt significantly less stigmatized after meeting regularly to discuss their illness. While drugs are widely available to reduce epileptic seizures, the stigma and discrimination that arise from those seizures is a thornier problem, said Melissa Elafros, who is pursuing medical ...

DURHAM, NC – Women with atrial fibrilation have more symptoms and lower quality of life than men with the same heart condition, according to an analysis of patients in a large national registry compiled by the Duke Clinical Research Institute. The finding adds to a growing body of research that highlights gender disparities in how cardiovascular disease is managed, and serves as a caution to doctors to be alert to treatment decisions that might perpetuate the differences. "We need to pay close attention to women with atrial fibrillation, and it's important for physicians ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that people get frustrated when they are offered the opportunity to cheat or steal and that chance is then taken away from them. Other studies have shown that blocking people from achieving their positive goals increases frustration, which is not surprising. But this is the first to show that even denying people the chance to commit forbidden behaviors can increase frustration. That's not all. The researchers also found that people who are frustrated in their attempts to cheat or steal are more likely than others to be attracted ...

PITTSBURGH—Aging sewer systems are spilling a considerable amount of nitrogen into urban watersheds, diminishing both the quality of water and ecosystems' habitats. However, many studies documenting the impacts of nitrogen on urban environs have not properly estimated the contribution of leaky sewer systems—until now. Aging sewer systems are spilling a considerable amount of nitrogen into urban watersheds, diminishing both the quality of water and the ecosystems' habitats. Using water samples from the Pittsburgh-based Nine Mile Run watershed, a Pitt research team reveals ...

This press release is available in French. Families with a child completing elementary school this year are now preparing their registration for high school, a transition that is often stressful for children. A new program has demonstrated that it is possible to significantly reduce stress in some of these children thanks to a new educational tool designed under the leadership of Sonia Lupien, Director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) and professor at the University of Montreal. A study published in February in Neuroscience confirms the benefits of ...

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have made a discovery that may explain how prion diseases, like chronic wasting disease and mad cow disease, adapt in order to spread between various types of animals. The research team, led by neurologist Valerie Sim, discovered that a miniscule change in the prions' makeup appears to give the disease the ability to adapt – to mimic and recreate new strains with which it comes into contact. The team has been studying this area for two years. "Prion diseases don't always successfully go from one animal to another, but when ...

URBANA – Researchers in the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory at the University of Illinois in collaboration with German scientists have been using bioinformatics techniques to probe the world of proteins for answers to questions about the origins of life. Proteins are formed from chains of amino acids and fold into three-dimensional structures that determine their function. According to crop sciences professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, very little is known about the evolutionary drivers for this folding. In collaboration with scientists at the Heidelberg Institute ...

A team of Spanish and Argentinean researchers have verified that the distribution of the inhabitants in each Spanish province evolves in accordance with the maximum entropy principle in the field of physics. Therefore, this evolution is predictable. The results have allowed authors to put forward a 'socio-thermodynamic' theory that applies the laws of thermodynamics to collective human behaviour. Spanish and Argentinean scientists have researched the way in which we as people group together on a large scale as a way of seeing whether there is any law or pattern that explains ...