WASHINGTON, DC – With only one week left before sequestration is to take effect, America's research community sustained its call for an end to the across-the-board cuts to discretionary spending that will severely restrict the nation's ability to invest in the basic scientific research that drives innovation and produces economic growth. Sequestration will reduce federal funding for scientific research by nearly $95 billion over the next nine years, which will result in a reduction of U.S. GDP by at least $203 billion. The net impact will be 200,000 fewer jobs per year ...

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, February 21, 2013 -- Rocket attacks in Sderot, Israel significantly increase the likelihood of miscarriages, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers. The study, published in the January issue of Psychosomatic Medicine Journal of Bio-behavioral Medicine, compared 1,341 pregnancies of women (exposed group) who resided in Sderot, an area exposed to frequent rocket fire, with 2,143 pregnancies of women who lived in Kiryat Gat (unexposed group), which is out of range of missiles. Among women residing in the exposed ...

A new climate model predicts an increase in snowfall for the Earth's polar regions and highest altitudes, but an overall drop in snowfall for the globe, as carbon dioxide levels rise over the next century. The decline in snowfall could spell trouble for regions such as the western United States that rely on snowmelt as a source of fresh water. The projections are the result of a new climate model developed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and analyzed by scientists at GFDL and Princeton University. ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Studies at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are shedding some light on the microbes that dwell in cattle manure—what they are, where they thrive, where they struggle, and where they can end up. This research, which is being conducted by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the agency's Agroecosystems Management Research Unit in Lincoln, Neb., supports the USDA priority of ensuring food safety. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency. In one project, ARS microbiologist Lisa Durso ...

Highlights Dialysis patients using catheters to access the blood have the highest risks for death, infections, and cardiovascular events compared with patients using other types of vascular access. Higher quality studies are needed to determine the true safety of different types of vascular access used for hemodialysis. Worldwide, more than 1.5 million people are treated with hemodialysis. Washington, DC (February 21, 2013) — Dialysis patients using catheters to access the blood have the highest risks for death, infections, and cardiovascular events compared with ...

Highlights Certain mutations and combinations of mutations in immune-related genes affect individuals' risk of developing a rare but serious kidney condition. These mutations also affect patient prognosis following different treatments.About half of patients with the condition, called atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome, develop kidney failure. Washington, DC (February 21, 2013) — Certain gene mutations affect individuals' risk of developing a serious kidney condition, as well as their prognosis after being diagnosed with the disease, according to a study appearing in ...

VIDEO: Penn's Dennis Discher explains how his lab designed a protein that acts a "passport " for the body's immune system. Nanoparticles equipped with this passport last longer in the bloodstream than... Click here for more information. PHILADELPHIA — The body's immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices ...

In the first human study of its kind, researchers activated heart failure patients' stem cells with gene therapy to improve their symptoms, heart function and quality of life, according to a study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation Research. Researchers delivered a gene that encodes a factor called SDF-1 to activate stem cells like a "homing" signal. The study is unique because researchers introduced the "homing" factor to draw stem cells to the site of injury and enhance the body's stem cell-based repair process. Generally, researchers extract and ...

Flowers' methods of communicating are at least as sophisticated as any devised by an advertising agency, according to a new study, published today in Science Express by researchers from the University of Bristol. The research shows for the first time that pollinators such as bumblebees are able to find and distinguish electric signals given out by flowers. However, for any advert to be successful, it has to reach, and be perceived by, its target audience. Flowers often produce bright colours, patterns and enticing fragrance to attract their pollinators. Researchers ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Malaria does not have to be eradicated globally for individual countries to succeed at maintaining elimination of the disease, according to research from the University of Florida's Emerging Pathogens Institute and department of geography, to be published in the journal Science Feb. 22. Researchers Andrew Tatem and Christina Chiyaka found that those countries that have eliminated malaria have maintained their malaria-free states with remarkable stability, going against traditional theory. Between 1945 and 2010, 79 countries eliminated malaria and ...

Researchers from Amherst College and The University of Texas at Austin have described a new technique that might one day reveal in higher detail than ever before the composition and characteristics of the deep Earth. There's just one catch: The technique relies on a fifth force of nature (in addition to gravity, the weak and strong nuclear forces and electromagnetism) that has not yet been detected, but which some particle physicists think might exist. Physicists call this type of force a long-range spin-spin interaction. If it does exist, this exotic new force would ...

A new class of influenza drug has been shown effective against drug-resistant strains of the flu virus, according to a study led by University of British Columbia researchers. Published online today in the journal Science Express, the study details the development of a new drug candidate that prevents the flu virus from spreading from one cell to the next. The drug is shown to successfully treat mice with lethal strains of the flu virus. In order to spread in the body, the flu virus first uses a protein, called hemagglutinin, to bind to the healthy cell's receptors. ...

Researchers have successfully applied a novel method of vaccine creation for Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) using a technique called large scale random codon re-encoding. Using this approach, a group from the UMR_D 190, Emerging viruses Department in Marseille, France in collaboration with the University of Sydney, Australia, demonstrated that the engineered viruses exhibit a stable phenotype with a significantly decreased viral fitness (i.e., replication capacity), making it a new vaccine candidate for this emerging viral disease. This new report publishes on February 21 in ...

In reef-building corals variations within genes involved in immunity and response to stress correlate to water temperature and clarity, finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Genetics. This information could be used to conserve or rebuild reefs in areas affected by climate change, by changes in extreme weather patterns, increasing sedimentation or altered land use. A research team led by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and in collaboration with Penn State University and the Aix-Marseille University, studied DNA variations (Single ...

Bacteria become resistant to antibiotics when stressed, finds research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. In particular E. coli grown at high temperatures become resistant to rifampicin. It is generally thought that antibiotic resistance is costly to maintain, for example mutations which reduce antibiotic uptake also restrict the amount of nutrients entering the cell. Consequently in the absence of antibiotics non-resistant bacteria will out-compete the resistant ones. However researchers from UC Irvine and Faculté de Médicine ...

What: The U.S. government today released two new documents to guide researchers in carrying out dual use research of concern. First, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy today published a draft policy for public comment that proposes to formalize the roles and responsibilities of institutions and researchers when they are conducting certain types of research on specific pathogens and toxins. Researchers are often best poised to understand the potential misuse of the information, technologies and products emanating from their research and to propose ...

Many nations battling malaria face an economic dilemma: spend money indefinitely to control malaria transmission or commit additional resources to eliminate transmission completely. A review of malaria elimination conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute and other institutions suggests stopping malaria transmission completely has longlasting benefits for many countries and that once eliminated, the disease is unlikely to reemerge over time. Furthermore, total eradication of malaria may not be necessary before countries that eliminate the ...

Boston, MA — The large antiretroviral treatment (ART) scale-up in a rural community in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, has led to a rapid and dramatic increase in population adult life expectancy—a gain of 11.3 years over eight calendar years (2004-2011)—and the benefit of providing ART far outweighs the cost, according to new research from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). While previous studies have shown that ART significantly improves survival in clinical cohorts of HIV patients receiving ART, this is the first study to directly measure the full population-level ...

Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, threatening release of carbon from soils, and damage to natural and human environments. A thaw in Siberia's permafrost (ground frozen throughout the year) could release over 1000 giga-tonnes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially enhancing global warming. The data comes from an international team led by Oxford University scientists studying stalactites and stalagmites ...

For older adults looking to sharpen their mental abilities, it might be time to log on to Facebook. Preliminary research findings from the University of Arizona suggest that men and women older than 65 who learn to use Facebook could see a boost in cognitive function. Janelle Wohltmann, a graduate student in the UA department of psychology, set out to see whether teaching older adults to use the popular social networking site could help improve their cognitive performance and make them feel more socially connected. Her preliminary findings, which she shared this month ...

Washington, D.C.—Solar geoengineering is a proposed approach to reduce the effects of climate change due to greenhouse gasses by deflecting some of the sun's incoming radiation. This type of proposed solution carries with it a number of uncertainties, however, including geopolitical questions about who would be in charge of the activity and its goals. New modeling work from Carnegie's Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira shows that if a powerful coalition ever decided to deploy a geoengineering system, they would have incentive to exclude other countries from participating ...

VIDEO: The strong, flapping flight of bats offers great possibilities for the design of small aircraft, among other applications. By building a robotic bat wing, Brown researchers have uncovered flight secrets... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers at Brown University have developed a robotic bat wing that is providing valuable new information about dynamics of flapping flight in real bats. The robot, which mimics the wing ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a way to melt or "weld" specific portions of polymers by embedding aligned nanoparticles within the materials. Their technique, which melts fibers along a chosen direction within a material, may lead to stronger, more resilient nanofibers and materials. Physicists Jason Bochinski and Laura Clarke, with materials scientist Joe Tracy, placed specifically aligned gold nanorods within a solid material. Gold nanorods absorb light at different wavelengths, depending upon the size and orientation of the nanorod, ...

Toronto, Canada – Scientists at Baycrest Health Sciences' Rotman Research Institute (RRI) and the University of Toronto's Psychology Department have found compelling evidence that older adults can eliminate forgetfulness and perform as well as younger adults on memory tests. Scientists used a distraction learning strategy to help older adults overcome age-related forgetting and boost their performance to that of younger adults. Distraction learning sounds like an oxymoron, but a growing body of science is showing that older brains are adept at processing irrelevant and ...

Although immigration to the United States from Latin American countries, particularly Mexico, has captured much public attention, immigrants who move between countries in Latin America have more difficulty than those moving to the United States. Donald Bogue, professor emeritus in sociology and a distinguished scholar of demography, has found that unlike immigrants to the United States, immigrants between nations in Latin America frequently do not improve their lives by moving. A popular theory on immigration contends that immigrants are self-selected achievers who ...