The ability of male chimpanzees to form coalitions with one another in order to direct aggression at other male chimpanzees has certain benefits. A new study by Ian Gilby at Duke University in North Carolina and his colleagues has further revealed that it may not just be the coalition that is important, but who the coalition is with that determines future success. Their study finds that male chimpanzees with central positions in the coalitionary network were most likely to father offspring and increase in rank. Specifically, those who formed coalitions with males who did ...

Although several studies have followed the course of depression throughout the lifespan, the characteristics of depression at different developmental stages haven't been clearly identified. New research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, presents a unique longitudinal investigation of depression across four critical developmental periods from childhood to adulthood. To better understand the developmental course of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Paul Rohde of the Oregon Research Institute and colleagues ...

Johns Hopkins experts are recommending early post-surgical assessment -- preferably within 24 hours -- for trouble chewing and swallowing food, or speaking normally, among patients who have had benign tumors removed from the base of the brain. Such early assessments, they say, may minimize complications associated with the sometimes hazelnut-sized tumors, called vestibular schwannomas. Damage can arise when the tumors themselves press on the nearby cranial nerves -- key to controlling the tongue, lips, mouth and throat -- or from the surgery itself. Researchers ...

Scientists from VIB and KU Leuven have discovered a new target molecule for the development of a treatment against Alzheimer's disease. There is currently no cure for this disease. Many candidate drugs fail because they also target proteins essential to life. This discovery from Leuven could form a target for a treatment against Alzheimer's disease with fewer side effects and that suppresses the very first symptoms of the disease. This research will be published in the leading journal Nature Medicine. Alzheimer's Disease Alzheimer's Disease is the most common form of ...

When the dry lubricant, molybdenum disulfide, is stripped down to a single layer of atoms, a tightly bound quasi-particle comprised of two electrons and a hole forms with unique spin and valley properties, researchers from Case Western Reserve University and colleagues discovered. These charged quasi-particles, called negative trions, can be manipulated to change the light absorbed and emitted from this two-dimensional semi-conducting crystal, opening it to potential use in new solar cells and other electronic devices that are controlled by light or designed to control ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – As U.S. health care goes high tech, spurred by $20 billion in federal stimulus incentives, the widespread adoption of electronic medical records and related digital technologies is predicted to reduce errors and lower costs – but it is also likely to significantly boost musculoskeletal injuries among doctors and nurses, concludes a Cornell University ergonomics professor in two new papers. The repetitive strain injuries, he said, will stem from poor office layouts and improper use of computer devices. "Many hospitals are investing heavily in new technology ...

How effective is the German mammography screening program? This is the question examined by Oliver Heidinger of the Epidemiological Cancer Registry North Rhine–Westphalia and his co-authors in the first study on this subject in Germany, in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109(46): 781-7). To answer it, the authors have used the interval cancer rate as an indicator. Interval cancers are tumors found more or less by chance between two screenings. In approximately 880 000 women from North Rhine–Westphalia who had taken part in mammography screening ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (December 3, 2012) – A new technology called the Pipeline embolization device (PED) shows encouraging results in patients with certain types of difficult-to-treat brain aneurysms, reports the December issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Data collected since the PED was approved for marketing show generally good results in "real world" clinical practice. However, the report raises concerns about fatal bleeding and other ...

Troy, N.Y. – Antibodies developed by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are unusually effective at preventing the formation of toxic protein particles linked to Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, as well as Type 2 diabetes, according to a new study. The onset of these devastating diseases is associated with the inappropriate clumping of proteins into particles that are harmful to cells in the brain (Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease) and pancreas (Type 2 diabetes). Antibodies, which are commonly used by the immune system to target foreign ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Extreme heat or cold can cause dangerous and potentially fatal side effects in athletes. A literature review appearing in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS) provides an overview of the risk factors, signs and symptoms, and management of various conditions related to excessive heat and cold exposure. "Both extreme heat and cold can be challenging for athletes during training and competition," said lead study author Benjamin Noonan, MD, MS. "One role of the team physician is to educate coaches and ...

Using deceptive behavioral patterns of squirrels and birds, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed robots that are able to deceive each other. The research is funded by the Office of Naval Research and is led by Professor Ronald Arkin, who suggests the applications could be implemented by the military in the future. The research is highlighted in the November/December 2012 edition of IEEE Intelligent Systems. Arkin and his team learned by reviewing biological research results that squirrels gather acorns and store them in specific locations. ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Dec. 3, 2012 – College football and basketball games may provide more than a way for students to show school spirit – they could help prevent the flu. According to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, colleges and universities should implement new or improved influenza vaccine strategies, such as giving flu shots at sporting events or during campus-wide, day-long campaigns, to increase the number of their students who get the annual flu vaccine. In the early online edition of the December issue of the Journal of American ...

Reston, Va. (December 3, 2012) – In the management of gliomas—or tumors that originate in the brain—precise assessment of tumor grade and the proliferative activity of cells plays a major role in determining the most appropriate treatment and predicting overall survival. Research published in the December issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) highlights the potential of imaging with 3'-deoxy-3'-F-18-fluorothymidine (F-18-FLT) positron emission tomography (PET) to noninvasively and accurately provide tumor-specific details to guide management of patients with gliomas. Gliomas ...

University of Illinois researchers have developed a model that uses neonatal piglets for studying infant brain development and its effect on learning and memory. To determine if the model is nutrient-sensitive, they have done some research on the effects of iron-deficient diets. "Iron deficiency is a major problem worldwide," said Rodney Johnson, professor of animal sciences and director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences. "Infants who experience iron deficiency during the first 6 to 12 months of age can have irreversible developmental delays in cognition." He ...

This press release is available in Spanish.Outfitting soldiers with clothing that effectively repels or kills insects is one of the strategies U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are using to help protect U.S. military personnel deployed overseas against disease-transmitting mosquitoes and sand flies. As part of the Deployed War-Fighter Protection Research Program, scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Fla., and other ARS laboratories are collaborating with ...

ANN ARBOR—New research from the University of Michigan School of Public Health found BPA, or bisphenol A, in fetal liver tissue, demonstrating that there is considerable exposure to the chemical during pregnancy. Researchers also found a proportionately higher concentration of free BPA—as opposed to the conjugated forms modified by the body for elimination—further showing that in fetuses the ability to eliminate the chemical from the body is not the same as in adults. "The general message from our research is that people have to be cognizant of the fact that the adult ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University research team has resolved a 40-year-old debate on the role of iron acquisition in bacterial invasion of animal tissues. The collaborative research -- led by Phillip Klebba, professor and head of the department of biochemistry -- clarifies how microorganisms colonize animal hosts and how scientists may block them from doing so. The findings suggest new approaches against bacterial disease and new strategies for antibiotic development. The study -- in collaboration with Tyrrell Conway, director of the Microarray and Bioinformatics ...

This press release is available in Spanish. With their ultra short X-ray flashes, free-electron lasers offer the opportunity to film atoms in motion in complicated molecules and in the course of chemical reactions. However, for monitoring this motion, the arrival time and the temporal profile of the pulses which periodically illuminate the system, must be precisely known. An international team of scientists has now developed a measurement technique that provides complete temporal characterization of individual FEL (free-electron laser) pulses at DESY's soft-X-ray ...

NEW YORK -- December 3, 2012 -- Racial and gender stereotypes have profound consequences in almost every sector of public life, from job interviews and housing to police stops and prison terms. However, only a few studies have examined whether these different categories overlap in their stereotypes. A new study on the connections between race and gender – a phenomenon called gendered race – reveals unexpected ways in which stereotypes affect our personal and professional decisions. Within the United States, Asians as an ethnic group are perceived as more feminine in comparison ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The amazing electrical, optical and strength properties of graphene, a single-atom-thick layer of carbon, have been extensively researched over the last decade. Recently, the material has been studied as a coating that might confer electrical conductivity while maintaining other properties of the underlying material. But the "transparency" of such a graphene coating to wetting — a measure of the degree to which liquids spread out or bead up on a surface — is not as absolute as some researchers had thought. New research at MIT shows that for materials ...

UEA research shows record high for global carbon emissions Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are set to rise again in 2012, reaching a record high of 35.6 billion tonnes - according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project, co-led by researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The 2.6 per cent rise projected for 2012 means global emissions from burning fossil fuel are 58 per cent above 1990 levels, the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol. This latest analysis by the Global Carbon Project is published ...

In the largest genetic study of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) to date, researchers from the CARDIoGRAMplusC4D Consortium report the identification of 15 genetic regions newly associated with the disease, bringing to 46 the number of regions associated with CAD risk. The team identified a further 104 independent genetic variants that are very likely to be associated with the disease, enhancing our knowledge of the genetic component that causes CAD. They used their discoveries to identify biological pathways that underlie the disease and showed that lipid metabolism and ...

New research has demonstrated a way to make bismuth electrons and nuclei work together as qubits in a quantum computer. The discovery, published in Nature Materials, takes us a key step further to creating practical quantum computing which could tackle complex programs that would otherwise take the lifetime of the universe to finish. The collaboration partners are based in the University of Warwick, UCL, ETH Zurich and the USA Sandia National Labs. Information on our normal computers is stored as bits, which are either ones or zeros. Quantum bits work differently ...

Anthrax uses a receptor on the surface of cells to inject its lethal toxins. However, the physiological function of this receptor, named Anthrax Toxin Receptor 2a (Antxr2a), remained unknown until now. A team led by Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan, a professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, in collaboration with Gisou van der Goot at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), reveals that Antxr2a actually plays a role in embryonic development, orienting cell division along a specific plane, which is a prelude to the formation of future tissues and organs. ...

Using powerful gene-analysis tools, researchers have discovered mutations in two related genes, ARID1A and ARID1B, that are involved in the most aggressive form of the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. While these findings do not immediately improve clinical treatments, they identify a novel pathway that is defective in these cancers, a pathway that scientists can now study to develop potential new therapies. "These gene alterations were not previously known to be mutated in neuroblastoma, and they may significantly advance our knowledge of the underlying biological pathways ...