In the first published results of more than three years of tracking mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains, UC Santa Cruz researchers document how human development affects the predators' habits. In findings published today (April 17) in the online journal PLOS ONE, UCSC associate professor of environmental studies Chris Wilmers and colleagues with the UC Santa Cruz Puma Project describe tracking 20 lions over 6,600 square miles for three years. Researchers are trying to understand how habitat fragmentation influences the physiology, behavior, ecology, and conservation ...

Researchers from the University of Alberta are abuzz after using fruit flies to find new ways of taking advantage of caffeine's lethal effects on cancer cells—results that could one day be used to advance cancer therapies for people. Previous research has established that caffeine interferes with processes in cancer cells that control DNA repair, a finding that has generated interest in using the stimulant as a chemotherapy treatment. But given the toxic nature of caffeine at high doses, researchers from the U of A instead opted to use it to identify genes and pathways ...

Do people get caught in the cycle of overeating and drug addiction because their brain reward centers are over-active causing them to experience greater cravings for food or drugs? In a unique prospective study Oregon Research Institute (ORI) senior scientist Eric Stice, Ph.D., and colleagues tested this theory, called the reward surfeit model. The results indicated that elevated responsivity of reward regions in the brain increased the risk for future substance use, which has never been tested before prospectively with humans. Paradoxically, results also provide evidence ...

Adding social gaming elements to a behavior tracking program led people to exercise more frequently and helped them decrease their body-mass index, according to new research from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the USC School of Social Work and the University at Buffalo, SUNY. The project was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio through its national program, Health Games Research. The results suggests that "gamification" may improve the effectiveness of traditional health interventions for ...

An Arizona State University biologist and her team have found that the Asian subspecies of great bustard, one of the heaviest birds capable of flight, covers migratory routes of more than 2,000 miles, traveling to and from its breeding grounds in northern Mongolia and wintering grounds in Shaanxi province in China. The research study, which is available online and will be published in the next volume of the Journal of Avian Biology, is the first of its kind to monitor the movement of this rarely studied subspecies through satellite telemetry and to connect a breeding ...

1. An enigmatic prehistoric fish has brought scientists at A*STAR's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) together with researchers from all over the world to crack its genomic code. Findings from the study are providing new insights into the evolutionary history of the African coelacanth (Figure 1) and possible clues as to how aquatic creatures transitioned to life on land. 2. Coelacanths resemble the fossilised skeletons of their ancestors from more than 300-million years ago (Figure 2). By sequencing its genome and comparing it to genes of other vertebrate ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Good news for anyone needing a transplant; a new Mayo Clinic survey shows that the public's support for both living and deceased organ donation is increasing. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they would be very or somewhat likely to consider donating a kidney or a portion of their liver to a close friend or family member in need, and an astounding 49 percent said they would be very or somewhat likely to consider donating a kidney to someone they have never met, which is often referred to as altruistic or "Good Samaritan" kidney donation. MULTIMEDIA ...

Approximately 2 million children in the United States have at least one parent deployed in military service; 750,000 of those children are 5 years old and younger. Deployment can disrupt children's well-being and development due to its impact on the care children receive, the destabilization of daily routines, and the effect on soldiers' physical and psychological health upon returning home. Research has indicated that for some children, separation during deployment contributes to heightened levels of behavioral problems, psychiatric difficulties, and poor school performance. ...

More than 12 percent of preschoolers are obese, which means they have a body mass index above the 95th percentile. Among Black and Hispanic children, the figure rises to 16 percent. These early growth patterns often continue through childhood and adolescence, increasing children's health risks, which can affect almost every system in the body, from cardiovascular to mental health. Childhood obesity often occurs in the context of family obesity. Evidence has shown that interventions that address families' dietary choices, mealtime behaviors, and patterns of physical activity ...

Screen time has changed dramatically in the 21st century. Although most people still watch television and work on computers, social forms of media are expanding rapidly, in part due to the growth of the Internet and cellular networks. These interactive and social media include social networking sites, online video sharing, virtual worlds, mobile phones, and video chat. Starting as early as ages 1 or 2, many children start using these tools, increasing the likelihood that social media will influence the development of social skills, interpersonal dynamics, and social-emotional ...

Brains develop in the context of experience. Social experiences may be particularly relevant for developing neural circuits related to the experience of feeling or emotion. Factors such as negative life events and the quality of relationships may be especially influential. Adolescence is a key time to investigate how early social experiences contribute to brain development because it's a period of dramatic changes in brain function, brain structure, and social context, and it's when many psychiatric disorders first appear. But few studies have addressed this important ...

Early mental and intellectual stimulation is important for subsequent learning. What role do electronic media play in this process? New studies are providing rigorous examinations of whether educational medial with certain features promote early learning. The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) will host a symposium during its Biennial Meeting that brings together researchers to consider educational media and early learning in global contexts. Among the questions that will be addressed: Can interactive media characters affect 18-month-olds' early learning ...

In 2010, Arizona passed an immigration law (S.B. 1070, the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act) that gave state police unprecedented power to detain individuals unable to prove their U.S. citizenship when asked. At a symposium during the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), researchers will examine the effect of the law on the health and well-being of Latino youth and families. Nearly 30 percent of Arizonans self-identify as Hispanic or of Latino origin, according to Census data. In the United States, Latinos constitute ...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease, is a fatal disease that causes motor neurons, which are responsible for controlling muscles, to die. A study published by Cell Press on April 18th in Cell Stem Cell has revealed a novel stem-cell-based approach to screen for effective treatments, which are sorely lacking. Applying this method to motor neurons derived from stem cells taken from an ALS mouse model and human patients, the researchers discovered a promising compound that promotes the survival of motor neurons, paving the way for better treatments ...

Researchers have recently discovered that an expansion of DNA in patients with the common neurodegenerative disorder Fragile X-associated Tremor syndrome causes the production of an abnormal protein that is toxic to neurons. The findings, which are reported online April 18 in the Cell Press journal Neuron, suggest an unexpected process by which DNA expansions might lead to neurodegenerative diseases—including Huntington's disease and ALS. This discovery reveals a common feature among these diseases that could be targeted to treat affected individuals. The length of this ...

When faced with impossible circumstances beyond their control, animals, including humans, often hunker down as they develop sleep or eating disorders, ulcers, and other physical manifestations of depression. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 18 show that the same kind of thing happens to flies. The study is a step toward understanding the biological basis for depression and presents a new way for testing antidepressant drugs, the researchers say. The discovery of such symptoms in an insect shows that the roots of depression ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Declining levels of the protein BubR1 occur when both people and animals age, and contribute to cell senescence or deterioration, weight loss, muscle wasting and cataracts. Mayo Clinic researchers have shown that adult progenitor or stem cells -- important for repair and regeneration of skeletal muscle and maintenance of healthy fat tissue -- are subject to cellular senescence, and that clearance of these cells limits age-related deterioration of these tissues. The findings appear today online in the journal Cell Reports. BubR1 is an essential part ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- How well people are protected by the smallpox vaccine depends on more than the quality of the vaccination: individual genes can alter their response, Mayo Clinic research shows. The findings, gathered using sophisticated genomic screening, appear in today's online issue of the journal Genes and Immunity. MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video of Dr. Poland is available on the Mayo Clinic News Network. "We were looking into the intercellular reactions that occur when vaccinated and unvaccinated persons are exposed to and infected with smallpox virus. We were able ...

Cambridge, MA, April 18, 2013 - Using a new stem-cell based drug screening technology with the potential to reinvent and greatly reduce the cost of the way new pharmaceuticals are developed, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have found a compound more effective in protecting the neurons killed in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – Lou Gehrig's disease – than two drugs that failed in human clinical trials after hundreds of millions of dollars had been invested in them. The new stem cell screening technique developed by Lee Rubin, a member of HSCI's Executive ...

VIDEO: This is the video article, "Anatomical Reconstructions Of The Human Cardiac Venous System Using Contrast-Computed Tomography of Perfusion-fixed Specimens. " Click here for more information. On April 18th JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) will publish a new video article by Dr. Paul A Iaizzo demonstrating the anatomical reconstruction of an active human heart. The research uses contrast-computed tomography (CT) to allow in-depth 3-D computer modeling ...

(Seattle, WA, April 18, 2013) In a manuscript published today in Immunity, scientists at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) and the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research (BIIR) report the results of a comparative study of the molecular immune responses to influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. In addition, cutting-edge web technology was used to improve dissemination of data in order to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery. The article features interactive figures (iFigures!; http://www.interactivefigures.com ) that can be customized and allow ...

National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists studying an emerging coronavirus have found that a combination of two licensed antiviral drugs, ribavirin and interferon-alpha 2b, can stop the virus from replicating in laboratory-grown cells. These results suggest that the drug combination could be used to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus, but more research is needed to confirm this preliminary finding. The study appears in the April 18, 2013, issue of Scientific Reports. The new coronavirus, called nCoV, was first identified in Saudi Arabia in September ...

Researchers have designed a method that can universally test for evolutionary adaption, or positive (Darwinian) selection, in any chosen set of genes, using re-sequencing data such as that generated by the 1000 Genomes Project. The method identifies gene sets that show evidence for positive selection in comparison with matched controls, and thus highlights genes for further functional studies. The method was employed to test whether any of the genes directly regulated by FOXP2 may themselves have undergone positive selection following the known selection at the FOXP2 ...

VIDEO: This video shows a behavioral task in a human mother-infant dyad. Click here for more information. There is a very good reason mothers often carry their crying babies, pacing the floor, to help them calm down. New research published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 18 shows that infants experience an automatic calming reaction upon being carried, whether they are mouse or human babies. The study is the first to show that the infant calming response to ...

PASADENA, Calif., April 18, 2013 — Nearly 30 percent of women failed to pick up their bisphosphonate prescriptions, a medication that is most commonly used to treat osteoporosis and similar bone diseases, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published this week in the journal Osteoporosis International. The failure to pick up these newly prescribed medications, called primary nonadherence, can lead to an increased risk of fractures for these patients. The study examined the electronic health records of 8,454 women, ages 55 years or older, who were Kaiser Permanente ...