A new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) looked at the vulnerability of 54 breeding bird species to climate change impacts occurring by the year 2050 in Arctic Alaska. The assessment found that two species, the gyrfalcon and common eider are likely to be "highly" vulnerable, while seven other species would be "moderately" vulnerable to anticipated impacts. Five species are likely to increase in number and benefit from a warming climate. Arctic Alaska harbors some of the most important breeding and staging grounds for millions of birds—many from around ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (April 3, 2013)—Women who have hypertensive diseases during pregnancy seem to be at higher risk of having troublesome hot flashes and night sweats at menopause, report researchers from the Netherlands in an article published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. This is the first study to look at this association. The investigators examined the relationship between hypertensive diseases in pregnancy, such as preeclampsia, and vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes and night sweats) among 853 women who visited a cardiology ...

SAN FRANCISCO – April 3, 2013 – Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) continues to be the leading cause of visual impairment in the United States for people over age 65, according to a study recently published online in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. AMD is a potentially blinding disease that affects more than 9.1 million Americans. This study, which tracked vision loss in relation to eye disease and treatment response in nearly 5,000 patients over a 20-year period, showed that despite the recent discovery of sight-saving drugs and ...

Chinese fishing boats catch about US$11.5 billion worth of fish from beyond their country's own waters each year – and most of it goes unreported, according to a new study led by fisheries scientists at the University of British Columbia. The paper, recently published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, estimates that China's foreign catch is 12 times larger than the catch it reports to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, an international agency that keeps track of global fisheries catches. Using a new method that analyzes the type of fishing vessels ...

Physicists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have, for the first time, successfully transmitted a secure quantum code through the atmosphere from an aircraft to a ground station. Can worldwide communication ever be fully secure? Quantum physicists believe they can provide secret keys using quantum cryptography via satellite. Unlike communication based on classical bits, quantum cryptography employs the quantum states of single light quanta (photons) for the exchange of data. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle limits the precision with which the position ...

In their latest experiment, Prof. Andrea Cavalleri from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter at the Hamburg-based Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) and Dr. Michael Gensch from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) investigated together with other colleagues from the HZDR, the United Kingdom, and Japan if and how superconductivity can be systematically controlled. The objective of their research is to improve the usability of superconducting materials for such new technologies as, for example, the processing of information. ...

NEW YORK, NY (April 3, 2013) – A team of New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute scientists led by David Kahler, PhD, NYSCF Director of Laboratory Automation, have developed a new way to generate induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines from human fibroblasts, acquired from both healthy and diseased donors. Reported in PLOS ONE, this cell-sorting method consistently selects the highest quality, standardized iPS cells, representing a major step forward for drug discovery and the development of cell therapies. Employing a breakthrough method developed ...

Humans have used the papyrus sedge for millennia. The Ancient Egyptians wrote on it, it can be made into highly buoyant boats, it is grown for ornamentation and parts can even be eaten. Now, writing in the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, researchers in Uganda have demonstrated that growing papyrus can be used to soak up toxins and other noxious residues from abattoir effluent. Robinson Odong, Frank Kansiime, John Omara and Joseph Kyambadde of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, investigated a range of macrophyte plants grown in so-called ...

A new study of Hong Kong chronic pain patients suggests that targeting feelings of mental defeat could prevent severe depression, anxiety and interference with daily activities. The concept of mental defeat has previously been associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, but the new study applies it to the experience of chronic pain. Mental defeat occurs when pain patients view their pain as an 'enemy' which takes over their life and removes their autonomy and identity. The study, published in the Clinical Journal of Pain, analysed three groups of individuals living ...

Migrations happen for a reason, not randomly. A new study, based on computer simulation, attempts to explain the effect of so-called directional migration – migration for a reason – on cooperative behaviours and social cohesion. These results appear in a study about to be published in EPJ B by Hongyan Cheng from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and colleagues. The authors devised a computer simulation of what they refer to as selfish individuals – those who are mainly concerned with their own interests, to the exclusion of the interests of others. In ...

New Orleans, LA – Research led by Ya-Ping Tang, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has found that the action of a specific gene occurring during exposure to adolescent trauma is critical for the development of adult-onset Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) The findings are published in PNAS Online Early Edition the week of April 1-5, 2013. "This is the first study to show that a timely manipulation of a certain neurotransmitter system in the brain during the stage of trauma exposure is potentially an ...

This press release is available in German. In the bird world, male and female blue tits are hard to distinguish for the human observer. However, in the UV-range, visible to birds, the male is much more colourful. A closer look at the monogamous mating system of these birds again reveals that all is not what it seems: in every second nest there are chicks that are not related to the care-giving father. An already mated male can increase the number of his offspring by siring extra-pair offspring in other nests than the one he cares for with his mate. Emmi Schlicht and ...

Jerusalem, April 3, 2013 – The same factor in our immune system that is instrumental in enabling us to fight off severe and dangerous inflammatory ailments is also a player in doing the opposite at a later stage, causing the suppression of our immune response. Why and how this happens and what can be done to mediate this process for the benefit of mankind is the subject of an article published online in the journal Immunity by Ph.D. student Moshe Sade-Feldman and Prof. Michal Baniyash of the Lautenberg Center for General and Tumor Immunology at the Institute for Medical ...

The largest survey of the British class system ever carried out has revealed a new structure of seven social divisions, ranging from an "advantaged and privileged" elite to a large "precariat" of poor and deprived people. The British Sociological Association's annual conference in London heard today [Wednesday 3 April 2013] that the survey, of over 150,000 people, revealed a collapse in the number of traditional working class, and the rise of five new classes. Professor Mike Savage, of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Professor Fiona Devine, ...

By introducing individual silicon atom 'defects' using a scanning tunnelling microscope, scientists at the London Centre for Nanotechnology have coupled single atoms to form quantum states. Published today in Nature Communications, the study demonstrates the viability of engineering atomic-scale quantum states on the surface of silicon – an important step toward the fabrication of devices at the single-atom limit. Advances in atomic physics now allow single ions to be brought together to form quantum coherent states. However, to build coupled atomic systems in large ...

The scientific tools are not yet available to build a comprehensive map of the activity in the most complicated 3 pounds of material in the world — the human brain, scientists say in a newly published article. It describes the technologies that could be applied and developed for the Brain Activity Mapping (BAM) Project, which aims to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics. Published in the journal ACS Nano, the article describes how BAM could bring new understanding of how the brain works and possibly lead to treatments of clinical depression, ...

With warm summer days at the beach on the minds of millions of winter-weary people, scientists are reporting that use of a new water quality test this year could prevent unnecessary beach closures while better protecting the health of swimmers. A study analyzing the accuracy of the test appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. Meredith B. Nevers and colleagues point out that decisions on whether water is safe for recreational use have been based on tests that actually show the condition of water in the past. Those tests involve sampling water for the ...

Researchers from the universities of Granada and Murcia have confirmed the effectiveness of a spray containing 1% malic acid, which greatly improves xerostomy, or dry mouth, caused by anti-depressant drugs. This product, combined with xylitol and fluorides, in a spray format, stimulates saliva production in patients with this illness, thus improving their quality of life. Xerostomy is a dry-mouth sensation that patients have, often caused by reduced salivary secretion or biochemical changes in the saliva itself. Patients with xerostomy often find difficulty in chewing, ...

Researchers led by scientists at Case Western Reserve University have turned to an unlikely model to make medical devices safer and more comfortable—a squid's beak. Many medical implants require hard materials that have to connect to or pass through soft body tissue. This mechanical mismatch leads to problems such as skin breakdown at abdominal feeding tubes in stroke patients and where wires pass through the chest to power assistive heart pumps. Enter the squid. The tip of a squid's beak is harder than human teeth, but the base is as soft as the animal's Jello-like ...

Strong new biochemical evidence exists showing that the cereal grain sorghum is a safe food for people with celiac disease, who must avoid wheat and certain other grains, scientists are reporting. Their study, which includes molecular evidence that sorghum lacks the proteins toxic to people with celiac disease, appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Paola Pontieri and colleagues explain that those gluten proteins, present in wheat and barley, trigger an immune reaction in people with celiac disease that can cause abdominal pain and discomfort, constipation, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Geoscientist Michele Cooke and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst take an uncommon, "Earth is lazy" approach to modeling fault development in the crust that is providing new insights into how faults grow. In particular, they study irregularities along strike-slip faults, the active zones where plates slip past each other such as at the San Andreas Fault of southern California. Until now there has been a great deal of uncertainty among geologists about the factors that govern how new faults grow in regions where one plate slides past ...

Using new technology and new approaches, researchers at Lund University in Sweden hope to be able to explain why people suffer vision loss in eye diseases such as retinal detachment and glaucoma. Research on diseases of the eye such as retinal detachment and glaucoma has until now focused on the biochemical process that takes place in the eye in connection with the diseases. Fredrik Ghosh and Linnéa Taylor have concentrated instead on attempting to understand what happens on a biomechanical level in the diseases and have produced results that have drawn a lot of interest ...

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans. Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers an opportunity ...

Mention "high costs," "financing" and "safety" in the same sentence as "commercial nuclear power plants," and most people think of the multi-billion-dollar construction or operational phase of these facilities, which provide 20 percent of the domestic electric supply. Those concerns, however, are now emerging as aging nuclear power plants reach retirement age, and electric utilities confront the task of deconstruction, or decommissioning, nuclear power stations. That's the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine ...

BOSTON (April 3, 2013) — Researchers from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine have discovered a statistical association between the injection of local dental anesthesia given to children ages two to six and evidence of missing lower wisdom teeth. The results of this epidemiological study, published in the April issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association, suggest that injecting anesthesia into the gums of young children may interrupt the development of the lower wisdom tooth. "It is intriguing to think that something as routine as local anesthesia could ...