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 ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Schizophrenia patients experiencing relapse are 29 times more likely than healthy individuals to have a urinary tract infection, researchers report. Urinary tract infections, which can cause painful and frequent urination, are common but patients hospitalized for schizophrenia are even more likely to have a UTI than healthy individuals or even others whose illness is under control, said Dr. Brian J. Miller, psychiatrist and schizophrenia expert at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. The study comparing UTI rates in 57 relapsed ...

Toronto – Imagine you have a choice to make. In one scenario, you'd get $8 and somebody else -- a stranger – would get $8 too. In the other, you'd get $10; the stranger would get $12. Economists typically assume you'd go for the $10/$12 option because of the belief that people try to maximize their own gains. Choosing the other scenario would just be irrational. But new research conducted in collaboration with a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management shows that if a person is feeling threatened, or concerned with their status, they are ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 3, 2013 – Depression, anxiety, and smoking are associated with lower bone mineral density (BMD) in adults, but these factors have not previously been studied during adolescence, when more than 50% of bone accrual occurs. This longitudinal preliminary study is the first to demonstrate that smoking and depressive symptoms in adolescent girls have a negative impact on adolescent bone accrual and may become a red flag for a future constrained by low bone mass or osteoporosis and higher fracture rates in postmenopausal years. The study is published in ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When a current passes between two electrodes — one thinner than the other — it creates a wind in the air between. If enough voltage is applied, the resulting wind can produce a thrust without the help of motors or fuel. This phenomenon, called electrohydrodynamic thrust — or, more colloquially, "ionic wind" — was first identified in the 1960s. Since then, ionic wind has largely been limited to science-fair projects and basement experiments; hobbyists have posted hundreds of how-to videos on building "ionocrafts" — lightweight vehicles made of balsa wood, ...

Diversity training programs lead people to believe that work environments are fair even when given evidence of hiring, promotion or salary inequities, according to new findings by psychologists at the University of Washington and other universities. The study also revealed that participants, all of whom were white, were less likely to take discrimination complaints seriously against companies who had diversity programs. Workplace diversity programs are usually developed by human resource departments to foster a more inclusive environment for employees, but aren't typically ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Long vilified, invasive species can sometimes become an ecosystem asset. New Brown University research published online in the journal Ecology reports exactly such a situation in the distressed salt marshes of Cape Cod. There, the invasive green crab Carcinus maenas is helping to restore the marsh by driving away the Sesarma reticulatum crabs that have been depleting the marsh grasses. The observations and experiments of the research show that the green crab has filled the void left by the decline of native predators of sesarma crabs, ...

The creation of new blood vessels in the body, called "angiogenesis," is usually discussed in connection with healing wounds and tumors. But it's also an ongoing process in the female reproductive tract, where the growth and breaking of blood vessels is a normal part of the menstrual cycle. But abnormal growth of blood vessels can have painful consequences and resultant pathologies. Now, Prof. Ruth Shalgi and research associate Dr. Dana Chuderland of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine have found a potential treatment for this abnormal growth in a potent ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A scientist's gender can have a big impact on how other researchers perceive his or her work, according to a new study. Young scholars rated publications supposedly written by male scientists as higher quality than identical work identified with female authors. The research found that graduate students in communication -- both men and women -- showed significant bias against study abstracts they read whose authors had female names like "Brenda Collins" or "Melissa Jordan." These students gave higher ratings to the exact same abstracts when the authors ...

Cancer painfully ends more than 500,000 lives in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The scientific crusade against cancer recently achieved a victory under the leadership of University of Missouri Curators' Professor M. Frederick Hawthorne. Hawthorne's team has developed a new form of radiation therapy that successfully put cancer into remission in mice. This innovative treatment produced none of the harmful side-effects of conventional chemo and radiation cancer therapies. Clinical trials in humans could begin soon ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A new study shows clean-air regulations have dramatically reduced acid rain in the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea over the past 30 years, but the opposite is true in fast-growing East Asian megacities, possibly due to lax antipollution rules or lack of enforcement. The U.S. Clean Air Act began requiring regulatory controls for vehicle emissions in the 1970s, and 1990 amendments addressed issues including acid rain. Similar steps in the European Union, Japan and South Korea over the past three decades have reduced nitrate and sulfate ...

UCLA researchers have used a brain-imaging tool and stroke risk assessment to identify signs of cognitive decline early on in individuals who don't yet show symptoms of dementia. The connection between stroke risk and cognitive decline has been well established by previous research. Individuals with higher stroke risk, as measured by factors like high blood pressure, have traditionally performed worse on tests of memory, attention and abstract reasoning. The current small study demonstrated that not only stroke risk, but also the burden of plaques and tangles, as ...