International researchers from 14 institutions met in Nicosia (Cyprus) on the 10th and 11th of December to present and debate the results of studies on water, conflict and security conducted in the past three years in a variety of locations in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Sahel under the CLICO research project. The CLICO project explored the social dimensions of climate change and in particular, conflicts related to water, and the threats this may pose for national and human security. The project was led by the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) ...

Human–elephant conflict in Sri Lanka kills more than 70 humans and 200 Asian elephants every year. One of the most common tools in combating these conflicts is moving the elephants into ranges away from humans, often into national parks. This is done in hopes of avoiding problems that include elephants raiding crops, breaking into homes and injuring or killing people. But according to a new study to be published Dec. 7 in PLOS ONE by the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the Centre for Conservation and Research in Sri Lanka and the Department of Wildlife Conservation ...

It may be possible to stop the spread of can toads into new areas of Australia according to new research published today in the Journal of Applied Ecology. One of the lead authors of the study, James Cook University's Dr Ben Phillips, said that their work, which involved an international team of scientists, showed that artificial waterbodies installed by graziers acted as critical stepping-stones for the toad invasion. "By removing these waterbodies in key locations it is possible to halt the spread of toads," he said. Cane toads are currently spreading into the vast ...

Rare brain tumors emerging among raccoons in Northern California and Oregon may be linked to a previously unidentified virus discovered by a team of researchers, led by scientists from the University of California, Davis. Their findings, published today in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, could lead to a better understanding of how viruses can cause cancer in animals and humans. Necropsies conducted since March 2010 by scientists at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and UC Davis-led California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory found brain tumors ...

Long ago, when life on our planet was in its infancy, a group of small single-celled algae floating in the vast prehistoric ocean swam freely by beating whip-like tails, called flagella. It's a relatively unremarkable tale, except that now, over 800 million years later, these organisms have evolved into parasites that threaten human health, and their algal past in the ocean may be the key to stopping them. The organisms are called Apicomplexa, but are better known as the parasites that cause malaria and toxoplasmosis—serious diseases that infect millions of people every ...

Measures of uncertainty should be taken into account when estimating progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4 (to reduce the mortality rate of children under 5 years by two thirds from the 1990 level by 2015) in order to give more accurate assessments of countries' progress, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Leontine Alkema and Jin Rou New from the National University of Singapore used a statistical method called bootstrapping to calculate uncertainty intervals for the estimates of mortality rates in children aged under 5 years and the ...

CHICAGO – The prevalence of nonrefractive visual impairment (not due to need for glasses) in the U.S. has increased significantly in recent years, which may be partly related to a higher prevalence of diabetes, an associated risk factor, according to a study in the December 12 issue of JAMA. "It is estimated that more than 14 million individuals in the United States aged 12 years and older are visually impaired ( END ...

Taxes on soft drinks and foods high in saturated fats and subsidies for fruit and vegetables could lead to beneficial dietary changes and potentially improve health, according to a study by experts from New Zealand published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Helen Eyles and colleagues from the University of Auckland and the University of Otago (Wellington) reached these conclusions by reviewing all relevant modelling studies that investigated the association between food pricing strategies, food consumption and chronic diseases (often referred to as non-communicable diseases, ...

CHICAGO – For individuals with obstructive sleep apnea traveling to higher altitudes (which may exacerbate symptoms), use of a combination therapy resulted in improvement in symptoms including reduced insomnia and better control of sleep apnea, according to a preliminary study published in the December 12 issue of JAMA. As travel to the mountains for professional and recreational activities is increasingly popular, involving millions of persons worldwide, the estimated number of patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) among mountain tourists is also high, and may ...

Outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as swine flu (H1N1) threaten global health and should be considered by funding agencies and humanitarian organizations as development issues rather than emergency situations, requiring long-term support and investment, according to US experts writing in this week's PLOS Medicine. The authors from several US institutions, led by Tiffany Bogich from Princeton University, reached these conclusions by reviewing nearly 400 serious international public health events. They found that the disruption to, or lack of, public health infrastructure ...

Studies reporting the results of industry sponsored clinical trials present a more favourable picture of the effects of drugs and medical devices than those reporting on non-industry sponsored trials, according to a new Cochrane systematic review. The researchers call for a rethink of the way that industry bias is handled in medical guidelines and reviews. The outcomes of clinical trials influence the recommendations that doctors make about drugs and other medical interventions. Therefore, it is important that trials are designed, carried out and reported on without bias ...

The sweet taste of sugar may provide some comfort for babies during immunisations, according to a new Cochrane systematic review. Researchers found babies did not cry for as long if they were given drops of sugar solution before injections. Between birth and 18 months, babies may have as many as 15 injections. It is not certain whether babies feel pain in the same way as older children and adults, or whether they are simply unable to express it. Recent evidence has proven they do feel pain and efforts have been made to reduce pain caused by injections through the use ...

Children suffering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of traumatic events, including child abuse, may benefit from psychological therapies, according to a review published in The Cochrane Library. In the first systematic review of PTSD in young people, researchers found that children and teenagers diagnosed with PTSD showed signs of improvement up to three months following treatment and called for more studies to assess long-term benefits. People who develop PTSD have usually experienced extreme traumatic events, such as abuse, war or natural disasters. ...

How does evolution innovate? We exist because our ancestors have had the ability to adapt successfully to changes in their environment; however, merely examining present-day organisms can limit our understanding of the actual evolutionary processes because the crucial events have been masked by the passage of aeons – what we need is a time machine. Scientists from VIB, KU Leuven, University of Ghent and Harvard have done the next-best thing; by reconstructing DNA and proteins from prehistoric yeast cells, they were able to directly examine the evolutionary forces that have ...

Women who are even light-to-moderate cigarette smokers may be significantly more likely than nonsmokers to suffer sudden cardiac death, according to new research in Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology, an American Heart Association journal. The findings indicate long-term smokers may be at even greater risk. But quitting smoking can reduce and eliminate the risk over time. "Cigarette smoking is a known risk factor for sudden cardiac death, but until now, we didn't know how the quantity and duration of smoking effected the risk among apparently healthy women, nor ...

Washington, DC — Brain changes in children who have sustained a mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, persist for months following injury — even after the symptoms of the injury are gone, according to a study published in the December 12 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings highlight the potential benefit of using advanced imaging techniques to monitor recovery in children following concussions. Despite growing concerns over the risk of concussions in youth, the majority of research examining their effects on the brain has involved adults. These ...

A Cochrane review of studies into manipulative therapies for colic, by the University of Southampton, suggests that the treatment technique may be of some benefit. Infantile colic is a distressing problem, characterised by excessive crying of infants and it is the most common complaint seen by physicians in the first 16 weeks of a child's life. It is usually considered a benign disorder because the symptoms generally disappear by the age of five or six months. However, the degree of distress caused to parents and family life is such that physicians often feel the ...

'It is exciting to discover that a common group of fossils that we thought we knew a lot about may well have been hood-winking us as to their true identity, which we now realise because we have their beautifully fossilised soft-parts. A case of a 'wolf in sheep's clothing''- Professor David Siveter, University of Leicester An international team of researchers have made an extremely rare discovery of a species of animal - related to crabs, lobsters and shrimps – that is new to science. Scientists from the universities of Leicester, Oxford, Imperial and Yale have announced ...

The long necked sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth – but why were they so large? A decade ago a team of plant ecologists from South Africa suggested that this was due to the nature of the plant food they ate, however these ideas have fallen out of favour with many dinosaur researchers. Now Liverpool John Moores University's (LJMU's) Dr David Wilkinson and Professor Graeme Ruxton of University of St Andrews, Scotland, argue that this idea still has legs. The results have been published in the journal Functional Ecology published by ...

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have discovered a drug intended for diabetes appears to restore memory in Alzheimer's brain cells. Jack Jhamandas, a researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the U of A, is the principal investigator with the team whose research results were recently published in the peer-reviewed publication The Journal of Neuroscience. He works in the Division of Neurology. The team took brain tissue from animal models with Alzheimer's disease and tested the tissue in the lab, looking specifically at the cells' memory ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- High-speed video of projectiles slamming into a bed of disks has given scientists a new microscopic picture of the way a meteorite or missile transfers the energy of its impact to sand and dirt grains. The transfer is jerky, not smooth. "It was surprising just how unsmooth the slow-down of the intruding object was," Duke physicist Robert Behringer said. His team describes their new videos and impact analysis in the Dec. 7 Physical Review Letters. The research may change the way scientists model meteorite and missile impacts and their effects. Scientists ...

WASHINGTON (Dec. 11, 2012) – New research, presented this morning at the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), has identified important associations between Plasmodium falciparum (Pf) malaria and endemic Burkitt Lymphoma (eBL) that may help researchers identify young children who are more susceptible to eBL. Unlike previous studies in which malaria infection alone was considered the important factor, this study approached the evolving complexity and heterogeneity of the humoral immune response to Pf as a key component for risk of developing ...

Rose madder – a natural plant dye once prized throughout the Old World to make fiery red textiles – has found a second life as the basis for a new "green" battery. Chemists from The City College of New York teamed with researchers from Rice University and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to develop a non-toxic and sustainable lithium-ion battery powered by purpurin, a dye extracted from the roots of the madder plant (Rubia species). More than 3500 years ago, civilizations in Asia and the Middle East first boiled madder roots to color fabrics in vivid oranges, reds ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Dec. 10, 2012) — A research team composed of University of Kentucky researchers has published a paper which provides the first direct evidence that activated astrocytes could play a harmful role in Alzheimer's disease. The UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging has also received significant new National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding to further this line of study. Chris Norris, an associate professor in the UK College of Medicine Department of Molecular and Biomedical Pharmacology, as well as a member of the faculty at the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, ...

Hot flushes affect millions of people, and not just women. Yet, it is still unclear what causes the episodes of temperature discomfort, often accompanied by profuse sweating. Now a team of researchers around Dr. Naomi Rance, a professor in the department of pathology at the UA College of Medicine, has come closer to understanding the mechanism of hot flushes, a necessary step for potential treatment options down the road. This research was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team identified a group of brain cells known as KNDy ...