GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Shark attacks in the U.S. reached a decade high in 2012, while worldwide fatalities remained average, according to the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File report released today. The U.S. saw an upturn in attacks with 53, the most since 2000. There were seven fatalities worldwide, which is lower than 2011 but higher than the yearly average of 4.4 from 2001 to 2010. It is the second consecutive year for multiple shark attacks in Western Australia (5) and Reunion Island (3) in the southwest Indian Ocean, which indicates the localities ...

Although the current Supreme Court has been criticized for its lack of diversity on the bench, the Court is actually more diverse overall today than ever in history, according to a new study that borrows statistical methods from ecology to reveal a more precise picture of diversity. The study, which appears in the online edition of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, examines seven categories of diversity for every Supreme Court justice since the Court first convened in 1790 with Justice John Jay, including ethnic/racial origin, religion, professional background, childhood ...

A team of UCLA-led researchers has identified a protein with broad virus-fighting properties that potentially could be used as a weapon against deadly human pathogenic viruses such as HIV, Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, Nipah and others designated "priority pathogens" for national biosecurity purposes by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. In a study published in the January issue of the journal Immunity, the researchers describe the novel antiviral property of the protein, cholesterol-25-hydroxylase (CH25H), an enzyme that converts cholesterol to an ...

DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher has identified characteristics in benign breast disease associated with future cancer risk in African-American women. Michele Cote, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology in the School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, recently reviewed data from about 1,400 20- to 84-year-old African-American women who underwent breast biopsies between 1997 and 2000. Researchers identified biopsies that showed benign breast disease (BBD) and also tracked subsequent breast cancers. BBD is an established risk factor ...

Dance is a beautiful form of expression, but it could be physically taxing and strenuous on the human body, particularly for children and adolescents. A new study by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital examined dance-related injuries among children and adolescents 3 to 19 years of age from 1991 to 2007. During the 17-year study period, an estimated 113,000 children and adolescents were treated in U.S. emergency departments for dance-related injuries. According to the study, which is being ...

Rice University researchers "cured" a strain of bacteria of its ability to resist an antibiotic in an experiment that has implications for a long-standing public health crisis. Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez and his team managed to remove the ability of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa microorganism to resist the antibiotic medication tetracycline by limiting its access to food and oxygen. Over 120 generations, the starving bacteria chose to conserve valuable energy rather than use it to pass on the plasmid – a small and often transmissible DNA element – that ...

VIDEO: Using cutting-edge time-lapse photography, University of Southern California researchers have discovered clues to the development of the head at the cellular level, which could point scientists to a better understanding... Click here for more information. Highlights of this news release: The research has determined two molecular signaling pathways that help control formation of the head and face The discovery may lead to future understanding of certain birth defects ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When a person living in the U.S. without legal permission or suspected of doing so is involved in a work-related lawsuit, most courts disregard their immigration status when determining remedies, says a study from a University of Illinois expert in labor relations. According to research from Michael LeRoy, a professor of law and of labor and employment relations at Illinois, by mostly ignoring the immigration status of workers who file suit against former employers, lower courts are essentially refusing to view the complaint as an occasion to enforce ...

Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have provided important new details into the activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a cell surface protein that has been strongly linked to a large number of cancers and is a major target of cancer therapies. "The more we understand about EGFR and the complex molecular machinery involved in the growth and proliferation of cells, the closer we will be to developing new and more effective ways to cure and treat the many different forms ...

HOUSTON - Researchers employed an extensive analysis of genomic information to identify a new, high-risk cohort of ovarian cancer patients, characterize their tumors, find a potential treatment and test it in mouse models of the disease. The exhaustive analysis that led to micro RNA 506 (miR-506) as a potential therapeutic candidate for advanced or metastatic ovarian cancer is the cover article in the Feb. 11 edition of Cancer Cell. "Functional analysis showed that miR-506 is a robust inhibitor of a cellular transition that makes ovarian cancer cells more resistant ...

Alexandria, VA – Geoscience Currents #69 explores how female geoscience enrollments and degrees changed in the 2011-2012 academic year. New data collected shows that female geoscience enrollments and degrees in the U.S. dropped sharply at both the Bachelor's and Master's levels, but increased slightly at the Doctoral level. The percentage of women enrolled in undergraduate geoscience programs in 2011-2012 was at the lowest levels seen since the 1990s, and Master's participation rates fell below 40% for the first time since 2001. Alternatively, women's participation in geoscience ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Batten disease is a rare, fatal genetic disorder that affects children. Currently, no effective treatment exists for the disease, which ultimately kills all who are affected. Dachshunds also suffer from Batten disease, and now researchers from the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine and School of Medicine, in collaboration with BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., have developed a treatment for the disease that has significantly delayed the onset and progression of symptoms in the Dachshunds. The effectiveness of the treatment in the dogs has ...

A new commentary in the Annals of Internal Medicine from researchers with The Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and University of California, Davis, calls for more physician engagement in the current gun policy dialogue. "Physicians are an important source of information for the public and a valued constituency for policymakers," said lead author Shannon Frattaroli, a faculty member with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "They are uniquely poised to be at the forefront of gun violence ...

Nine out of 10 young children with moderate to severe attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) continue to experience serious, often severe symptoms and impairment long after their original diagnoses and, in many cases, despite treatment, according to a federally funded multi-center study led by investigators at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. The study, published online Feb. 11 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, is the largest long-term analysis to date of preschoolers with ADHD, the investigators say, and sheds much-needed ...

PITTSBURGH—A musical collaboration, be it Rodgers and Hammerstein or Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, requires a mix of shared and complementary traits that is not always obvious. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University discovered elements of this unique chemistry by using an automated technique to analyze an online songwriting community. Based on four years of data collected though an international songwriting challenge called February Album Writing Month, or FAWM, the Carnegie Mellon team found that common interests or skills do not cause collaborators to seek each ...

"Sit up straight in your chair!" That command given by countless parents to their children may one day be delivered by vehicle designers to a robot that is actually a computerized model of a long-distance truck driver or other heavy equipment operator, thanks to a University of Iowa research program. That's because a UI researcher has designed a computer program that allows engineers to accurately predict the role posture plays in transferring the stress of vehicle motion to bone and muscle in the head and neck. Titled "Human head-neck models in whole-body vibration: ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - What's most important to a man as he decides whether or not to undergo prostate-specific antigen- PSA- screening for prostate cancer? What does he value most about the screening? And what's the best way to present the information to help him make an appropriate decision for himself? An international team of scientists led by the University of North Carolina has published a study evaluating different ways of helping men consider their values about PSA screening. They report that the decision-making process was influenced by the format in which information ...

HOUSTON -- (Feb. 11, 2013) -- Cancer researchers from Rice University suggest that a new man-made drug that's already proven effective at killing cancer and drug-resistant bacteria could best deliver its knockout blow when used in combination with drugs made from naturally occurring toxins. "One of the oldest tricks in fighting is the one-two punch -- you distract your opponent with one attack and deliver a knockout blow with another," said José Onuchic of Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP). "Combinatorial drug therapies employ that strategy at a ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – Strokes that occur during or shortly after surgery can be devastating, resulting in longer hospital stays and increased risks of death or long-term disability. But prompt identification and treatment of such strokes can improve neurologic outcomes, according to an article in the journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics by Loyola University Medical Center stroke specialists Sarkis Morales-Vidal, MD and Michael Schneck, MD. The article answers commonly asked questions about the management of perioperative stroke. (A perioperative stroke is a stroke that ...

The fifteenth tropical cyclone of the Southern Indian Ocean season strengthened into a tropical storm today, Feb. 11, and NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead hours after it reached tropical storm strength. Tropical Cyclone 15S was born from the low pressure area designated as System 92S. System 92S developed on Feb. 9 and intensified into a tropical storm on Feb. 11 at 0300 UTC. At that time, Tropical Cyclone 15S had maximum sustained winds near 35 knots (40.2 mph/64.8 kph), making it a tropical storm. It was centered near 12.1 south latitude and 82.5 east longitude, ...

Tropical Cyclone Haley was forming quickly as NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the storm in the South Pacific Ocean. On Feb. 9 at 2020 UTC (3:20 p.m. EST) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of System 93P (known in Fiji as 14F). The MODIS image showed a circular center of circulation with banding features, two things that indicated that the low pressure area was quickly organizing. The next day, the low became Tropical Storm Haley. Tropical Cyclone Haley formed on Feb. ...

Toddlers whose parents praised their efforts more than they praised them as individuals had a more positive approach to challenges five years later. That's the finding of a new longitudinal study that also found gender differences in the kind of praise that parents offer their children. The study, by researchers at the University of Chicago and Stanford University, appears in the journal Child Development. "Previous studies have looked at this issue among older students," according to Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Temple University; Gunderson ...

Negative stereotypes about boys may hinder their achievement, while assuring them that girls and boys are equally academic may help them achieve. From a very young age, children think boys are academically inferior to girls, and they believe adults think so, too. Even at these very young ages, boys' performance on an academic task is affected by messages that suggest that girls will do better than they will. Those are the conclusions of new research published in the journal Child Development and conducted at the University of Kent. The research sought to determine the ...

Parents act differently with different children—for example, being more positive with one child and more negative with another. A new longitudinal study has found that this behavior negatively affects not only the child who receives more negative feedback, but all the children in the family. The study also found that the more risks experienced by parents, the more likely they will treat their children differentially. Carried out at the University of Toronto with researchers from McMaster University and the University of Rochester, the study appears in the journal Child ...

Teenagers from all walks of life who believe people can't change react more aggressively to a peer conflict than those who think people can change. And teaching them that people have the potential to change can reduce these aggressive reactions. Those are the findings of a new study published in the journal Child Development. The research was conducted at the University of Texas at Austin, Emory University, and Stanford University. Prior research has shown that children who grow up in hostile environments, such as high-violence neighborhoods, are more likely to interpret ...