An experiment carried out on rodents exposed to fuel similar to that of the Prestige tanker oil spill – which took place nearly a decade ago – shows that inhalation of the fuel causes damage to genetic material. According to the study, led by the University of A Coruña, the results could be used in relation to people who carry out the industrial cleaning of coasts. On 19 November, it will be ten years since the sinking of the Prestige, which caused one of Spain's largest ecological disasters. The oil spill reached the coasts of Galicia and the rest of the Cantabrian coast, ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 15, 2012 – One of the biggest challenges in psychiatric genetics has been to replicate findings across large studies. Scientists at King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry have now performed one of the largest ever genetic replication studies of bipolar affective disorder, with 28,000 subjects recruited from 36 different research centers. Their findings provide compelling evidence that the chromosome 3p21.1 locus contains a common genetic risk for bipolar disorder, the PBRM1 gene. The locus at 3p21.1 has also been previously associated ...

Playing soccer (football) could be the best way for people with high blood pressure, known as hypertension, to improve their fitness, normalise their blood pressure and reduce their risk of stroke. Research from Universities of Exeter and Copenhagen, and Gentofte University Hospital in Denmark, published today (Monday 15 October 2012) in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, suggests that soccer training prevents cardiovascular disease in middle-aged men with hypertension and is more effective than healthy lifestyle advice currently prescribed by GPs. After ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 15, 2012) – State physician health programs (PHPs) play a key role in helping doctors with substance abuse problems. But the current PHP system is inconsistent and prone to potential conflicts of interest and ethical issues, according to a review available as publish ahead of print content from the December 2012 issue of Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part ofWolters Kluwer Health. In the article, Drs J. Wesley Boyd ...

A film historian at Queen Mary, University of London has been uncovering the secret past of British cinema in a private collection of production records for thousands of films, including such iconic titles as Dr No, The African Queen, and Zulu. The unique production archive is owned by Film Finances Ltd, underwriters of many major British films made since the 1950s. The company has kept complete documentation for every production it has guaranteed, including letters, telegrams, shooting schedules, scripts, storyboards and even doctors' certificates. In 2009, Film Finances ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed new techniques for stretching carbon nanotubes (CNT) and using them to create carbon composites that can be used as stronger, lighter materials in everything from airplanes to bicycles. By stretching the CNT material before incorporating it into a composite for use in finished products, the researchers straighten the CNTs in the material, which significantly improves its tensile strength – and enhances the stiffness of the composite material and its electrical and thermal conductivity. State-of-the-art ...

Many diseases are caused by proteins losing their natural three-dimensional structure and thus their function. In most cases, the damaged proteins are degraded by different systems in the cells, but in some cases, the proteins begin to aggregate and form very well-organised rope-like structures called fibrils. These structures have now been linked to many different diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type 2 diabetes and corneal dystrophies (opaqueness in the cornea). It has long been known that corneal dystrophy is caused by a mutation of a protein called TGFBIp ...

This press release is available in Spanish.This line of research, coordinated by Luz Neira, who is a professor in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art, as well as a researcher in UC3M's Institute for Culture and Technology (Instituto de Cultura y Tecnología), continues on the path established by previous studies that examined the images of women and certain legends in Roman mosaics. "We had previously shown the memory and conscious, self-interested reuse of myths, but this new volume also examines the possibility that there is a subliminal message regarding ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Georgia Health Sciences University researchers have developed a mouse that errs on the side of making bone rather than fat, which could eventually lead to better drugs to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Drugs commonly used to treat those types of conditions – called glucocorticoids – work by turning down the body's anti-inflammatory response, but simultaneously turn on other pathways that lead to bone loss. The result can lead to osteoporosis and an accumulation of marrow fat, says Dr. Xingming Shi, bone biologist at the GHSU ...

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, spend August in Sisimiut on the west coast of Greenland studying the prevalence of antibiotic resistance and the effects of antibiotic emissions on communities of bacteria living in marine sediments. More specifically, they were investigating how communities of bacteria in sediment and clay on the seabed are affected by exposure to antibiotics. "We know very little about what happens to antibiotics that end up in the ocean, but several substances can accumulate in sediments where biodegradation occurs extremely slowly," ...

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan and 20 other U.S. and Canadian universities will join forces to propose a set of long-term research and policy priorities to help protect and restore the Great Lakes and to train the next generation of scientists, attorneys, planners and policy specialists who will study them. The Great Lakes Futures Project of the Transborder Research University Network will use a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector approach to outlining alternative Great Lakes futures through science-based scenario analysis. "With the recent release of the revised ...

New research findings recently published in The FASEB Journal, show that immune system development is affected by gravity changes, as reported by researchers from the University of Lorraine and University of Luxembourg. Astronauts are exposed to stresses, during launch and landing, which disrupts their body's natural defenses against infection. Changes to the immune system need to be investigated before astronauts undergo longer space missions. Researchers looked at how antibody production is affected when animal development occurs onboard a space station and which ...

After leukaemia and brain tumours, neuroblastoma is the most common form of cancer to affect children. A thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has studied a DNA method which is now used for all cases of neuroblastoma in Sweden, and which has led to more effective treatment at individual level. Neuroblastoma affects around 20 children each year, most of them under the age of two. This form of cancer, which affects the peripheral nervous system, is particularly unusual: some tumours can regress spontaneously without treatment, while others ...

Ylva Sommerland, from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has studied the tomboy in manga, a girl manoeuvring in masculine situations. The study concerns sports manga and fantasy manga for teens – genres that offer plenty of tomboy stories. The study focuses on a tomboy found in Mitsuru Adachi's sports manga Cross Game. Sports manga is immensely popular in Japan, and Mitsuru Adachi is one of the most well-known artists in this genre. He has been active since the 1970s. "My analyses for example show that his character Aoba uses her entire female body when playing ...

Spintronic technology, in which data is processed on the basis of electron "spin" rather than charge, promises to revolutionize the computing industry with smaller, faster and more energy efficient data storage and processing. Materials drawing a lot of attention for spintronic applications are dilute magnetic semiconductors – normal semiconductors to which a small amount of magnetic atoms is added to make them ferromagnetic. Understanding the source of ferromagnetism in dilute magnetic semiconductors has been a major road-block impeding their further development and use ...

Children who undergo brain radiation therapy run a significant risk of suffering from permanent neurocognitive adverse effects. These adverse effects are due to the fact that the radiation often encounters healthy tissue. This reduces the formation of new cells, particularly in the hippocampus – the part of the brain involved in memory and learning. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy have used a model study to test newer radiation therapy techniques which could reduce these harmful adverse effects. The researchers based their study on a ...

Evidence uncovered by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, geography professor suggests recent droughts could be the new normal. This is especially bad news for our nation's forests. For most, to find evidence that recent years' droughts have been record-breaking, they need not look past the withering garden or lawn. For Henri Grissino-Mayer he looks at the rings of trees over the past one thousand years. He can tell you that this drought is one of the worst in the last 600 years in America's Southwest and predicts worst are still to come. Grissino-Mayer collaborated ...

Researchers plan to see if a higher dose of a pneumococcal vaccine will create a stronger immune response in older adults who received an earlier generation vaccine against pneumonia and other pneumococcal diseases. The study supported by the National Institutes of Health will compare two dosages of a pneumococcal vaccine approved for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years, and adults 50 and older. The trial will enroll up to 882 men and women ages 55 to 74. The study is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH. Researchers ...

When we read a text, we hear a voice talking to us. Yet the voice changes over time. In his new book titled Poesins röster, Mats Malm, professor in comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that when reading older literature, we may hear completely different voices than contemporary readers did – or not hear any voices at all. 'When we read a novel written today, we hear a voice that speaks pretty much the same language we speak, and that addresses people and things in a way we are used to. But much happens as a text ages – a certain type of ...

CINCINNATI—A joint study by University of Cincinnati Department of Emergency Medicine and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center researchers has found that, in contrast to popular opinion, major holidays are associated with a lower number of suicide attempts by poisoning. The study found that holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving may actually be protective against suicide attempts, possibly due to the increased family or social support structures present around those times. In contrast, New Year's Day had significantly higher numbers of suicide attempts by overdose. "There ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Computer-delivered and face-to-face interventions both can help curb problematic college drinking for a little while, but only in-person encounters produce results that last beyond a few months, according to a new analysis of the techniques schools use to counsel students on alcohol consumption. CDIs — computer-delivered interventions — have gained prominence on college campuses because they can reach a large number of students almost regardless of the size of a college's counseling staff, said Kate Carey, lead author of a systematic ...

DURHAM, N.H. – Astrophysicists from the University of New Hampshire's Space Science Center (SSC) have created the first online system for predicting and forecasting the radiation environment in near-Earth, lunar, and Martian space environments. The near real-time tool will provide critical information as preparations are made for potential future manned missions to the moon and Mars. "If we send human beings back to the moon, and especially if we're able to go to Mars, it will be critical to have a system like this in place to protect astronauts from radiation hazards," ...

In the far future, superconducting quantum bits might serve as components of high-performance computers. Today already do they help better understand the structure of solids, as is reported by researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the Science magazine. By means of Josephson junctions, they measured the oscillations of individual atoms "tunneling" between two positions. This means that the atoms oscillated quantum mechanically. Deformation of the specimen even changed the frequency (DOI: 10.1126/science.1226487). "We are now able to directly control the frequencies ...

This press release is available in Spanish.Preventing activity of a key enzyme in potatoes could help boost potato quality by putting an end to cold-induced sweetening, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Cold-induced sweetening, which occurs when potatoes are put in long-term cold storage, causes flavor changes and unwanted dark colors in fried and roasted potatoes. But long-term cold storage is necessary to maintain an adequate supply of potatoes throughout the year. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists found that during cold ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, October 15, 2012 -- Fearful flyers seek flight attributes that may be primarily reassuring, such as schedule, aircraft size and carrier origin, but have little effect on the low, actual risk according to a study published in the Journal of Travel Research. People with fear of flying (FOF) are willing to pay more for a number of choices that help them alleviate their fear, according to the study by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Technion Israel Institute of Technology. According to ...