This press release is available in French.Quebec City, September 19, 2012—Kangaroo Mother Care -- a technique in which a breastfed premature infant remains in skin-to-skin contact with the parent's chest rather than being placed in an incubator -- has lasting positive impact on brain development, revealed Université Laval researchers in the October issue of Acta Paediatrica. Very premature infants who benefited from this technique had better brain functioning in adolescence -- comparable to that of adolescents born at term -- than did premature infants placed in incubators. Earlier ...

Type 1 diabetes is the autoimmune form of diabetes, in which the patients' insulin-producing beta cells are destroyed by their own immune system. "We know that if a person has two autoantibodies and one of them is against insulin, there is a 50 per cent risk that they will develop type 1 diabetes within five years. It doesn't matter how old you are", says Åke Lernmark, Professor of Experimental Diabetes Research at Lund University in Sweden. "There are indications that oral insulin may prevent or delay the clinical onset of type 1 diabetes among individuals with autoantibodies ...

The process of metastasis, by which cancer cells travel from a tumor site and proliferate at other sites in the body, is a serious threat to cancer patients. According to the National Cancer Institute, most recurrences of cancer are metastases rather than "new" cancers. Virtually all types of cancer can spread to other parts of the body, including the brain. Once metastatic melanoma cells are entrenched in the brain, patients typically have only a few months to live. Now Prof. Isaac Witz and his team at Tel Aviv University's Department of Cell Research and Immunology ...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) released into the oceans as a result of water pollution by nutrients — a major source of this greenhouse gas that gets little public attention — is enhancing the unwanted changes in ocean acidity due to atmospheric increases in CO2. The changes may already be impacting commercial fish and shellfish populations, according to new data and model predictions published today in ACS's journal, Environmental Science & Technology. William G. Sunda and Wei-Jun Cai point out that atmospheric levels of CO2, the main greenhouse gas, have increased by about 40 ...

This press release is available in Spanish.Researchers at TECNALIA recently published a study in the prestigious science magazine, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, which reveals the emission of nanomaterials caused by water runoff on surfaces containing nanomaterials. These surface treatments are employed in numerous consumption and construction products, so evidences of the presence of engineered nanomaterials are beginning to appear in the environment. Concerns about their toxicity for human or the environment rose in the last years, so further studies are required. The ...

Scientists are reporting development of a revolutionary new lens — flat, distortion-free, so small that more than 1,500 would fit across the width of a human hair — capable in the future of replacing lenses in applications ranging from cell phones to cameras to fiber-optic communication systems. The advance, which could lead to smart phones as thin as a credit card, appears in ACS' journal Nano Letters. Federico Capasso and colleagues explain that the lenses used to focus light in eyeglasses, microscopes and other products use the same basic technology dating to the late ...

In an advance toward a new generation of improved hip and other joint replacements, scientists are describing development of a potential implant material that flexes more like natural bone, fosters the growth of bone that keeps implants firmly in place and is less likely to fail and require repeat surgery. Their study on these so-called tantalum nanotube materials appears in ACS Applied Material & Interfaces. Hongyi Li, Jinshu Wang and Zhenting Zhang explain that the metal tantalum has advantages over titanium, stainless steel and other metals used in the current generation ...

Researchers from the Research Group on Ruminants led by Elena Albanell, lecturer in Animal and Food Science at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, have successfully achieved to prevent sheep and goats from chewing on the young leaves of olive trees and grapevines when grazing. By using the natural mechanism of conditioned taste aversion, researchers redirected the food preferences of ruminants, making them more willing to eliminate undesirable plants from these types of pastures, and thereby reducing the use of pesticides and farming equipment. The cultivation of woody ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – One in 88 children has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A new study by a University of Missouri researcher found that many children with ASD also experience anxiety, chronic gastrointestinal (GI) problems and atypical sensory responses, which are heightened reactions to light, sound or particular textures. These problems appear to be highly related and can have significant effects on children's daily lives, including their functioning at home and in school. Micah ...

Could the impact of chronic stress explain why American black girls are more likely to be overweight than white girls? According to Dr. Tomiyama of the University of California, Los Angeles in the U.S., and her colleagues, higher levels of stress over 10 years predict greater increases in body weight over time in both black and white girls. However, the experience of chronic stress appears to have a greater negative effect on black girls' weight, which may explain racial disparities in obesity levels. The work is published online in Springer's journal, Annals of Behavioral ...

CHICAGO --- Remember the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line? By the time the last person speaks it out loud, the message has radically changed. It's been altered with each retelling. Turns out your memory is a lot like the telephone game, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you ...

WASHINGTON — Some athletes may improve their performance under pressure simply by squeezing a ball or clenching their left hand before competition to activate certain parts of the brain, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. In three experiments with experienced soccer players, judo experts and badminton players, researchers in Germany tested the athletes' skills during practice and then in stressful competitions before a large crowd or video camera. Right-handed athletes who squeezed a ball in their left hand before competing ...

Using a combination of traditional and innovative model-building techniques, scientists in the U.S. and a specialist in Denmark have created a lifelike reconstruction of an ancient mollusk, offering a vivid portrait of a creature that lived about 390 million years ago, and answering questions about its place in the tree of life, as described in the Sept. 18 edition of the journal Palaeontology. The model of the oval-shaped sea creature, called a multiplacophoran, which was covered with stiff plates and a ring of spines, resulted from a collaboration between Jakob Vinther, ...

Researchers have long known that individual diseases are associated with genes in specific locations of the genome. Genetics researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now have shown definitively that a small number of places in the human genome are associated with a large number and variety of diseases. In particular, several diseases of aging are associated with a locus which is more famous for its role in preventing cancer. For this analysis, researchers at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center catalogued results from several hundred human ...

New cancer drugs must be thoroughly tested in preclinical models, often in mice, before they can be offered to cancer patients for the first time in phase I clinical trials. Key components of this process include pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies, which evaluate how the drug acts on a living organism. These studies measure the pharmacologic response and the duration and magnitude of response observed relative to the concentration of the drug at an active site in the organism. A new comparison of four different methodologies for pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 19, 2012—More than 900 million people worldwide are active users of the social networking site Facebook, and it is estimated that as many as one-third report using Facebook to check on the activities of former romantic partners. The effects of remaining Facebook friends with an ex-lover or even just following their activities online can disrupt a person's ability to heal emotionally and move on with his or her life, according to an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study of the sense of smell lends support to a controversial theory of olfaction: Our noses can distinguish both the shape and the vibrational characteristics of odorant molecules. The study, in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, demonstrates the feasibility of the theory – first proposed decades ago – that the vibration of an odorant molecule's chemical bonds – the wagging, stretching and rocking of the links between atoms – contributes to our ability to distinguish one smelly thing from another. "The theory goes that when the ...

Contact: David Hosansky 303-497-8611 hosansky@ucar.edu NCAR/UCAR Zhenya Gallon, NCAR/UCAR Media Relations 303-497-8607 zhenya@ucar.edu New airport system facilitates smoother take-offs and landings BOULDER--For airline passengers who dread bumpy rides to mountainous destinations, help may be on the way. A new turbulence avoidance system has for the first time been approved for use at a U.S. airport and can be adapted for additional airports in rugged settings across the United States and overseas. The system, developed by the National Center for Atmospheric ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – This month, GSA's top geoscience journal, Geology, has posted 30 new articles ahead of print. Locations studied include Bhutan; the James Bay Lowland of Canada; Mount Taranaki, New Zealand; Fort Stanton Cave and Carlsbad Cavern, New Mexico, USA; the Quelccaya Ice Cap, Peru; the Nile Delta; and Mars. Topics include methane hydrates, microbial micro-tunneling, fibrous diamonds, climate change, cosmic rays, and maars. Also in Geology: the first application of CARS microscopy to the geosciences. Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ...

KNOXVILLE—Shoppers — particularly women — who take the time to read food labels are thinner than those who don't. These findings are from a recently released study authored by Steven T. Yen, a University of Tennessee professor in the Institute of Agriculture's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, in conjunction with researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the University of Arkansas and the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural Finance Research. Women who read food labels weighed nearly 9 pounds less than women who didn't read labels, ...

MADISON – At first glance, the northern muriqui monkey is a prime conservation success story. These Brazilian primates are critically endangered, but in the past 30 years a population on a private reserve has grown from just 60 individuals to some 300, now comprising almost a third of the total remaining animals. As the population grows, though, it is offering researchers a glimpse into a new phase of recovery as it begins to face the limitations of its habitat. A recent analysis of the factors contributing to this population's tremendous growth reveals surprising trends ...

CHICAGO (September 18, 2012) – The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have each released new tools and information to help track deadly healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in nursing homes and other long-term care settings. Potentially deadly HAIs strike volumes of nursing home residents each year, with best estimates suggesting that up to 2.8 million infections can occur in this population annually. Published online this week in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of SHEA, ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ⎯ The United States, long considered a champion of economic freedom, plunged to No. 18 in new rankings published in the 2012 Economic Freedom of the World, an annual report co-authored by Florida State University economics Professor James Gwartney. The report is published by Canada's Fraser Institute in cooperation with institutes in 78 other nations and territories. The U.S. publisher is the Cato Institute. The 2012 report, released on Sept. 18, uses 42 different variables derived from sources such as the World Bank and International Monetary ...

A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do for the government — has been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago. The ancient language is Demotic Egyptian, a name given by the Greeks to denote it was the tongue of the demos, or common people. It was written as a flowing script and was used in Egypt from about 500 B.C. to 500 A.D., when the land was occupied and usually dominated by foreigners, including Persians, ...

Bethesda, MD – A new report from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is a stark reminder of the perilous situation facing the medical research and scientific communities unless Congress and the President take action to prevent the pending sequestration. Set in motion by the Budget Control Act of 2011, sequestration would impose automatic cuts on federal funding starting on January 2, 2013. According to OMB, the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reduced by $2.529 billion, the National Science Foundation would lose $586 million, and the Department ...