An insect with a tiny brain and minimal computing power has become the first animal proven to use the Milky Way for orientation. Scientists from South Africa and Sweden have published findings showing the link between dung beetles and the spray of stars which comprises our galaxy. Although their eyes are too weak to distinguish individual constellations, dung beetles use the gradient of light to dark provided by the Milky Way to ensure they keep rolling their balls in a straight line and don't circle back to competitors at the dung pile. "The dung beetles don't care which ...

Scientists at the University of Copenhagen's Center for Healthy Ageing have identified a compound that blocks the expression of a protein without which certain tumours cannot grow. This compound has the potential as an anticancer agent according to the research published in the journal CHBIOL: Chemistry and Biology this week. The BLM protein is also known to be important in maintaining stability in cells when they multiply, thus preventing cancer. However, certain types of tumour need BLM to grow. This is typical of osteosarcomas - aggressive malignant tumours often seen ...

Our DNA is constantly under attack from UV light, toxins and metabolic processes. Proteins and enzymes continually repair the damaged DNA. Unrecognized and therefore unrepaired damage to the genetic material, however, accelerates aging and causes cancer and genetic disorders. A team headed by veterinary pharmacologist and toxicologist Hanspeter Nägeli has now discovered that the protein XPD plays a key role in locating damaged DNA. XPD protein as scanner Genetic information is stored on approximately three billion base pairs of adenine/thymine or cytosine/guanine in ...

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have found that lightning may affect the onset of headache and migraines. These results, published in the Jan. 24, 2013 online edition of the journal Cephalalgia, are the first tying lightning to headache and could help chronic sufferers more efficiently anticipate headache and migraine arrival and begin preventive treatment immediately. Geoffrey Martin, fourth-year medical student at UC, and his father Vincent Martin, MD, professor in the division of general internal medicine, UC Health physician and headache expert, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - It seems like a great idea: Provide instant corrections to web-surfers when they run across obviously false information on the Internet. But a new study suggests that this type of tool may not be a panacea for dispelling inaccurate beliefs, particularly among people who already want to believe the falsehood. "Real-time corrections do have some positive effect, but it is mostly with people who were predisposed to reject the false claim anyway," said R. Kelly Garrett, lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University. "The ...

Liquid crystal displays are ubiquitous. Now, Polish physicists have demonstrated that the application of a very strong alternating electric field to thin liquid crystal cells leads to a new distinct dynamic effect in the response of the cells. The theory of spatio-temporal chaos explains this effect. It was elucidated by Wojciech Jeżewski and colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Poznań, Poland, and is about to be published in EPJ E. This effect has implications for the operation of liquid-crystal devices because their ...

Quality sexual and reproductive health care is an essential component of public health. However, there are insufficient evidence-based policies related to adolescent sexual and reproductive health in low- and middle-income countries. In an effort to address the research gap, faculty from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health led a project to identify research priorities for adolescent sexual and reproductive health in these countries. The results, which are based on input from nearly 300 experts and highlight key focus areas, are featured in the January issue ...

WASHINGTON - African-American and Hispanic students may be less likely than non-Hispanic white students to hold a job during the school year, but when they do, they tend to work somewhat longer hours and seem less likely to see their grades suffer than non-Hispanic white students with jobs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. A study involving nearly 600,000 students from around the country also found that among high school students who work long hours at a part-time job, black and Hispanic students from lower income households ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — University of Michigan research sheds new light on why certain people are more likely to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis – paving the way to explore new treatments for both arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. The new UMHS research in mice identifies how a specific group of genes works behind the scenes to activate the bone-destroying cells that cause severe rheumatoid arthritis, a debilitating health issue for millions of Americans. "We believe this could be a significant breakthrough in our understanding of why certain genes are associated ...

DURHAM, N.H. – There's a well-known saying in New England that if you don't like the weather here, wait a minute. When it comes to independent voters, those weather changes can just as quickly shift beliefs about climate change. New research from the University of New Hampshire finds that the climate change beliefs of independent voters are dramatically swayed by short-term weather conditions. The research was conducted by Lawrence Hamilton, professor of sociology and senior fellow at the Carsey Institute, and Mary Stampone, assistant professor of geography and the New ...

A team of researchers led by the UAB has found the first ancient remains of a calcified ovarian teratoma, in the pelvis of the skeleton of a woman from the Roman era. The find confirms the presence in antiquity of this type of tumour - formed by the remains of tissues or organs, which are difficult to locate during the examination of ancient remains. Inside the small round mass, four teeth and a small piece of bone were found. Teratomas are usually benign and contain remains of organic material, such as hair, teeth, bones and other tissues. There are no references in the ...

Though controversial, medical cannabis has been gaining ground as a valid therapy, offering relief to suffers of diseases such as cancer, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ALS and more. The substance is known to soothe severe pain, increase the appetite, and ease insomnia where other common medications fail. In 2009, Zach Klein, a graduate of Tel Aviv University's Department of Film and Television Studies, directed the documentary Prescribed Grass. Through the process, he developed an interest in the scientific research behind medical marijuana, and now, as a specialist ...

Michael Baum, Professor emeritus of surgery at University College London says that, while deaths from breast cancer may be avoided, any benefit will be more than outweighed by deaths due to the long term adverse effects of treatment. He estimates that, for every 10, 000 women invited for screening, three to four breast cancer deaths are avoided at the cost of 2.72 to 9.25 deaths from the long term toxicity of radiotherapy. These figures contrast with an independent report on breast cancer screening, led by Sir Michael Marmot and published in November last year. Marmot ...

The mosquitoes that spread dengue fever tap into the domestic networks of humans, along with their bloodstreams, finds a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The data from Iquitos, Peru, shows that the trail of the most rapid transmission of human infections does not lead through large, public gathering places, as might be expected, but from house-to-house, as people visit nearby friends and relatives. "It's common in a dengue fever outbreak to first treat public places like schools for mosquitoes, but our results show ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Biopesticides containing beneficial fungi are often grown on grains or other solids, but U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have shown a liquid diet can work better. The approach, dubbed "liquid culture fermentation," offers several benefits, including lower material costs and increased yields of certain forms of insect-killing fungi, including Isaria or Metarhizium, which can serve as biobased alternatives to synthetic pesticides. For decades, biopesticide makers have grown such fungi on moistened grains ...

In 1901 the star GK Persei gave off a powerful explosion that has not stopped growing and astonishing ever since. Now a team of Spanish and Estonian astronomers has reconstructed the journey of the emitted gas in 3D which, contrary to predictions, has hardly slowed down its speed of up to 1,000 km/s after all this time. Thanks to the images captured from the Isaac Newton Telescope and the Nordic Optical Telescope in La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain), a European team of astronomers has constructed a three dimensional map of the remnant of a nova, or in other words, what ...

RUB researchers find altered connectivity in the brain network for body perception. The weaker the connection, the greater the misjudgement of body shape When people see pictures of bodies, a whole range of brain regions are active. This network is altered in women with anorexia nervosa. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, two regions that are important for the processing of body images were functionally more weakly connected in anorexic women than in healthy women. The stronger this "connection error" was, the more overweight the respondents considered ...

What to fear most if faced by a cancer diagnosis is the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body. This process called metastasis accounts for over 90% of cancer patient deaths and therefore is a strong focus for cancer researchers. Researchers at BRIC, University of Copenhagen have shown that the enzyme Lysyl Oxidase (LOX) can create a "scarred" microenvironment that enhances cancer spreading. By blocking activity of the LOX enzyme, the researchers succeeded in significantly decreasing metastasis in a model of breast cancer. 'When we inhibit the activity of LOX ...

HOUSTON – An engineered peptide provides a new prototype for killing an entire category of resistant bacteria by shredding and dissolving their double-layered membranes, which are thought to protect those microbes from antibiotics. The synthetic peptide was effective in lab experiments against antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, which cause a variety of difficult-to-treat, potentially lethal infections such as pneumonia and sepsis. The team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported its findings online in advance of print ...

A study by health economists at the University of York has, for the first time, produced an estimate of the impact on other NHS patients of new and more costly drugs and other treatments. This research suggests a refinement of the way the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) gauges the cost-effectiveness of new interventions. It also has implications for the prices that the NHS can afford to pay for new drugs when the value-based pricing scheme for all new drugs is introduced by the Government in 2014. The project was funded by the Medical Research ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 24, 2013 – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine may have found an "Achilles heel" in a key HIV protein. In findings published online today in Chemistry and Biology, they showed that targeting this vulnerable spot could stop the virus from replicating, potentially thwarting HIV infection from progressing to full-blown AIDS. Previous research demonstrated that a small HIV protein called Nef interacts with many other proteins in infected cells to help the virus multiply and hide from the immune system. The Pitt group developed a ...

WASHINGTON, January 23, 2013─Important findings on the impact of banning affirmative action in higher education were just published in the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) in Online First. Affirmative action in university admissions has long been a matter of public debate, and Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin has placed its use in admissions policy as an issue before the U.S. Supreme Court. AERJ is a top-ranked peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. The article, "Understanding the Impact of Affirmative Action Bans ...

(Philadelphia, PA) - Researchers at Shriner's Hospital Pediatric Research Center at the Temple University School of Medicine, and the University of Pennsylvania have evidence linking the human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) – the most common cause of cervical cancer – to a common form of childhood epilepsy. They have shown for the first time that HPV16 may be present in the human brain, and found that when they added a viral protein to the brains of fetal mice, the mice all demonstrated the same developmental problems in the cerebral cortex associated with this type of epilepsy, ...

DETROIT – Here's a wake-up call for snorers: Snoring may put you at a greater risk than those who are overweight, smoke or have high cholesterol to have thickening or abnormalities in the carotid artery, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The increased thickening in the lining of the two large blood vessels that supply the brain with oxygenated blood is a precursor to atherosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries responsible for many vascular diseases. "Snoring is more than a bedtime annoyance and it shouldn't be ignored. Patients need to seek ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – You can train your body, your mind … and your willpower? That's according to a new study by researchers at The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, who say that with a little practice, it may be possible to strengthen and improve your self-control – and lose more weight. The Miriam research team found that individuals with more willpower – or self-control – lost more weight, were more physically active, consumed fewer calories from fat and had better attendance at weight loss group meetings. The same was true for participants ...