According to results of a new study by researchers at the University of Utah, military personnel experience increased risk of suicidal thoughts or actions if they were the victims of physical or violent sexual assault as adults. In contrast, undergraduate students experience increased risk of suicidal thoughts or actions if they were the victims of unwanted sexual experiences as children or adults. While other research has shown that victims of sexual or physical assault are at increased risk of health problems—including suicide—the majority of that work has focused on ...

The Arctic sea ice has not only declined over the past decade but has also become distinctly thinner and younger. Researchers are now observing mainly thin, first-year ice floes which are extensively covered with melt ponds in the summer months where once metre-thick, multi-year ice used to float. Sea ice physicists at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), have now measured the light transmission through the Arctic sea ice for the first time on a large scale, enabling them to quantify consequences of this change. They come to ...

January 17, 2013--Nyon, Switzerland Sarcopenia, or the gradual loss of muscle mass, is a common consequence of ageing, and poses a significant risk factor for disability in older adults. As muscle strength plays an important role in the tendency to fall, sarcopenia leads to an increased risk of fractures and other injuries. The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) Nutrition Working Group has published a new review which identifies nutritional factors that contribute to loss of muscle mass, or conversely, are beneficial to the maintenance of muscle mass. The Group ...

This press release is available in German. Membrane proteins are the "molecular machines" in biological cell envelopes. They control diverse processes, such as the transport of molecules across the lipid membrane, signal transduction, and photosynthesis. Their shape, i.e. folding of the molecules, plays a decisive role in the formation of, e.g., pores in the cell membrane. In the Cell magazine, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Cagliari are now reporting a novel charge zipper principle used by proteins to form functional units ...

This may look like yet another video of a dividing cell, but there's a catch. You are looking at chromosomes (red) being pulled apart by the mitotic spindle (green), but it's not a cell, because there's no cell membrane. Like a child sucking an egg out of its shell, Ivo Telley from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, removed these cellular 'innards' from a fruit fly embryo, at a stage when it is essentially a sac full of membrane-less 'cells' that divide and divide without building physical barriers to separate themselves from each other. "It's ...

COUPLES seeking to build a family, and surrogate mothers overseas who help them, are in danger of emotional, physical and financial exploitation unless UK authorities monitor and regulate the field much more closely, according to a University of Huddersfield professor who has published the results of a detailed investigation. Eric Blyth – Professor of Social Work at the University of Huddersfield, and based at its Centre for Applied Childhood Studies – is co-author of The changing face of surrogacy in the UK, an article which charts the rapid increase in the numbers of ...

The first comparative study on the evolution of sperm quality in young Spanish men over ten years, headed by researchers at the University of Murcia, reveals that spermatozoid concentration in men between 18 and 23 years in the regions of Murcia and Almeria has dropped by an annual average of 2%. The suspicion that the semen of Spanish men is losing quality now takes force in the case of young men from Murcia and Almeria. The 'Andrology' journal has published a multidisciplinary and international study, headed by the Department of Preventative Medicine and Public ...

Volcanic eruptions have the potential to cause loss of life, disrupt air traffic, impact climate, and significantly alter the surrounding landscape. Knowledge of the past behaviours of volcanoes is key to producing risk assessments of the hazards of modern explosive events. The open access database of Large Magnitude Explosive Eruptions (LaMEVE) will provide this crucial information to researchers, civil authorities and the general public alike. Compiled by an international team headed by Dr Sian Crosweller from the Bristol's School of Earth Sciences with support from ...

In the latest issue of Science, researchers from Lund University in Sweden have shown how nanowires could pave the way for more efficient and cheaper solar cells. "Our findings are the first to show that it really is possible to use nanowires to manufacture solar cells", says Magnus Borgström, a researcher in semiconductor physics and the principal author. Research on solar cell nanowires is on the rise globally. Until now the unattained dream figure was ten per cent efficiency – but now Dr Borgström and his colleagues are able to report an efficiency of 13.8 per cent. ...

ANN ARBOR—In the coming decades, climate change will lead to more frequent and more intense Midwest heat waves while degrading air and water quality and threatening public health. Intense rainstorms and floods will become more common, and existing risks to the Great Lakes will be exacerbated. Those are some of the conclusions contained in the Midwest chapter of a draft report released last week by the federal government that assesses the key impacts of climate change on every region in the country and analyzes its likely effects on human health, water, energy, transportation, ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Baited black traps in a pyramid shape attract significantly more brown marmorated stink bugs than other traps, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Evaluating stink bug responses to different visual stimuli may help manufacturers design better traps for monitoring the bugs. Entomologist Tracy Leskey at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Appalachian Fruit Research Station in Kearneysville, W.V., focused on visual stimuli that can attract the stink bugs to traps that will help farmers monitor ...

Washington, D.C.— Researchers still have much to learn about the volcanism that shaped our planet's early history. New evidence from a team led by Carnegie's Frances Jenner demonstrates that some of the tectonic processes driving volcanic activity, such as those taking place today, were occurring as early as 3.8 billion years ago. Their work is published in Geology. Upwelling and melting of the Earth's mantle at mid-ocean ridges, as well as the eruption of new magmas on the seafloor, drive the continual production of the oceanic crust. As the oceanic crust moves away ...

Wild animals may be a key contributor to the continuing spread of African sleeping sickness, new research published in PLOS Computational Biology shows. The West African form of the disease, also known as Gambiense Human African trypanosomiasis, affects around 10,000 people in Africa every year and is deadly if left untreated. The disease is caused by a brain-invading parasite transmitted by bites of the tsetse fly, and gets its name from the hallmark symptoms of drowsiness and altered sleeping patterns that affect late-stage patients, along with other physical and neurological ...

Highlights Residence in areas with higher average household income was linked with improved survival in kidney failure patients. In White patients, income inequality was associated with mortality. In Black patients exclusively, residence in highly segregated areas was associated with increased mortality. More than 590,000 Americans in 2010 were treated for kidney failure. Washington, DC (January 17, 2013) — Complex socioeconomic and residential factors may account for differences in survival between Black and White kidney failure patients, according to a study ...

Climate change is known to affect the population dynamics of single species, such as reindeer or caribou, but the effect of climate at the community level has been much more difficult to document. Now, a group of Norwegian scientists has found that extreme climate events cause synchronized population fluctuations among all vertebrate species in a relatively simple high arctic community. These findings may be a bellwether of the radical changes in ecosystem stability that could result from anticipated future increases in extreme events. The findings are published in the ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (January 17, 2013) – Using only a computer, an Internet connection, and publicly accessible online resources, a team of Whitehead Institute researchers has been able to identify nearly 50 individuals who had submitted personal genetic material as participants in genomic studies. Intent on conducting an exercise in “vulnerability research”—a common practice in the field of information security—the team took a multi-step approach to prove that under certain circumstances, the full names and identities of genomic research participants can be determined, ...

Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have established a link between elevated levels of a stress hormone in adolescence — a critical time for brain development — and genetic changes that, in young adulthood, cause severe mental illness in those predisposed to it. The findings, reported in the journal Science, could have wide-reaching implications in both the prevention and treatment of schizophrenia, severe depression and other mental illnesses. "We have discovered a mechanism for how environmental factors, such as stress hormones, can affect the brain's physiology ...

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The pattern of blood flow in the prefrontal cortex in the brains alters with age during multi-tasking, finds a new study in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Neuroscience. Increased blood volume, measured using oxygenated haemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) increased at the start of multitasking in all age groups. But to perform the same tasks, healthy older people had a higher and more sustained increase in Oxy-Hb than younger people. Age related changes to the brain occur earliest in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain associated with memory, emotion, and higher decision ...

Using data collected about Labrador Retrievers, research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Veterinary Research is beginning to quantify the health, illnesses, and veterinary care of dogs. The UK is a nation of pet lovers – but what do we know about the health of our pets? To date the long term (longitudinal) study of canine diseases has been patchy, relying on information from referral centers and details about pet illnesses which are not reported to a vet have never been studied before. The Dogslife internet-based project was organized in conjunction ...

The dwindling reserves of fuelwood in Africa have been illuminated in a new study published today, which shows a bleak outlook for supplies across savannas in South Africa. Presenting their findings in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers have found that at current consumption levels in the communal areas of Lowveld, South Africa, reserves of fuelwood could be totally exhausted within 13 years. The consequences are significant, with around half of the 2.4 million rural households in the country using wood as their primary fuel source, ...

(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Histone proteins are the proteins that package DNA into chromosomes. Every time the cell replicates its DNA it must make large amounts of newly made histones to organize DNA within the nucleus. An imbalance in the production of DNA and histones is usually lethal for the cell, which is why the levels of the messenger RNA (mRNA) encoding the histone proteins must be tightly controlled to ensure the proper amounts of histones (not too many and not too few) are made. In a collaborative effort published online in the January 18, 2013 issue ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Jan. 17, 2013 – Farmworkers are at potential risk from food and waterborne illnesses because of the condition of cooking and eating facilities available to them, according to a new study from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Researchers from Wake Forest Baptist are the first to evaluate cooking and eating facilities in migrant farmworker camps to compare against established housing regulations. They found that the facilities fail to comply with regulations in a substantial number of camps. The study, which appears online today in the January issue ...

In contrast to climate change, there is no coordinated global system in place for measuring and reporting on biodiversity change or loss. An international team of biologists is now addressing this gap. In Science today, 30 researchers led by Henrique Miguel Pereira, from the Centre for Environmental Biology of the University of Lisbon, proposed a global biodiversity monitoring system based on a set of essential variables. By determining the most essential measurements to accurately and usefully report on biodiversity loss, known as essential biodiversity variables (EBVs), ...

Scientists from The University of Manchester have discovered that weight loss plays an important role in the body's response to fighting off intestinal worms. The findings have been published in the journal PLOS Pathogens and show that the immune system hijacks the natural feeding pathways causing weight loss. This then drives the defense mechanisms down the correct pathway to expel the worms. Nearly one quarter of the world's population is infected with gastrointestinal parasites. These prevalent infections often result in a period of reduced appetite resulting in ...