Mountain View, Calif. – December 13, 2012 -- 23andMe, the leading personal genetics company, today announced the availability of Ancestry Composition, a new feature that provides state-of-the-art geographic illustration of an individual's ancestral origins. Using 22 reference populations, the feature indicates what percent of a person's ancestry comes from various regions around the world. The analysis includes DNA inherited from all ancestors on both sides of the family. The results reflect where an individual's ancestors lived going back approximately 500 years. Ancestry ...

Scientists have identified a new mutation in the gene that causes the inherited disease known as Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (Alpha-1), which affects roughly one in 2,500 people of European descent. Alpha-1 can lead to serious lung disease in adults, or liver disease at any age. The finding extends understanding of Alpha-1 at the molecular level, potentially leading to new drug development and better diagnostic tools. Dr Darren Saunders from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Professor Vanessa Hayes, from the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego, ...

Primary sources publisher, Adam Matthew, has announced the release of the fourth section of its highly renowned Victorian Popular Culture Portal. "Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema" explores the cultural history of optical entertainments from the late 18th century to the early 20th century, bringing to life the rich cultural and scientific history from which cinema was born. From shadow puppets to dioramas, and from zoetropes to Hollywood, the long and varied evolution of visual entertainments is represented through objects, ephemera and ...

MAMMALS could be at a greater risk of extinction due to predicted increases in extreme weather conditions, states a paper published today by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Scientists have mapped out land mammal populations, and overlapped this with information of where droughts and cyclones are most likely to occur. This allowed them to identify species at high risk of exposure to extreme weather. The paper, published this week in the journal Conservation Letters, describes the results of assessing almost six thousand species of land mammals in this way. Lead ...

A hearing system component thought to be unique in toothed whales like dolphins has been discovered in insects, following research involving the University of Strathclyde. The research is challenging ideas about how a large group of insects including crickets and katydids hear, revealing the unexpected similarity to toothed whale hearing. Scientists from the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Auckland, with colleagues from Plant & Food Research in New Zealand, led the research with engineers from the University of Strathclyde working on the biomechanical ...

An anesthetic regimen typically used during surgery on pregnant mothers appears to have a negative effect on the development of the fetus, according to a new study on mice conducted by neurobiologists from the National Center for Toxicological Research, in Arizona. In the article 'Inhalation Anesthesia-Induced Neuronal Damage and Gene Expression Changes in Developing Rat Brain' published earlier this month in Systems Pharmacology, an open access journal by Versita – Dr. Fang Liu and Dr. Cheng Wang describe the effect of major, commonly used anesthetic compounds – Nitrous ...

Scientists have developed a new method for studying parasite numbers in the stomachs of individual seabirds in the wild. The technique enables the recording of video footage of worms inside seabird stomachs and is an important step forward in understanding the impact of parasites on seabird populations. The research is published today (13 December 2012) in the scientific journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. The research team trialled the use of endoscopy, often used in human and veterinary medicine but rarely in field situations, to measure natural parasite loads, ...

Labour conditions, the amount of hours and working during the morning are the factors that most negatively affect the academic development of children who work. Using data from the 'Edúcame primero Colombia' Project ('Educate me first Colombia' in Spanish), a group of researchers in which the University of Seville participates has confirmed the incompatibility between studying and child labour. The International Labour Organisation states that, in 2010, approximately 215 million children across the world were working. This figure has been progressively decreasing in ...

More than two hundred gene locations have now been identified for the chronic bowel condition Crohn's Disease, in a study that analysed the entire human genome. Published today in The American Journal of Human Genetics, scientists at UCL have devised a new method for identifying and mapping gene locations for complex inherited diseases. Using this method, they have been able to identify a large number of additional genes for Crohn's Disease, making a total of more than 200, which is more than have been found for any other disease. For example, there are just 66 known ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (December 13, 2012) – Analysis of media portrayals of nursing homes finds that negative stories outnumber positive stories by five to one, reports a study in the December issue of Medical Care. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part ofWolters Kluwer Health. Negative news coverage of nursing homes may shape public perceptions and consumer care choices, suggest Edward Alan Miller, PhD, MPA, of University of Massachusetts Boston and Denise A. Tyler, PhD, of Brown University. They write, "Our findings suggest that negative reporting ...

Randomly distributed sticky spots which are integral to the development of stem cells by maximising adhesion and acting as internal scaffolding have been artificially recreated by experts from the University of Sheffield for the first time. Using synthetic foam type materials to mimic the natural process – known as the extracellular matrix or ECM – scientists, from the University of Sheffield and University of California San Diego, created the random stickiness required for stem cells to properly adhere. The findings will better inform researchers across the world of ...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 13, 2012 — Three University of Kentucky (UK) sociologists have co-authored a study that helps to fill a gap in our understanding of suicide risk among African-American women. Appearing in the December issue of Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ), the study, "Too Much of a Good Thing? Psychosocial Resources, Gendered Racism, and Suicidal Ideation among Low Socioeconomic Status African American Women," examines the relationship between racial and gender discrimination and suicidal ideation, or thinking about and desiring to commit suicide. The co-authors ...

PITTSBURGH—What is everyone looking at? It's a common question in social settings because the answer identifies something of interest, or helps delineate social groupings. Those insights someday will be essential for robots designed to interact with humans, so researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have developed a method for detecting where people's gazes intersect. The researchers tested the method using groups of people with head-mounted video cameras. By noting where their gazes converged in three-dimensional space, the researchers could determine ...

Their review is published online in the Springer publication, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. A certain amount of mental deterioration is expected with advancing age. However, this may not necessarily have to be the case as particular aspects of cognitive function such as task switching, selective attention and working memory among others, all appear to benefit from aerobic exercise. Studies in older adults reviewed by the authors consistently found that fitter individuals scored better in mental tests than their unfit peers. In addition, intervention studies found scores ...

Wrinkles, dryness, and a translucent and fragile appearance are hallmarks of old skin, caused by the natural aging of skin cells. But while most of us can recognize the signs of lost youth when we peer into the mirror each morning, scientists do not have a standardized way to measure the extent of age damage in skin. Now a group of Taiwanese researchers has used a specialized microscope to peer harmlessly beneath the skin surface to measure natural age-related changes in the sizes of skin cells. The results, which are published in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access ...

This press release is available in German. How many matter particles exist in nature? Particle physicists have been dealing with this question for a long time. The 12 matter particles contained in the standard model of particle physics? Or are there further particles with too high a mass to be produced by the experiments performed so far? These questions are now answered by researchers of KIT, CERN, and Humboldt University in the current issue of the Physical Review Letters. (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.241802) Matter particles, also called fermions, are the elementary ...

Worcester, Mass. – The interior of an animal cell is like a small city, with factories—called organelles—dedicated to manufacturing, energy production, waste processing, and other life functions. A network of intercellular "highways," called microtubules, enables bio-molecular complexes, products, and other cargo to move speedily about the cell to keep this vital machinery humming. A new paper published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds new light on how cells manage to keep traffic flowing smoothly along this busy transportation ...

This press release is available in French. Quebec City, December 13, 2012—A study published by Université Laval researchers and their colleagues from the Canadian Forest Service reveals that the genome of conifers such as spruce, pine, and fir has remained very much the same for over 100 million years. This remarkable genomic stability explains the resemblance between today's conifers and fossils dating back to the days when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Details of this finding are presented in a recent issue of the journal BMC Biology. The team supervised by Professor ...

A University of Oklahoma-led study has demonstrated that ancient DNA can be used to understand ancient human microbiomes. The microbiomes from ancient people have broad reaching implications for understanding recent changes to human health, such as what good bacteria might have been lost as a result of our current abundant use of antibiotics and aseptic practices. Cecil M. Lewis Jr., professor of anthropology in the OU College of Arts and Sciences and director of the OU Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, and Raul Tito, OU Research Associate, led the research study that ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - A survey has identified career burnout as a significant problem among neurologists who predominantly work with hospital inpatients. Nearly 29 percent of these "neurohospitalists" said they had experienced burnout, and 45.8 percent said they were concerned about burnout but had not yet experienced it. (Burnout was defined as maintaining a schedule so burdensome as to limit the time a physician will or could spend as a neurohospitalist.) Results were published in the December, 2012 issue of Neurology® Clinical Practice. Among the co-authors is Jose Biller, ...

VIDEO: Scientists are using "virtual hearts " to better understand risk in real-world patients. Researcher Coeli Lopes, Ph.D., University of Rochester Medical Center, assistant professor at the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute, describes... Click here for more information. A computer model of the heart wall predicted risk of irregular heart rhythms and sudden cardiac death in patients, paving the way for the use of more complex cardiac models to calculate the ...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Low-wage workers, who make up a large and growing share of the U.S. workforce, are especially vulnerable to financial hits that can result from on-the-job injuries and illnesses, according to a policy brief released today by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS). The policy brief, "Mom's off Work 'Cause She Got Hurt: The Economic Impact of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses in the U.S.'s Growing Low-Wage Workforce," was released along with a white paper showing that such workplace injuries and ...

Efforts to reduce underage exposure to alcohol advertising by implementing time restrictions have not worked, according to new research from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy. The report, published in the Journal of Public Affairs, confirms what Dutch researchers had already learned in that country: time restrictions on alcohol advertising actually increase teen exposure, because companies move the advertising to late night. In 2009, Dutch regulators sought ...

Observations from 'Curiosity' when Mar's moon Phobos crosses in front of the sun, like in September, help us to understand exactly where the rover is on the red planet. Researchers at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) have developed a method for achieving precisely this. The exact location of Curiosity on the surface of Mars is determined using data transmitted from its antennas as well as the space probes that orbit the red planet. It is very unlikely that these systems would fail but in such an eventuality there would be an alternative for determining the ...

Pre-clinical trials — the stage at which medications or therapies are tested on animals like laboratory mice — is a crucial part of drug development. It's only then that scientists can assess benefits and side effects before a drug is administered to patients. Now, Prof. Ilan Golani of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology and Sagol School for Neuroscience and his fellow researchers Prof. Yoav Benjamini of TAU's Department of Statistics and Operations Research and the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and Dr. Ehud Fonio of the Weizmann Institute are questioning the ...