Scientists have taken a step forward in helping to solve one of life's greatest mysteries – what makes us human? An international team of researchers have discovered a new gene that helps explain how humans evolved evolved from apes. Scientists say the gene – called miR-941 – appears to have played a crucial role in human brain development and may shed light on how we learned to use tools and language. Researchers say it is the first time that a new gene – carried only by humans and not by apes – has been shown to have a specific function within the human body. A ...

Children whose mothers were overly stressed during pregnancy are more likely to become victims of bullying at school. New research from the University of Warwick shows stress and mental health problems in pregnant women may affect the developing baby and directly increases the risk of the child being victimised in later life. The study has been published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and is based on 8,829 children from the Avon Longtitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Professor Dieter Wolke, Professor of Developmental Psychology at ...

Headshaking syndrome is when a horse shakes or jerks its head uncontrollably for no apparent reason. There are striking clinical similarities between facial pain syndromes in people, most notably trigeminal neuralgia, and headshaking in horses. Although some progress has been made towards both diagnosing and treating the condition in horses, the pathology of the disease remains unknown and further research is needed. A recent study led by academics from the University of Bristol's School of Veterinary Sciences and the University of Liverpool, evaluated the long-term ...

Straightforward imaging with an infrared, thermal, camera for detecting breast cancer early without the discomfort or inconvenience of mammography or biomolecular tests, according to a study to be published in the International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications. Tiago Borchartt of the Federal Fluminense University in Brazil and colleagues explain how breast thermography has up to now achieved an average sensitivity and specificity or approximately 90 percent for the detection of malignant tissue. The advantages of the technique are that it is painless, ...

Gross domestic product (GDP) can be boosted by cloud computing, the system in which remote computers on the Internet are used to store, manage and process data rather than the users' local machines. A report to be published in the International Journal of Technology, Policy and Management suggests that governments should collaborate to boost the adoption of cloud computing internationally. Marco Iansiti of Harvard Business School and Gregory Richards of Cambridge-based Keystone Strategy, LLC, have found that cloud computing is likely to extend economic growth by increasing ...

This press release is available in German. Since 1900 the global sea level has risen by approximately 20 cm. Melting glaciers are one of the causes – along with warming and thereby expanding sea water, melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, and changing terrestrial water storage in dammed lakes and groundwater reservoirs. A team of scientists at the University of Innsbruck has now assessed the contribution of melting glaciers to sea level rise during the 20th century. They numerically modeled each of the world's roughly 300 000 glaciers and used thousands of on-site ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 14, 2012 – The ability of cannabis to produce psychosis has long been an important public health concern. This concern is growing in importance as there is emerging data that cannabis exposure during adolescence may increase the risk of developing schizophrenia, a serious psychotic disorder. Further, with the advent of medical marijuana, a new group of people with uncertain psychosis risk may be exposed to cannabis. For these reasons, it would be valuable if a biological test could be developed that predicted the risk for developing cannabis ...

Jerusalem, Nov. 14, 2012 –Can we actually read words and phrases and solve multi-step mathematical problems without our having consciously been aware of them? A team in the Psychology Department at the Hebrew University has conducted a series of experiments that give a positive answer: people can read and do math non-consciously. The results constitute a challenge to existing theories of unconscious processes, that maintain that reading and solving math problems -- two prime examples of complex, rule-based operations – require consciousness. The conclusions of the Hebrew ...

This press release is available in German. Leipzig. Environmental contaminants, such as smoking, are harmful to the human organism in relation to the occurrence of allergies. This is known. Until now, researchers had never investigated whether and to what extent environmental contaminants also affect allergy-relevant stem cells. For the first time a team at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has found evidence for this: Smoking affects the development of peripheral allergy-relevant stem cells in the blood. In order to present this result Dr. Irina Lehmann ...

A new University of Cincinnati study examines how anxiety sensitivity can thwart the efforts of smokers with asthma to quit smoking. This new direction of research from Alison McLeish, a UC assistant professor of psychology, will be presented on Nov.17, at the 46th annual convention of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) in National Harbor, Md. Anxiety sensitivity, or AS, refers to a person's chronic fear of anxiety-related symptoms – the belief that experiences such as sweaty palms, shallow breathing, headache or rapid heartbeat could bring on ...

University of Cincinnati research is examining the effectiveness of a relationship education program that was created to specifically address the needs of male same-sex couples. Details on the program and the study, led by Sarah Whitton, a UC assistant professor of psychology, will be presented Nov. 17, at the 46th annual convention of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT) in National Harbor, Md. Whitton explains that same-sex couples and heterosexual couples share similar foundations for building successful relationships: commitment, communication ...

Although many people look forward to getting away on vacation or just putting their feet up at home, there are others who can get as anxious about taking time to relax as they would if they were delivering a national address. Christina Luberto, a doctoral student in the University of Cincinnati's Department of Psychology, has now developed a questionnaire, the Relaxation Sensitivity Index (RSI), to examine the phenomenon. Preliminary findings on the RSI will be presented on Nov.17, at the 46th annual convention of the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- On its surface, operating a military drone looks a lot like playing a video game: Operators sit at workstations, manipulating joysticks to remotely adjust a drone's pitch and elevation, while grainy images from the vehicle's camera project onto a computer screen. An operator can issue a command to fire if an image reveals a hostile target, but such adrenaline-charged moments are few and far between. Instead, a drone operator — often a seasoned fighter pilot — spends most of his shift watching and waiting, as automated systems keep the vehicle running. ...

New research from Queen's University Belfast has uncovered the cause of infertility for 80 per cent of couples previously diagnosed with 'unexplained infertility'. At present some 50,000 couples require fertility treatment across the UK each year, with the figure reaching one million worldwide. Up to one third of these couples are diagnosed with unexplained or idiopathic infertility. This means that, using current tests, neither partner has been diagnosed with any detectable problem. Published in Reproductive Biomedicine Online, and carried out by Professor Sheena Lewis ...

There are plenty of effective anticancer agents around. The problem is that, very often, they cannot gain access to all the cells in solid tumors. A new gene delivery vehicle may provide a way of making tracks to the heart of the target. Many types of tumor form a compact mass, like the phalanx formation of Greek antiquity. And although many drugs are known to be toxic to cancer cells, they are often unable to percolate into the inner recesses of the tumor. Upon intravenous administration, for instance, cytotoxic drugs may only be able to penetrate the outermost layers ...

The breeding population of chinstrap penguins has declined significantly as temperatures have rapidly warmed on the Antarctic Peninsula, according to researchers funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The study indicates that changing climatic conditions, rather than the impact of tourism, have had the greatest effect on the chinstrap population. Ron Naveen, founder of a nonprofit science and conservation organization, Oceanites, Inc., of Chevy Chase, Md., documented the decline in a paper published in the journal Polar Biology. Naveen and coauthor ...

The chrome yellow pigment that renowned post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh favored in priceless masterpieces like Sunflowers, the Yellow House and Wheatfield with Crows is especially sensitive to certain types of light and should be protected to prevent darkening. That's the conclusion of a series of studies in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry, which could help preserve masterpieces by van Gogh and contemporaries like Gauguin, Cézanne and others. Koen Janssens and colleagues explain that the chrome yellow pigment used by van Gogh and others in the 19th and 20th ...

Scientists are reporting a simple way to improve the sensitivity of the test often used to detect traces of explosives on the hands, carry-ons and other possessions of passengers at airport security screening stations. Their report appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. Yehuda Zeiri and colleagues explain that most tests for traces of explosives begin by rubbing a swab made from glass fiber, Teflon or cotton over the suspect material. Analysis of the swab in a detector — usually a device called an ion mobility spectrometer — alerts agents to any explosive ...

The search for a sustainable slow-release fertilizer — a key to sustaining global food production at a time of burgeoning population growth — has led scientists to an ingredient used in some diarrhea medicines. They describe use of the substance, attapulgite, as a "carrier" for plant nutrients in a report in ACS' journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Boli Ni and colleagues explain that about half of the 150 million tons of fertilizer used worldwide every year goes to waste. That's because most fertilizers release nutrients too fast for the crops to use. ...

One of the most promising innovations of nanotechnology has been the ability to perform rapid nanofabrication using nanometer-scale tips. The fabrication speed can be dramatically increased by using heat. High speed and high temperature have been known to degrade the tip… until now. "Thermal processing is widely used in manufacturing," according to William King, the College of Engineering Bliss Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We have been working to shrink thermal processing to the nanometer scale, where we can use a nanometer-scale heat ...

The aftershock of a stellar explosion rippling through space is captured in this new view of supernova remnant W44, which combines far-infrared and X-ray data from ESA's Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories. W44, located around 10 000 light-years away within a forest of dense star-forming clouds in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle, is one of the best examples of a supernova remnant interacting with its parent molecular cloud. The product of a massive star that has already reached the end of its life and expelled its outer layers in a dramatic explosion, ...

The rapid growth in "citizen science" projects during the past decade is enabling more and more science enthusiasts, hobbyists, students and other ordinary people to participate in the excitement of real-world scientific research and help solve serious scientific mysteries. That's the topic of the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Deirdre Lockwood, C&EN contributing editor, traces the growth of citizen science from the Audubon Christmas Bird Count of 1900 ...

Not only is TV not endangered, but it also has a unifying social impact on the nuclear family across the country. This is the main conclusion of a cross-Canada study—Are the Kids All Right?—on the television viewing habits of families with at least one child aged between 9 and 12 years. The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by André H. Caron, professor of communications at Université de Montréal and Director of the Centre for Youth and Media Studies (CYMS). "Young Canadians today live in a different world than that experienced by previous generations. In ...

Neuroscientists studying the link between poor sleep and schizophrenia have found that irregular sleep patterns and desynchronised brain activity during sleep could trigger some of the disease's symptoms. The findings, published in the journal Neuron, suggest that these prolonged disturbances might be a cause and not just a consequence of the disorder's debilitating effects. The possible link between poor sleep and schizophrenia prompted the research team, led by scientists from the University of Bristol, the Lilly Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and funded by the ...

Researchers from the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester are leading the largest ever study of the genetics relating to lung disease. The project will investigate what determines an individual's lung health and why smoking harms the lungs of some people more than others and will use health information held by UK Biobank, a major national resource holding health information from half a million volunteers. The study, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and also involving scientists at St George's, University of London, is aiming to shed light on why some ...