With new national anti-bullying ads urging parents to teach their kids to speak up if they witness bullying, one researcher has found that in humans' evolutionary past at least, helping the victim of a bully hastened our species' movement toward a more egalitarian society. Humans have evolved a genetically-controlled drive to help weaker individuals fight back against a bully. The drive to help the weaker group members led to a dramatic reduction in group inequality and eventually enabled humans to develop widespread cooperation, empathy, compassion and egalitarian moral ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A common enzyme that is easily detected in blood may predict how well patients with advanced kidney cancer will respond to a specific treatment, according to doctors at Duke Cancer Institute. The finding, published online Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, could lead to the first blood test to determine the best treatment for late-stage kidney cancer. "Being able to direct these patients to a treatment we know will help them would be a major advancement in their care," said Andrew Armstrong, M.D., ScM, associate professor of medicine ...

Triclosan, an antibacterial chemical widely used in hand soaps and other personal-care products, hinders muscle contractions at a cellular level, slows swimming in fish and reduces muscular strength in mice, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Colorado. The findings appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. "Triclosan is found in virtually everyone's home and is pervasive in the environment," said Isaac Pessah, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular ...

MADISON -- When conflict breaks out in social groups, individuals make strategic decisions about how to behave based on their understanding of alliances and feuds in the group. But it's been challenging to quantify the underlying trends that dictate how individuals make predictions, given they may only have seen a small number of fights or have limited memory. In a new study, scientists at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison develop a computational approach to determine whether individuals behave predictably. With data ...

CHICAGO – A strategy using an algorithm that incorporates high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) values appears to be associated with ruling-out or ruling-in myocardial infarction (heart attack) within one hour in 77 percent of patients with acute chest pain who presented to an emergency department, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Patients with symptoms that suggest an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) account for about 10 percent of all emergency department consultations. Along with clinical ...

Middle-aged adults who regularly engage in leisure-time physical activity for more than a decade may enhance their heart health, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation. In a new study, more than 4,200 participants (average age 49) reported the duration and frequency of their leisure-time physical activities such as brisk walking, vigorous gardening, cycling, sports, housework and home maintenance. "It's not just vigorous exercise and sports that are important," said Mark Hamer, Ph.D., study lead author and associate professor ...

Eating cocoa flavanols daily may improve mild cognitive impairment, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension. Each year, more than six percent of people aged 70 years or older develop mild cognitive impairment, a condition involving memory loss that can progress to dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Flavanols can be found in tea, grapes, red wine, apples and cocoa products and have been associated with a decreased risk of dementia. They may act on the brain structure and function directly by protecting neurons from injury, improving ...

CHICAGO – Pay for performance appears to be associated with improved implementation of an adolescent substance use treatment program, although no significant differences were found in remission status between the pay-for-performance and implementation-as-usual groups, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Pay for performance (P4P, when financial incentives are given for achieving predefined criteria) is a strategy recommended by the Institute of Medicine to help improve the delivery of ...

Young virgin female hide beetles (Dermestes maculatus) are attracted to cadavers by a combination of cadaver odour and male sex pheromones, finds a new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology. Neither cadaver scent, nor male sex pheromones alone, caught the fancy of the fussy females. This predilection ensures that there is both a waiting male and food for her larvae, and optimises the chances of reproductive success. Decomposition of a vertebrate cadaver is a sequential buffet for many carrion species including insects. Different ...

Parental hopes of a "miraculous intervention," prompted by deeply held religious beliefs, are leading to very sick children being subjected to futile care and needless suffering, suggests a small study in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The authors, who comprise children's intensive care doctors and a hospital chaplain, emphasise that religious beliefs provide vital support to many parents whose children are seriously ill, as well as to the staff who care for them. But they have become concerned that deeply held beliefs are increasingly leading parents to insist on the ...

A new study led by scientists at the University of York has shown how birds, butterflies, other insects and spiders have colonised nature reserves and areas protected for wildlife, as they move north in response to climate change and other environmental changes. The study of over 250 species, led by researchers in the Department of Biology at York, is published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS). The conclusions were based on the analysis of millions of records of wildlife species sent in predominantly by members of the public. The ...

New research raises questions about the theory that modern humans and Neanderthals at some point interbred, known as hybridisation. The findings of a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge suggests that common ancestry, not hybridisation, better explains the average 1-4 per cent DNA that those of European and Asian descent (Eurasians) share with Neanderthals. It was published today, 13 August, in the journal PNAS. In the last two years, a number of studies have suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals had at some point interbred. Genetic evidence ...

A new technology which delivers sustained release of therapeutics for up to six months could be used in conditions which require routine injections, including diabetes, certain forms of cancer and potentially HIV/AIDS. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed injectable, reformable and spreadable hydrogels which can be loaded with proteins or other therapeutics. The hydrogels contain up to 99.7% water by weight, with the remainder primarily made up of cellulose polymers held together with cucurbiturils - barrel-shaped molecules which act as miniature ...

About 25,000 Danes currently live with congenital heart defects. Both heredity and environment play a role for these malformations, but exactly how various risk factors influence the development of the heart during pregnancy has been a mystery until now. With the aid of a supercomputer, an international, interdisciplinary research team has analysed millions of data points. This has allowed the scientists to show that a huge number of different risk factors – for example in the form of genetic defects – influence the molecular biology of heart development. – The ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida researchers curating a 17-foot-7-inch Burmese python, the largest found in Florida, discovered 87 eggs in the snake, also a state record. Scientists at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus examined the internal anatomy of the 164.5-pound snake Friday. The animal was brought to the Florida Museum from Everglades National Park as part of a long-term project with the U.S. Department of the Interior to research methods for managing the state's invasive Burmese python problem. Following scientific investigation, the ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have made a breakthrough in the performance of microbial fuel cells that can produce electricity directly from wastewater, opening the door to a future in which waste treatment plants not only will power themselves, but will sell excess electricity. The new technology developed at OSU can now produce 10 to 50 more times the electricity, per volume, than most other approaches using microbial fuel cells, and 100 times more electricity than some. Researchers say this could eventually change the way that wastewater ...

A new tool to observe cell behavior has revealed surprising clues about how cancer cells respond to therapy – and may offer a way to further refine personalized cancer treatments. The approach, developed by investigators at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, shows that erlotinib – a targeted therapy that acts on a growth factor receptor mutated in some lung, brain and other cancers – doesn't simply kill tumor cells as was previously assumed. The drug also causes some tumor cells to go into a non-dividing (quiescent) state or to slow down their rate of division. This variability ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 10, 2012 – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy are consistent with the intriguing possibility that dark-matter particles are annihilating each other in space, according to research submitted by UC Irvine astrophysicists to the American Physical Society journal Physical Review D. Kevork Abazajian, assistant professor, and Manoj Kaplinghat, associate professor, of the Department of Physics & Astronomy analyzed data collected between August 2008 and June 2012 from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth. ...

A targeted approach to treating toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease, shows early promise in test-tube and animal studies, where it prevented the parasites from making selected proteins. When tested in newly infected mice, it reduced the number of viable parasites by more than 90 percent, researchers from the University of Chicago Medicine report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This precisely focused therapy combines short strands of "antisense" nucleic acid-like material with a small peptide that can transport those strands through cell membranes ...

Newly published research led by Dr. David Spence of Western University, Canada, shows that eating egg yolks accelerates atherosclerosis in a manner similar to smoking cigarettes. Surveying more than 1200 patients, Dr. Spence found regular consumption of egg yolks is about two-thirds as bad as smoking when it comes to increased build-up of carotid plaque, a risk factor for stroke and heart attack. The research is published online in the journal Atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis, also called coronary artery disease, is a disorder of the arteries where plaques, aggravated ...

ARGONNE, Ill. (August 12, 2012) -- For the first time X-ray scientists have combined high-resolution imaging with 3-D viewing of the surface layer of material using X-ray vision in a way that does not damage the sample. This new technique expands the range of X-ray research possible for biology and many aspects of nanotechnology, particularly nanofilms, photonics, and micro- and nano-electronics. This new technique also reduces "guesswork" by eliminating the need for modeling-dependent structural simulation often used in X-ray analysis. Scientists from the Advanced ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A team of investigators from UC Davis and Peking University have discovered a mechanism that may explain how alpha hydroxyl acids (AHAs) -- the key ingredient in cosmetic chemical peels and wrinkle-reducing creams -- work to enhance skin appearance. An understanding of the underlying process may lead to better cosmetic formulations as well as have medical applications. The findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in an article entitled "Intracellular proton-mediated activation of TRPV3 channels accounts for exfoliation effect ...

WASHINGTON, DC—A team at Children's National Medical Center has found that external stimulation has an impact on the postnatal development of a specific region of the brain. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study used sensory deprivation to look at the growth and collection of NG2-expressing oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (NG2 cells) in the sensory cortex of the brain. This type of research is part of the Center for Neuroscience Research focus on understanding the development and treatment of white matter diseases. NG2 cells can develop into oligodendrocytes progenitor ...

A University of Houston researcher has developed a nanoparticle coating for solar panels that makes it easier to keep the panels clean, maintaining their efficiency for longer and reducing the maintenance and operations costs. The patent-pending coating developed by physics professor Seamus "Shay" Curran, director of UH's Institute for NanoEnergy, has successfully undergone testing at the Dublin Institute for Technology and will undergo field trials being conducted by an engineering firm in North Carolina. Curran said the June testing in Ireland and the field trials ...

If a hurricane's path carries it over large areas of fresh water, it will potentially intensify 50 percent faster than those that do not pass over such regions, meaning it has greater potential to become a stronger storm and be more devastating, according to a study co-written by a group of researchers at Texas A&M University. Ping Chang, professor of oceanography and atmospheric sciences and director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, along with his former student, Karthik Balaguru, now at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, are the ...