For researchers who study Earth's past environment, disentangling the effects of climate change from those related to human activities is a major challenge, but now University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientists have used a biomarker from human feces in a completely new way to establish the first human presence, the arrival of grazing animals and human population dynamics in a landscape. Doctoral student Robert D'Anjou and his advisor Raymond Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at UMass Amherst, with UMass colleagues Nick Balascio and David Finkelstein, ...

NEW YORK (November 26, 2012)—Scientists have developed a system to predict the timing and severity of seasonal influenza outbreaks that could one day help health officials and the general public better prepare for them. The system adapts techniques used in modern weather prediction to turn real-time, Web-based estimates of influenza infection into local forecasts of seasonal flu. Results appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Year to year, and region to region, there is huge variability in the peak of flu season, which, in temperate areas ...

Several drugs companies have ineffectively tried to produce antibodies that bind to the IGF-1 receptor on the cell surface, which has a critical part to play in the development of cancer. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now ascertained how these antibodies work, and can explain why only some cancer patients are helped by IGF-1 blockers during clinical tests. The researchers also present a means by which drugs of this kind could help more cancer patients. Every cell contains thousands of tiny receptors that help it communicate with other cells. These ...

RENO – This week a pioneering study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and co-authored by Dr. Alison Murray and Dr. Christian Fritsen of Nevada's Desert Research Institute (DRI) reveals, for the first time, a viable community of bacteria that survives and ekes out a living in a dark, salty and subfreezing environment beneath nearly 20 meters of ice in one of Antarctica's most isolated lakes. Lake Vida, the largest of several unique lakes found in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contains no oxygen, is mostly frozen and possesses the highest ...

SALT LAKE CITY— Discovery of a new drug with high potential to treat Ewing sarcoma, an often deadly cancer of children and young adults, and the previously unknown mechanism behind it, come hand-in-hand in a new study by researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah. The report appears in today's online issue of the journal Oncogene. "Ewing sarcoma is almost always caused by a cancer-causing protein called EWS/FLI," said Stephen Lessnick, M.D., Ph.D., director of HCI's Center for Children's Cancer Research, professor in the Department of ...

Biologists at UC San Diego have demonstrated for the first time that marine algae can be just as capable as fresh water algae in producing biofuels. The scientists genetically engineered marine algae to produce five different kinds of industrially important enzymes and say the same process they used could be employed to enhance the yield of petroleum-like compounds from these salt water algae. Their achievement is detailed in a paper published online in the current issue of the scientific journal Algal Research. The ability to genetically transform marine algae into ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Student engagement is not independent of the type of school attended.Nor is it independent of the organisational development of the school.The school's organisational style affects the work of its teaching staff, which, in turn, has repercussions on the performance and engagement of their students.As IkerRos, the UPV/EHU researcher, has been able to verify in his PhD thesis, these factors vary when comparing public schools, subsidised schools and co-operative schools, the latter being the ones that fare best. "The study of ...

(NEW YORK, N.Y., November 26, 2012) – Autism Speaks Chief Science Officer Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D. describes how the dramatic progress in autism research has paralleled increased recognition of autism's prevalence and financial impact in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry published on line today. "This issue of the journal features three articles on autism," she writes in her editorial. "A decade ago, the journal published about the same number of autism articles per year." Dr. Dawson also notes that, while the funding for autism research has dramatically ...

An area of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex is responsible for decisions made on the spur of the moment, but not those made based on prior experience or habit, according to a new basic science study from substance abuse researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Scientists had previously believed that the area of the brain was responsible for both types of behavior and decision-making. The distinction is critical to understanding the neurobiology of decision-making, particularly with regard to substance ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (November 26, 2012) The Algae Biomass Organization, the trade association for the U.S. algae industry today hailed the findings of a University of California at San Diego study that concludes, for the first time, that marine (saltwater) algae can be just as capable as freshwater algae in producing biofuels. The research is documented in a peer-reviewed paper published online in the current issue of the scientific journal Algal Research. "What this means is that you can use ocean water to grow the algae that will be used to produce biofuels. And once ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Where there's water there's life – even in brine beneath 60 feet of Antarctic ice, in permanent darkness and subzero temperatures. While Lake Vida, located in the northernmost of the McMurdo Dry Valleys of East Antarctica, will never be a vacation destination, it is home to some newly discovered hearty microbes. In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nathaniel Ostrom, Michigan State University zoologist, has co-authored "Microbial Life at -13ºC in the Brine of an Ice-Sealed Antarctic Lake." Ostrom was part ...

The wild and dramatic cascade of ice into the ocean from Alaska's Columbia Glacier, an iconic glacier featured in the documentary "Chasing Ice" and one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, will cease around 2020, according to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder. A computer model predicts the retreat of the Columbia Glacier will stop when the glacier reaches a new stable position -- roughly 15 miles upstream from the stable position it occupied prior to the 1980s. The team, headed by lead author William Colgan of the CU-Boulder headquartered Cooperative ...

SEATTLE—After gastric bypass surgery, diabetes goes away for some people—often even before they lose much weight. So does that mean gastric surgery "cures" diabetes? Not necessarily, according to the largest community-based study of long-term diabetes outcomes after bariatric surgery. For most people in the study, e-published in advance of print in Obesity Surgery, diabetes either never remitted after gastric surgery or relapsed within five years. Among the two thirds of the study's patients whose diabetes at first went away, more than a third re-developed diabetes again ...

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. However, to get a real idea of what a person is up to, according to UC Santa Barbara researchers Miguel Eckstein and Matt Peterson, the best place to check is right below the eyes. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "It's pretty fast, it's effortless –– we're not really aware of what we're doing," said Miguel Eckstein, professor of psychology in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences. Using an eye tracker and more than 100 photos of faces and participants, Eckstein ...

PHILADELPHIA — Electronic circuits are typically integrated in rigid silicon wafers, but flexibility opens up a wide range of applications. In a world where electronics are becoming more pervasive, flexibility is a highly desirable trait, but finding materials with the right mix of performance and manufacturing cost remains a challenge. Now a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has shown that nanoscale particles, or nanocrystals, of the semiconductor cadmium selenide can be "printed" or "coated" on flexible plastics to form high-performance electronics. The ...

You may have received CPR training some time ago, but would you remember the proper technique in an emergency? Would you know what to do in the event of an earthquake or a fire? A new UCLA psychology study shows that people often do not recall things they have seen — or at least walked by — hundreds of times. For the study, 54 people who work in the same building were asked if they knew the location of the fire extinguisher nearest their office. While many of the participants had worked in their offices for years and had passed the bright red extinguishers several times ...

Johns Hopkins researchers report concrete steps in the use of human stem cells to test how diseased cells respond to drugs. Their success highlights a pathway toward faster, cheaper drug development for some genetic illnesses, as well as the ability to pre-test a therapy's safety and effectiveness on cultured clones of a patient's own cells. The project, described in an article published November 25 on the website of the journal Nature Biotechnology, began several years ago, when Gabsang Lee, D.V.M., Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Are juicier, sweeter, more disease-resistant watermelons on the way? An international consortium of more than 60 scientists from the United States, China, and Europe has published the genome sequence of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) — information that could dramatically accelerate watermelon breeding toward production of a more nutritious, tastier and more resistant fruit. The watermelon genome sequence was published in the Nov. 25 online version of the journal Nature Genetics. The researchers discovered that a large portion of disease resistance genes ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- One tropical lizard's tolerance to cold is stiffer than scientists had suspected. A new study shows that the Puerto Rican lizard Anolis cristatellus has adapted to the cooler winters of Miami. The results also suggest that this lizard may be able to tolerate temperature variations caused by climate change. "We are not saying that climate change is not a problem for lizards. It is a major problem. However, these findings indicate that the thermal physiology of tropical lizards is more easily altered than previously proposed," said Duke biologist Manuel ...

HOUSTON - Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have tracked down a cancer-promoting protein's pathway into the cell nucleus and discovered how, once there, it fires up a glucose metabolism pathway on which brain tumors thrive. They also found a vital spot along the protein's journey that can be attacked with a type of drug not yet deployed against glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer. Published online by Nature Cell Biology, the paper further illuminates the importance of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) in cancer ...

Areopaguristes tudgei. That's the name of a new species of hermit crab recently discovered on the barrier reef off the coast of Belize by Christopher Tudge, a biology professor at American University in Washington, D.C. Tudge has been interested in biology his whole life, from boyhood trips to the beach collecting crustaceans in his native Australia, to his undergraduate and PhD work in zoology and biology at the University of Queensland. He has collected specimens all over the world, from Australia to Europe to North and South America. Until now, he has never had ...

Athens, Ga. – More people are better off thanks to the impact of an influx of direct-to-consumer advertising spending than they would be without those marketing efforts, according to a study recently published by Jayani Jayawardhana, an assistant professor in the University of Georgia College of Public Health. The multi-year study focused on advertising efforts surrounding cholesterol-reducing prescription medications. Jayawardhana found increased levels of consumer welfare due to direct-to-consumer advertising than when compared to situations without this type of marketing. ...

Call it "PAC-MAN, the Sequel." Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted a second feature shaped like the 1980s video game icon in the Saturn system, this time on the moon Tethys. The pattern appears in thermal data obtained by Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer, with warmer areas making up the PAC-MAN shape. "Finding a second PAC-MAN in the Saturn system tells us that the processes creating these 'PAC-MEN' are more widespread than previously thought," said Dr. Carly Howett, the lead author of a recently published paper in the journal Icarus. "The Saturn ...

An international team of biologists led by Indiana University's David M. Kehoe has identified both the enzyme and molecular mechanism critical for controlling a chameleon-like process that allows one of the world's most abundant ocean phytoplankton, once known as blue-green algae, to maximize light harvesting for photosynthesis. Responsible for contributing about 20 percent of the total oxygen production on the planet, the cyanobacteria Synechococcus uses its own unique form of a sophisticated response called chromatic acclimation to fine tune the absorption properties ...

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act – now assured by the re-election of President Obama – is expected to result in up to 50 million currently uninsured Americans acquiring some type of health insurance coverage. But a study by researchers at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) finds that a significant percentage of the primary care physicians most likely to care for newly insured patients may be not be accepting new patients. The investigators note that strategies designed to increase and support these "safety-net" physicians ...