Urban rivers throughout England and Wales have improved dramatically in water quality and wildlife over the last 20 years. That's the conclusion of one the largest studies of national trends in river health ever undertaken. After decades of pollution, typically from poorly treated sewage and industrial waste, rivers in or near Britain's major urban areas are regaining insects such as mayflies and stoneflies that are typical of fast-flowing, oxygen-rich waters. The range of invertebrates found has also increased, on average, by around 20%. Researchers from Cardiff ...

A new way of testing the safety of natural and synthetic chemicals has been developed by scientists with funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Their research, published today in the journal Ecotoxicology, could reduce the number of fish needed to test the toxicity of a range of chemicals including pharmaceuticals and environmental pollutants. The researchers, led by Professor Awadhesh Jha of Plymouth University, have managed to coax cells from the liver of a rainbow trout to form a ball-shaped structure called a spheroid in a ...

A reindeer engraved on the wall of a cave in South Wales has been found to date from at least 14,505 years ago – making it the oldest known rock art in the British Isles. The engraving was discovered in September 2010 by Dr George Nash from the University of Bristol's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology while he was exploring the rear section of Cathole Cave, a limestone cave on the eastern side of an inland valley on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales. Found to the rear of the cave on a small vertical limestone niche, the engraved cervid – probably a stylised ...

Archaeological research carried out at the Neolithic site of La Draga, near the lake of Banyoles, has yielded the discovery of an item which is unique in the western Mediterranean and Europe. The item is a bow which appeared in a context dating from the period between 5400-5200 BCE, corresponding to the earliest period of settlement. It is a unique item given that it is the first bow to be found in tact at the site. According to its date, it can be considered chronologically the most ancient bow of the Neolithic period found in Europe. The study will permit the analysis ...

London (June 29 2012) – Merely showing up to work in an environment where bullying goes on is enough to make many of us think about quitting, a new study suggests. Canadian researchers writing in the journal Human Relations published by SAGE, have found that nurses not bullied directly, but who worked in an environment where workplace bullying occurred, felt a stronger urge to quit than those actually being bullied. These findings on 'ambient' bullying have significant implications for organizations, as well as contributing a new statistical approach to the field. To ...

New Haven, Conn.—Women in rural Bangladesh prefer inexpensive, traditional stoves for cooking over modern ones despite significant health risks, according to a Yale study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A large majority of respondents—94 percent—believed that indoor smoke from the traditional stoves is harmful, but less so than polluted water (76 percent) and spoiled food (66 percent). Still, Bangladeshi women opted for traditional cookstove technology so they could afford basic needs. "Nontraditional cookstoves might be more successful if they ...

"When faced with the possibility of an earthquake, up until now the physical risk of the city has only ever been evaluated. This, in other words, means damage to buildings and infrastructures taking into consideration the amount of people inside," as explained to SINC by Liliana Carreño, researcher at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). Her team proposes a new method of carrying out an overall assessment of the seismic risk of an urban area, taking into account the social strengths and weakness and the city's governance. The system created by Carreño and her ...

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) will be adding a leap second at 00:59 BST on 1st July to its atomic clocks, to ensure UK time remains synchronised with international time. The insertion of the leap second is required as the Earth does not rotate at a constant speed, whereas atomic clocks, several of which are located at NPL's site in Teddington, are much better at keeping time. Due to the unpredictable nature of the Earth's movement, leap seconds are occasionally required to bring atomic time back into alignment with astronomical time. This procedure ...

Injections of corticoid preparations can have severe side effects. In this issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Christian Holland and coauthors contribute to physicians' awareness of problems of this type with a report on the relevant findings of medicolegal expert committees in Germany (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[24]: 425-30. One patient, for example, received multiple intramuscular injections of dexamethasone and diclofenac for the treatment of back pain. Six weeks after the last injection, 500 g of necrotic tissue had to be surgically removed from the site ...

Accelerated whole breast irradiation after lumpectomy is an effective treatment for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a very common early stage and noninvasive form of breast cancer, meaning many more breast cancer patients could see their treatment times reduced by half, according to a study in the June issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology•Biology•Physics, the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). The widespread use of mammography beginning in the early 1980s has led to a dramatic increase in the number ...

As scientists have added to a growing list of types of RNA molecules with roles that go beyond conveying the genetic code, they have found the short strands known as Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) particularly perplexing. New work from Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists suggests those abundant molecules may be part of the cell's search engine, capable of querying the entire history of a cell's genetic past. Organisms contain thousands of piRNA molecules, strands of 26 to 31 nucleotides encoded all over the genome. In two studies published online June 25, ...

University Park, Pa. -- A device about the size of a dime can manipulate living materials such as blood cells and entire small organisms, using sound waves, according to a team of bioengineers and biochemists from Penn State. The device, called acoustic tweezers, is the first technology capable of touchlessly trapping and manipulating Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a one millimeter long roundworm that is an important model system for studying diseases and development in humans. Acoustic tweezers are also capable of precisely manipulating cellular-scale objects that ...

WASHINGTON — Innovation in computing will be essential to finding real-world solutions to sustainability challenges in such areas as electricity production and delivery, global food production, and climate change. The immense scale, numerous interconnected effects of actions over time, and diverse scope of these challenges require the ability to collect, structure, and analyze vast amounts of data. A new report from the National Research Council says that advances in computing -- such as ones that allow us to make trade-offs, understand complex systems and their connections, ...

A simple and cost effective imaging device for breast tumor detection based on a flexible and wearable antenna system has been developed by researchers at the Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis. The team based in the Integrated Nanosystems Development Institute (INDI) describes details in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology and point out that their system holds the promise of much earlier detection than mammography. INDI's Kody Varahramyan and colleagues, Sudhir Shrestha, Mangilal Agarwal, Azadeh ...

A University of Texas at Austin research team successfully demonstrated for the first time that the GPS signals of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone, can be commandeered by an outside source — a discovery that could factor heavily into the implementation of a new federal mandate to allow thousands of civilian drones into the U.S. airspace by 2015. Cockrell School of Engineering Assistant Professor Todd Humphreys and his students were invited by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to attempt the demonstration in White Sands, New Mexico in late June. Using ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – Scientists at Arizona State University have discovered that honey bees may teach us about basic connections between taste perception and metabolic disorders in humans. By experimenting with honey bee genetics, researchers have identified connections between sugar sensitivity, diabetic physiology and carbohydrate metabolism. Bees and humans may partially share these connections. In a study published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics (Public Library of Science), Gro Amdam, an associate professor, and Ying Wang, a research scientist, in the School ...

For bacteria, snipping apart DNA that bears certain signature sequences is a defense mechanism. For scientists working in the lab, the same strategy can be a powerful research tool. With a newly discovered component of an adaptive bacterial immune system, scientists have identified a targeted method of slicing DNA that they say can be easily customized for a variety of applications in the lab. Tools that snip apart DNA strands in defined locations are essential for editing genomes in the laboratory to study or alter gene function. To target the specific site in the genome ...

GenSpera, Inc. (OTCBB:GNSZ) announced that a study titled, "Engineering the Plant Product Thapsigargin into a PSMA-Activated Tumor Endothelial Cell Prodrug for Cancer Therapy," was published in the journal, Science Translational Medicine, on June 27, 2012 (http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/4/140/140ra86). The manuscript documents the extensive pre-clinical data and rationale for the development of G-202 as a potential treatment for a variety of solid tumors in human patients. The paper also validated the enzyme, PSMA, as an appropriate molecular target for G-202. ...

PITTSBURGH-- A new study led by University of Pittsburgh researchers reveals that moderate amounts of alcohol--consumed in a social setting--can enhance positive emotions and social bonding and relieve negative emotions among those drinking. While it is usually taken for granted that people drink to reduce stress and enhance positive feelings, many studies have shown that alcohol consumption has an opposite effect. In a new paper titled "Alcohol and Group Formation: A Multimodal Investigation of the Effects of Alcohol on Emotion and Social Bonding," research shows that ...

SEATTLE – June 28, 2012 – A research team led by Seattle Children's Research Institute has discovered new gene mutations associated with markedly enlarged brain size, or megalencephaly. Mutations in three genes, AKT3, PIK3R2 and PIK3CA, were also found to be associated with a constellation of disorders including cancer, hydrocephalus, epilepsy, autism, vascular anomalies and skin growth disorders. The study, "De novo germline and postzygotic mutations in AKT3, PIK3R2 and PIK3CA cause a spectrum of related megalencephaly syndromes," was published online June 24 in Nature ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- You'd be amazed at how much you can learn from a plant. In a paper published this week in the journal Science, a Michigan State University professor and a colleague discuss why if humans are to survive as a species, we must turn more to plants for any number of valuable lessons. "Metabolism of plants provides humans with fiber, fuel, food and therapeutics," said Robert Last, an MSU professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. "As the human population grows and nonrenewable energy sources diminish, we need to rely increasingly on plants and ...

Cambridge, Mass. -– June 29, 2012 -- Imagine a kerosene lamp that continued to shine after the fuel was spent, or an electric stove that could remain hot during a power outage. Materials scientists at Harvard have demonstrated an equivalent feat in clean energy generation with a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) that converts hydrogen into electricity but can also store electrochemical energy like a battery. This fuel cell can continue to produce power for a short time after its fuel has run out. "This thin-film SOFC takes advantage of recent advances in low-temperature ...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (June 29, 2012) -- Cognitive skills such as learning and memory diminish with age in everyone, and the drop-off is steepest in Alzheimer's disease. Texas scientists seeking a way to prevent this decline reported exciting results this week with a drug that has Polynesian roots. The researchers, appointed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, added rapamycin to the diet of healthy mice throughout the rodents' life span. Rapamycin, a bacterial product first isolated from soil on Easter Island, enhanced ...

An attosecond is a ridiculously brief sliver of time – a scant billionth of a billionth of a second. This may seem too short to have any practical applications, but at the atomic level, where electrons zip and jump about, these vanishingly short timescales are crucial to a deeper understanding of science. In a paper accepted for publication in the American Institute of Physics' journal Review of Scientific Instruments, a team of researchers describes an advanced experimental system that can generate attosecond bursts of extreme ultraviolet light. Such pulses are the ...

New York, NY (June 29, 2012) -- Under-performance of small bowel biopsy during endoscopy may be a major reason that celiac disease remains underdiagnosed in the United States, according to a new study published online recently in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. Investigators at the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) found that the rate of small bowel biopsy is low in this country. "The vast majority of people with celiac disease in the United States remain undiagnosed," said lead author Benjamin Lebwohl, MD, MS, assistant professor of clinical ...