PHILADELPHIA — The colors of a butterfly's wings are unusually bright and beautiful and are the result of an unusual trait; the way they reflect light is fundamentally different from how color works most of the time. A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has found a way to generate this kind of "structural color" that has the added benefit of another trait of butterfly wings: super-hydrophobicity, or the ability to strongly repel water. The research was led by Shu Yang, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn's ...

DETROIT – Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers may have discovered why people exposed to war are at increased risk to develop chronic problems like heart disease years later. And the culprit that links the two is surprising. Beginning in the mid-2000s, WSU researchers interviewed a random sample of 145 American immigrants who left Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War, and 205 who fled Iraq after the Gulf War began. All were residing in metropolitan Detroit at the time of the study. Study subjects were asked about socio-demographics, pre-migration trauma, how ...

An analysis of a school behavior strategy—known as School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS)—found that these types of programs significantly reduced children's aggressive behaviors and office discipline referrals, as well as improved problems with concentration and emotional regulation. The study, conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is the first randomized control trial to examine the impact of SWPBIS programs over multiple school years. The results were published October 15 in the journal Pediatrics ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 15, 2012 -- In today's tough job market, more job-seekers could be facing interview questions like this: Why are manholes round? Or how many barbershops are there in San Francisco? New job-hunters need to be prepared for these "puzzle interview" questions, says SF State researcher Chris Wright, even though they may consider them to be unfair or irrelevant. "I always give graduating students two primary suggestions. Expect the unexpected and be aware that you might get an off-the-wall question like this," said Wright, associate professor of psychology ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Nearly half of patients taking medications for chronic conditions do not strictly follow their prescribed medication regimens. Failure to use medications as directed increases patients' risk for side effects, hospitalizations, reduced quality of life and shortened lifespans. Now, a University of Missouri gerontological nursing expert says patients' poor adherence to prescribed medication regimens is connected to their beliefs about the necessity of prescriptions and concerns about long-term effects and dependency. MU Assistant Professor Todd Ruppar found ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A comprehensive new review on how to treat high cholesterol and other blood lipid problems suggests that intensive treatment with high doses of statin drugs is usually the best approach. But some statins work much better for this than others, the review concluded, and additional lipid-lowering medications added to a statin have far less value. And medications, of course, should be considered after first trying diet, weight loss and exercise. The review, published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy, examined the range of treatment options for "dyslipidemia," ...

The identified critical threshold for dangerous climate change saying that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius seems not to have helped the climate negotiations so far. New research from the University of Gothenburg and Columbia University shows that negotiations based on such a threshold fail because its value is determined by Nature and is inherently uncertain. Climate negotiators should therefore focus on other collective strategies. Presenting their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Astrid Dannenberg, ...

A new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues finds that adolescents commonly take more risks than younger children and adults because they are more willing to accept risks when consequences are unknown, rather than because they are attracted to danger, as often assumed. Adolescents have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases and criminal behaviors of any age group, and even drive faster than adults. The death and injury rate of adolescents is 200% greater than for their younger peers, according to research cited in the study. Ifat ...

NEW ORLEANS, La. —New research links motor skills and perception, specifically as it relates to a second finding—a new understanding of what the left and right brain hemispheres "hear." Georgetown University Medical Center researchers say these findings may eventually point to strategies to help stroke patients recover their language abilities, and to improve speech recognition in children with dyslexia. The study, presented at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, is the first to match human behavior with left brain/right brain auditory ...

A new study led by the University of Leicester, in association with colleagues at Loughborough University, has discovered that sitting for long periods increases your risk of diabetes, heart disease and death. The study, which combined the results of 18 studies and included a total of 794,577 participants, was led by Dr. Emma Wilmot, a research fellow in the Diabetes Research Group at the University of Leicester. It was done in collaboration with colleagues from the newly established National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester-Loughborough Diet, Lifestyle ...

Researchers at Penn State University have developed a chemical model that mimics a possible step in the formation of cellular life on Earth four-billion years ago. Using large "macromolecules" called polymers, the scientists created primitive cell-like structures that they infused with RNA -- the genetic coding material that is thought to precede the appearance of DNA on Earth -- and demonstrated how the molecules would react chemically under conditions that might have been present on the early Earth. The journal Nature Chemistry will post the research as an Advance Online ...

DURHAM, NC -- Reproducing a rare type of B cell in the laboratory and infusing it back into the body may provide an effective treatment for severe autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center. The findings, which were demonstrated in mice, highlight the unique properties of a subset of B cells that normally controls immune responses and limits autoimmunity, in which an organism mistakenly attacks its own healthy tissue. The work appears Oct. 14, 2012, in the journal Nature. B cells ...

Michelle Geis mgeis@burnesscommunications.com 301-280-5712 Burness Communications Wambui Kamiru w.kamiru@cgiar.org 254-724-623-016 CGIAR Research shows legume trees can fertilize and stabilize maize fields, generate higher yields Africa's first long-term study finds legume trees planted alongside maize, combined with less fertilizer, is best solution for Africa's most important food crop NAIROBI, KENYA (15 October 2012)—Inserting rows of "fertilizer trees" into maize fields, known as agroforestry, can help farmers across sub-Saharan Africa cope with ...

One in six people in England aged over 50 are socially isolated. They have few socially orientated hobbies, little civic or cultural engagement with society, and may have very limited social networks. This was a key finding from the most recent report of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a comprehensive study that aims to understand the economic, social, psychological and health concerns of an ageing society. The multidisciplinary ELSA research team showed that the least wealthy over-fifties suffer the most social isolation, with the wealthier over 50's half ...

The causes of autism and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are complex, and contain elements of both nature (genes) and the environment. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Molecular Autism shows that common genetic polymorphisms (genetic variation) can add up to an increased risk of ASD. The contribution of inheritance and genetic mutation versus environmental factors to the risk of ASD is hotly debated. Most twin studies show the contribution heavily tilted toward inheritance, but the exact amount of involvement of genes in ASD risk is less apparent. ...

In a report published in Nature Physics, a group led Dr Leonid Ponomarenko and Nobel prize-winner Professor Andre Geim has assembled individual atomic layers on top of each other in a desired sequence. The team used individual one-atom-thick crystals to construct a multilayer cake that works as a nanoscale electric transformer. Graphene, isolated for the first time at The University of Manchester in 2004, has the potential to revolutionise diverse applications from smartphones and ultrafast broadband to drug delivery and computer chips. It has the potential to replace ...

Pioneering research conducted by the University of Sheffield is paving the way for new treatments which could benefit patients suffering from the fatal lung disease pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). For the first time scientists have found an antibody treatment that not only stops PAH getting worse, but also reverses the condition in mice and rats. The research was funded by the British Heart Foundation and the Medical Research Council (MRC) and is published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. PAH – high pressure in the blood vessels supplying the lungs – ...

Cambridge, Mass. – October 14, 2012 – In Harvard's Pierce Hall, the surface of a small germanium-coated gold sheet shines vividly in crimson. A centimeter to the right, where the same metallic coating is literally only about 20 atoms thicker, the surface is a dark blue, almost black. The colors form the logo of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), where researchers have demonstrated a new way to customize the color of metal surfaces by exploiting a completely overlooked optical phenomenon. For centuries it was thought that thin-film interference ...

MIAMI -- A new study by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science shows that corals may be more severely impacted by climate warming when they contain too many symbiotic algae. The single-celled algae living inside corals are usually the key to coral success, providing the energy needed to build massive reef frameworks. However, when temperatures become too warm, these algae are expelled from corals during episodes of coral 'bleaching' that can lead to widespread death of corals. Until now, it was thought that corals with ...

ANN ARBOR—The most likely source of the water locked inside soils on the moon's surface is the constant stream of charged particles from the sun known as the solar wind, a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues have concluded. Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-held belief that the moon is bone-dry. In 2009, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing satellite, known as LCROSS, slammed into a permanently shadowed lunar crater and ejected a plume of material that was ...

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine are presenting important discoveries on the involvement of the immune system and dopamine cells in the onset of depression at Neuroscience 2012, the Society for Neuroscience's 42nd annual meeting on October 13 -17 in New Orleans, and are available for interviews. In addition to scientists presenting at the conference, Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, The Mount Sinai Medical Center, is available to speak about depression ...

ATLANTA, October 15, 2012 – The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine known as Gardasil is not associated with an increase in pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, or contraceptive counseling, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published online today in the journal Pediatrics. Since 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that girls ages 11 receive three doses of the vaccine to protect them from HPV, which is transmitted through sexual activity and can cause genital warts and cervical, penile, vaginal, and head and neck cancers. The ...

In a challenge to prevailing wisdom that CEO and board chair positions should be held by two different people as "best practice," new research indicates that the roles should be split only when there is a performance problem, and then only through a "demotion strategy" that keeps the CEO but brings in an independent chair, as an overt signal to reverse course. This is the primary finding of a study from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business that is the first to identify the distinct performance consequences of three approaches to CEO-chair separation: apprentice, ...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights originated from the United Nations in 1948. So it is fitting that the United Nations Association has now joined in the planning for the Tennessee Human Rights Day celebration this year. Chair of the Planning Committee, Rev. Brian Fesler said, "We are so happy to welcome the United Nations Association, Nashville Cordell Hull Chapter, to the table again this year. This event is only possible because of the United Nations decision to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after World War II." International ...

Lead Gen Weekend is a two day training event to show local businesses how to generate a flood of leads on autopilot using social media and online marketing strategies. It will be held in Schaumburg between October 20, 2012 thru October 21, 2012. Chaffee-Thanh Nguyen, Founder of Key Concept Coaching and a local business and success coach will be teaching local businesses the techniques and strategies that he uses for lead generation online which runs automatically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This will be a live, hands-on training where Chaffee-Thanh will show real life ...