HOUSTON -- (July 28, 2011) -- The DNA evidence is in, and Ben Franklin didn't do it. Genetic tests on more than 1,000 Chinese tallow trees from the United States and China show the famed U.S. statesman did not import the tallow trees that are overrunning thousands of acres of U.S. coastal prairie from Florida to East Texas. "It's widely known that Franklin introduced tallow trees to the U.S. in the late 1700s," said Rice University biologist Evan Siemann, co-author the new study in this month's American Journal of Botany. "Franklin was living in London, and he had tallow ...

In a study published in this week's issue of Nature, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Gauis Shaver and his colleagues, including lead author Michelle Mack of the University of Florida, describe the dramatic impacts of a massive Arctic wildfire on carbon releases to the atmosphere. The 2007 blaze on the North Slope of the Alaska's Brooks Mountain Range released 20 times more carbon to the atmosphere than what is annually lost from undisturbed tundra. As wildfires increase in frequency and size along Alaska's North Slope, the team contends the disturbances ...

Enterprise IT architects and developers face the dual demands of optimizing their service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementations on-premise while also seeking ways to leverage the cloud. This month, WSO2 (http://wso2.com?080111w) delivers technical workshops designed to address two of enterprises' top SOA challenges: enterprise integration and security in the cloud. Security in the Cloud: August 4, 2011, Palo Alto, CA The WSO2 "Security in the Cloud" workshop will identify the security challenges that can stop or slow a move to the cloud, review open ...

NEW YORK (July 28, 2011) -- The ability to tag proteins with a green fluorescent light to watch how they behave inside cells so revolutionized the understanding of protein biology that it earned the scientific teams who developed the technique Nobel Prizes in 2008. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have developed a similar fluorescent tool that can track the mysterious workings of the various forms of cellular RNA. In the July 29 issue of Science, the Weill Cornell investigators report how they developed an RNA mimic of green fluorescent protein (GFP) ...

Feeding mannan oligosaccharides (MOS) can fine-tune the immune system of pigs, suggests a new University of Illinois study. "When it comes to keeping pigs healthy, there are some potentially powerful tools we can use in the diet besides antibiotics," said James Pettigrew, U of I professor of animal science. "We have a tendency to think that we can administer health through a needle, by giving pigs antibiotics, and even through systems like all-in/all-out pig flow. These are important, but there are also many health benefits we can realize through the diet." MOS is a ...

Irvine, Calif., July 28, 2011 — The events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the way Americans travel and view the world. They may also have made us sicker and more likely to access healthcare services, according to a new UC Irvine study. In the first three years after the terrorist attacks, researchers found, reports of doctor-diagnosed illness climbed by 18 percent in a nationally representative sample of adults. The jump was highest in those with pre-existing health conditions, but people who were healthy before 9/11 also experienced an increase in physician-diagnosed ailments. ...

California's native grasses, already under pressure from invasive exotic grasses, are likely to be pushed aside even more as the climate warms, according to a new analysis from the University of California, Berkeley. In the study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Global Change Biology and is now available online, UC Berkeley biologists catalogued the ranges of all 258 native grasses and 177 exotic grasses in the state and estimated how climate change – in particular, increased temperature and decreased rainfall – would change them. They concluded ...

PASADENA, Calif.—If one is good, two can sometimes be better. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have certainly found this to be the case when it comes to a small HIV-fighting protein. The protein, called cyanovirin-N (CV-N), is produced by a type of blue-green algae and has gained attention for its ability to ward off several diseases caused by viruses, including HIV and influenza. Now Caltech researchers have found that a relatively simple engineering technique can boost the protein's battling prowess. "By linking two cyanovirins, we were ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Practicing positive activities may serve as an effective, low-cost treatment for people suffering from depression, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside and Duke University Medical Center. In "Delivering Happiness: Translating Positive Psychology Intervention Research for Treating Major and Minor Depressive Disorders," a paper that appears in the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the team of UCR and Duke psychology, neuroscience and psychopharmacology researchers proposed a new ...

The research efforts of University of Guam scientist Thomas Marler have put Guam's endangered native cycad, Cycas micronesica (fadang is the Chamorro name) on the cover of the June 2011 International Journal of Plant Sciences (IJPS). Published by the University of Chicago Press, IJPS is an important source for researchers looking for new and dynamic articles in the field of botany. In this recently published article, Marler and Cornell University botanist Karl Niklas compared Guam cycads growing in different habitats to examine the influence of the environment on reproductive ...

STANFORD, Calif. — A sudden drop in blood pressure while undergoing dialysis has long vexed many kidney patients. Side effects associated with this situation over the long term range from stroke to seizure to heart damage to death. Patients also suffer in the short term with gastrointestinal, muscular and neurologic symptoms. Now one more disturbing side effect can be been added to this list. A study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine reports an increased risk of blood clotting at the point where the patient's blood vessels are connected ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Millions of U.S. drivers cross faulty or obsolete bridges every day, highway statistics show, but it's too costly to fix all these spans or adequately monitor their safety, says a University of Maryland researcher who's developed a new, affordable early warning system. This wireless technology could avert the kind of bridge collapse that killed 13 and injured 145 along Minneapolis' I-35W on Aug. 1, 2007, he says - and do so at one-one-hundredth the cost of current wired systems. "Potentially hundreds of lives could be saved," says University of Maryland ...

New research focusing on high-frequency oscillations, termed ripples and fast ripples, recorded by intracranial electroencephalography (EEG), may provide an important marker for the localization of the brain region responsible for seizure activity. According to the study now available in Epilepsia, a journal of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), the resection of brain regions containing fast ripples, along with the visually-identified seizure-onset zone, may achieve a good seizure outcome in pediatric epilepsy. High-frequency oscillations at 80-200 Hz ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Hospice services substantially improved the provision of care and support for nursing home patients dying of dementia and their families, according to an analysis of survey responses from hundreds of bereaved family members. The research comes as hospice funding has received particular scrutiny in the debate over Medicare spending. "People whose loved ones received hospice care reported an improved quality of care, and had a perception that the quality of dying was improved as well," said Dr. Joan Teno, a Brown University gerontologist ...

STANFORD, Calif. — When it comes to hitting a golf ball hard, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified several biomechanical factors that appear to separate the duffers from the pros. For the first time, several key rotational-biomechanic elements of the golf stroke in its entirety, from backswing to follow-through, were analyzed, and then the data were used to generate benchmark curves, said Jessica Rose, PhD, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery and senior author of the study. She and her fellow researchers found that swing biomechanics ...

Washington, DC (July 29, 2011) — For the thousands of patients who receive kidney transplants in the United States each year, preventing organ rejection without compromising other aspects of health requires a delicate balance of medications. Immunosuppresive drugs that protect transplanted organs can also cause serious side effects, including compromising patients' immunity to infection, cancer, and other threats. Finding the best combination and dosage of drugs has often proved difficult for physicians. A new multi-year study has now shown that using tacrolimus (TAC) ...

Some compounds found in grapes help to protect skin cells from the sun's ultraviolet radiation, according to a study by researchers from the University of Barcelona and the CSIC (Spanish National Research Council). The study supports the use of grapes or grape derivatives in sun protection products. Ultraviolet (UV) rays emitted by the sun are the leading environmental cause of skin complaints, causing skin cancer, sunburn and solar erythema, as well as premature ageing of the dermis and epidermis. Now, a Spanish study has proven that some substances in grapes can reduce ...

Brussels, 29 July 2011 - The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has developed three new methods to detect an illegal clouding agent which can be found in sports drinks imported from Taiwan. In late May, the Taiwanese authorities informed the European Commission that significant amounts of phthalates were illegally added to certain categories of sports drinks. These chemicals are believed to affect reproductive performance and fertility, and have been linked to developmental problems with children. Under a request from the Commission's Directorate-General for ...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should gather the information needed to develop a new regulatory framework to replace the 35-year-old 510(k) clearance process for medical devices, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. The 510(k) process lacks the legal basis to be a reliable premarket screen of the safety and effectiveness of moderate-risk Class II devices and cannot be transformed into one, concluded the committee that wrote the report. FDA's finite resources would be better invested in developing a new framework that uses both premarket ...

TORONTO, Ont., July 29, 2011—More than eight in 10 Ontarians say they would want to be taken directly to a trauma centre if they were seriously injured, even if another hospital were closer, a new poll has found. The poll, conducted for researchers at St. Michael's Hospital, also found that 40 per cent of respondents believe they can get access to a trauma centre within an hour of calling 911. Neither event is guaranteed, said Dr. Avery Nathens, the hospital's trauma director. Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of seriously injured adults in Ontario are taken to their ...

When people recognize voices, part of what helps make voice recognition accurate is noticing how people pronounce words differently. But individuals with dyslexia don't experience this familiar language advantage, say researchers. The likely reason: "phonological impairment." Tyler Perrachione with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains, "Even though all people who speak a language use the same words, they say those words just a little bit differently from one another--what is called 'phonetics' in linguistics." Phonetics is concerned with the physical ...

The first screening by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists of the American ancestors of soybeans for tolerance to ozone and other stresses had an eye-opening result: The world superstars of stress resistance hailed from a little village in far northern Sweden, called Fiskeby. The screeners, geneticist Tommy Carter and plant physiologist Kent Burkey, are with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Raleigh, NC. Carter works in the ARS Soybean and Nitrogen Fixation Research Unit, and Burkey is in the agency's Plant Science Research Unit. ARS is USDA's principal ...

Electronic memory devices, which store information, are increasingly expected to provide not only greater storage density, but also faster access to information. As storage density increases, however, power consumption and unwanted heat generation also increase, and the fidelity of accessing the memory is frequently diminished. Various platforms exist to overcome these hurdles, according to a team led by University of California at Los Angeles researchers, which they describe in detail in the AIP's Applied Physics Letters. A spin-transfer-torque device, for example, relies ...

By engineering alternating layers of nanometer and micrometer particles, a team of engineers from the University of Minnesota has improved the efficiency of a type of solar cell by as much as 26 percent. These cells, known as dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC), are made of titanium dioxide (TiO2), a photosensitive material that is less expensive than the more traditional silicon solar cells, which are rapidly approaching the theoretical limit of their efficiency. Current DSSC designs, however, are only about 10 percent efficient. One reason for this low efficiency is that ...

The distinctive roar of a Harley's engine is loud, but studies have revealed the biggest source of noise for motorcyclists is actually generated by air whooshing over the riders' helmets. Even at legal speeds, the sound can exceed safe levels. Now, scientists have identified a key source of the rushing din. Researchers from the University of Bath and Bath Spa University placed motorcycles helmets atop mannequin heads, mounted them in a wind tunnel, and turned on the fans. By placing microphones at different locations around the helmet and at the mannequin's ear, the researchers ...