TEMPE (Sept. 21, 2012) - It's called mile-a-minute weed or "forest killer." Mikania micrantha is an exotic, invasive species that spreads quickly, covering crops, smothering trees and rapidly altering the environment. Researchers at Arizona State University are spearheading a four-year research project that will explore what factors cause people and the environment to be vulnerable to rapid environmental change, such as an invasion by Mikania. Study findings likely will serve as a harbinger of the future as humans increasingly experience abrupt, extreme conditions associated ...

LONDON, ON – A team of researchers led by London's Dr. Daniel Bainbridge have compiled data from 87 studies worldwide that shows post-anaesthetic deaths have declined as much as 90 percent since before the 1970s. During the same period, the risk of dying from any cause within 48 hours of surgery has decreased by 88 percent. The study covered outcomes in both developed and developing countries, with the findings published in the current issue of the high-profile journal The Lancet. The study calls for use of evidence-based interventions to reduce the disparities between ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have solved an important piece of one of neuroscience's outstanding puzzles: how progenitor cells in the developing mammalian brain reproduce themselves while also giving birth to neurons that will populate the emerging cerebral cortex, the seat of cognition and executive function in the mature brain. CSHL Professor Linda Van Aelst, Ph.D., and colleagues set out to solve a particular mystery concerning radial glial cells, or RGCs, which are progenitors of pyramidal neurons, the most common type ...

The seeds of greenhouse-grown corn could hold the key to treating a rare, life-threatening childhood genetic disease, according to researchers from Simon Fraser University. SFU biologist Allison Kermode and her team have been carrying out multidisciplinary research toward developing enzyme therapeutics for lysosomal storage diseases - rare, but devastating childhood genetic diseases – for more than a decade. In the most severe forms of these inherited diseases, untreated patients die in early childhood because of progressive damage to all organs of the body. Currently, ...

LifeShield Security authorized dealers throughout the country can now connect with consumers on a regional level through locally relevant websites that help to identify customers and prospects. Sites also offer special wireless home security deals to each region that are constantly changing. "Local dealers understand the security challenges particular to their own regions and therefore can be more successful at recruiting new customers," said Shannon Dominello, CMO, LifeShield. "Regional sites provide a legitimate local web presence for each dealer that ...

Newly formed emotional memories can be erased from the human brain. This is shown by researchers from Uppsala University in a new study now being published by the academic journal Science. The findings may represent a breakthrough in research on memory and fear. Thomas Ågren, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professors Mats Fredrikson and Tomas Furmark, has shown, that it is possible to erase newly formed emotional memories from the human brain. When a person learns something, a lasting long-term memory is created with the ...

Moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood spurs long-term gains in the physical and mental health of low-income adults, as well as a substantial increase in their happiness, despite not improving economic self-sufficiency, according to a new study published in the Sept. 20 issue of Science by researchers at the University of Chicago and partners at other institutions. Although moving into less disadvantaged neighborhoods did not raise incomes for the families that moved, these families experienced important gains in well-being in other ways. Moving from ...

Bethesda, MD—Everyone knows that what mom eats when pregnant makes a huge difference in the health of her child. Now, new research in mice suggests that what she ate before pregnancy might be important too. According to a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal, what a group of female mice ate—before pregnancy—chemically altered their DNA and these changes were passed to her offspring. These DNA alterations, called "epigenetic" changes, drastically affected the pups' metabolism of many essential fatty acids. These results could have a profound impact on ...

Mathematical modeling being tested by researchers at the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the IU School of Medicine has the potential to impact the knowledge and treatment of several diseases that continue to challenge scientists across the world. The National Science Foundation recently recognized the work led by Drs. Giovanna Guidoboni, associate professor of mathematics in the School of Science, and Alon Harris, professor of ophthalmology and director of clinical research at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Eye Institute, ...

A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Ho Nyung Lee has discovered a strain relaxation phenomenon in cobaltites that has eluded researchers for decades and may lead to advances in fuel cells, magnetic sensors and a host of energy-related materials. The finding, published in Nano Letters, could change the conventional wisdom that accommodating the strain inherent during the formation of epitaxial thin films necessarily involves structural defects, said Lee, a member of the Department of Energy lab's Materials Science and Technology Division. Instead, the researchers ...

Risk increases with comfort: "Single Sign-On" permits users to access all their protected Web resources, replacing repeated sign-ins with passwords. However, attackers also know about the advantages such a single point of attack offers to them. Andreas Mayer, who is writing his PhD thesis as an external doctoral candidate at the Chair for Network and Data Security (Prof. Dr. Jörg Schwenk) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, has now been able to significantly increase the security of this central interface for the simpleSAMLphp framework. In the past, no protection against targeted ...

WASHINGTON—Prescription painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the United States than heroin and cocaine combined. And while most states have programs to curb abuse and addiction, a new report from Brandeis University shows that many states do not fully analyze the data they collect. Experts from the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Center of Excellence at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management systematically assessed prescription drug monitoring programs and found a patchwork of strategies and standards. Their report ...

Walking to a beat could be useful for patients needing rehabilitation, according to a University of Pittsburgh study. The findings, highlighted in the August issue of PLOS One, demonstrate that researchers should further investigate the potential of auditory, visual, and tactile cues in the rehabilitation of patients suffering from illnesses like Parkinson's Disease—a brain disorder leading to shaking (tremors) and difficulty walking. Together with a team of collaborators from abroad, Ervin Sejdic, an assistant professor of engineering in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, ...

A new study of high-tech startups that participated in the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) shows that these entrepreneurs have a much higher rate of success than typical new ventures and are therefore more likely to contribute to job growth. The study by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship spans the 11-year life of the RBPC, the world's richest and largest business plan competition, which comprises teams of graduate students from throughout the world. The comprehensive and longitudinal study offers insights into the experiential factors that can ...

It's a high-pressure environment within solid tumors. Abnormal blood and lymphatic vessels cause fluids to accumulate, and the uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells within limited space leads to the buildup of what is called solid stress. Both types of pressure can interfere with the effectiveness of anticancer treatments, but while strategies have been developed that reduce fluid pressures, little has been known about the impact of solid stress or potential ways to alleviate it. Now a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team has identified factors that ...

If two birds meet deep in the forest, does anybody hear? Until now, nobody did, unless an intrepid biologist was hiding underneath a bush and watching their behavior, or the birds happened to meet near a research monitoring station. But an electronic tag designed at the University of Washington can for the first time see when birds meet in the wild. A new study led by a biologist at Scotland's University of St. Andrews used the UW tags to see whether crows might learn to use tools from one another. The findings, published last week in Current Biology, supported the theory ...

PASADENA, Calif.—At any given moment, millions of cells are on the move in the human body, typically on their way to aid in immune response, make repairs, or provide some other benefit to the structures around them. When the migration process goes wrong, however, the results can include tumor formation and metastatic cancer. Little has been known about how cell migration actually works, but now, with the help of some tiny worms, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have gained new insight into this highly complex task. The team's findings are ...

Los Angeles, CA (September 20, 2012) SAGE and The Society for Medical Decision Making are pleased to announce the release of seven new reports that will have a significant impact on modeling techniques in health care research and medical decision making. Written by the Modeling Good Research Practices Task Force, a special group of leading experts in decision analysis, economics, simulation, and health policy, these reports were published in a special issue of Medical Decision Making (MDM), a SAGE journal. "The history of decision and economic modeling to support health ...

Investigators at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have identified two promising therapies to treat patients with acute megakaryocytic leukemia (AMKL), a rare form of leukemia where the number of cases is expected to increase with the aging population. The disease is characterized by an overload of white blood cells that remain forever young because they can't mature into specialized cells. Published in a recent issue of the journal Cell, the study found that the drug with the generic name alisertib (MLN8237), induced division and growth of healthy ...

The pressures of global trade may heighten disease incidence by dictating changes in land use. A boom in disease-carrying ticks and chiggers has followed the abandonment of rice cultivation in Taiwanese paddies, say ecologist Chi-Chien Kuo and colleagues, demonstrating the potential for global commodities pricing to drive the spread of infections. Their work appears in the September issue of ESA's journal Ecological Applications. After Taiwan joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, active cultivation of rice paddies fell from 80 percent to 55 percent in just three ...

Scientists and forecasters have been analyzing Tropical Storm Nadine using various NASA satellites as NASA's Global Hawk flew over the storm gathering information. Both the Global Hawk and NASA's TRMM satellite noticed that Nadine has continued to display tropical characteristics, indicating that it has not transitioned to an extra-tropical storm. Forecasters noted that Nadine could have started transitioning into an extra-tropical storm, because there was little significant rainfall near Nadine's center of circulation yesterday, Sept. 19. However, satellite data and ...

Tried-and-true techniques could help optimize oilseed yield for biodiesel production, according to studies conducted by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. For more than 30 years, near infrared (NIR) reflectance spectroscopy has been used as a rapid and nondestructive method for measuring protein, moisture, and oil levels in whole grains. Now Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research leader Dan Long is studying how to use remote sensing tools to quickly assess seed oil quality and quantity before and after harvest. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific ...

The sun's atmosphere dances. Giant columns of solar material – made of gas so hot that many of the electrons have been scorched off the atoms, turning it into a form of magnetized matter we call plasma – leap off the sun's surface, jumping and twisting. Sometimes these prominences of solar material, shoot off, escaping completely into space, other times they fall back down under their own weight. The prominences are sometimes also the inner structure of a larger formation, appearing from the side almost as the filament inside a large light bulb. The bright structure around ...

In a preliminary clinical trial, investigators at Johns Hopkins have shown that even partially-matched bone marrow transplants can eliminate sickle cell disease in some patients, ridding them of painful and debilitating symptoms, and the need for a lifetime of pain medications and blood transfusions. The researchers say the use of such marrow could potentially help make bone marrow transplants accessible to a majority of sickle cell patients who need them. After a median follow-up of two years, the transplants successfully eliminated sickle cell disease in 11 of 17 patients. ...

Scientists from Queen Mary, University of London have tracked bumblebees for the first time to see how they select the optimal route to collect nectar from multiple flowers and return to their nest. In a paper published in PLOS Biology today (18 September), the scientists, working with the Harmonic Radar Group at Rothamsted Research, were able to use radar tracking to show how bumblebees discover flowers, learn their location and use trial and error to find the most efficient route between flowers over large distances. Professor Lars Chittka and Dr Mathieu Lihoreau ...