(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The orientation of a diagram on the page of a textbook may seem inconsequential, but it can have a significant impact on a reader's ability to comprehend the information as presented, according to a team of researchers at UC Santa Barbara, Vanderbilt University, and West Carolina University. Their findings appear in a recent issue of the journal Bioscience. Focusing on variously formatted cladograms –– also known as phylogenetic trees –– the researchers found that two diagrams may contain the same information, but they aren't necessarily equivalent ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - More than one-third of young adults who reported being victims of dating violence as teenagers had two or more abusive partners, a new study suggests. The study involved 271 college students who recalled dating violence - including physical, sexual and psychological abuse - from ages 13 to 19. Overall, nearly two-thirds of both men and women reported some type of abuse during their teenage years, which falls in line with other studies. But it was surprising how many teen victims had two or more abusive partners, said Amy Bonomi, lead author of the ...

Proteins accelerate certain chemical reactions in cells by several orders of magnitude. The molecular mechanism by which the Ras protein accelerates the cleavage of the molecule GTP and thus slows cell growth is described by biophysicists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum led by Prof. Dr. Klaus Gerwert in the Online Early Edition of the journal PNAS. Using a combination of infrared spectroscopy and computer simulations, they showed that Ras puts a phosphate chain under tension to such an extent that a phosphate group can very easily detach - the brake for cell growth. Mutated ...

Biologists and informaticists at Indiana University have produced one of the most extensive pictures ever of mutation processes in the DNA sequence of an organism, elucidating important new evolutionary information about the molecular nature of mutations and how fast those heritable changes occur. By analyzing the exact genomic changes in the model prokaryote Escherichia coli that had undergone over 200,000 generations of growth in the absence of natural selective pressures, the team led by IU College of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology professor Patricia L. Foster ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – U.S. adults repeatedly rate bullying as a major health problem for U.S. children. But a new poll from the University of Michigan shows adults have different views about what bullying behaviors should prompt schools to take action. The University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health recently asked a nationwide sample of adults what behaviors should be considered bullying and what behaviors should spur school officials to intervene. The vast majority of adults (95 percent) say schools should take action if a student ...

As sea ice in the Arctic continues to shrink during this century, more than two thirds of the area with sufficient snow cover for ringed seals to reproduce also will disappear, challenging their survival, scientists report in a new study. The ringed seal, currently under consideration for threatened species listing, builds caves to rear its young in snow drifts on sea ice. Snow depths must be on average at least 20 centimeters, or 8 inches, to enable drifts deep enough to support the caves. "It's an absolute condition they need," said Cecilia Bitz, an associate professor ...

Women are better than men at recognizing living things and men are better than women at recognizing vehicles. That is the unanticipated result of an analysis Vanderbilt psychologists performed on data from a series of visual recognition tasks collected in the process of developing a new standard test for expertise in object recognition. "These results aren't definitive, but they are consistent with the following story," said Gauthier. "Everyone is born with a general ability to recognize objects and the capability to get really good at it. Nearly everyone becomes expert ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Long mandatory minimum sentences or strong limits on judicial discretion can counter-productively reduce the incentives of prison inmates to engage in rehabilitative behavior, thereby raising recidivism rates, according to published research co-written by a University of Illinois economics professor. Dan Bernhardt, the IBE Distinguished Professor of Economics at Illinois, says rehabilitation incentives are maximized when the lengths of prison sentences are neither too short, nor too long. According to the paper, inmates with short prison sentences ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An international team of physicists is working to ascertain more about the fundamental physical laws that are at work in a process known as convection, which occurs in a boiling pot of water as well as in the turbulent movement of the liquid outer core of the Earth. The team's new finding specifies the way that the temperature of a gas or liquid varies with the distance from a heat source during convection. The research is expected to eventually help engineers with applications such as the design of cooling systems, for instance, in nuclear power ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 17, 2012 — Researchers with UC Irvine's Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a major reason why melanoma is largely resistant to chemotherapy. UCI dermatologist Dr. Anand Ganesan and colleagues found a genetic pathway in melanoma cells that inhibits the cellular mechanism for detecting DNA damage wrought by chemotherapy, thereby building up tolerance to cancer-killing drugs. Targeting this pathway, comprising the genes RhoJ and Pak1, heralds a new approach to treating the deadly skin cancer, which claims nearly 10,000 U.S. lives ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – GSA Bulletin papers posted online from 20 July through 14 September 2012 elaborate on geoscience from Algeria, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, Nova Scotia, Switzerland, New Mexico, and the U.S. Rocky Mountains. Topics include tectonics, mineral formation, the Moho, age dating using zircon crystals, the Code of Stratigraphic Nomenclature, atmospheric CO2, and early animal evolution. GSA Bulletin articles published ahead of print are online at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — An enzyme that could represent a powerful new tool for combating Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The enzyme — known as BACE2 — destroys beta-amyloid, a toxic protein fragment that litters the brains of patients who have the disease. The findings were published online Sept. 17 in the science journal Molecular Neurodegeneration. Alzheimer's disease is the most common memory disorder. It affects more that 5.5 million people in the United States. Despite the disorder's enormous financial and personal ...

A new University of Iowa study suggests there are two root causes of a type of diabetes associated with cystic fibrosis (CF). The findings, which already have sparked a clinical trial, may guide development of new treatments or even help prevent diabetes in patients with CF. Almost half of patients with CF will develop diabetes by age 30 and almost one quarter will develop it in their teens. In addition to the health problems caused by high blood sugar, diabetes also worsens lung disease and increases the risk of dying for people with CF. However, the underlying cause ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found identical strains of antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter coli (C. coli) in both antibiotic-free (ABF) and conventionally raised pigs. This finding may indicate that these antibiotic-resistant pathogens can persist and thrive in the environment, regardless of antimicrobial usage by pork producers. Dr. Siddhartha Thakur, assistant professor of population health and pathobiology, had previously found that antibiotic-resistant C. coli, a leading cause of foodborne illness in the U.S., was present in both ABF-certified ...

New in our journals: Your city matters: San Francisco v. Boston Your home city matters for both who you are and how you feel, according to a new suite of studies. In seven studies, researchers examined the history and culture of San Francisco and Boston, as well as surveyed residents (including commuters, college students, and middle-aged residents) of each city. They found that San Francisco showed more emphasis on egalitarianism, innovation, and looser social norms, while Boston emphasizes tradition, community, and tighter social norms. As a result, for Bostonians, ...

Saturday, September 15, 2012, Cleveland: Cleveland Clinic researchers have discovered that vitamin E may prevent cancer in patients with an under-recognized genetic disorder. Several genetic mutations are known to be present in Cowden Syndrome (CS) – a disease that predisposes individuals to several types of cancers, including breast and thyroid cancers. One type of mutation in the succinate dehydrogenase (SDH) genes may be responsible for cancer development, according to research by Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D., Hardis Chair and Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute ...

TORONTO, Sept. 17, 2012—Whether your neighbourhood is conducive to walking could determine your risk for developing diabetes, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Researchers found this risk was particularly high for new immigrants living in low-income neighbourhoods. A new immigrant living in a less walkable neighbourhood – fewer destinations within a 10-minute walk, lower residential density, poorly connected streets – was about 50 per cent more likely to develop diabetes when compared ...

The NFL season is off and running and with it comes the proverbial hamstring injury, the torn tendon, the groin strain – injuries that players have come to expect as part of this high-energy contact sport. Far less top of mind is the rare but catastrophic cervical spine injury, but that's exactly the injury that Mercyhurst University researchers are working with Sports Medicine Concepts and the National Football League (NFL) to mitigate. One tragic example came Sept. 8 when Tulane University safety Devon Walker fractured his spine in a head-on collision with a teammate ...

A new study that identifies ways to reduce the factors that lead to an asthma attack gives hope to asthma sufferers. A UCSF researcher and his colleagues believe they have found a way to help asthma sufferers by impeding the two most significant biological responses that lead to an asthma attack. Asthma, a respiratory disorder that causes shortness of breath, coughing and chest discomfort, results from changes in the airways that lead to the lungs. It affects 18.7 million adults and 7.0 million children in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The discovery of a new gene could lead to better bug-resistant plants. Research led by Michigan State University and appearing on the cover of this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, demonstrates that domestic tomatoes could re-learn a thing or two from their wild cousins. Long-term cultivation has led to tomato crops losing beneficial traits common to wild tomatoes. Anthony Schilmiller, MSU research assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, was able to identify a gene that is involved in one of these beneficial ...

When Kayla Dehnert tells friends and family in Northern California about life as a St. Jude Children's Research Hospital patient, she pulls out a string of beads taller than she is. "This is a learning-to-take medicine bead," Kayla explains, fingering the bumps of a bluish-lavender bead and working her way down the long strand. "This yellow bead is the change-the-bandage bead, and the tiger bead is the losing-your-hair bead." Kayla, 8, of Novato, Calif., is one of hundreds of St. Jude patients who have participated in the hospital's Legacy Bead program since its launch ...

DURHAM, N.C.— By studying how birds master songs used in courtship, scientists at Duke University have found that regions of the brain involved in planning and controlling complex vocal sequences may also be necessary for memorizing sounds that serve as models for vocal imitation. In a paper appearing in the September 2012 issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers at Duke and Harvard universities observed the imitative vocal learning habits of male zebra finches to pinpoint which circuits in the birds' brains are necessary for learning their songs. Knowing ...

NASA's Hurricane Severe Storms Sentinel (HS3) Mission is in full-swing and one of the unmanned Global Hawk aircraft investigate Tropical Storm Nadine on Sept. 14 and 15, while NASA satellites continued to obtain imagery of the storm as seen from space. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a true-color image of Hurricane Nadine in the Atlantic Ocean on Sept. 16 at 1345 UTC (9:45 a.m. EDT) while NASA's Global Hawk was flying around the storm. Nadine strengthened to a hurricane on Friday, Sept. 14 at 11 p.m. EDT, and weakened ...

Using ultra-low input power densities, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have demonstrated for the first time how low-power "optical nanotweezers" can be used to trap, manipulate, and probe nanoparticles, including fragile biological samples. "We already know that plasmonic nanoantennas enhance local fields by up to several orders of magnitude, and thus, previously showed that we can use these structures with a regular CW laser source to make very good optical tweezers," explains, Kimani Toussaint, Jr., assistant professor of mechanical science ...

Typhoon Sanba made landfall in southern South Korea on Monday, Sept. 17 and was moving northeast bringing heavy rainfall, and gusty winds along its path. Sanba downed trees, and caused power outages, canceled flights and canceled ferries. NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Sanba on Sept. 17 after it made landfall and observed the large extent of its cloud cover from South Korea to eastern Siberia. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Sanba on Sept. 17 at 0430 UTC (12:30 a.m. EDT/1:30 p.m. local time Seoul, South Korea) and the Moderate Resolution ...