In a single new scientific publication, 24 new species of lizards known as skinks, all from islands in the Caribbean, have been discovered and scientifically named. According to Blair Hedges, a professor of biology at Penn State University and the leader of the research team, half of the newly added skink species already may be extinct or close to extinction, and all of the others on the Caribbean islands are threatened with extinction. The researchers found that the loss of many skink species can be attributed primarily to predation by the mongoose -- an invasive predatory ...

Philadelphia -- A few months after the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on the use of psychoactive drugs by children in foster care in five states, a national study from PolicyLab at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia describes prescription patterns over time in 48 states. The updated findings show the percentage of children in foster care taking antipsychotics--a class of psychoactive drugs associated with serious side effects for children-- continued to climb in the last decade. At the same time, a slight decline was seen in the use ...

KOREA (30 April 2012) — There is more going on in DPR Korea than rocket science: local people in collaboration with natural resources scientists are taking control of their food supply through agroforestry. This is according to a report published in Agroforestry Systems journal. How participatory agroforestry restored land and secured the food supply The report published online on 24 March, notes that in DPR Korea a bottom–up participatory process of developing locally appropriate agroforestry has been a revelation to many and is helping to reverse the chronic food ...

Scientists have discovered that they can dramatically increase the life span of mice with progeria (premature ageing disease) and heart disease (caused by Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy) by reducing levels of a protein called SUN1. This research was done by A*STAR's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in collaboration with their partners at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States and the Institute of Cellular and System Medicine in Taiwan. Their findings were published in the prestigious scientific journal, Cell, on 27th April 2012 ...

A new study of the wandering albatross – one of the largest birds on Earth – has shown that some of the birds are breeding earlier in the season compared with 30 years ago. Reporting online this month (April) in the journal Oikos, a British team of scientists describe how they studied the breeding habits of the wandering albatross on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. They have discovered that because some birds are now laying their eggs earlier, the laying date for the population is an average of 2.2 days earlier than before. The researchers say the reasons ...

Corals, trees and marine sediments, among others, are direct evidence of the climate of the past, but they are not the only indicators. A team led by Spanish scientists has interpreted records written in Iraq by Arabic historians for the first time and has made a chronology of climatic events from the year 816 to 1009, when cold waves and snow were normal. The Arabic historians' records chronologically narrate social, political and religious matters, and some of them mention climate. A study led by researchers from the University of Extremadura (Spain) has focused on ancient ...

Researchers studying a superconducting strip observed an intermittent motion of magnetic flux which carries vortices inside the regularly spaced weak conducting regions carved into the superconducting material. These vortices resulted in alternating static phases with zero voltage and dynamic phases, which are characterised by non-zero voltage peaks in the superconductor. This study, which is about to be published in EPJ B¹, was carried out by scientists from the Condensed Matter Theory Group of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, working in collaboration with Brazilian ...

Obese women are more likely to be discriminated against when applying for jobs and receive lower starting salaries than their non-overweight colleagues, a new study has found. The study, led by The University of Manchester and Monash University, Melbourne, and published in the International Journal of Obesity, examined whether a recently developed measure of anti-fat prejudice, the universal measure of bias (UMB), predicted actual obesity job discrimination. The researchers also assessed whether people's insecurity with their own bodies (body image) and conservative personalities ...

Great care should be taken when performing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with a cardiac pacemaker. Henning Bovenschulte and his co-authors review recent findings in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[15]: 270-5). MRI is generally contraindicated in patients with a pacemaker (PM) or an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD), because of the risk of life-threatening events. The devices and their sensors may interact with the magnetic fields, disrupting the cardiac rhythm. Energy builds up in the electrode leads, ...

Pasadena, CA—The Big Bang produced lots of hydrogen and helium and a smidgen of lithium. All heavier elements found on the periodic table have been produced by stars over the last 13.7 billion years. Astronomers analyze starlight to determine the chemical makeup of stars, the origin of the elements, the ages of stars, and the evolution of galaxies and the universe. Now for the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of arsenic and selenium, neighboring elements near the middle of the periodic table, in an ancient star in the faint stellar halo that surrounds ...

Evidence that a Florentine merchant house financed the earliest English voyages to North America, has been published on-line in the academic journal Historical Research. The article by Dr Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli, a member of a project based at the University of Bristol, indicates that the Venetian merchant John Cabot (alias Zuan Caboto) received funding in April 1496 from the Bardi banking house in London. The payment of 50 nobles (£16 13s. 4d.) was made so that 'Giovanni Chabotte' of Venice, as he is styled in the document, could undertake expeditions 'to go and find ...

Theoretical physicist Ali Naji from the IPM in Tehran and the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues have shown how small random patches of disordered, frozen electric charges can make a difference when they are scattered on surfaces that are overall neutral. These charges induce a twisting force that is strong enough to be felt as far as nanometers or even micrometers away. These results, about to be published in EPJ E (1), could help to understand phenomena that occurr on surfaces such as those of large biological molecules. To measure the strength of the twist ...

Lifting less weight more times is just as effective at building muscle as training with heavy weights, a finding by McMaster researchers that turns conventional wisdom on its head. The key to muscle gain, say the researchers, is working to the point of fatigue. "We found that loads that were quite heavy and comparatively light were equally effective at inducing muscle growth and promoting strength," says Cam Mitchell, one of the lead authors of the study and a PhD candidate in the Department of Kinesiology. The research, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, ...

Ann Arbor, Michigan… Regional differences in rates of cardiac procedures have increased in Michigan over the past decade—not fully explained by differences in health risk factors, heart attack or cardiac mortality rates—according to a report released today by the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation (CHRT). The report compares the state's hospital referral regions (HRRs) using claims data from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan's (BCBSM's) under-65 commercial subscribers and Medicare data from The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care in Michigan. According to the ...

Vitamin D may be known as the sunshine vitamin, but a new research report appearing in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology shows that it is more than that. According to the report, insufficient levels of vitamin D are related to a deficiency in our innate immune defenses that protect us from infections, neoplasias or autoimmune diseases. Since vitamin D levels decrease during autumn and winter when days are shorter and sunlight is relatively weak, this may explain why people are more prone to viral infection during these times. It also suggests that vitamin D supplementation, ...

New research published online in the FASEB Journal suggests that a specific enzyme, called 5-lipoxygenase, plays a key role in cell death induced by microgravity environments, and that inhibiting this enzyme will likely help prevent or lessen the severity of immune problems in astronauts caused by spaceflight. Additionally, since space conditions initiate health problems that mimic the aging process on Earth, this discovery may also lead to therapeutics that extend lives by bolstering the immune systems of the elderly. "The outcomes of this space research might be helpful ...

Scientists of KIT and the University of Birmingham have identified relevant new functions of a gene that plays a crucial role in Fanconi anemia, a life-threatening disease. The FANCM gene is known to be important for the stability of the genome. Now, the researchers found that FANCM also plays a key role in the recombination of genetic information during inheritance. For their studies, the scientists used thale cress as a model plant. Their results are newly published by the journal The Plant Cell. Stability of the genome is ensured by a series of mechanisms. If these ...

Are you connected to college friends on Facebook? Research from North Carolina State University shows that these social networks tend to form around graduation year or university housing – rather than other interests. Researchers examined the first 100 colleges and universities to have students, faculty or staff join Facebook when the site exclusively contained .edu email addresses. As students, faculty and staff joined Facebook, social networks were formed. Each university, in essence, formed its own network – ranging in size from 762 to 50,000. "We wanted to see what ...

Removing a child's ruptured appendix sooner rather than later significantly lowers hospital costs and charges, according to a recently published study. An estimated $10,000 in hospital charges was saved when pediatric general surgeons removed the ruptured appendix within the first 24 hours, compared to the alternative treatment, called an interval appendectomy, which involved removing the appendix six-eight weeks later. The study was published in the April issue of the Journal of American College of Surgeons, and was led by Martin Blakely, M.D., MS, associate professor ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Today's hybrid corn varieties more efficiently use nitrogen to create more grain, according to 72 years of public-sector research data reviewed by Purdue University researchers. Tony Vyn, a professor of agronomy, and doctoral student Ignacio Ciampitti looked at nitrogen use studies for corn from two periods -- 1940-1990 and 1991-2011. They wanted to see whether increased yields were due to better nitrogen efficiency or whether new plants were simply given additional nitrogen to produce more grain. "Corn production often faces the criticism from ...

Toronto will be the site of an incredible exchange of ideas between artists, music industry professionals, thinkers and developing artists at the Toronto International Music Summit. This one-day event, to be held at the Fairmont Royal York, will provide the tools and knowledge necessary to gain a foothold in the music industry and promote your band, your brand and yourself to the best of your ability. The Summit will host a huge variety of influential industry professionals from all over the music business. Speakers will focus on four specific aspects of the music industry: ...

WASHINGTON, April 30--Like a coffee enthusiast who struggles to get a buzz from that third cup of morning joe, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) seem to reach a point where more electricity no longer imparts the same kick and productivity levels-off. Now a team of researchers from California and Japan has devised a new design for green and blue LEDs that avoids much of this vexing efficiency droop. The findings will be presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO: 2012), taking place May 6-11 in San Jose, Calif. By changing the orientation of the crystal ...

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society today announced that press registration is now open for the 2012 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). The event, which runs at the Paul River Centre in Saint Paul, MI on May 14-18, 2012, attracts the world's leading robotics and automation experts. The theme of the annual robotics conference is "Robots and Automation: Innovation for Tomorrow's Needs". The event website is http://www.icra2012.org.According to ICRA 2012 Program Chair Paul Oh, "The conference theme for the 2012 ICRA event, 'Robots ...

Twist Restaurant, inside the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel & Spa, invites you to enjoy a culinary experience on May 13th with our Mother's Day Brunch featuring vocalist Judy Wexler. This delectable blend of renowned jazz artists, champagne, free-flowing Mimosas and a gourmet brunch buffet creates one of the most popular dining experiences in Southern California. While you're enjoying the music, indulge in the restaurant's unique spin on the American classic buffet. The brunch menu includes all you can eat and drink of cooked to order omelettes, eggs benedict, waffle ...

People searching Internet for a vehicle transportation company may be overwhelmed with the number or results appearing on their computer or smart phone screens. Without extensive research and a lot of luck there is really no way of knowing which of the vehicle transport _http://illinoistowingservices.com_ search results has the potential of being the best one. Is it really the one on the top? "Ask questions before you hire a carrier" says Mario Klus, President of CanAm Transportation Inc., "most people searching for anything on the web assume that first ...