The most widely used methods for calculating species extinction rates are "fundamentally flawed" and overestimate extinction rates by as much as 160 percent, life scientists report May 19 in the journal Nature. However, while the problem of species extinction caused by habitat loss is not as dire as many conservationists and scientists had believed, the global extinction crisis is real, says Stephen Hubbell, a distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and co-author of the Nature paper. "The methods currently in use to estimate extinction ...

Gaining more than the recommended weight during pregnancy can put women at increased risk of becoming obese and developing related health problems, including high blood pressure, later in life. These are the latest findings from researchers at the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)/Children of the 90s at the University of Bristol. Weight gain during pregnancy is necessary for the growth and development of the fetus but the study, which looked at the health of 3,877 women 16 years after they gave birth, found that those who gained more than the ...

In the opening editorial to the latest edition of the Journal of Radiological Protection, published today, Wednesday 18 May, radiological protection expert Professor Richard Wakeford of the Dalton Nuclear Institute, The University of Manchester, gives a detailed account of events at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station, and poses several questions that remain unanswered, several weeks on from the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March. Taking a close look at information disclosed by Japanese government ministries, the World Health Organisation, the International Atomic ...

The Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) recently released its third annual scorecard on the safety of each state's roads. When it comes to laws meant to prevent car accidents, the news for Florida is not so good. Out of 14 categories, Florida received a mediocre score of seven. While the score is not the worst received - North Dakota scored lowest at four - it certainly was not one of the top scores. The scorecard ranked the safety of each state's roads based on the presence or absence of 14 different motor vehicle safety laws. The laws included those for mandatory seatbelt ...

Can people truly feel the future? Researchers remain skeptical, according to a new study by Jeffrey Rouder and Richard Morey from the University of Missouri in the US, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, respectively. Their work (1) appears online in the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (2), published by Springer. Although extra-sensory perception (ESP) seems impossible given our current scientific knowledge, and certainly runs counter to our everyday experience, a leading psychologist, Daryl Bem of Cornell University, is claiming evidence for ESP. Rouder ...

How do genes control us? This fundamental question of life still remains elusive despite decades of research. Genes are blueprints for proteins, but it is the proteins that actually carry out vital functions in the body for maintaining life. Diseases such as cancer are not only characterized by altered genes, but also by disturbed protein production. But how is protein production controlled? Researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch of the Helmholtz Association, Germany, have now comprehensively quantified gene expression (the activation ...

The sharp downturn in the real estate market has impacted millions of Americans, and seniors are one of the groups most affected. This is particularly true of seniors who have so-called "reverse mortgages." This type of mortgage can potentially be a good way for people over the age of 62 to get money out of their homes. But in a market in which so many mortgages are underwater, it can also raise the risk of foreclosure. Reverse Mortgages Reverse mortgages are not new. But older homeowners are increasingly turning to them to improve their situations later ...

Jerusalem, May 18, 2011 – In case you thought that octopuses were smart only in guessing the outcome of soccer matches (remember the late Paul the octopus in Germany who picked all the right winners in last year's world cup matches in Johannesburg?), scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have now shown that not only are they smart, they can make some pretty good moves as well. Octopuses are among the most developed invertebrates. They have large brains and are fast learners. With eight arms and no rigid skeleton, they perform many tasks like crawling, swimming, ...

Throughout the 1990s, many states revamped their juvenile criminal laws to make it easier for judges to sentence children to adult prison. This was obviously done in an effort to appear "tough on crime" after a number of high-profile and sensational juvenile-offender cases had caused a media and public outcry. What many suspected at the time, however, and what has been proven to be true over time, is that this approach has been a poor solution to a complex problem. The pendulum is now beginning to swing the other way. A report by the Campaign for Youth Justice ...

A new international Task Force has been set up to promote 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' for workers and to develop organisational capacity in lower income countries. The research which found discrepancies between the salaries earned by local and those earned by expatriate aid workers was instrumental in setting up the task force. According to the findings from a jointly funded project by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Department for International Development (DFID) an expatriate aid worker will be paid on average four times more (and sometimes ...

Greater awareness of 'specific language impairment' (SLI), a language disorder, is needed to ensure better outcomes for the 3-6 per cent of UK school children affected by this disability. Children with SLI have difficulties with most or all aspects of language including grammar, vocabulary and literacy as well as with short term memory. According to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), they also have problems with higher order thinking skills. SLI may have a greater impact on these children than the better know disorder, dyslexia. "The ...

Irony has hit the health care system. While its goal is to safely heal injuries and diseases, the U.S. healthcare system has created an epidemic of medical errors. Recent studies reveal the physical and financial toll these medical mistakes continue to take on the quality of patient care. While medical malpractice reforms have attempted to curb the damages patients may recover after an injury caused by medical negligence, the health care system still suffers from a lack of incentive for doctors and hospitals to impose and adhere to stricter safety measures. In the meantime, ...

Scientists have used the latest computer-imaging technology to produce stunning three-dimensional pictures of a 49 million-year-old spider trapped inside an opaque piece of fossilized amber resin. University of Manchester researchers, working with colleagues in Germany, created the intricate images using X-ray computed tomography to study the remarkable spider, which can barely be seen under the microscope in the old and darkened amber. Writing in the international journal Naturwissenscaften, the scientists showed that the amber fossil – housed in the Berlin Natural ...

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in a case that has the potential to make it easier for accident victims and their families to bring products liability claims against automobile manufacturers. In Williamson v. Mazda Motor Corp. of America (No. 08-1314), the Court has been asked to decide whether federal safety regulations preempt state-based products liability claims against car manufacturers. In Williamson, 32-year-old Thanh Williamson died as a result of injuries sustained in a 2002 car crash. Williamson was sitting in the second row seat of a 1993 ...

ATS 2011, DENVER – A Wednesday morning session will explore the inhalational exposures and respiratory outcomes of military deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Presenters will review current knowledge on complex inhalational exposures, epidemiologic studies, animal toxicology studies, and clinical lung findings in U.S. military men and women who are returning from Southwest Asia. D6 "Occupational Lung Diseases in U.S. Military Personnel Deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan" will take place from 8:15 to 10:45 a.m. in the Wells Fargo Theatre Section 1 on the street level of ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — About half of prostate cancers have a genetic anomaly that appears to make tumor cells responsive to a new class of cancer-fighting drugs, a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center finds. The drugs, called PARP inhibitors, are currently being tested in breast cancer patients with mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are found in up to 10 percent of all breast cancers. Half of prostate cancers have a genomic rearrangement that causes the fusion of two genes called TMPRSS2 and ERG. This gene fusion, believed to ...

Head injuries can be classified in one of two ways, open and closed. Open, or penetrating, head wounds are what most of us think of when picturing common brain injuries. They occur when an object pierces the skull, and are usually easy to observe and detect. Closed head injuries, on the other hand, typically involve a blow from an object that does not break the skull. Closed head injuries are often difficult to diagnose, since they often evince no external signs. Yet, they can be just as damaging as their open counterparts. An article by Leonardo Rangel-Castilla, ...

The results from a very well-done meta-analysis support other data generated on the risk of alcohol consumption and gastric cancer – that is – that the risk may be real for heavy alcohol consumption but not for moderate intake. The type of gastric cancer relating to heavier alcohol intake in this study tended to be tumors involving the noncardia, but differences between the association with tumors of the gastric cardia were not significant. There was no increased risk of gastric cancer from alcohol intake among Asians; this may be due to their lower alcohol intake; ...

PHILADELPHIA—Cancer researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson and an international team of collaborators have discovered a biomarker in breast cancer that may help identify which women will respond to anti-estrogen therapy. The research appears in the May 16 online issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Anti-estrogen drugs, most notably tamoxifen, are widely used in patients diagnosed with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. However, as many as a third of the women given tamoxifen fail to respond. In this new study, the investigators found ...

Baylor University, in collaboration with the U.S Forest Service (USFS) Rocky Mountain Research Station, has developed a model that predicts the risk of wetland habitat loss based on local wetland features and characteristics of the landscape surrounding the wetland. The new model was used to predict the fate of wetland habitats over a 13-state area in the southern United States and was published in the journal Ecological Applications. "Because conservation resources are scarce, it is essential to focus conservation efforts on those geographic areas where the risks for ...

"Seeing something invisible with your own eyes is an exciting experience," say Joachim Fischer and Tolga Ergin. For about one year, both physicists and members of the team of Professor Martin Wegener at KIT's Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) have worked on refining the structure of the Karlsruhe invisibility cloak to such an extent that it is also effective in the visible spectral range. In invisibility cloaks, light waves are guided by the material such that they leave the invisibility cloak again as if they had never been in contact with the object to be ...

When we speak, our enunciation and pronunciation of words and syllables fluctuates and varies from person to person. Given this, how do infants decode all of the spoken sounds they hear to learn words and meanings? To replicate the challenges of learning language as an infant, Carnegie Mellon University's Lori Holt and Sung-Joo Lim and Stockholm University's Francisco Lacerda used video game training with a mock "alien" language. They discovered that listeners quickly recognize word-like units. They will present their findings at the Acoustical Society of America's ...

A recent story shows the potential mischief that can be caused by simply having a Facebook page. Richard Leon Barton Jr. posted pictures of his wedding on his Facebook page. One problem. Technically, he wasn't divorced from his first wife. And she saw the pictures. He is now facing polygamy charges in Michigan. Apparently, he believed he was divorced from his first wife, Adina Quarto. While they had discussed divorce, and were separated, they had never finalized the divorce. He had "defriended" his first wife before he married his second, but Quarto came ...

Scientists from the University of Sheffield have developed pigment-free, intensely coloured polymer materials, which could provide new, anti-counterfeit devices on passports or banknotes due to their difficulty to copy. The polymers do not use pigments but instead exhibit intense colour due to their structure, similar to the way nature creates colour for beetle shells and butterfly wings. These colours were created by highly ordered polymer layers, which the researchers produced using block copoylmers (an alloy of two different polymers). By mixing block copolymers ...

NEW YORK – Slowing down the aggregation or "clumping" of vitamin A in the eye may help prevent vision loss caused by macular degeneration, research from Columbia University Medical Center has found. Rather than changing the way the eye processes vitamin A, a team of researchers led by Ilyas Washington, a professor in the department of ophthalmology at Columbia's Harkness Eye Institute, decided to focus on changing the structure of vitamin A itself. In turn, Dr. Washington and his lab have taken a novel step toward treating age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a top ...