A European research team, with Spanish participation, has described two new beetle species measuring two millimetres in length. The coleoptera (beetles) were found in streams in the Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees mountains (from Gipuzkoa to Girona) and in the Sierra de la Demanda mountains (Burgos). Experts had previously thought that they belonged to another European species. "These species, which have a restricted range, had been confused with another European species with a more extensive distribution (Hydraena saga) and so their independent evolutionary history was unknown", ...

MadCap Software, Inc. (http://www.madcapsoftware.com), the leader in multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft XPS, today announced that revenues for Q1 2011 have grown 41% over Q1 2010, continuing the profitability that the company has enjoyed since launching its flagship product Flare in 2006. In the wake of strong growth, MadCap has increased its cash and accounts receivable by 30% over the same period ending 2010. At the same time, MadCap continues to invest in resources by expanding headcount by 21% over the previous ...

Research from North Carolina State University shows that so-called biodegradable products are likely doing more harm than good in landfills, because they are releasing a powerful greenhouse gas as they break down. "Biodegradable materials, such as disposable cups and utensils, are broken down in landfills by microorganisms that then produce methane," says Dr. Morton Barlaz, co-author of a paper describing the research and professor and head of NC State's Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. "Methane can be a valuable energy source when captured, ...

Bethesda, MD—Severe deficiency of the vitamins and minerals required for life is relatively uncommon in developed nations, but modest deficiency is very common and often not taken seriously. A new research published online in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), however, may change this thinking as it examines moderate selenium and vitamin K deficiency to show how damage accumulates over time as a result of vitamin and mineral loss, leading to age-related diseases. "Understanding how best to define and measure optimum nutrition will make the application of new technologies ...

TORONTO, Ont., May 31—Female prisoners who did not participate in a drug treatment program after their release were 10 times more likely to return to prison within one year than other prisoners, a new study has found. More than one-third of those women were sent back to prison within six months, according to the national study led by Flora Matheson, a medical sociologist at St. Michael's Hospital. The findings, published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, underline the importance of post-release treatment programs for prisoners with substance ...

What would it take to make a manned mission to Mars a reality? A team of aeronautical and textile engineering students from North Carolina State University believe part of the solution may lie in advanced textile materials. The students joined forces to tackle life-support challenges that the aerospace industry has been grappling with for decades. "One of the big issues, in terms of a manned mission to Mars, is creating living quarters that would protect astronauts from the elements – from radiation to meteorites," says textile engineering student Brent Carter. "Currently, ...

In the online version of the New England Journal of Medicine, physicians and scientists in Heidelberg, Montreal, and Paris reported on the successful treatment of three young children who were suffering from a severe hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) after an infection with enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC). The infections occurred in 2010. EHEC are the bacteria that cause the current wave of infections that have already claimed ten lives in Germany. The number of suspected and confirmed cases of EHEC has now reached 700. Eculizumab has been approved in Germany ...

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – May 31, 2011 – The gold standard long-term glucose monitoring test for patients with diabetes proved to be of limited value in dialysis patients, according to a new study at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The study appears online in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and is scheduled for the July print issue. Blood sugar monitoring is a vital part of diabetes management. Patients and physicians rely on the hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) test to measure an individual's average blood sugar level over the prior three months. ...

Bethesda, MD—If you are one of the millions of people around the world who struggle with dry eye disease, good news is on the way. A new research discovery published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (https://www.jleukbio.org) offers hope for new drugs that treat the cellular cause of the disease rather than its symptoms. That's because the research is the first to identify natural killer (NK) cells, a type of cell that provides innate immunity to the eyes, as promoting the inflammation that plays a critical role in the development of dry eye disease. "Dry eye disease ...

Analysis of data from two long-term studies of the impact of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on the development of psychiatric disorders in young adults confirms that ADHD alone significantly increases the risk of cigarette smoking and substance abuse in both boys and girls. The report from a team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators will appear in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and has been released online. "Our study, which is one of the largest set of longitudinal studies of this issue to date, ...

Delineation of the origin of the retrovirus known as XMRV from the genomes of laboratory mice indicates that the virus is unlikely to be responsible for either prostate cancer or chronic fatigue syndrome in humans, as has been widely published. The virus arose because of genetic recombination of two mouse viruses. Subsequent infection of lab experiments with XMRV formed the basis of the original association. Reporting in Science, Vinay Pathak, Ph.D., and his research team from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration ...

A survey of nearly 4,000 Americans finds that obese women reported significantly worse health than obese men. Blacks who were overweight also reported better health than blacks in the normal or obese weight categories. Respondents were divided into three categories: normal, overweight, or obese, according to their height and weight. The survey results are published online in the June issue of Springer's journal Quality of Life Research and they come from a study funded by the National Institute on Aging. During the survey, researchers conducted comprehensive telephone ...

"When we talk about supporting adaptation to climate change, what we mean is supporting resilience at the community level," says Noorjehan Johnson, Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Cultural Anthropology at McGill University. "In the Arctic, much of the resilience is fostered through community institutions, which are playing an increasingly important role in crafting a local-level response to climate change." Johnson's research has taken her to Kanngiqtugaapik (Clyde River) on Baffin Island, Nunavut. There, she has been finding out how Inuit communities are adapting to ...

Washington, DC, May 31, 2011 -- Cell phones used by patients and their visitors were twice as likely to contain potentially dangerous bacteria as those of healthcare workers (HCW), according to a study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC - the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. A team of researchers from the Department of Medical Microbiology at Inonu University in Malatya, Turkey collected swab samples from three parts of cell phones—the keypad, microphone and ear ...

A Queen's University professor is helping standardize practices for healthcare ethicists who consult and give guidance on medical ethics issues to doctors, nurses and patients across the country. "It's time for healthcare ethicists to have some formal practice guidelines, a governing code of ethics, and uniform education and certification standards," says Cheryl Cline, Director of the Office of Bioethics in the Faculty of Health Sciences and Clinical Ethicist at Kingston General Hospital. "Our job is to provide Canadian patients and their families with high quality ethics ...

How do people who speak more than one language keep from mixing them up? How do they find the right word in the right language when being fluent in just one language means knowing about 30,000 words? That's what science has wondered about for decades, offering complicated theories on how the brain processes more than one language and sometimes theorizing that bilingualism degrades cognitive performance. But University of Kansas psycholinguist Mike Vitevitch thinks that complicated explanations of how the brain processes two or more languages overlook a straightforward ...

Alexandria, VA –Next week marks the 67th anniversary of D-Day, when the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy, France, and changed the face of World War II. Not much evidence of the war remains in Normandy: a few dilapidated relics, a cemetery, a war memorial. But something else was left behind that cannot be seen by the naked eye: shrapnel and iron and glass beads left over from the D-Day invasions in 1944. Two geologists visited Omaha Beach in 1988 and collected samples of the sand. Upon returning to their labs, they examined the sand under microscopes and discovered ...

In the 30 years since the first reported cases of a mysterious illness now known as AIDS, researchers have made extraordinary advances in understanding, treating and preventing the disease. Now the challenge, according to experts at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is to build on those successes to control and, ultimately, end the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In an article published online today by the Annals of Internal Medicine, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director, and Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., ...

Each time you see a person that you know, your brain rapidly and seemingly effortlessly recognizes that person by his or her face. Until now, scientists believed that only a couple of brain areas mediate facial recognition. However, Carnegie Mellon University's Marlene Behrmann, David Plaut and Adrian Nestor have discovered that an entire network of cortical areas work together to identify faces. Published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), their findings will change the future of neural visual perception research and ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (G-Cubed), Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (JGR-D), the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences (JGR-G), the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics (JGR-A), Paleoceanography (PA), and Water Resources Research (WRR). 1. Analyzing subsurface oil and gas intrusions from Gulf spill After the Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010, hydrocarbons were released into the Gulf of Mexico. These ...

CAMDEN – If you think that you're using humanely produced eggs for your omelets or deviled eggs, think again. Egg companies recognize that most Americans care about the welfare of farmed animals and many market their eggs with labels claiming the hens were treated well. But a Rutgers–Camden law professor warns that many of the animal welfare claims on egg cartons aren't all that they're cracked up to be. Sheila Rodriguez, a clinical associate professor at the Rutgers School of Law–Camden, asserts that food consumers have a right to know how farm animals are raised and, ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — Blood clotting is a complicated business, particularly for those trying to understand how the body responds to injury. In a new study, researchers report that they are the first to describe in atomic detail a chemical interaction that is vital to blood clotting. This interaction – between a clotting factor and a cell membrane – has baffled scientists for decades. The study appears online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. "For decades, people have known that blood-clotting proteins have to bind to a cell membrane in order for the clotting reaction ...

A team of Scripps Research Institute scientists has found a key biological mechanism underpinning the transition to alcohol dependence. This finding opens the door to the development of drugs to manage excessive alcohol consumption. "Our focus in this study, like much of our lab's research, was to examine the role of the brain's stress system in compulsive alcohol drinking driven by the aversive aspects of alcohol withdrawal," said Scripps Research Associate Professor Marisa Roberto, Ph.D., senior author of the study. "A major goal for this study," added Research Associate ...

In the treeless, flat Prairie, you'd think a city would provide a good home for bats who like to snuggle up and roost in trees and buildings. But researchers at the University of Calgary made the surprising discovery that the urban landscape is far from ideal for these animals. "I was really surprised," says Dr. Joanna Coleman, a sessional lecturer and recent PhD graduate in biological sciences at the University of Calgary and lead author of the study. "I fully expected bats to benefit from the expected increase in availability of roosts and food – insects -- in the city. ...