A new study reveals for the first time that activating the brain's visual cortex with a small amount of electrical stimulation actually improves our sense of smell. The finding published in the Journal of Neuroscience by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital - The Neuro, McGill University and the Monell Chemical Senses Center, Philadelphia, revises our understanding of the complex biology of the senses in the brain. "It's known that there are separate specialized brain areas for the different senses such as vision, smell, touch and so forth ...

People with heart disease may not be able to compensate for their bodies' higher demand for oxygen when inhaling cold air, according to Penn State researchers, making snow shoveling and other activities dangerous for some. "This study can help us understand why cold air is such a trigger for coronary events," said Lawrence I. Sinoway, Distinguished Professor of Medicine and director of the Heart and Vascular Institute, Penn State College of Medicine. Breathing cold air during exercise can cause uneven oxygen distribution throughout the heart. But a healthy body generally ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal, February 28, 2012 - We depend on a barrage of standardized tests to assess everything from aptitude to intelligence. But do they provide an accurate forecast when it comes to something as complex as language? A study by Diane Pesco, an assistant professor in Concordia's Department of Education, and co-author Daniela O'Neill, published earlier this year in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, shows that the Language Use Inventory (LUI) does. Developed by O'Neill at the University of Waterloo, the ...

Plan UK's campaign, which highlights the plight of the world's poorest girls, launched a groundbreaking interactive ad on a bus stop in Oxford Street on February 22. The advert uses facial recognition software with an HD camera to determine whether a man or woman is standing in front of the screen, and shows different content accordingly. Passing shoppers can opt-in to view the ad and find out more about Plan's work to help some of the world's poorest girls. Men and boys are denied the choice to view the full content in order to highlight the fact that women and girls ...

A child's cognitive development is not generally impacted by how much weight his or her mother gained during pregnancy, according to a study from Nationwide Children's Hospital. This is the first study to use methods controlling for the widest range of confounding factors when directly examining the association between gestational weight gain and childhood cognition. Insufficient or excessive weight gain in pregnancy can have negative consequences for fetuses and children including infant mortality. The Institute of Medicine recently revised gestational weight gain ...

The invention of a long-lasting incandescent light bulb in the 19th century spurred on the second wave of the industrial revolution, illuminating homes, extending leisure time and bringing us to the point today where many millions of people use a whole range of devices from mood lighting to audiovisual media centers, microwave ovens to fast-freeze ice makers, and allergy-reducing vacuum cleaners to high-speed broadband connected computers in their homes without a second thought. However, the waves of the industrialization of the west have merely lapped at the shores of ...

University of British Columbia researcher Hongshen Ma has developed a simple and accurate device to study malaria, a disease that currently affects 500 million people per year worldwide and claims a million lives. Spread by mosquitoes, malaria is caused by a tiny parasite that infects human red blood cells. Ma and his team designed a "lab on a chip" device to better understand the changes in red blood cells caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the most common species of malaria parasites. Ma explains the device will help those conducting laboratory research or clinical ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University have discovered yet another reason why the "sulforaphane" compound in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables is so good for you – it provides not just one, but two ways to prevent cancer through the complex mechanism of epigenetics. Epigenetics, an increasing focus of research around the world, refers not just to our genetic code, but also to the way that diet, toxins and other forces can change which genes get activated, or "expressed." This can play a powerful role in everything ...

FAIRFAX, Va.—The Society of Interventional Radiology will feature minimally invasive scientific advances and new discoveries that may change the way dozens of diseases are treated at its 37th Annual Scientific Meeting March 24-29 at San Francisco's Moscone Center. More than 5,000 physicians, scientists and allied health professionals are expected to attend this premier interventional radiology event. The meeting's theme, "IR Evidence," reflects a growing commitment to develop and prove care-changing advances in dozens of practice areas important to the specialty. Nearly ...

CHICAGO -- Having a powerful member of congress could have unintended consequences for a state's economy, according to a study published today (February 28, 2012) in the Journal of Political Economy. Researchers from Harvard Business School found that when a member of a state's congressional delegation becomes chair of a powerful committee, that state sees a tremendous influx of government cash through earmarks and government contracts, as one might expect. But rather than stimulating private sector growth, the study found that the extra government spending actually causes ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A mysterious phenomenon detected by space probes has finally been explained, thanks to a massive computer simulation that was able to precisely align with details of spacecraft observations. The finding could not only solve an astrophysical puzzle, but might also lead to a better ability to predict high-energy electron streams in space that could damage satellites. Jan Egedal, an associate professor of physics at MIT and a researcher at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, working with MIT graduate student Ari Le and with William Daughton of the Los ...

AMES, Iowa – Genetic mutations to cellulose in plants could improve the conversion of cellulosic biomass into biofuels, according to a research team that included two Iowa State University chemists. The team recently published its findings in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mei Hong, an Iowa State professor of chemistry and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, and Tuo Wang, an Iowa State graduate student in chemistry, contributed their expertise in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ...

Los Angeles, CA -- People all over the world have spent almost six months in front of universities, public parks, banks, and even Wall Street to publicly protest their dissatisfaction with economic inequality. But how much disparity really exists between the rich and poor in the United States? According to a new study, it might be more than you would think. A recent study published in the Review of Radical Political Economics (published by SAGE), analyzed surveys of US households from the late 1990's and early 2000's. The author looked at differences among quintiles (or ...

Polaris Financial Technology Ltd. (POLS.BO), a leading global Financial Technology Company, today announced that AITE Group, a leading independent research and advisory firm focused on business, technology and regulatory issues, has positioned Polaris among the highest rated vendors in the matrix of SCF (Supply Chain Finance) Enablers & SCF Components Maturity Index. This was announced in AITE Group's report* on Supply Chain Finance Software Vendors. The report discusses the target markets, software functionalities, delivery models, client segmentation and partnership ...

Last year, Kenya lost 278 elephants to poachers, as compared to 177 in 2010. On the continent of Africa as whole, elephants have declined from an estimated 700,000 in 1990 to 360,000 today due to the demands of the ivory trade. Spend some time with University of Notre Dame researchers Elizabeth Archie and Patrick Chiyo and you'll gain a better understanding of just what a tragic loss elephant poaching is. A thinking, reasoning species with extraordinary memories, a strong sense of families and caring and nurturing natures are increasingly at the risk of extinction. Archie's ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — California's three-strikes law has not reduced violent crime, but has contributed significantly to the state's financial woes by substantially increasing the prison population, according to a University of California, Riverside researcher. Declining crime rates in California and nationwide reflect declines in alcohol consumption, not tough-on-crime policies such as three-strikes laws, says Robert Nash Parker, a sociologist and director of the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies at UCR. Parker, who is known internationally for groundbreaking ...

SEATTLE—As soon as women quit hormone therapy, their rates of new breast cancer decline, supporting the hypothesis that stopping hormones can lead to tumor regression, according to a report e-published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, & Prevention. As part of the national Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, researchers studied 741,681 woman-years of data (with a median of 3.3 years per woman) on 163,490 women aged 50-79 who were Group Health Cooperative members and had no prior history of breast cancer. "This is the first study to look over time at screening ...

TAMPA, Fla. -- Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., and colleagues in California have found that the XL888 inhibitor can prevent resistance to the chemotherapy drug vemurafenib, commonly used for treating patients with melanoma. Vemurafenib resistance is characterized by a diminished apoptosis (programmed cancer cell death) response. According to the researchers, the balance between apoptosis and cell survival is regulated by a family of proteins. The survival of melanoma cells is controlled, in part, by an anti-apoptotic protein (Mcl-1) that is regulated ...

A weak tropical low pressure area known as System 92S, and locally called Irina caused flooding over northern Madagascar less than two weeks after deadly flooding by Tropical Cyclone Giovanna in the south and central part of the island nation. NASA's TRMM satellite measured System 92S's rainfall over Madagascar, and measured some high rain totals. System 92S didn't have very strong winds when it passed over the coastal city of Vohemar on Madagascar's northeastern coast over the last couple of days, but street flooding was reported. A rainfall analysis was made at ...

Mingles Media, Inc is pleased to announce the launch of www.interfaithmingle.com, an online dating site that is dedicated to people of the Interfaith community all faiths and beliefs. Our site is not just for people who want to date within their own faith but also for people who want to mingle and learn from members of other faiths and beliefs. The mission of www.interfaithmingle.com is to bring together people who have strong values, who will care for each other and like-minded people of the interfaith communities. Our faiths may be different, but we must be willing ...

Edmonton -- One of the most prominent features of life-size, museum models of Tyrannosaurus rex, is its fearsome array of flesh-ripping, bone-crushing teeth. Until recently most researchers only noted the varying size of T. rex's teeth when they studied the carnivore's smile. But now a University of Alberta paleontologist has discovered that beyond the obvious difference in size of each tooth family, there is considerable variation in the serrated edges of the teeth. These varying edges or keels not only enabled T.rex's very strong teeth to cut through flesh and bone, ...

A new discovery involving two Simon Fraser University scientists could lead to a little known and benign bacterium becoming a vital new tool in the development of a vaccine against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Ralph Pantophlet, a Faculty of Health Sciences assistant professor, and Kate Auyeung, his senior research assistant and lab manager at SFU, and scientists in Italy have made a breakthrough discovery about Rhizobium radiobacter. The journal Chemistry & Biology has just published their research in its Feb. 24 issue. The research team has discovered this harmless ...

Slowing or preventing the development of Alzheimer's disease, a fatal brain condition expected to hit one in 85 people globally by 2050, may be as simple as ensuring a brain protein's sugar levels are maintained. That's the conclusion seven researchers, including David Vocadlo, a Simon Fraser University chemistry professor and Canada Research Chair in Chemical Glycobiology, make in the latest issue of Nature Chemical Biology. The journal has published the researchers' latest paper Increasing O-GlcNAc slows neurodegeneration and stabilizes tau against aggregation. Vocadlo ...

FEBRUARY 2012 -- A University of Toronto research team has developed a process to analyze the behavior of bitumen in reservoirs using a microfluidic chip, a tool commonly associated with the field of medical diagnostics. The process may reduce the cost and time of analyzing bitumen-gas interaction in heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs. Dr. David Sinton, Professor with the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Hossein Fadaei are using the chips to examine the way highly pressurized CO2 behaves when ...

When talking with Michael Dow, you wouldn't expect that he would come up with a global impacting idea. He's soft spoken, going bald even though he's a bit hairy, he's only attended public schools and sometimes he has memory issues. But that didn't keep him from using his creative writing talent. "I wanted to find a way to help the world," says Michael, "and stumbled across some ideas. I chose to believe that I could present them simply and thoroughly and published some books and websites." The main part of his plan, which he has named Project 13 ...