Stephen Spielberg's movie Jurassic Park got one thing right. Velociraptors hunted by night while big plant-eating dinosaurs browsed around the clock, according to a paper on the eyes of fossil animals published on-line this week in Science Express. That overturns the conventional wisdom that dinosaurs were active by day while early mammals scurried around at night, said Ryosuke Motani, a geologist at the University of California at Davis, and a co-author of the paper. "It was a surprise, but it makes sense," Motani said. It's also providing insight into how ecology ...

A team of Boston University researchers has found that the majority of individuals with substance dependence problems report having poor oral health. They also found that opioid users, in particular, showed a decline in oral health over the period of one year. These findings appear online in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. Public health, dental medicine and internal medicine faculty from Boston University investigated the affects of different substances on oral health among a sample of substance-dependent individuals. Alcohol, stimulant, opioid and marijuana ...

Chlorine is an abundant and readily available halogen gas commonly associated with the sanitation of swimming pools and drinking water. Could a one-atom thick sheet of this element revolutionize the next generation of flat-panel displays and lighting technology? In the case of Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) devices, it most certainly can. Primary researchers Michael G. Helander (PhD Candidate and Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar), Zhibin Wang (PhD Candidate), and led by Professor Zheng-Hong Lu of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of ...

Given sufficient forward speed, a bicycle pushed sideways, will not fall over. Scientists have been trying to find a conclusive explanation for this remarkable characteristic for over a century. This week, researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft, The Netherlands) have thrown new light on the question in a publication in Science. Staying stable The research at TU Delft, in collaboration with scientists from Cornell University (USA), centred on the following intriguing question: why is a bicycle self stable, above a certain speed? You add speed to a bike ...

A recently released report of the General Social Survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, shows that for the first time since 1972, more Americans say that their financial situation has gotten worse in recent years rather than better. Understandably, also for the first time since 1972, the percentage of Americans saying that they are "not at all" satisfied with their financial situation (31.5%) notably exceeds those saying they are "pretty well" satisfied (23.4%). The General Social Survey which NORC has conducted for forty years, is supported by the National ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A University of Missouri researcher says people who overuse credit have very different beliefs about products than people who spend within their means. Following a new study, Marsha Richins, Myron Watkins Distinguished Professor of Marketing in the Trulaske College of Business, says many people buy products thinking that the items will make them happier and transform their lives. "There is nothing wrong with wanting to buy products," Richins said. "It becomes a problem when people expect unreasonable degrees of change in their lives from their purchases. ...

Nutrition research is pointing to ways that nutrients or diets may lessen the effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI), raising the possibility that the U.S. Department of Defense might be able to use nutritional approaches to help personnel who receive a TBI. Nutrition and Traumatic Brain Injury: Improving Acute and Subacute Health Outcomes in Military Personnel, a new report from the Institute of Medicine, recommends which nutritional approaches DOD should adopt and priorities for further research into nutrients and diets that show promise for being effective in providing ...

Repeated unnecessary 911 calls are a common drain on the manpower and finances of emergency medical services, but a pilot program that identified Baltimore City's top 911 callers and coupled them with a case worker has succeeded in drastically cutting the number of such calls while helping callers get proper care. The program, called Operation Care, was conceived and implemented by the non-profit agency Baltimore HealthCare Access and ran as a three-month pilot in 2008. Now, a newly published report of its results appearing in The American Journal of Emergency Medicine ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Studies of the small sea squirt may ultimately help solve the problem of rejection of organ and bone marrow transplants in humans, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara. An average of 20 registered patients die every day waiting for transplants, due to the shortage of matching donor organs. More than 110,000 people are currently waiting for organ transplants in the U.S. alone. Currently, only one in 20,000 donors are a match for a patient waiting for a transplant. These grim statistics drive scientists like Anthony W. De Tomaso, assistant ...

Older workers benefit most from a modest health behavior program when it combines a web-based risk assessment with personal coaching. University of Illinois at Chicago researchers conducted a randomized trial to evaluate two worksite wellness interventions assessing older workers' health behaviors and outcomes. The findings are available online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The health behaviors that were examined were physical activity, diet, stress reduction and smoking cessation, says Susan Hughes, professor of ...

In a novel approach that works around the gene defect in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, an inherited immune deficiency disorder, researchers used an alternative cell signaling pathway to significantly improve immune function in a 13-year-old boy with the disease. The study, at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, provides a proof-of-principle that immunotherapy, which harnesses elements of the body's immune system, may be used to treat this rare but often deadly disorder. "If this encouraging initial result holds up in further ...

By asking a group of older adults to analyze videos of other people conversing -- some talking truthfully, some insincerely -- a group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco has determined which areas of the brain govern a person's ability to detect sarcasm and lies. Some of the adults in the group were healthy, but many of the test subjects had neurodegenerative diseases that cause certain parts of the brain to deteriorate. The UCSF team mapped their brains using magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, which showed associations between the deteriorations ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Easy-to-follow recipes for radioactive compounds like those found in nuclear fuel storage pools, liquid waste containment areas and other contaminated aqueous environments have been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories. "The need to understand the chemistry of these compounds has never been more urgent, and these recipes facilitate their study," principal investigator May Nyman said of her group's success in encouraging significant amounts of relevant compounds to self-assemble. The trick to the recipes is choosing the right templates. ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- A new computational study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals how hydrocarbons may be formed from methane in deep Earth at extreme pressures and temperatures. The thermodynamic and kinetic properties of hydrocarbons at high pressures and temperature are important for understanding carbon reservoirs and fluxes in Earth. The work provides a basis for understanding experiments that demonstrated polymerization of methane to form high hydrocarbons and earlier methane forming reactions under pressure. Hydrocarbons ...

PASADENA, Calif.—For many people, Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology is little more than a high-tech version of a traditional paper map. Used in automobile navigation systems and smart phones, GPS helps folks find their way around a new neighborhood or locate a nearby restaurant. But GPS is doing much, much more for researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech): it's helping them find their way to a more complete understanding of Earth's interior structure. Up until now, the best way to explore Earth's internal structures—to measure ...

Los Angeles, CA (April 7, 2011) While breastfeeding babies has numerous health advantages to both mother and child, mothers who breastfeed may find that other people look down on them and do not want to work with them. A recent study released by Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (published by SAGE) found that mothers who breastfeed are viewed as less competent than other women. Researchers conducted three varying double blind studies to determine the views of others towards breastfeeding moms. One study, for example, asked participants to measure the competence, ...

First impressions are important, and they usually contain a healthy dose both of accuracy and misperception. But do people know when their first impressions are correct? They do reasonably well, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE). Researchers had two separate groups of more than100 people meet in a "getting-acquainted" session much like speed-dating, until the people had spoken with everyone else in the group for three minutes each. At the end of each 3-minute chat, they rated each other's personalities, ...

Dark matter, the mysterious substance that may account for nearly 25 percent of the universe, has so far evaded direct observation. But researchers from UCLA, Columbia University and other institutions participating in the international XENON collaboration say they are now closer than ever before. Their new results, announced today at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, where the XENON experiment is housed deep beneath a mountain 70 miles west of Rome, represent the highest-sensitivity search for dark matter yet, with background noise 100 times lower than competing ...

An experimental drug that blocks two points of a crucial cancer cell signaling pathway inhibits the growth of ovarian cancer cells and significantly increases survival in an ovarian cancer mouse model, a study at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found. The drug, called NVP-BEZ235, also inhibits growth of ovarian cancer cells that have become resistant to the conventional treatment with platinum chemotherapy, and helps to re-sensitize the cancer cells to the therapy. It also enhances the effect of platinum chemotherapy on ovarian cancer cells that are still ...

In light of recent studies that suggest the use of stored blood during transfusions may cause adverse effects in patients, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded a number of research projects to examine the safety of transfusing older red cells and the impact of stored blood on respiratory gases. These papers discussing potential adverse effects of stored blood and related concerns for oxygen delivery by transfusion are now available online in TRANSFUSION, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of AABB. Blood banks are responsible for ...

BOSTON, Mass. (April 15, 2011) — Strains of genital herpes in Africa are far more virulent than those in the United States, researchers at Harvard Medical School report, a striking insight into a common disease with important implications for preventing HIV transmission in a region staggered by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The researchers arrived at this finding by testing mouse model strains of the disease against vaccine candidates. All vaccines were far more efficacious in abating the U.S. strain. The researchers say identification of the properties of the African viruses ...

PHILADELPHIA—Identifying gene mutations in cancer patients to predict clinical outcome has been the cornerstone of cancer research for nearly three decades, but now researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have invented a new approach that instead links cancer cell metabolism with poor clinical outcome. This approach can now be applied to virtually any type of human cancer cell. The researchers demonstrate that recurrence, metastasis, and poor clinical outcome in breast cancer patients can be identified by simply gene profiling cancer cells that are using ...

VIDEO: Much of the FEN1 structure was solved by Sakurai et al, but how FEN1 works was not apparent in the DNA-free structure. The presence of DNA appears to induce the... Click here for more information. DNA replication is critical to the life of all organisms, insuring that each new cell, as well as each new offspring, gets an accurate copy of the genome. Among the legions of proteins that do the work so essential to a cell's survival, the DNA-slicing "flap endonuclease" ...

The Colorado Supreme Court recently decided to review a 2010 Colorado Court of Appeals decision involving the collateral source rule. The central issue is whether a Colorado personal injury defendant can introduce evidence of the actual amount a health provider received for a plaintiff's injuries. Under common law, compensation or indemnity paid to an injured party by a collateral source (that is, not the alleged wrongdoer in the lawsuit) does not reduce the damages that could otherwise be recovered from the wrongdoer. In Crossgrove v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., a delivery ...

DARIEN, IL – A study in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows increased automobile crash rates among teen drivers who start school earlier in the morning. Results indicate that in 2008 the weekday crash rate for 16- to 18-year-olds was about 41 percent higher in Virginia Beach, Va., where high school classes began at 7:20 - 7:25 a.m., than in adjacent Chesapeake, Va., where classes started at 8:40 - 8:45 a.m. There were 65.8 automobile crashes for every 1,000 teen drivers in Virginia Beach, and 46.6 crashes for every 1,000 teen drivers in ...