In many bird species males have a more elaborate plumage than females. This elaborate plumage is often used to signal body condition, to intimidate rivals or to attract potential mates. In many cases plumage colouration also depends on the hormone testosterone. Christina Muck and Wolfgang Goymann from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now investigated whether this also holds true for sex role reversed bird species. In barred buttonquails that live in Southeast Asia, females are polygamous and pair with several males that incubate the eggs and raise ...

LASIK vision correction is a long-term solution. The eye surgery changes the shape of your cornea, permanently altering the way that your eye receives light. The longevity of your LASIK results depends greatly on whether you will undergo age-related vision changes and if you had a stable prescription prior to surgery. During an initial LASIK consultation, your LASIK doctor will make sure you are a good candidate for the eye surgery. Vision after LASIK LASIK eye surgery changes the shape of your cornea, allowing your eye to correctly focus light for clear and precise ...

New research suggests African Americans have a higher burden of multiple, large-joint osteoarthritis (OA), and may not be recognized based on the current definition of "generalized OA." African Americans were also more likely to have knee OA, but less likely to be affected by hand OA than Caucasians according to the findings reported today in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). OA is the most common type of arthritis and typically affects multiple joints. The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal ...

Clinical depression is a serious problem in the United States. According to estimates by the Washington University in Saint Louis School of Medicine, approximately 9.2 million Americans suffer from severe or clinical depression. By 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that clinical depression will be the number two cause of "lost years of healthy life" worldwide. Fortunately, those who suffer from severe, debilitating depression can qualify for Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits. What Is Depression? Depression is much more than simply ...

Among known risk factors for hepatocellular cancer, smoking, obesity, and heavy alcohol consumption, along with chronic hepatitis B and C infection, contribute to a large share of the disease burden in Europe, according to a cohort study published online October 21 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. While a causal link between hepatitis B and C and hepatocellular cancer has been known for a few decades, tobacco smoking, obesity, and alcohol consumption are common risk factors, albeit with lower relative risks, that also contribute to the development of ...

MARSABIT, KENYA (21 October 2011) – In the midst of a drought-induced food crisis affecting millions in the Horn of Africa, an innovative insurance program for poor livestock keepers is making its first payouts today, providing compensation for some 650 insured herders in northern Kenya's vast Marsabit District who have lost up to a third of their animals. Known as Index Based Livestock Insurance or IBLI, payouts are triggered when satellite images show that grazing lands in the region have deteriorated to the point that herders are expected to be losing more than 15 ...

Professor Qin Wenbin from BaoTou Medical College first identified the hemoglobin (Hb) A2 phenomenon 30 years ago. His first paper on this phenomenon was published in Acta Biochimica et Biophysica Sinica, in Chinese, in 1981. Subsequent research investigating its mechanism was published in Chinese in the Chinese Biochemical Journal and Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics in 1991 and more recently in Electrophoresis, in 2010. Using electrophoretic methods, he discovered that Hb is re-released in living red blood cells (RBCs) and demonstrated the significance of this process ...

After decades of decline, the worldwide death rate from full anesthesia is quietly creeping higher. According to an article recently published in the German Medical Association's official international science journal, the death rate during full anesthesia has reached approximately seven patients per million. In contrast, deaths from full anesthesia only affected four patients per million at the end of the 1980s. This disturbing trend may serve as a wakeup call to alert doctors that special precautions are warranted when anesthetizing at risk patients. Reasons Anesthesia ...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an established technique which over the years has made it possible for researchers and healthcare professionals to study biological phenomena in the body without using ionising radiation, for example X-rays. The images produced by normal MRI are, to put it simply, pictures of water in the body, since the body is largely made up of water. MRI produces images of the hydrogen nuclei in water molecules. It can also be used to study other types of nuclei in many other interesting molecules. The only problem is that the concentration of ...

However, Svante Björck, a climate researcher at Lund University in Sweden, has now shown that global warming, i.e. simultaneous warming events in the northern and southern hemispheres, have not occurred in the past 20 000 years, which is as far back as it is possible to analyse with sufficient precision to compare with modern developments. Svante Björck's study thus goes 14 000 years further back in time than previous studies have done. "What is happening today is unique from a historical geological perspective", he says. Svante Björck has gone through the global ...

The benefits of virtual worlds can be used to help autistic children develop social skills beyond their anticipated levels, suggest early findings from new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Researchers on the Echoes Project have developed an interactive environment which uses multi-touch screen technology where virtual characters on the screener act to children's actions in real time. During sessions in the virtual environment, primary school children experiment with different social scenarios, allowing the researchers to compare their ...

Nearly one in three Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some point in their lives, according to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In Pennsylvania, as in many other states, the law recognizes the fact that there is often more than one at-fault party in a drunk driving accident. Under a Pennsylvania statute known as the "dram shop law," business establishments and social hosts may be held liable when they serve alcohol irresponsibly to someone who later causes an injury. Business Establishments Pennsylvania ...

Celebrated writers such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot described characters' faces vividly without going into detail about their features, according to a research group led at the University of Strathclyde. Experts in literature, psychology, neurology and music suggested that vividness can be created not only by describing individual features, such as the eyes, nose or chin, but by the strength of readers' feelings about how a person is depicted. These feelings may be triggered by the 'mirror neuron system,' in which people who see an action being performed have ...

Finnish researchers found a new mechanism inhibiting the spread and growth of cancer found in motile cells It has long been held that cells use different mechanisms for regulating migration and growth. This conception was proven false by research scientists Anja Mai and Stefan Veltel from the research team of Professor Johanna Ivaska. Their findings on aggressively spreading breast cancer cells revealed – completely contrary to previous expectations – that a single cell protein (p120RasGAP) acts as an important inhibitor of both cell migration and growth. Cancer cells ...

A University of Michigan Health System-led team of researchers has found a biomarker they believe can help rapidly identify one of the most serious complications in patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood disorders who have received a transplant of new, blood-forming cells. Known as a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, these patients receive bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells from a matched donor who is either a family member or an unrelated volunteer. The most common fatal complication of this type of transplant is graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), ...

In a summer with unprecedented weather events, from tornados, floods, fires and hurricanes, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing found that physiological changes associated with aging and the presence of chronic illness make older adults more susceptible to illness or injury, even death, during a disaster. Investigators followed 17 long-term care residents, with a mean age of 86, who were evacuated for five days due to a severe summer storm and were relocated to different facilities with different care providers and physical surroundings. The ...

Lithium-ion batteries are applied widely, but their storage capacity is limited. In the future, battery systems of enhanced energy density will be needed for mobile applications in particular. Such batteries can store more energy at reduced weight. For this reason, KIT researchers are also conducting research into alternative systems. A completely new concept for secondary batteries based on metal fluorides was developed by Dr. Maximilian Fichtner, Head of the Energy Storage Systems Group, and Dr. Munnangi Anji Reddy at the KIT Institute of Nanotechnology (INT). Metal ...

For those suffering a stroke, effective early treatment is critical in order to avoid long term complications or even death. But, stroke is commonly thought of as a condition only affecting older patients. According to a study presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference, this misperception often leads to misdiagnosis when stroke victims seek medical attention in an emergency room setting. Nearly One in Seven Young Stroke Sufferers Misdiagnosed It is true that the typical stroke victim is at least 55 years old. However, research shows ...

Research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists advances a strategy for taming the side effects and enhancing the therapeutic benefits of steroids and other medications that work by disrupting the activity of certain hormones. The approach relies on a small molecule developed at St. Jude. In this study, scientists showed that a compound known as SJ-AK selectively blocked the activity of genes in a cell signaling pathway regulated by thyroid hormone. Investigators showed that SJ-AK also affected cells growing in the laboratory, reducing cell proliferation ...

In a report to be published soon in EPJE¹, researchers from the National University of the South in Bahía Blanca, Argentina studied the condition for model cavity and tunnel structures resembling the binding sites of proteins to stay dry without losing their ability to react, a prerequisite for proteins to establish stable interactions with other proteins in water. E.P. Schulz and colleagues used models of nanometric-scale hydrophobic cavities and tunnels to understand the influence of geometry on the ability of those structures to stay dry in solution. The authors ...

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is known as a leading American health care provider. Yet, despite UPMC's high ranking in hospital rating publications, serious medical errors can and do occur in its facilities. In early 2011, Michael Yocabet received a kidney from longtime girlfriend Christina Mecannic in an operation performed at UPMC Presbyterian. Although the surgery was completed without incident, it was later discovered that the donated kidney was infected with hepatitis C, which was passed to Yocabet. As a result, UPMC's living kidney donor transplant ...

Athens, Ga. – A commonly prescribed blood pressure-lowering medication appears to kick start recovery in the unaffected brain hemisphere after a stroke by boosting blood vessel growth, a new University of Georgia study has found. The discovery, based on a study using rats and published recently in the online journal PLoS ONE, occurred only because the team, led by Susan Fagan, professor of clinical and administrative pharmacy at the UGA College of Pharmacy, struck a new path in stroke research by examining the healthy side of brain after the stroke occurred. "I'm ...

Reconstructive surgical approaches can help delay endoprosthetic joint replacement in patients with osteoarthritis. Henning Madry and coauthors introduce such procedures in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[40]: 669-77). Articular cartilage defects often develop subsequent to injury or osteoarthritis. The authors in their article provide an overview of currently available medical and surgical therapeutic options. Medical therapy aims to preserve articular function for as long as possible and to delay surgical intervention. ...

WORCESTER, Mass. — A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Harvard Medical School, Stanford University and the Prince Felipe Research Centre in Spain have deciphered the complete three-dimensional structure of the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus's chromosome. Analysis of the resulting structure —published this week in Molecular Cell — has revealed new insights into the function of genetic sequences responsible for the shape and structure of this genome. Scientists know that the three-dimensional shape of a cell's chromosome plays a role ...

New research reveals how we make decisions. Birds choosing between berry bushes and investors trading stocks are faced with the same fundamental challenge - making optimal choices in an environment featuring varying costs and benefits. A neuroeconomics study from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro, McGill University, shows that the brain employs two separate regions and two distinct processes in valuing 'stimuli' i.e. 'goods' (for example, berry bushes), as opposed to valuing the 'actions,' needed to obtain the desired option (for example flight ...