University of British Columbia researchers estimate that fisheries catches in the Arctic totaled 950,000 tonnes from 1950 to 2006, almost 75 times the amount reported to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) during this period. Led by Prof. Daniel Pauly, the research team from UBC's Fisheries Centre and Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences reconstructed fisheries catch data from various sources – including limited governmental reports and anthropological records of indigenous population activities – for FAO's Fisheries Statistical Area 18, which covers ...

In our not-so-distant evolutionary past, stress often meant imminent danger, and the risk of blood loss, so part of our body's stress response is to stock-pile blood-clotting factors. Scientists in the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (MMPU), a collaboration between the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the University of Heidelberg Medical Centre, have discovered how stressed cells boost the production of the key blood-clotting factor, thrombin. Their work, published today in Molecular Cell, shows how cancer cells may be taking ...

This week, the highly-respected US Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS) published an article describing how the first line of defence of the human immune system distinguishes between microbes and the body's own structures. The basis of this recognition mechanism has been unclear since the key protein components were discovered over 30 years ago – and has now finally been cracked by a collaboration between high-level research groups at the University of Helsinki, Finland. When a microbe has infected us, the first defence mechanism that attacks it is a protein-based marking ...

A systematic review carried out by a team at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry has analysed existing studies and concluded that there are benefits to mental and physical well-being from taking exercise in the natural environment. Their findings are published in the leading research journal Environmental Science and Technology today, 4th February 2011. The research team, supported by the NIHR Peninsula Collaboration in Leadership for Applied Health Research and Care (PenCLAHRC, part of the NIHR family of health and research initiatives) in collaboration with ...

In Spain it is relatively common to come across petrol stations surrounded by houses, particularly in urban areas. Researchers from the University of Murcia (UM) have studied the effects of contamination at petrol stations that is potentially harmful to health, which can be noted in buildings less than 100 metres from the service stations. "Some airborne organic compounds – such as benzene, which increases the risk of cancer – have been recorded at petrol stations at levels above the average levels for urban areas where traffic is the primary source of emission", Marta ...

The link between deficits of omega-3 poly-unsaturated fatty acids (AGPO-3) and the onset of depressive disorders is not new in the medical field. However, what has not been known until now is the brain mechanism by which diet can condition mental health to a certain extent. Research undertaken by scientists in Bordeaux (France) and at the Faculty of Medicine and Odontology of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and published in Nature Neuroscience, provides new clues to understanding this phenomenon. The name of the research work, 'Omega-3 nutritional deficiencies ...

Physicists, led by a researcher at the University of Warwick, studying new images of clouds of material exploding from the Sun have spotted instabilities forming in that exploding cloud that are similar to those seen in clouds in Earth's atmosphere. These results could greatly assist physicists trying to understand and predict our Solar System's "weather". The researchers, led by of the Centre for Fusion Space and Astrophysics, at the University of Warwick's Department of Physics, made their discovery when examining new images of clouds of material exploding from ...

Scientists continuing to investigate a 50 year mystery have discovered another vital clue that could help pave the way for improved medicines. The results feature in a special edition of Nature celebrating the International Year of Chemistry. The findings reveal an important insight into the way carbohydrates (sugars) bond and this will influence the way drugs are designed in the future. Using specialist laser equipment from the EPSRC-funded Laser Loan Pool managed by STFC's Central Laser Facility, Professors John Simons and Ben Davis together with co-workers from the ...

This declining trend is blamed on a failure of innovative drive in the industry, failure of the UK to support basic research, failure of venture capital to invest in early stage research, or failure of the Health Service to provide smart procurement. A research centre funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) shows that radical reform of the drugs industry regulatory system must be an important part of the solution to ensure a productive and profitable pharmaceutical sector, both globally and in the UK. Researchers from the ESRC's Innogen centre have ...

DURHAM, N.H. – From an environmental perspective, Daphnia pulex -- the waterflea – is the best-studied organism on the planet. Scientists know how this species responds to pollution, predators, day and night, making it an important model for ecological and evolutionary research. Its genome, however, remained elusive, limiting understanding of how the environment and genes interact. Until now. An international team of researchers comprising the Daphnia Genomics Consortium, including four from the University of New Hampshire's Hubbard Center for Genome Studies, has described ...

Ms. K. is vision-impaired and can't get around very well any more. Still, the 80-year-old, who lives alone, has no intention whatsoever of moving to a retirement home. Most elderly people think the same way. They want to stay in their accustomed surroundings as long as possible, where they can lead an autonomous life. What many fail to realize is that they are risking their health in the process. Cardiovascular problems are more frequent among the elderly, and the risk of falling is more prevalent: one person in three above the age of 65 falls once a year; among those over ...

URBANA – A University of Illinois scientist reports that family mealtimes that contain three ingredients in the right amounts can improve the quality of life in children who have chronic asthma. "Family mealtimes, when they're done right, are linked to many benefits for children, including a reduced risk of substance abuse, eating disorders, and obesity. In this study, we've put these mealtimes under a microscope so we can see minute by minute which factors deliver these healthy outcomes," said Barbara H. Fiese, director of the U of I's Family Resiliency Center. Which ...

Rainer Kube and his working group report in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[4]: 41-6) on new treatment strategies in patients with colon cancer. The findings of multicenter observational studies are a good basis for improvements to overall quality of patient care. Against this background, from 2000 to 2004 Kube and his coauthors collected data on over 31 000 patients in 346 German hospitals. From this data pool they extracted statements about the quality of care. They discovered, for example, that colonoscopy screening ...

Compared to people in employment, men and women who are unemployed suffer more often and longer from both physical and emotional complaints. Why the un-employed should have health problems more often is discussed by Lars E. Kroll and his coauthor in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 4: 47-52), along with a report on the findings of the GEDA study. The GEDA study (Gesundheit in Deutschland Aktuell, or Current Health in Germany) was carried out in 2008-2009 by the Robert Koch Institute. The results showed that unemployed people ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Everyone knows chocolate is critical to a happy Valentine's Day. Now scientists are one step closer to knowing what makes a heart happy the rest of the year. It's a gene called DOT1L, and if you don't have enough of the DOT1L enzyme, you could be at risk for some types of heart disease. These findings from a study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine appear in the Feb. 1, 2011 issue of the journal Genes and Development. The team created a special line of mice that were genetically predisposed to ...

The first stars in the universe were not as solitary as previously thought. In fact, they could have formed alongside numerous companions when the gas disks that surrounded them broke up during formation, giving birth to sibling stars in the fragments. These are the findings of studies performed with the aid of computer simulations by researchers at Heidelberg University's Centre for Astronomy together with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching and the University of Texas at Austin (USA). The group's findings, published in Science Express, ...

Things are not always what they seem when it comes to fish—something scientists at the Smithsonian Institution and the Ocean Science Foundation are finding out. Using modern genetic analysis, combined with traditional examination of morphology, the scientists discovered that what were once thought to be three species of blenny in the genus Starksia are actually 10 distinct species. The team's findings are published in the scientific journal ZooKeys, Feb. 3. Starksia blennies, small (less than 2 inches) fish with elongated bodies, generally native to shallow to moderately ...

The vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV) can prevent 90 percent of genital warts in men when offered before exposure to the four HPV strains covered by the vaccine, according to a new multi-center study led by H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and UCSF. The four-year, international clinical trial, which also found a nearly 66 percent effectiveness in the general population of young men regardless of prior exposure to these strains, provides the first reported results of using the HPV vaccine as a prophylactic in men. Initial data from this study informed the Food and Drug ...

NEW YORK (February 4, 2011) – Researchers at the NYU Child Study Center demonstrated that a brief program for families of Pre-Kindergarten students attending schools in disadvantaged urban communities improved children's behavior at school. The study, called "Promoting effective parenting practices and preventing child behavior problems in school among ethnically diverse families from underserved, urban communities," was published in the February 2011 issue of Child Development. Dr. Laurie Miller Brotman and her colleagues spent several years developing ParentCorps, ...

Since the days of Darwin, the "tree of life" has been the preeminent metaphor for the process of evolution, reflecting the gradual branching and changing of individual species. The discovery that a large cluster of genes appears to have jumped directly from one species of fungus to another, however, significantly strengthens the argument that a different metaphor, such as a mosaic, may be more appropriate. "The fungi are telling us something important about evolution … something we didn't know," said Antonis Rokas, assistant professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt. ...

An ambitious hunt by Johns Hopkins scientists for actively "jumping genes" in humans has yielded compelling new evidence that the genome, anything but static, contains numerous pesky mobile elements that may help to explain why people have such a variety of physical traits and disease risks. Using bioinformatics to compare the standard assembly of genetic elements as outlined in the reference human genome to raw whole-genome data from 310 individuals recently made available by the 1000 Genomes Project, the team revealed 1,016 new insertions of RIPs, or retrotransposon ...

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a little bomb that promises a big bang for cancer patients. Preliminary tests show an anti-cancer drug loosely attached to gold nanoparticles starts accumulating deep inside tumors within minutes of injection and can be activated for an effective treatment within two hours. The same drug injected alone takes two days to gather and attacks the tumor from the surface – a far less effective route. The work, titled "Deep Penetration of a PDT Drug into Tumors by Noncovalent Drug-Gold Nanoparticle Conjugates," ...

Mice know fear. And they know to fear the scent of a predator. But how do their brains quickly figure out with a sniff that a cat is nearby? It's a complex process that starts with the scent being picked up by specific receptors in their noses. But until now it wasn't clear exactly how these scent signals proceeded from nose to noggin for neural processing. In a study to be published in Nature (available online now to subscribers), Stanford researchers describe a new technique that makes it possible to map long-distance nerve connections in the brain. The scientists ...

CHICAGO --- Small calf muscles may be a feminine trait, but for women with peripheral artery disease (PAD) they're a major disadvantage. Researchers at Northwestern Medicine point to the smaller calf muscles of women as a gender difference that may cause women with PAD to experience problems walking and climbing stairs sooner and faster than men with the disease. The study was published in the February 2011 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Peripheral artery disease affects eight million men and women in the United States. The disease causes ...

MyBinding,com, a division of Information Management Services, LCC, announces the promotion of Shawn Slotkin from Account Executive to Inside Sales Supervisor MyBinding.com, one of the country's leading online retailers of document finishing equipment and supplies, recently announced that one of their account executives, Shawn Slotkin, has been promoted. Slotkin is now serving as Inside Sales Supervisor. His promotion was announced in a company e-mail on Friday, January 28, 2011. "I'm excited," said Slotkin. "I've been waiting for this opportunity for quite a while." ...