Golf courses and coffee plantations are some of the unlikely bat habitats that could be considered in conservation plans, say scientists presenting research at the Ecological Society of America's (ESA) 96th Annual Meeting from August 7-12, 2011. Using Doppler weather radar and other technologies relatively new to the field of ecology, ecologists will discuss the role of atmospheric conditions in bat behavior and the effectiveness of acoustic deterrents in reducing bat fatalities at wind farms. ESA's August 2011 meeting will take place in Austin, Texas, home to North America's ...

Analyses of the metabolic profile of blood serum have revealed significant differences in metabolites between men and women. In a study to be published on August 11 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have concluded that there is a need for gender-specific therapies. Gender-specific therapies may be required for some diseases as there are significant differences between male and female metabolism. Such differences were shown to exist for 101 of the 131 metabolites – above all in lipid and amino acid species – in the sera ...

AUSTIN, Texas – Just as the rainy season is driving a new surge of cholera cases in Haiti, a new computational model could forecast where outbreaks are likely to occur. Researchers at Ohio State University are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the project, in the hopes of targeting anti-cholera efforts where they are most needed in the earthquake-ravaged country. Just back from a 10-day trip to the Artibonite Valley in Haiti, Ohio State researcher Marisa Eisenberg described the model's early results at the Ecological Society of America ...

Ice and frozen ground at the North and South Poles are affected by climate change induced warming, but the consequences of thawing at each pole differ due to the geography and geology, according to a Penn State hydrologist. "The polar regions, particularly the Arctic, are warming faster than the rest of the world," Michael N. Gooseff, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, told attendees today (Aug. 11) at the 96th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Austin, Texas. "As a consequence, polar ecosystems respond directly to changes ...

In both chimpanzees and humans, portions of the brain that are critical for complex cognitive functions, including decision-making, self-awareness and creativity, are immature at birth. But there are important differences, too. Baby chimpanzees don't show the same dramatic increase in the volume of prefrontal white matter in the brain that human infants do. Those are the conclusions of a study reported in the August 11th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that is the first to track the development of the chimpanzee brain over time and to make the comparison to ...

Bacteria may have bad reputations but in fact, all animals -- us included -- rely on them in critical ways. In the case of sap-feeding insects, intimate associations with microbes offer a source for essential nutrients that their sugary diets just don't include. Now, researchers reporting in the August 11th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, have new insight into organisms that have taken this symbiotic lifestyle to the extreme; they have sequenced the genomes of two species of bacteria that live together, one inside of the other, inside mealybugs. The effort ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Looking to nature for their muse, researchers have used a common protein to guide the design of a material that can make energy-storing hydrogen gas. The synthetic material works 10 times faster than the original protein found in water-dwelling microbes, the researchers report in the August 12 issue of the journal Science, clocking in at 100,000 molecules of hydrogen gas every second. This step is just one part of a series of reactions to split water and make hydrogen gas, but the researchers say the result shows they can learn from nature how to control ...

VIDEO: The video describes the new epidermal electronics system and shows how it is applied to the skin. Click here for more information. Through a combination of careful theoretical modeling and precise micro-manufacturing, a team of engineers and scientists has developed a new type of ultra-thin, self-adhesive electronics device that can effectively measure data about the human heart, brain waves and muscle activity – all without the use of bulky equipment, conductive ...

- Revenue increased to US $ 1.035 billion, compared to US $ 663 million in H1 2010 - Operating profit increased to US $ 288 million, compared to US $ 83 million in H1 2010 - Adjusted EBITDA grew to US $ 337 million, compared to US $ 137 million in H1 2010 - Net profit amounted to US $ 244 million, compared to net loss of US $ 13 million in H1 2010 URALCHEM Holding P.L.C. (hereinafter URALCHEM Holding or the Company), a Cypriot holding company of the URALCHEM Group (hereinafter called the Group), one of the largest producers of nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers ...

VIDEO: A new form of electronics, small enough to fit under a temporary tattoo, changes the way scientists think about gathering data from the human body. Click here for more information. CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Engineers have developed a device platform that combines electronic components for sensing, medical diagnostics, communications and human-machine interfaces, all on an ultrathin skin-like patch that mounts directly onto the skin with the ease, flexibility and comfort of ...

August 7, 2011 – A paper to be published on August 12, 2011 in the authoritative magazine Science reveals that Dr. F. Robin O'Keefe of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. and Dr. Luis Chiappe, Director of the Natural History Museum's Dinosaur Institute, have determined that a unique specimen now displayed in NHM's Dinosaur Hall is the fossil of an embryonic marine reptile contained within the fossil of its mother. The 78-million-year-old, 15.4-foot-long adult specimen is a Polycotylus latippinus, one of the giant, carnivorous, four-flippered reptiles known as plesiosaurs ...

Researchers have traced in detail how certain powerful HIV neutralizing antibodies evolve, a finding that generates vital clues to guide the design of a preventive HIV vaccine, according to a study appearing in Science Express this week. The discoveries were made by a team led by the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. "This elegant research brings us another step closer to an HIV vaccine and establishes a potent new technique for evaluating the human immune response ...

Pasadena, CA— Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions whose brightness is used to determine distances in the universe. Observing these objects to billions of light years away has led to the discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, the foundation for the notion of dark energy. Although all Type Ia supernovae appear to be very similar, astronomers do not know for certain how the explosions take place and whether they all share the same origin. Now, a team of researchers has examined new and detailed observations of 41 of these objects and ...

Depressed women may face an increased risk of stroke, according to new research reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. In six years of follow-up of women in the Nurses' Health Study, researchers found that a history of depression was associated with a 29 percent increased risk of total stroke – even after considering other stroke risk factors. Women who used anti-depressant medication — particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors— had a 39 percent increased risk of stroke. Examples of these drugs are Prozac, Zoloft, and Celexa. Anti-depressant ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A type of fungus that's been lurking underground for millions of years, previously known to science only through its DNA, has been cultured, photographed, named and assigned a place on the tree of life. Researchers say it represents an entirely new class of fungi: the Archaeorhizomycetes. Like the discovery of a weird type of aquatic fungus that made headlines a few months ago, this finding offers a glimpse at the rich diversity of microorganisms that share our world but remain hidden from view. The fungal phenomenon, brought to light by researchers ...

The Nobel Prize winning scientists Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov have taken a huge step forward in studying the wonder material graphene and revealing its exciting electronic properties for future electronic applications. Writing in the journal Science, the academics, who discovered the world's thinnest material at The University of Manchester in 2004, have revealed more about the electronic properties of its slightly fatter cousin – bilayer graphene. The researchers, from the universities of Manchester, Lancaster (UK), Nijmegen (the Netherland) ...

Thousands of tonnes of toxic mercury are released into the environment every year. Much of this collects in sediment where it is converted into toxic methyl mercury, and enters the food chain ending up in the fish we eat. New research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology, showcases genetically engineered bacteria which are not only able to withstand high levels of mercury but are also able to mop up mercury from their surroundings. These mercury-resistant bacteria, developed by researchers from Inter American University of Puerto Rico, ...

(Edmonton, Canada) Access to health care and the usage of emergency departments are popular topics in the news. David Jones, a graduate student in the University of Alberta's School of Public Health, along with Linda Carroll, professor in the School of Public Health, and Leonard Frank, executive director of the Leduc Beaumont Devon Primary Care Network, recently completed a study that examined whether or not there was a clear association between the number of visits to the emergency department and the availability of an after-hours care clinic in Leduc, Alberta. Jones ...

After a heart attack or stroke, heart scarring can lead to dangerously paper-thin heart walls and a decreased ability to pump blood through the body. Although the heart is unable to completely heal itself, a new treatment developed at Tel Aviv University uses laser-treated bone marrow stem cells to help restore heart function and health. Combining the therapeutic benefits of low-level lasers — a process called "shining" — and bone marrow stem cells, Prof. Uri Oron of the Department of Zoology at TAU's George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences has developed an effective, ...

A team of researchers from the University of Valladolid (Spain) has analysed 40 brands of beer, discovering that dark beer has more free iron than pale and non-alcoholic beers. Iron is essential to the human diet, but also helps oxidise the organic compounds that give these beverages stability and flavour. According to the analysis carried out by the University of Valladolid (UVa) on 40 types of beers from all 5 continents, dark beers have an average free iron content of 121 ppb (parts per billion) compared to 92 ppb in pale beers and 63 ppb in non-alcoholic beers. "Although ...

Milan, Italy, August 11, 2011 – Memory is not a single process but is made up of several sub-processes relying on different areas of the brain. Episodic memory, the ability to remember specific events such as what you did yesterday, is known to be vulnerable to brain damage involving the hippocampus. The question is, what happens when damage to the hippocampus occurs very early in life? In a case study published in the September 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex, clinical neuropsychologists have reported that a child can develop normally despite severe damage to the hippocampus ...

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have mimicked the ways viruses infect human cells and deliver their genetic material. The research hopes to apply the approach to gene therapy – a therapeutic strategy to correct defective genes such as those that cause cancer. Gene therapy is still in its infancy, with obvious challenges around targeting damaged cells and creating corrective genes. An equally important challenge, addressed by this research, is finding ways to transport the corrective genes into the cell. This is a problem, because of the poor permeability ...

The Radiation Research Division at Risø DTU was suddenly very busy in March 2011 when the accident in Fukushima began to unfold. "In the first 14 days we couldn't do anything but answer questions from the media and monitor the event in collaboration with the Danish Emergency Management Agency," says Bent Lauritzen, Head of Programme in the Radiation Research Division at Risø DTU, and continues: "The report was almost ready to be issued, but after the accident we didn't think it made sense to send it out without mentioning the accident in Japan. Therefore, we have subsequently ...

Hysterectomy elevates the risk of stroke and coronary heart disease in young women when combined with the removal of both ovaries in the same operation. This fact provides the background for the epidemiological report by Andreas Stang and colleagues on hysterectomy rates in Germany, which appears in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[30]: 508-14). Removal of the uterus (hysterectomy) is among the commonest procedures in surgical gynecology. Stang et al. based their report on nationwide statistics relating to diagnosis-related ...

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a safe and effective option for the treatment of dysplastic Barrett's esophagus that attains lasting response, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Progression of disease, which can precede cancer, was rare in patients who underwent RFA treatment, and there was no procedure- or cancer-related mortality. "This study reports the longest duration of follow-up of patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation for pre-cancerous Barrett's esophagus," said Nicholas J. ...