An international team of researchers has completed the first major survey in Asia of a deadly fungus that has wiped out more than 200 species of amphibians worldwide. The massive survey could help scientists zero in on why the fungus has been unusually devastating in many parts of the globe -- and why Asian amphibians have so far been spared the same dramatic declines. The disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or Bd, is the culprit behind amphibian extinctions in Central, South and North America, Australia and Europe. The new Asian ...

NEW YORK, NY, LA JOLLA and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA, SEATTLE, WA, August 17, 2011 — A team of researchers at and associated with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), The Scripps Research Institute, the biotechnology company Theraclone Sciences and Monogram Biosciences Inc., a LabCorp company, report in the current issue of Nature the isolation of 17 novel antibodies capable of neutralizing a broad spectrum of variants of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The new antibodies, large protein molecules that bind to pathogens and flag them for destruction, were ...

LAWRENCE, Kan. — An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Kansas plan to bring a highly successful anti-bullying effort, the KiVa program, to American schools. Starting as early as the 2012-13 school year, a pilot program could kick off in selected classrooms in Lawrence, Kan. If shown to be successful there, soon afterward the model could expand nationally. KiVa, implemented in Finland in 2007, has impressed researchers with its proven reduction in bullying incidents. According to one recent study, KiVa "halved the risk of bullying others and of ...

TORONTO, ON – The performance management process should evaluate and focus on employee engagement in addition to job performance, according to a paper published from the University of Toronto and University of Guelph. Engagement involves high levels of identification with one's work in terms of attention, absorption and feeling integrated in the performance of one's tasks and roles. The paper's authors – Professor Alan Saks from the University of Toronto and Professor Jamie Gruman of the University of Guelph – contend performance management should involve an evaluation ...

LAWRENCE, Kan. — As suburban school districts have gained advantages over their urban counterparts, they have tenaciously clung to them, often at the expense of urban districts, a new study by University of Kansas researchers shows. While urban schools' not keeping pace with suburban schools is an acknowledged problem, few have studied the causes of the discrepancies. John Rury and Argun Saatcioglu, professor and assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies, recently published an article in the American Journal of Education showing how some suburban ...

Analysis of a piece of lunar rock brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 has shown that the Moon may be much younger than previously believed. This is concluded in new research conducted by an international team of scientists that includes James Connelly from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. Their work has just been published in Nature. The prevailing theory of our Moon's origin is that it was created by a giant impact between a large planet-like object and the proto-Earth very early ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17, 2011 –– The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, today launched a new edition of its award-winning Bytesize Science video series, which has been fascinating thousands of viewers of all ages since its inception in 2007. Bytesize Science has received accolades from the National Science Teachers Association, the National Education Association, the National Science Foundation and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. The 2011 update refreshes Bytesize with a new logo and theme ("Uncover the Chemistry All Around ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – College students aren't eating enough fruits and vegetables – in fact, a new study shows students aren't even eating one serving per day, far from the recommended five daily servings. The study by Oregon State University researchers surveyed the eating habits of 582 college students, a majority of which were first-year students. The study, now online in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, compares male and female students, but found that both were not getting the proper amount of fruits and vegetables. Male students had about five servings ...

Hamilton, ON (August 17, 2011) – Active children need to be watered with milk. It's a more effective way of countering dehydration than a sports drink or water itself, say researchers at McMaster University. That's particularly important during hot summer weather, says Brian Timmons, research director of the Child Health and Exercise Medicine Program at McMaster and principal investigator of the study. "Children become dehydrated during exercise, and it's important they get enough fluids, particularly before going into a second round of a game. Milk is better than ...

Hamilton, ON (August 16, 2011) -- A successful new rehabilitation approach to treating children with cerebral palsy puts its focus on where a child lives and plays, not just improving the child's balance, posture and movement skills. Called a "context-focused intervention", McMaster University and the University of Alberta researchers report in a new study this approach is just as beneficial as traditional child-focused therapy, offering parents an additional treatment option for their child. The McMaster study, in conjunction with researchers at the University of Alberta's ...

Despite the rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice in recent years, the ice may temporarily stabilize or somewhat expand at times over the next few decades, new research indicates. Results of a study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) appear this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), published by the American Geophysical Union. The National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor, funded the work. "As we learn more about climate variability, new and unexpected research results are coming to light," says Sarah Ruth, program ...

Toronto, August 17, 2011—Hospitals could reduce health care costs arising from pressure ulcers, commonly known as bedsores, by investing in pressure-reduction mattresses for elderly patients in emergency departments, according to new research from the University of Toronto. In emergency departments (EDs), elderly patients are at high risk for pressure ulcers in part because they spend hours lying on hard surfaces. The researchers found that while the average cost of upgrading from standard to pressure-redistribution mattresses would be 30 cents per patient, the corresponding ...

Every day we make thousands of tiny predictions — when the bus will arrive, who is knocking on the door, whether the dropped glass will break. Now, in one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are beginning to unravel the process by which the brain makes these everyday prognostications. While this might sound like a boon to day traders, coaches and gypsy fortune tellers, people with early stages of neurological diseases such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases could someday benefit from this research. In ...

Towing Guru provides a full range of services in online marketing for towing companies. There are countless opportunities for towing marketing on the Internet. Google's My Maps is an exceptional free tool that can improve a towing company's search engine optimization (SEO), which gets local businesses found by consumers. What a towing company can do in My Maps is provide a valuable service for consumers. At the same time, My Maps is a powerful towing marketing strategy. Google My Maps is a customizable tool used to create user-generated maps. A towing company might ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) -- Consumers who set ambitious goals have a greater level of satisfaction compared to those who set conservative goals, according to a recently published paper by the Cecile K. Cho, a University of California, Riverside assistant marketing professor. Cho and her co-author and Gita Venkataramani Johar, a professor at Columbia University, set up two experiments to compare people who set ambitious goals to those who set conservative goals. They focused on situations in which goals were achieved, and measured the level of satisfaction with ...

(WASHINGTON, August 17, 2011) –Patients with clinically diagnosed superficial vein thrombosis (SVT), a blood clot in the veins just beneath the skin that commonly resolves on its own without treatment, are four to six times more likely to develop venous thromboembolism (VTE), a dangerous, often life-threatening condition, according to study results published today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Recent studies have shown that patients diagnosed with SVT using ultrasound to confirm the presence of a clot showed increased risk of VTE; ...

Organic semiconductors hold immense promise for use in thin film and flexible displays – picture an iPad you can roll up – but they haven't yet reached the speeds needed to drive high definition displays. Inorganic materials such as silicon are fast and durable, but don't bend, so the search for a fast, durable organic semiconductor continues. Now a team led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard universities has developed a new organic semiconductor material that is among the speediest yet. The scientists also accelerated the development process by using a predictive ...

The Eastern Pacific Ocean is fired up with two tropical storms today, Fernanda and Greg, and both were caught in one image from the GOES-11 satellite. Both appear to be chasing each other to the west, and Fernanda appears a little more organized in satellite imagery and stronger than her "little brother." The newest tropical storm, Greg, formed this morning, August 17 off the west coast of Mexico from a low previously known as System 99E. Greg is about 135 miles (220 km) south-southwest of Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Because Greg is close to the western coast of Mexico, the ...

A growing body of recent research indicates that, in Earth's warming climate, there is no "tipping point," or threshold warm temperature, beyond which polar sea ice cannot recover if temperatures come back down. New University of Washington research indicates that even if Earth warmed enough to melt all polar sea ice, the ice could recover if the planet cooled again. In recent years scientists have closely monitored the shrinking area of the Arctic covered by sea ice in warmer summer months, a development that has created new shipping lanes but also raised concerns about ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- New research using a technique that measures the isotopes of lead and neodymium in lunar crustal rocks shows that the moon and Earth may be millions of years younger than originally thought. The common estimate of the moon's age is as old as 4.5 billion years old (roughly the same age as the solar system) as determined by mineralogy and chemical analysis of moon rocks gathered during the Apollo missions. However, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Lars Borg and international collaborators have analyzed three isotopic systems, including ...

When it comes to improving bone health in postmenopausal women — and people of all ages, actually — a Florida State University researcher has found a simple, proactive solution to help prevent fractures and osteoporosis: eating dried plums. "Over my career, I have tested numerous fruits, including figs, dates, strawberries and raisins, and none of them come anywhere close to having the effect on bone density that dried plums, or prunes, have," said Bahram H. Arjmandi, Florida State's Margaret A. Sitton Professor and chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Food and Exercise ...

A study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers of 192 pharmaceutical advertisements in biomedical journals found that only 18 percent were compliant with Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines, and over half failed to quantify serious risks including death. The study, is published online today in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One. "Marketing research has consistently shown that journal advertising is the most profitable form of drug marketing, with an estimated return on investment of five dollars for every dollar spent," said Dr. Deborah ...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – (August 17, 2011) – 23andMe, Inc., a leading personal genetics company has replicated over 180 genetic associations from a list of associations curated by the National Human Genome Research Institute's Office of Population Genomics ("GWAS Catalog") demonstrating that self-reported medical data is effective and reliable to validate known genetic associations. The results, available online in the journal PLoS ONE establish 23andMe's methodology as a significant research platform in a new era of genetic research. "In this paper we confirm that self reported ...

B chromosomes have a functional effect on sex determination in a species of cichlid fishes from Lake Victoria, according to a study by Japanese researchers to be published in open-access journal PLoS Genetics on August 18th, 2011. The researchers found sex-ratio distortions caused by B chromosomes in the breeding line of the cichlids, as well as several protein-coding genes in the B chromosomes. The resultant ratio was female biased, suggesting a role for B chromosomes in female sex determination. The B chromosome was first identified by E. B. Wilson in 1907. B chromosomes ...

Washington, D.C. – Cells with too few or too many chromosomes have long been known to be a hallmark of cancer — but the cause of this abnormal number of chromosomes has been little understood. Now, in the August 19th issue of Science, researchers at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center, have identified a gene that is commonly mutated in human cancers and have demonstrated its direct role in causing aneuploidy, an abnormal number of chromosomes. The researchers found that 20 percent of the brain cancer (glioblastoma ...