CORVALLIS, Ore. – Lodgepole pine, a hardy tree species that can thrive in cold temperatures and plays a key role in many western ecosystems, is already shrinking in range as a result of climate change – and may almost disappear from most of the Pacific Northwest by 2080, a new study concludes. Including Canada, where it is actually projected to increase in some places, lodgepole pine is expected to be able to survive in only 17 percent of its current range in the western parts of North America. The research, just published in the journal Climatic Change, was done by ...

Indonesia has promised to become a world leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2009, the president committed to a 26% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to below 'business-as-usual' levels. Of this total, 14% would have to come from reducing emissions from deforestation or forest degradation. Investments by foreign governments and other bodies are expected to raise total emission reduction from 26% to 41%. While international negotiations on rules about how to reduce emissions and slow global warming are slow but ongoing, the Indonesian and Norwegian ...

Fear of free radicals may be exaggerated, according to scientists from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. A new study, published in the Journal of Physiology, shows that free radicals act as signal substances that cause the heart to beat with the correct force. Free radicals are molecules that react readily with other substances in the body, and this can have negative effects on health in certain circumstances, through the damage caused to cells. Free radicals can be counteracted by substances known as 'antioxidants', which are common ingredients in ...

Nearly two-thirds of the hospital in-patients who took part in a survey had experienced pain in the last 24 hours and 42% of those rated their pain as more than seven out of ten, where ten was the worst pain imaginable, according to the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing. Although eight out of ten patients had been asked about their pain levels by staff, less than half of those had been asked to rate their pain on a simple numeric scale. Researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden, studied 759 patients aged from six weeks to 95, with parents completing the ...

Blindly copying what your parents did – no matter how stupid it may seem – could be the best strategy for the long-term success of your genes, according to research by the Universities of Exeter and Bristol. The findings of the study, published in Ecology Letters, show that apparently mindless survival strategies – such as the long-distance migration of many animals to breed at the place they were born – may not be as impractical as they appear. Using mathematical models, researchers compared the evolutionary success of straightforward copying strategies with that of ...

The bones of people who died up to a hundred years ago are being used in the development of new treatments for chronic back pain. It is the first time old bones have been used in this way. The research is bringing together the unusual combination of latest computer modelling techniques developed at the University of Leeds, and archaeology and anthropology expertise at the University of Bristol. With Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding, spines from up to 40 skeletons housed in museums and university anatomy collections are being analysed ...

The SWAN (Simulating WAves Nearshore) wave prediction model developed at TU Delft has been a huge international success for many years. This model predicts the distribution of wave heights close to the shore. It was recently expanded to include the SWASH (Simulating WAves till SHore) model, which enables the modelling of wave behaviour right up to the shore, including how they break and overflow. Over a 1,000 institutes worldwide use the SWAN computer model which is available within the public domain (GNU GPL license, http://www.swan.tudelft.nl). This model was recently ...

The starting point for this research is the recent and relentless transformation processes that the traditional irrigation network in the Mediterranean region has undergone and the subsequent degradation of some of its landscape, of great value from the point of view of productivity, patrimony and identity. The study deals with the relation between water and the agricultural landscape as well as the treatment of patrimonial values in public actions. "It is vital that hydraulic policy and modernization projects for watering infrastructure be designed based on the principle ...

Students' social skills and behaviour in social situations during their university studies contribute to their success in the transition to work. The social strategies adopted during university studies also have an impact on work commitment and early-career coping with working life. These results have been uncovered in a research project investigating the relationship between the social strategies students show at university and how well they cope with work-related challenges. The research has been carried out with funding from the Academy of Finland. "The higher the ...

The growth in the demand of smartphones has highlighted the complexities of wireless communications through problems of reduced sensitivity when the user holds some devices. New research has been investigating this problem, along with developing new solutions to overcome the loss of connectivity. The study by academics in the field of antennas and propagation in the University of Bristol's Centre for Communications Research (CCR) is published in the journal IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters. The paper builds on previous work that analysed multi-antenna ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a cheap and easy method for assembling nanowires, controlling their alignment and density. The researchers hope the findings will foster additional research into a range of device applications using nanowires, from nanoelectronics to nanosensors, especially on unconventional substrates such as rubber, plastic and paper. "Alignment is a critical first step for developing devices that use nanowires," says Dr. Yong Zhu, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and co-author of ...

Ulysses Balis, M.D., clicks a mouse to identify a helicopter in a satellite photo of Baghdad, Iraq. With another click, an algorithm that he and his team designed picks out three more choppers without highlighting any of the buildings, streets, trees or cars. Balis isn't playing war games. The director of the Division of Pathology Informatics at the University of Michigan Medical School is demonstrating the extreme flexibility of a software-tool aimed at making the detection of abnormalities in cell and tissue samples faster, more accurate and more consistent. In a ...

UPTON, NY - A brain imaging study at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory reveals a subtle difference between ordinary obese subjects and those who compulsively overeat, or binge: In binge eaters but not ordinary obese subjects, the mere sight or smell of favorite foods triggers a spike in dopamine - a brain chemical linked to reward and motivation. The findings - published online on February 24, 2011, in the journal Obesity - suggest that this dopamine spike may play a role in triggering compulsive overeating. "These results identify dopamine ...

Nanometre-scale gold particles are currently intensively investigated for possible applications in catalysis, sensing, photonics, biolabelling, drug carriers and molecular electronics. The particles are prepared in a solution from gold salts and their reactive gold cores can be stabilised with various organic ligands. Particularly stable particles can be synthesised by using organothiolate ligands that have a strong chemical interaction to gold. The chemical process of preparing such particles has been known since the mid-1990s and many different stable sizes and compositions ...

Sexuality and religion are generally considered uncomfortable bedfellows. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers from Nottingham have carried out a detailed study around these issues and how they affect and influence the lives of British 18 to 25 year olds. Led by The University of Nottingham, in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University, experts spent two years investigating the attitudes, values and experiences of sex and religion among young adults. The study, which involved nearly 700 young people from six different religious traditions; Buddhism, Christianity, ...

One in eight Americans will fall prey to Alzheimer's disease at some point in their life, current statistics say. Because Alzheimer's is associated with vascular damage in the brain, many of them will succumb through a painful and potentially fatal stroke. But researchers led by Dr. Dan Frenkel of Tel Aviv University's Department of Neurobiology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences are working on a nasally-delivered 2-in-1 vaccine that promises to protect against both Alzheimer's and stroke. The new vaccine repairs vascular damage in the brain by rounding up ...

Ever get a flu shot and still get the flu? If so, there's new hope for flu-free winters in the years to come thanks to a new discovery by researchers who found that a drug called DMXAA, originally developed as anti-tumor agent, enhances the ability of flu vaccines to ward off this deadly virus. A new research report appearing in the March 2011 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) suggests that DMXAA could assist flu vaccines by causing the body to produce its own antiviral proteins, called interferons, which interfere with the virus's ability ...

Be it a heart transplant or a Cesarean section, every operation requires a wide variety of surgical instruments, from simple retractors, clamps, scalpels and scissors to more specialist devices such as cerclage wire passers, which surgeons employ to repair long, oblique fractures in bones. These are shaped in such a way as to half encircle the broken bone, and incorporate a hollow channel. In a process not unlike stringing a parcel for posting, thread or wire is fed through the channel around the damaged bone and then knotted in place, both to support the bone and to hold ...

More and more often, abdominal surgeries are being carried out in a minimally invasive manner. A small incision in the abdominal wall is sufficient for the surgeon to be able to insert the instrument and make the organs visible with an endoscope. This technique is gentler and does not stress the body as much as traditional surgeries do. However, these minimally invasive surgeries pose a special challenge to the surgeons. In particular, the suturing – meaning joining the tissue with needle and suture material - demands great skill and dexterity. Very often, piercing the ...

Part of the answer to how and why primates differ from other mammals, and humans differ from other primates, may lie in the repetitive stretches of the genome that were once considered "junk." A new study by researchers at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine finds that when a particular type of repetitive DNA segment, known as an Alu element, is inserted into existing genes, they can alter the rate at which proteins are produced -- a mechanism that could contribute to the evolution of different biological characteristics in different species. The study was ...

In an interesting bit of scientific serendipity, researchers at North Carolina State University have found that a chemical compound useful for studying the origins of intestinal birth defects may also inhibit the growth and spread of cancerous tumors. During the screening of chemical compounds created by NC State chemist Dr. Alex Deiters, developmental biologist Dr. Nanette Nascone-Yoder found one of particular interest to her research: a compound that induced heterotaxia, a disordering or mirror-image "flipping" of internal organs, in the frog embryos she was studying. ...

A daytime sleep could have cardiovascular benefits according to new research by Ryan Brindle and Sarah Conklin, PhD, from Allegheny College in Pennsylvania in the US. Their study, looking at the effect of a daytime nap on cardiovascular recovery following a stress test, found that those participants who slept for at least 45 minutes during the day had lower average blood pressure after psychological stress than those who did not sleep. The work is published in Springer's journal International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. Long work schedules, shift work, increased anxiety ...

A research study coordinated by Manel Esteller, researcher at Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) has identified a substance that inhibits cancer growth by activating the so‑called "dark genome" (or non‑coding DNA) and micro‑RNA molecules. The study appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Human body cells have a genome (the set of our DNA) encoding our proteins such as keratin in the skin or haemoglobin in blood. This genome with encoding DNA represents only the 5% of our genetic material. ...

About 1,200 criminal justice researchers as well as active and retired law-enforcement professionals from around the world are expected to attend the annual meeting of the international Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, to be held March 1-5 in Toronto. Presentations of the latest research in the field will be made, including research presented by the University of Cincinnati faculty and students. Recognized at the conference will be UC researchers Bonnie Fisher, professor, and Francis Cullen, distinguished professor. Fisher and Cullen will receive the 2010 Outstanding ...

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that patients with node negative T3 and T4 non-small lung cancer who underwent chemotherapy before surgery had more than three times the survival rate than patients who only underwent surgery. These findings currently appear on-line in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. The study looked at a total of 110 patients who underwent surgical resection for invasive T3 and T4 non-small lung cancer between 1979 and 2008. Forty-seven patients received neoadjuvant chemotherapy and concurrent ...