A Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientist, analyzing ancient plankton DNA signatures in sediments of the Black Sea, has found for the first time that the same genetic populations of a virus and its algal host can persist and coexist for centuries. The findings have implications for the ecological significance of viruses in shaping algae ecosystems in the ocean, and perhaps fresh water as well. "The finding that the DNA of viruses and algal host cells can be preserved in the geological records is of great interest to microbial ecologists," said Marco Coolen ...

(Edmonton) Two University of Alberta researchers have published a step by step plan to one-day end the use of environmentally harmful chemicals on commercial crops by developing plants that produce their own fertilizer. U of A plant biologist Allen Good says the energy required to produce nitrogen fertilizers has pushed the world-wide cost for agricultural producers to a $100 billion a year. Good says that while they are necessary for high yields, those nitrogen fertilizers also damage the environment. Emissions from nitrogen fertilizers add to greenhouse gas emissions ...

Tel Aviv — Circadian rhythms — the natural cycle that dictates our biological processes over a 24-hour day — does more than tell us when to sleep or wake. Disruptions in the cycle are also associated with depression, problems with weight control, jet lag and more. Now Prof. Yoav Gothilf of Tel Aviv University's Department of Neurobiology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences is looking to the common zebrafish to learn more about how the human circadian system functions. Prof. Gothilf and his Ph.D. student Gad Vatine, in collaboration with Prof. Nicholas Foulkes ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) -- Do people believe good and bad luck can be washed away? Yes, according to an advanced online publication in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that was co-authored by Rami Zwick, a University of California, Riverside marketing professor in the School of Business Administration. Zwick, working with Alison Jing Xu of the University of Toronto, and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan, designed two experiments that showed risk taking depends on whether participants recalled a past episode of good or bad luck and whether they ...

A study by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) shows that people who use cosmetics buy these products primarily for emotional reasons. The study was carried out on facial creams (hydrating and nutritive ones, coloured or non-coloured, and anti-wrinkle creams) and body creams (firming and anti-cellulite creams). "The study shows that both the emotional and utility aspect of cosmetic brands have a significant impact on consumer satisfaction, but that the emotional component has a greater effect", Vanessa Apaolaza, a researcher from the UPV and lead author of ...

Today, the body of an ordinary family car consists of 193 different types of steel. The steel for each part of the car has been carefully selected and optimised. It is important, for example, that all parts are as light as possible because of the fuel consumption, whereas other parts of the car have to be super strong in order to protect passengers in a collision. Super strong nanostructured metals are now entering the scene, aimed at making cars even lighter, enabling them to stand collisions in a better way without fatal consequences for the passengers. Research into ...

Engineers at the University of Leicester have for the first time created a way of measuring how much force is used during a stabbing using a broken bottle. The advance is expected to have significant implications for legal forensics. A team from the University has conducted a systematic study of the force applied during a stabbing and come up with the first set of penetration force data for broken glass bottles. This work has been published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine (http://www.springerlink.com/content/v21t5g05250n22xw/) Stabbing is the most ...

Researchers from the United States and Europe involved in an NIH-funded multicenter study have determined that increased body mass index (BMI) is an independent predictor of clinical decompensation in patients with compensated cirrhosis, independent of portal pressure and liver function. The findings suggest obesity accelerates cirrhosis progression and measures to reduce BMI could improve the prognosis for patients with advanced liver disease. Study details are available in the August issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American ...

Incidence rates of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) have increased in the U.S. This population-based study publishing in the August issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, found that metabolic syndrome significantly increases risk of developing these primary liver cancers. According to data from the National Cancer Institute, 24,120 new cases of liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancer and close to 19,000 deaths from the diseases occurred in the U.S. in 2010. Major risk factors ...

A software program developed by a Penn State synthetic biologist could provide biotechnology companies with genetic plans to help them turn bacteria into molecular factories, capable of producing everything from biofuels to medicine. "It's similar to how an engineer designs a plane or a car," said Howard M. Salis, assistant professor in agricultural and biological engineering, and chemical engineering. "When designing a biological organism, there are many combinations that the engineer must test to find the best combination. This technology allows us to quickly identify ...

This release is available in German. VIDEO: Red-colored adenovirus particles are found in the periphery of a human epithelial cell and steadily move towards the cell nucleus at the bottom of the image. The endocytic vesicles in... Click here for more information. Mucosal epithelia do not have any receptors on the outer membrane for the absorption of viruses like hepatitis C, herpes, ...

When competing for food and resources, bacteria employ elaborate strategies to keep rival cells at bay. Scientists have now identified a pathway that allows disease-causing bacteria to attack other bacterial cells by breaking down their cell wall. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a type of bacteria readily found in everyday environments. It easily forms colonies in a wide variety of settings, including medical devices, body organs and skin wounds. This allows it to cause disease and act as a major pathogen, particularly in hospitals. Research led by Joseph Mougous, assistant ...

While more Americans are working past age 65 by choice, a growing segment of the population must continue to work well into their sixties out of financial necessity. Research conducted by the Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine looked at aging, social class and labor force participation rates to illustrate the challenges that lower income workers face in the global marketplace. The study used the burden of arthritis to examine these connections because 49 million U.S. adults have arthritis, and 21 ...

TORONTO, Ont., July 21, 2011—Chronic pain is not managed well in the general population and it's an even greater challenge for homeless people, according to new research by St. Michael's Hospital. Twenty-five per cent of Canadians say they have continuous or intermittent chronic pain lasting six months or more. The number is likely to be even higher among homeless people, in part due to frequent injuries. Of the 152 residents of homeless shelters with chronic pain studied by Dr. Stephen Hwang, more than one-third (37 per cent) had Chronic Pain Grade IV, the highest ...

This release is available in German. Nanotechnology has developed tremendously in the past decade and was able to create many new materials with a vast range of potential applications. Carbon nanotubes are an example of these new materials and consist of cylindrical molecules of carbon with diameters of a few nanometers – one nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter. Carbon nanotubes possess exceptional electronic, mechanical and chemical properties, for example they can be used to clean polluted water. Scientists of the University of Vienna had recently published ...

This release is available in Spanish. Each community of soil microbes has a unique fingerprint that can potentially be used to track soil back to its source, right down to whether it came from dust from a rural road or from a farm field, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) soil scientist. Ann Kennedy, at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Land Management and Water Conservation Research Unit in Pullman, Wash., studies the biological properties of soils that affect wind erosion. She analyses the soil for the fatty acid or lipid content from the community ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Subsidizing the wages of caregivers at group homes would likely reduce worker turnover rates and help contain costs at long-term care facilities, according to new University of Illinois research. Elizabeth T. Powers, a professor of economics and faculty member of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at Illinois, says that a government-sponsored wage-subsidy program could reduce the churn of low-wage caregivers through group homes by one-third. "High rates of worker turnover have costs, and there aren't a lot incentives for the agencies that ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Social safety net programs that reduce psychosocial stressors for low-income families also ultimately lead to a reduction in childhood obesity, according to research by a University of Illinois economist who studies the efficacy of food assistance programs on public health. Craig Gundersen, a professor of agricultural and consumer economics at Illinois, says food and exercise alone are not to blame for the extent of obesity among children in the United States. Psychosocial factors, such as stressors brought about by uncertainty about the economy, income ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Reforms aimed at curbing executive compensation will likely have little effect on reducing systemic risk in the financial system, and they may even have unintended consequences for the freedom to contract, according to a University of Illinois expert in business law and corporate finance. In a paper published in the Ohio State Entrepreneurial Business Law Journal, law professor Christine Hurt argues that giving regulators unprecedented power to prohibit certain types of private compensation under the guise of minimizing systemic risk in the financial ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Regulatory hurdles abound for the successful commercialization of emerging liquid biofuels, which hold the promise of enhancing U.S. energy security, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and serving as a driver for rural economic development, according to new U. of I. research. In the study, University of Illinois law professor Jay P. Kesan and Timothy A. Slating, a regulatory associate with the University of Illinois Energy Biosciences Institute, argue that regulatory innovations are needed to keep pace with technological innovations in the biofuels industry. "Getting ...

Most of our society's wealth is invested in businesses or other ventures that may or may not pan out. Thus, chance plays a role in where the wealth of a society will end up. But does chance favor the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, or does it tend to level the playing field? Three University of Minnesota researchers have built a simplified model that isolates the effects of chance and found that it consistently pushes wealth into the hands of a few, ever-richer people. The study, "Entrepreneurs, chance, and the deterministic concentration of wealth," ...

Two tropical storms are now in the open waters of the North Atlantic: Bret and Cindy. Both were captured on one image from NASA today. Both storms are hundreds of miles to the east-northeast of Bermuda and pose no threat to land areas. NASA's GOES Project issued an infrared image of both Bret and Cindy today from the GOES-13 satellite, which is operated by NOAA. The NASA GOES Project is housed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and uses GOES-13 data from NOAA to create images and animations. The image was captured at 0845 UTC (4:45 a.m. EDT) and shows ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- As workers continue to grapple with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, the crisis has shone a spotlight on nuclear reactors around the world. In June, The Associated Press released results from a yearlong investigation, revealing evidence of "unrelenting wear" in many of the oldest-running facilities in the United States. That study found that three-quarters of the country's nuclear reactor sites have leaked radioactive tritium from buried piping that transports water to cool reactor vessels, often contaminating groundwater. ...

In pure numerical terms, anesthesia-associated mortality has risen again. The reasons for this are the disproportionate increase in the numbers of older and multimorbid patients and surgical procedures that would have been unthinkable in the past. This is the result of a selective literature review of André Gottschalk's working group at the Bochum University Hospital in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[27]: 469-74). In the 1940s, anesthesia-related mortality was 6.4/10,000. By introducing safety standards such as pulse ...

MADISON, WI, JULY 21, 2011 -- Surface water quality is important for the proper function of aquatic ecosystems, as well as human needs and recreation. Pasturelands have been found to be major sources of sediment, phosphorus and pathogens in Midwest surface water resources. While poor grazing management may lead to contaminated surface water, little is known about the specific amount of pollution in pasture streams that can be attributed to grazing cattle. Scientists in the Departments of Animal Science, Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine, and Veterinary ...