Scientists can now manufacture a synthetic version of the self-healing sticky substance that mussels use to anchor themselves to rocks in pounding ocean surf and surging tidal basins. A patent is pending on the substance, whose potential applications include use as an adhesive or coating for underwater machinery or in biomedical settings as a surgical adhesive or bonding agent for implants. Inspiring the invention were the hair-thin holdfast fibers that mussels secrete to stick against rocks in lakes, rivers and oceans. "Everything amazingly just self-assembles underwater ...

URBANA – A new University of Illinois study provides convincing evidence that the way you prepare and consume your broccoli matters, and also suggests that teaming broccoli with broccoli sprouts may make the vegetable's anti-cancer effect almost twice as powerful. "Broccoli, prepared correctly, is an extremely potent cancer-fighting agent—three to five servings a week are enough to have an effect. To get broccoli's benefits, though, the enzyme myrosinase has to be present; if it's not there, sulforaphane, broccoli's cancer-preventive and anti-inflammatory component, doesn't ...

Researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital examined running-related injuries among children and adolescents 6 to 18 years old and found that an estimated 225,344 cases were treated in U.S. emergency departments from 1994 through 2007, for an average of more than 16,000 each year. During the 14-year study period, the annual number of running-related injuries increased 34 percent. According to the study, appearing in the February 2011 issue of Clinical Pediatrics, the majority of running-related ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – In a time of shrinking budgets, one University of Missouri professor believes that the current approach to juvenile crime is much too expensive to continue – and he has the numbers to prove it. Charles Borduin, a professor of psychological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science finds that multisystemic therapy (MST) is more effective in the lives of troubled youth and costs less. Borduin has pioneered the model for the treatment and prevention of serious mental health problems in children and adolescents throughout the course of his career. MST ...

(WASHINGTON, January 27, 2011) –Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID) occurs in just one out of every 50,000 to 100,000 births in the United States, yet it is the most serious primary immunodeficiency disorder.[1] A study published today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), demonstrates that babies with SCID who are diagnosed at birth and receive a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT), which is the transplantation of blood-forming stem cells, have significantly improved survival. SCID is a rare group of genetic disorders characterized ...

A study by experts at the University of Exeter has revealed that couples with similar personalities make much better parents than those with different dispositions – at least in the world of zebra finches. Researchers found birds expressing strong personality traits, such as aggressive behaviour or a willingness to explore, did a much better job of raising young if they had a like-minded partner. Where couples were markedly different in personality, chicks didn't fare as well – being less well-fed and in poorer condition. The research paper, published in the journal ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new study questions the controversial U.S. Preventative Service Task Force recommendations for breast cancer screening, with data that shows starting at a younger age and screening more frequently will result in more lives saved. The study analyzed the same data looked at by the task force, which issued its guidelines on mammography screening in November 2009. The study authors compared the task force's recommendations for screening every other year in women 50-74 to American Cancer Society guidelines of screening every year in women 40-84. The ...

For the first time, scientists have mapped the genome--the genetic code--of orangutans. This new tool may be used to support efforts to maintain the genetic diversity of captive and wild orangutans. The new map of the orangutan genome may also be used to help improve our understanding of the evolution of primates, including humans. Partially funded by the National Science Foundation, the orangutan study appears in the Jan. 27 issue of Nature. It was conducted by an international team of scientists led by Devin P. Locke of the Genome Center at Washington University. Conservation ...

We have developed an 'anytime' intelligence test, in other words a test that can be interrupted at any time, but that gives a more accurate idea of the intelligence of the test subject if there is a longer time available in which to carry it out", José Hernández-Orallo, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), tells SINC. This is just one of the many determining factors of the universal intelligence test. "The others are that it can be applied to any subject – whether biological or not – at any point in its development (child or adult, for example), ...

Madison, WI January 27, 2011 – Soybean production has continued to increase in the Northeast United States with more and more first time growers planting the crop and many experienced growers planting alongside corn crops. To save on time and expenses, some farmers plant soybeans with a corn planter in 30-inch rows instead of 7.5-inch rows with the regularly used grain drill. Dr. William Cox, a Cornell University scientist, investigated the response of two soybean varieties in row widths of 7.5, 15, and 30 inches at four seeding rates in a study funded by a USDA Hatch ...

The first large-scale, physics-based space weather prediction model is transitioning from research into operation. Scientists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM) and the National Weather Service reported the news today at the annual American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting in Seattle, Wash. The model will provide forecasters with a one-to-four day advance warning of high speed streams of solar plasma and Earth-directed coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These streams from the Sun may severely disrupt ...

A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere has discovered that a single alteration in the genetic code of about a fourth of African-Americans helps protect them from coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death in Americans of all races. Researchers found that a single DNA variation - having at least one so-called guanine nucleotide in a base pair instead of a combination without any guanine - on a gene already linked to higher risk of coronary disease in other races is linked in blacks to decreased risk. Specifically, the study showed that otherwise ...

DETROIT – Patients with obstructive sleep apnea who undergo surgery to improve their breathing get a better night's sleep and therefore are less drowsy during the day, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The study finds surgery greatly reduces daytime sleepiness – a common side effect from this disorder in which the upper airway is partially or completely blocked during sleep – when compared to other non-surgical treatments for obstructive sleep apnea. "This study validates what patients have told us regarding their improved alertness after ...

Scientists have created a diamond-like lattice composed of gold nanoparticles and viral particles, woven together and held in place by strands of DNA. The structure – a distinctive mix of hard, metallic nanoparticles and organic viral pieces known as capsids, linked by the very stuff of life, DNA – marks a remarkable step in scientists' ability to combine an assortment of materials to create infinitesimal devices. The research, done by scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Scripps Research Institute, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was published ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When it comes to breaking down plant matter and converting it to energy, the cow has it all figured out. Its digestive system allows it to eat more than 150 pounds of plant matter every day. Now researchers report that they have found dozens of previously unknown microbial enzymes in the bovine rumen – the cow's primary grass-digestion chamber – that contribute to the breakdown of switchgrass, a renewable biofuel energy source. The study, in the journal Science, tackles a major barrier to the development of more affordable and environmentally sustainable ...

Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have completed a new study on the geography of commercial fisheries in Northwest Mexico and the results could have far-ranging implications for the sustainable future of marine wildlife in the area. The scientists, led by Scripps postdoctoral researcher Brad Erisman, analyzed data from local fisheries offices around the region that includes Baja California as well as Gulf of California coasts from Sonora south to Nayarit. The region accounts for more than 60 percent of fishing production in Mexico. The ...

University of Alberta researchers determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago. The U of A team, led by Larry Heaman from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, determined the femur bone of a hadrosaur as being only 64.8 million years old. That means this particular plant eater was alive about 700,000 years after the mass extinction event many paleontologists believe wiped all non-avian dinosaurs off the face of earth, forever. Heaman ...

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have identified biomarkers of poor outcomes in preterm infants that may help identify new approaches to prevention. Ardythe Morrow, PhD, a researcher at the Cincinnati Children's Perinatal Institute, has identified a polymorphism – a variant in a particular DNA sequence – in a gene important to the development of the immune system. She found that this polymorphism raises the risk of bad outcomes in preterm infants, including death; necrotizing enterocolitis, which is the death of intestinal tissue; and gram ...

People with addictions to stimulants tend to choose instant gratification or a smaller but sooner reward over a future benefit, even if the future reward is greater. Reduced value of a future reward, called "delay discounting" by neuroscientists, is the major challenge for treatment of addiction. A new study in the February 2011 (Vol. 69, Issue 3) Biological Psychiatry appears to present a strategy for increasing the value of future rewards in the minds of addicts. "The hope is for a new intervention to help addicts," said Warren K. Bickel, professor and director of ...

The type of bacteria that colonize the placenta during pregnancy could be associated with preterm birth and other developmental problems in newborns according to research published in the current issue of the online journal mBio®. "The fetal inflammatory response appears to contribute to the onset of preterm labor, fetal injury and complications, underlying lifetime health challenges facing these children," say the researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Children's Hospital of Boston. "Our data suggest that placental colonization by specific ...

Data released today by the National Science Foundation show the recent economic recession had less effect on doctoral degree holders in science, engineering and health (SEH) fields than it did on the general population. According to a new NSF report, the unemployment rate in October 2008 for SEH doctorate recipients was 1.7 percent, whereas the unemployment rate for the total U.S. labor force was 6.6 percent. The report, "Unemployment Among Doctoral Scientists and Engineers Remained Below the National Average in 2008," was issued by NSF's Division of Science Resources ...

Visionaries in the field of cardiac therapeutics have long looked to the future when a damaged heart could be rebuilt or repaired by using one's own heart cells. A study published in the February issue of Circulation, a scientific journal of the American Heart Association, shows that heart stem cells from children with congenital heart disease were able to rebuild the damaged heart in the laboratory. Sunjay Kaushal, MD, PhD, surgeon in the Division of Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgery at Children's Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of surgery at Northwestern ...

VIDEO: Assistant professor Lotte Thomsen, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, has published a paper showing that infants less than one year old understand social dominance and... Click here for more information. New research from the University of Copenhagen and Harvard University has found that infants less than one year old understand social dominance and use relative size to predict who will prevail when two individuals' goals conflict. The ...

Disasters—both natural and manmade—can strike anywhere and they often hit without warning, so they can be difficult to prepare for. But what happens afterward? How do people cope following disasters? In a new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, George Bonanno, Chris R. Brewin, Krzysztof Kaniasty, and Annette M. La Greca review the psychological effects of disasters and why some individuals have a harder time recovering than do others. Individuals exposed to disaster may experience a number of ...

Researchers from McGill University's Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Research Centre (GCRC), the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC), the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School have discovered a gene signature that can accurately predict which breast cancer patients are at risk of relapse, thereby sparing those who are not from the burdens associated with unnecessary treatment. For years, clinicians have been faced with the problem that breast cancer cannot be treated with a one-size-fits-all approach. Some cancers ...