A new assessment conducted by 174 scientists from around the world underscores a growing concern about the health of the world's biodiversity, quantifying the rate of decline among vertebrate species on a global scale for the first time. The team's results support the idea that our planet is currently experiencing its sixth mass extinction—nearly one fifth of all known vertebrate species are currently classified as Threatened on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, and an average of 52 species of mammals, birds, and amphibians move one ...

Cutting surveillance for mosquito-borne diseases would likely translate into an exponential increase in both the number of human cases and the health costs when a disease outbreak occurs, according to an analysis by Emory University. The Public Library of Science (PLoS) publishes the research, led by Emory disease ecologist Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, Oct. 26. "Our analysis shows that halting mosquito surveillance can increase the management costs of epidemics by more than 300 times, in comparison with sustained surveillance and early case detection," Vazquez-Prokopec ...

An international team of primatologists have discovered a new species of monkey in Northern Myanmar (formerly Burma.) The research, published in the American Journal of Primatology, reveals how Rhinopithecus strykeri, a species of snub-nosed monkey, has an upturned nose which causes it to sneeze when it rains. Field biologists led by Ngwe Lwin from the Myanmar Biodiversity And Nature Conservation Association and supported by an international team of primatologists from Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and the People Resources and Biodiversity Foundation, discovered the ...

Almost a quarter of colorectal (bowel) cancer cases could be prevented if people followed healthy lifestyle advice in five areas including diet and exercise, says a new study published on bmj.com today. Researchers from Denmark found that following recommendations on physical activity, waist circumference, smoking, alcohol and diet could reduce the risk of developing bowel cancer considerably – by 23%. Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK where more than 38,600 people are diagnosed with the condition every year. It is the second most common cause of ...

Giving people opiate substitution treatment to help with their drug addiction can lead to a 85% plus chance of reducing mortality, according to a new study published on bmj.com today. Researchers from Bristol and London found that the length of time people had opiate substitution treatment (OST) for had a large impact on its success and the likelihood of death. Opiate users have a high risk of death, often from overdose. OST, mostly methadone and buprenorphine, is central to prevention of drug related mortality and often delivered in primary care settings. Over the ...

A new analysis of several major global studies of future species shifts and losses foresees inevitable continuing decline of biodiversity during the 21st century but offers new hope that it could be slowed if emerging policy choices are pursued. Led by experts Henrique Miguel Pereira and Paul Leadley, the 23-member scientific team from nine countries, under the auspices of DIVERSITAS, UNEP-WCMC and the secretariat of the CBD compared results from five recent global environmental assessments and a wide range of peer-reviewed literature examining likely future changes in ...

Increasing numbers of birds, mammals and amphibians have moved closer to extinction in the last several decades—but not as far as they would have if no conservation measures at all had been enacted, researchers report. Their study is being published online by the journal Science, at the Science Express Web site, at 6:30 p.m., U.S. Eastern Time, Tuesday, 26 October. Science is the journal of AAAS, the nonprofit science society. To assess the status of the world's vertebrates, a large, international research team lead by Michael Hoffmann of the International Union for ...

The sweet smell of fresh laundry may contain a sour note. Widely used fragranced products – including those that claim to be "green" – give off many chemicals that are not listed on the label, including some that are classified as toxic. A study led by the University of Washington discovered that 25 commonly used scented products emit an average of 17 chemicals each. Of the 133 different chemicals detected, nearly a quarter are classified as toxic or hazardous under at least one federal law. Only one emitted compound was listed on a product label, and only two were publicly ...

Scientists have revealed that an anti-obesity drug changes the way the brain responds to appetising, high-calorie foods in obese individuals. This insight may aid the development of new anti-obesity drugs which reduce the activity in the regions of the brain stimulated by the sight of tasty foods. Researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered that the anti-obesity drug sibutramine reduced brain responses in two regions of the brain, the hypothalamus and the amygdala, both of which are known to be important in appetite control and eating behaviour. Their findings ...

The food industry generates a lot of waste products, but one of these, eggshells, could help combat climate change, according to research published in the International Journal of Global Warming this month. Basab Chaudhuri of the University of Calcutta and colleagues have demonstrated that the membrane that lines an eggshell can absorb almost seven times its own weight of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide thus trapped could be stored in this form until energy-effective methods of using the gas could be found that would not compound ...

Dr. Jack Musick, emeritus professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, has overseen a global study suggesting that 33 percent of shark, skate, and ray species are threatened with extinction. The work is part of a major new study of vertebrates by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world's oldest and largest environmental network. The IUCN study shows that conservation actions have benefitted a few species of vertebrates around the world during the last few decades, but are too few and far between to slow an overall rapid increase ...

Scientists have been working on organic solar cells for about a decade. Their manufacture is environmentally friendly and they can be applied to all kinds of materials, such as plastic film, for instance. The trouble is, they only yield a fifth of the electrical energy that silicon solar cells do, with most of the electrical current trickling away into the material instead. Scientists at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) have developed a method that uses the magnetic fingerprint of the charge-carrying particles to reveal exactly how electricity is being lost. They did so ...

New research has provided the first evidence that 'gender bending' chemicals which find their way from human products into rivers and oceans can have a significant impact on the ability of fish to breed in UK Rivers. The findings from the four year study, led by the universities of Exeter and Brunel, has important implications for understanding the impacts of these chemicals on ecosystem health and possibly on humans. Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) disrupt the ways that hormones work in the bodies of vertebrates (animals with backbones), including humans. They ...

There are many good reasons to ensure sufficient exercise in everyday life. However, advising patients with increased blood pressure (hypertension) to exercise regularly is often regarded as a specific medical measure aiming to reduce the increased risk of late complications. But whether more exercise actually helps to avoid illnesses related to hypertension or at least delay their onset has been insufficiently investigated. In order to provide better advice to patients with hypertension, informative clinical studies are therefore needed. This is the result of a report ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed software for mobile phones that can track your facial features in real-time. Eventually it will be able to tell who the user is, where they are looking and even how they are feeling. The method is believed to be unrivalled for speed and accuracy and could lead to facial recognition replacing passwords and PIN numbers to log into internet sites from a mobile phone. "Existing mobile face trackers give only an approximate position and scale of the face," said Dr Phil Tresadern, lead researcher on the project. "Our ...

Scientists have demonstrated for the first time that a certain class of RNA (known as long non-protein-coding RNA [lncRNA]) are involved in the host response to viral infection. These findings, published today in the online journal mBio®, could greatly change the way scientists look at the body's response to viral infection. "To our knowledge, our study is the first to use comprehensive deep-sequencing technology to clearly demonstrate that lncRNAs are involved in the host response to viral infection and innate immunity," says Michael Katze of the University of Washington, ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2010 — Just five minutes of outdoor activity — such as exercising in a park, working in a backyard garden or walking on a nature trail — is good for the brain, with tangible benefits for mental health, according to the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions." The new Global Challenges podcast and website describe scientific research indicating that physical activity in natural areas, known as 'green' exercise, can lead to improvements in mental health. The research ...

AMES, Iowa – The quantity and quality of data coming back from NASA's Kepler Mission is changing how astronomers study stars, said Iowa State University's Steve Kawaler. "It's really amazing," said Kawaler, an Iowa State professor of physics and astronomy. "It's as amazing as I feared. I didn't appreciate how hard it is to digest all the information efficiently." The Kepler spacecraft, he said, "is a discovery machine." Kepler launched March 6, 2009, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft is orbiting the sun carrying a photometer, or light ...

The question of why women are so underrepresented in math-intensive fields is a controversial one. In 2005, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, set off a storm of controversy when he suggested it could be due partly to innate differences in ability; others have suggested discrimination or socialization is more to blame. Two psychological scientists have reviewed all of the evidence and concluded that the main factor is women's choices—both freely made, such as that they'd rather study biology than math, and constrained, such as the fact that the difficult ...

Adolescents enrolled in private schools employ more efficient strategies to cope with their problems than students in public schools. Further, they also use emotion-oriented coping, as drawn from a study carried out at the University of Granada, recently published in the prestigious journal Psicotema. This study revealed that students in private schools present a better problem-oriented coping. This means that, when facing a problem, they use more frequently strategies aimed at solving the problem. Some examples of such strategies are concentrating deeply when solving ...

Not only are restaurant patrons willing to pay more for meals prepared with produce and meat from local providers, the proportion of customers preferring local meals actually increases when the price increases, according to a team of international researchers. A recent study of how customers perceive and value local food shows that restaurant patrons prefer meals made with local ingredients when they are priced slightly higher than meals made with non-local ingredients, said Amit Sharma, assistant professor, School of Hospitality Management, Penn State. The research will ...

The proportion of the workforce represented by women rose from 20.7% to 41.1% between 1978 and 2002. However, this trend has not resulted in a similar increase in the proportion of men who participate in household tasks. Some 55% of women who are part of a dual earning couple still perform all household tasks. Furthermore, 33% of men do not do anything at home. "Younger women still carry out a larger amount of unpaid work than men, although in less proportion than older women. The same occurs with education. The lower the level of education, the more likely women are ...

Emissions from consumption growth have exceeded carbon savings from efficiency improvements in the global supply chain of products consumed in the UK, according to new research by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York and the University of Durham. Carbon dioxide emissions from UK consumption grew by 217 Million tonnes(Mt) of carbon dioxide from increased spending between 1992 and 2004 while cuts from more efficient production only led to reductions of 148 Mt leaving a net growth of 69 Mt of carbon dioxide . In previous research, Stockholm ...

Troy, N.Y. – Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute developed a new method for using water to tune the band gap of the nanomaterial graphene, opening the door to new graphene-based transistors and nanoelectronics. By exposing a graphene film to humidity, Rensselaer Professor Nikhil Koratkar and his research team were able to create a band gap in graphene – a critical prerequisite to creating graphene transistors. At the heart of modern electronics, transistors are devices that can be switched "on" or "off" to alter an electrical signal. Computer microprocessors ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In the 15 minutes a primary care doctor typically has with a patient, she's expected to diagnose the current ailment, help manage ongoing health issues and provide preventive care. In this setting, confronting all but the most obvious and immediate mental health needs of patients is an ongoing challenge. A new study by researchers at the University of Michigan Health System, however, points to an encouraging strategy for improving and sustaining mental health results in chronically depressed patients by providing small amounts of flexible, targeted ...