A record-breaking 429 White-shouldered Ibis Pseudibis davisoni have just been recorded in Cambodia, making the known global population much larger than previously thought. With so many birds remaining in the wild the chances of conservation success are greatly improved – welcome news for this Critically Endangered bird species. The University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, brought together a group of conservationists for a coordinated survey of 37 roost sites across Cambodia. Participants came from the Cambodian Forestry Administration and General Department for Administration ...

New research from North Carolina State University will help medical examiners and others identify human remains of those killed during the recent earthquake in Chile, as well as the bodies of the "disappeared" who were killed during the Pinochet administration. "We have developed population-specific identification criteria for the Chilean population, which will help us determine the stature and biological sex of skeletal remains," says Dr. Ann Ross, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research. "My ...

Hybrid cars and those fuelled by natural gas produce significantly less carbon dioxide (CO2) than equivalent vehicles running on gasoline. In the course of a study undertaken on behalf of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the results of which were recently published, Empa has investigated the CO2 emission behavior of current hybrid cars. A comparison with gasoline and natural gas fuelled vehicles concludes that hybrid vehicles are the cleanest during inner-city driving whilst natural gas fuelled cars do best on the motorway. When driven in rural areas, ...

Seamless fabric that can be sprayed on to skin and other surfaces to make clothes, medical bandages and even upholstery will be demonstrated this Thursday, in advance of the Science in Style spray-on fashion show next week at Imperial College London. Dr Manel Torres is a Spanish fashion designer and academic visitor at Imperial, where he has collaborated with Paul Luckham, Professor of Particle Technology from the Department of Chemical Engineering, to create a seamless material called Fabrican Spray-on fabric that can be sprayed directly onto the body, using aerosol ...

MIAMI -- September 14, 2010 --There is a significant disparity between knowledge and attitudes on the dangers of skin cancer among male and female medical students in Florida according to a new study by a joint team of researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The study was published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Dermatology. While their overall knowledge was judged to be satisfactory there was a significant difference between male and female students' knowledge survey scores: 93.1 percent ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital have invented the first artificial human ovary, an advance that provides a potentially powerful new means for conducting fertility research and could also yield infertility treatments for cancer patients. The team has already used the lab-grown organ to mature human eggs. "An ovary is composed of three main cell types, and this is the first time that anyone has created a 3-D tissue structure with triple cell line," said Sandra Carson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Sept. 14, 2010) – An international team of researchers has identified a risk gene for schizophrenia, including a potentially causative mutation, using genome-wide association data-mining techniques and independent replications. The results of the research, led by Xiangning Chen, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and human and molecular genetics in Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Medicine and the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, and Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., professor of psychiatry and human and molecular genetics ...

Researchers from the Congenital Cardiovascular Interventional Study Consortium (CCISC) who evaluated the intermediate and long-term results of stent implantation for aortic coarctation found that cumulative intermediate success was 86%, and cumulative long-term success was 77%. Results of this study appear in the October issue of Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions. Coarctation, or narrowing, of the aorta, restricts blood flow to the lower extremities ...

Evidence that a star has recently engulfed a companion star or a giant planet has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The likely existence of such a "cannibal" star provides new insight into how stars and the planets around them may interact as they age. The star in question, known as BP Piscium (BP Psc), appears to be a more evolved version of our Sun, but with a dusty and gaseous disk surrounding it. A pair of jets several light years long blasting out of the system in opposite directions has also been seen in optical data. While the disk and jets ...

"The high presence of microRNA 451 enhances the response to treatment with chemo-radiotherapy and increases the survival of patients with stomach cancer", explained Dr. Jesús García-Foncillas, chief researcher of the Pharmacogenomics Laboratory at the Applied Medical Research Centre (CIMA) and Director of Oncology at the University Hospital of Navarra. This was one of the results presented at the IV Congress of the Spanish Society for Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomic, recently held at CIMA. Pharmacogenetics studies the genetic bases determining the response of an ...

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – September 14, 2010 – When a federal fisheries scientist sought to learn how ocean currents affect the catch rate of lobsters, he turned to a University of Rhode Island oceanographer who had developed an innovative and inexpensive meter for measuring currents near the bottom of bays, rivers and other shallow waters. So did aquaculture farmers in Rhode Island looking to identify the best site for farming oysters, Cape Cod officials interested in understanding tidal fluctuations in Waquoit Bay, and students at Cohasset (Mass.) High School studying circulation ...

Suppose a close friend who is trying to figure out the facts about climate change asks whether you think a scientist who has written a book on the topic is a knowledgeable and trustworthy expert. You see from the dust jacket that the author received a Ph.D. in a pertinent field from a major university, is on the faculty at another one, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Would you advise your friend that the scientist seems like an "expert"? If you are like most people, the answer is likely to be, "it depends." What it depends on, a recent study found, ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2010 — A new genre of construction materials, made with particles barely 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, is about to play a big role in the building of homes, offices, bridges, and other structures, according to the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions." A new Global Challenges podcast and website is highlighting both the potential benefits of these nanomaterials in improving construction materials and the need for guidelines to regulate their use and ...

The first randomized, placebo-controlled U.S. clinical trial to assess the use of bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells (BMC) in patients after a ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI; severe heart attack) demonstrated a strong safety profile for this cell therapy, based on phase 1 results published in the September issue of the American Heart Journal. "The use of adult stem cells, derived from the patient's own bone marrow, presents a potential new type of therapy to benefit individuals after they suffer a heart attack," says the study's principal investigator Jay ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Women tend to believe the scientific consensus on global warming more than men, according to a study by a Michigan State University researcher. The findings, published in the September issue of the journal Population and Environment, challenge common perceptions that men are more scientifically literate, said sociologist Aaron M. McCright. "Men still claim they have a better understanding of global warming than women, even though women's beliefs align much more closely with the scientific consensus," said McCright, an associate professor with ...

The research, unveiled at a press conference today (14 September 2010), shows that the watercress compound is able to interfere with the function of a protein which plays a critical role in cancer development. As tumours develop they rapidly outgrow their existing blood supply so they send out signals which make surrounding normal tissues grow new blood vessels into the tumour which feed them oxygen and nutrients. The research, led by Professor Graham Packham of the University of Southampton, shows that the plant compound (called phenylethyl isothiocyanate) found ...

(PHILADELPHIA) An abrupt, fatal heart attack in a young athlete on the playing field is a tragedy destined to repeat itself over and over until more is understood about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic disorder that is the most common cause of sudden death in young people but which affects people of all ages. So says a task force of cardiologists and cardiac biologists, headed by Thomas L. Force, M.D., James C. Wilson Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, in the September 14th online edition of the journal Circulation. Their special report ...

Scientists have for the first time estimated the physical footprint of human activities on the deep seafloor of the North East Atlantic. The findings published in the journal PLoS ONE reveal that the area disturbed by bottom trawling commercial fishing fleets exceeds the combined physical footprint of other major human activities considered. The deep seafloor covers approximately 60% of Earth's surface, but only a tiny fraction of it has been studied to date. Yet as technology advances and resources from relatively shallow marine environments are depleted, human impacts ...

Global fisheries, a vital source of food and revenue throughout the world, contribute between US$225-$240 billion per year to the worldwide economy, according to four new studies released today. Researchers also concluded that healthier fisheries could have prevented malnourishment in nearly 20 million people in poorer countries. This first comprehensive, peer-reviewed estimate of the global economic contribution of fisheries was published online today in four papers as part of a special issue of the Journal of Bioeconomics. This research, conducted by the University ...

GOES-13 captured a look at System 92L this morning as it continues moving through the central Caribbean, and it's looking more and more like a tropical depression. As the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-13 satellite keeps relaying data to NOAA (who manages the satellite) and the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the images created by the NASA GOES Project reveal that System 92L appears to be taking on the appearance of a tropical depression. In the imagery captured today, Sept. 14 at 1340 UTC (9:40 ...

ROCKVILLE, Maryland, September 14, 2010 – Neuralstem, Inc. (NYSE Amex: CUR) announced that its spinal cord stem cells survived in rat brains affected by stroke and differentiated predominantly into neurons. The transplanted animals showed significant improvement in some motor skill and strength measurements. The study entitled, "Intracerebral Implantation of Adherent Human Neural Stem Cells To Reverse Motor Deficits in Chronic Stroke Rats," was presented earlier today by senior study author, Dr. Shinn-Zong Lin, M.D., Ph.D., at the Stem Cells USA & Regenerative Medicine ...

An astronomer may have caught a cannibalistic star in the act of devouring a companion and making a second generation of exoplanets from the resulting orbiting disk. Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Joel Kastner, professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, has found evidence that a variable star in the constellation of Pisces, BP Piscium, is not the young star it appears to be, but is more likely a one billion-year-old red giant that has gobbled up a star or planet in its vicinity. The star's extreme properties have puzzled astronomers since Kastner ...

"The IFFS's 'Surveillance 2010' report, compiled by Professor Ian Cooke and published on 14 September 2010, illustrates this for over 100 countries. The survey highlights how widely assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are being used and how different cultures are regulating services in different ways. In most countries there is no state or insurance support, so these services are costly and frequently beyond the reach of many families. In some countries access to donor gametes is denied or supply is limited. To address the safety of patients that seek treatment abroad, ...

Low Adherence with Regular Fecal Occult Blood Test Screening Among Insured Patients In a large U.S. health plan, nearly one-half of patients who initiated biennial fecal occult blood test (FOBT) screening did not adhere to subsequent colorectal screening in the ensuing 2-year period, compromising the effectiveness of the screening endeavor which hinges on regular screening. Analyzing data on 11,110 patients enrolled in a Washington State health plan who completed an FOBT during the baseline period (2000-2001), researchers found 47 percent received no colorectal screening ...

Farming practices have a significant impact on the diversity of beneficial microbial fungi known to play important roles in crop productivity, soil recovery and maintenance of healthy ecosystems, according to new research published today (14 September 2010) in the journal Environmental Microbiology. The conclusions could have important implications for the way humans manage the agricultural landscape and tackle food security issues. The study was led by Dr Christopher van der Gast at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), UK and Dr Gary Bending from the University ...