Newest
Science News Blog 20090727
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences
New
life histories emerge for invasive wasps, magnify ecological harm
A switch from annual to multiyear
colonies and a willingness to feed
just about any prey to their young have allowed invasive yellowjacket
wasps to disrupt native populations of insects and spiders on two
Hawaiian islands, a new study has found.
National Science Foundation, Environmental
Protection Agency
Contact: Erin Wilson
eewilson@ucsd.edu
University of California -
San Diego
Public Release: 20-Jul-2009
Archives
of Dermatology
Clotting
in veins close to skin may be associated with more dangerous deep-vein
blood clots
About one-fourth of patients with
superficial vein thrombosis --
clotting in blood vessels close to the skin -- also may have the
life-threatening condition deep vein thrombosis, according to a report
in the July issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives
journals.
Contact: Barbara Binder, M.D.
barbara.binder@klinikum-graz.at
JAMA and Archives
Journals
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
California's
Channel Islands hold evidence of Clovis-age comets
A 17-member team has found what
may be the smoking gun of a
much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago
ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Jim Barlow
jebarlow@uoregon.edu
541-346-3481
University of Oregon
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Young
men living at home with parents are more violent
Young men who stay at home with
their parents are more violent than
those who live independently, according to new research at Queen Mary,
University of London.
Men still living at home in their early twenties have fewer
responsibilities and more disposable income to spend on alcohol.
This group makes up only four percent of the UK's male population but
they are responsible for 16 percent of all violent injuries in the last
five years.
UK Department of Health
Contact: Kerry Noble
k.noble@qmul.ac.uk
44-207-882-7910
Queen Mary, University of
London
Venus
flytrap origins uncovered
The origin
of the voracious Venus flytrap has been uncovered.
Matt Walker Editor, Earth News
20
July 2009 15:52 UK
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Car
horns warn against natural disasters
In the past, sirens howled to
warn the population against floods, large
fires or chemical accidents. Today, however, there is no extensive
warning system in Germany, as most sirens were dismantled after the
Cold War. Researchers of the Fraunhofer Institute for Technological
Trend Analysis INT in Euskirchen want the population to be warned by
car horns in the future.
Contact: Guido Huppertz
guido.huppertz@int.fraunhofer.de
49-225-118-325
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Did
great balls of fire form the planets?
Glassy
spheres inside ancient meteorites may be remnants of the explosive
collisions of giant, radioactive magma balls which made the planets
THIS
WEEK: 12:50 20 July 2009
Public Release: 20-Jul-2009
PLoS
Biology
Common
cold virus efficiently delivers corrected gene to cystic fibrosis cells
Scientists have worked for 20
years to perfect gene therapy for the
treatment of cystic fibrosis, which causes the body to produce
dehydrated, thicker-than-normal mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to
life threatening infections. Now University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill School of Medicine scientists have found what may be the most
efficient way to deliver a corrected gene to lung cells collected from
cystic fibrosis patients.
National Institutes of Health, Cystic
Fibrosis Foundation
Contact: Les Lang
llang@med.unc.edu
919-966-9366
University of North
Carolina School of Medicine
Girl with half a brain retains
full vision
A
girl born with half of her cerebral cortex missing sees perfectly
because of a reorganisation of the brain circuits involved in vision
20:48 20 July 2009
Really?
The Claim: Red Wine Is Better for
You Than White
Which
type of wine is best for your health?
By
ANAHAD O’CONNOR
Basics
When ‘What Animals Do’ Doesn’t
Seem to Cover It
A
precise definition of behavior? Even experts don’t agree.
* Interactive Quiz: Defining
Behavior
By
NATALIE ANGIER
Jupiter sports new 'bruise' from
impact
A
new black spot about as big as the Earth has been found on Jupiter –
astronomers say it was caused by an impact, not by one of the planet's
famous storms
23:36 20 July 2009
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Neural
stem cells offer potential treatment for Alzheimer's disease
UC Irvine scientists have shown
for the first time that neural stem
cells can rescue memory in mice with advanced Alzheimer's disease,
raising hopes of a potential treatment for the leading cause of elderly
dementia that afflicts 5.3 million people in the US.
California Institute for Regenerative
Medicine, National Institutes of Health
Contact: Jennifer Fitzenberger
jfitzen@uci.edu
949-824-3969
University of California -
Irvine
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Developmental Psychology
Babies
understand dogs
A new BYU study shows that babies
understand dogs. The experiments
found 6-month-olds can match the sounds of friendly and aggressive
barks to corresponding pictures of dogs, which they accomplished on the
first try.
Contact: Joe Hadfield
joe_hadfield@byu.edu
801-422-9206
Brigham Young University
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Sea
lamprey jettison one-fifth of their genome
Sea
lampreys, which arose from the jawless fish that first appeared a
half-billion years ago, dramatically remodel their genomes during
embronic development. This is believed to be the first recorded
observation of a vertebrate reorganizing its genome during normal
development. Evolutionary biologists are interested in how and why the
lamprey re-organizes its genome because the animal is a living fossil
with millions of years of evolutionary history. Its closest ancestors
were among the first vertebrates on earth.
National Institutes of Health, National
Science Foundation, National
Research Service, NIH/National Institute of General Medical Sciences
Contact: Leila Gray
leilag@uw.edu
206-685-0381
University of Washington
Public
Release: 20-Jul-2009
Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology
UCLA
scientists present first genetic evidence for why placebos work
Researchers
at UCLA have found a new explanation for why placebos work
-- genetics. They report that in people suffering from major depressive
disorder, genes that influence the brain's reward pathways may modulate
the response to placebo.
Contact: Mark Wheeler
mwheeler@mednet.ucla.edu
310-794-2265
University of
California - Los Angeles
Public
Release: 21-Jul-2009
PLoS ONE
Researchers
turn cell phones into fluorescent microscopes
UC Berkeley researchers have
developed a cell phone microscope that not
only takes color images of malaria parasites, but of tuberculosis
bacteria labeled with fluorescent markers. The latest milestone moves a
major step forward in taking clinical microscopy out of specialized
laboratories into field settings for disease screening and diagnoses.
CITRIS, Blum Center for Developing Economies
Contact: Sarah Yang
scyang@berkeley.edu
510-643-7741
University of
California - Berkeley
Doctors
missing consciousness in vegetative patients
A
new comparison of tests for detecting consciousness suggests that
around 40 per cent of people diagnosed as being in a vegetative state
are in fact "minimally conscious"
12:47 21 July 2009
Public
Release: 21-Jul-2009
International Journal of Cancer
Ovary
removal may increase lung cancer risk
Women
who have premature menopause because of medical interventions are
at an increased risk of developing lung cancer, according to a new
study published in the International Journal of Cancer. The startling
link was made by epidemiologists from the University of Montreal, the
Research Center of the University of Montreal Hospital Center and the
INRS -- Institut Armand-Frappier.
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Fonds
de la recherche en santé
du Québec, Guzzo-SRC Chair in Environment and Cancer
Contact: Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins
sylvain-jacques.desjardins@umontreal.ca
514-343-7593
University
of Montreal
Public
Release: 21-Jul-2009
USENIX Security Symposium
This
article will self-destruct: A tool to make online personal data vanish
Private
information scattered all over the Internet and impossible to
control. A new system, called Vanish, puts an expiry date on electronic
text. Electronic communication sent using Vanish -- such as e-mail,
Facebook posts and chat messages -- would have a brief lifetime and
then self-destruct.
National Science Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation, Intel Corporation
Contact: Hannah Hickey
hickeyh@uw.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington
Public
Release: 21-Jul-2009
Neurology
Mayo
Clinic researchers find first potential pathogenic mutation for
restless legs syndrome
An
international team of researchers led by scientists at the Mayo
Clinic campus in Florida have found what they believe is the first
mutated gene linked to restless legs syndrome, a common neurologic
disorder.
National Institutes of Health, Mayo Clinic
Contact: Kevin Punsky
punsky.kevin@mayo.edu
904-953-2299
Mayo Clinic
Public
Release: 21-Jul-2009
Pediatrics
Daily
potassium citrate wards off kidney stones in seizure patients on
high-fat diet
Children on the high-fat
ketogenic diet to control epileptic seizures
can prevent the excruciatingly painful kidney stones that the diet can
sometimes cause if they take a daily supplement of potassium citrate
the day they start the diet, according to research from Johns Hopkins
Children's Center.
National Institutes of Health, Carson Harris
Foundation
Contact: Ekaterina Pesheva
epeshev1@jhmi.edu
410-516-4996
Johns Hopkins
Medical Institutions
Public
Release: 22-Jul-2009
Nature
New
evidence: AIDS-like disease in wild chimpanzees
An international consortium has
found that wild chimpanzees naturally
infected with simian immunodeficiency viruses -- long thought to be
harmless to the apes -- can contract an AIDS-like syndrome and die as a
result. The findings are published in the July 23 edition of the
journal Nature.
Contact: Diana Yates
diya@illinois.edu
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
Public
Release: 22-Jul-2009
Physical Review Letters
Ytterbium's
broken symmetry
The weak interaction has the
shortest range of the fundamental forces
and does some of the most peculiar things, like changing the flavor of
quarks, governing the interactions of neutrinos, and violating parity
-- nature's mirror symmetry. In ytterbium, researchers in Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory's Nuclear Science Division and the
University of California at Berkeley have measured the largest parity
violations ever observed in an atom.
National Science Foundation
Contact: Paul Preuss
paul_preuss@lbl.gov
510-486-6249
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory
Ion
engine could one day power 39-day trips to Mars
Researchers are testing a
powerful new rocket engine propelled by charged particles instead of
chemical fuel – one day it could shorten Mars trips from six months to
one
21:55 22 July 2009
Public
Release: 23-Jul-2009
Cell
Stem
cells not the only way to fix a broken heart
Researchers appear to have a new
way to fix a broken heart. They have
devised a method to coax heart muscle cells into reentering the cell
cycle, allowing the differentiated adult cells to divide and regenerate
healthy heart tissue after a heart attack, according to studies in mice
and rats reported in the July 24 issue of the journal Cell, a Cell
Press publication.
Contact: Cathleen Genova
cgenova@cell.com
617-397-2802
Cell Press
Public
Release: 23-Jul-2009
Anesthesiology
Mass.
General team develops potentially safer general anesthetic
In the August issue of
Anesthesiology, a team of Massachusetts General
Hospital physicians describe preclinical studies of a new general
anesthetic -- a chemically altered version of an exiting drug -- that
does not cause the sudden drop in blood pressure seen with most
anesthetics or prolonged suppression of adrenal gland activity, a
problem with the parent drug.
National Institutes of Health, Foundation for
Anesthesia Education and Research
Contact: Sue McGreevey
smcgreevey@partners.org
617-724-2764
Massachusetts
General Hospital
Public
Release: 23-Jul-2009
BMC Medical Ethics
Embarrassing
illnesses no bar to information sharing
People
with potentially "stigmatizing" medical conditions are just as
likely as those with less stigmatizing illnesses to allow their
personal information to be used for health research. A new study,
published in the open-access journal BMC Medical Ethics, found that the
purpose of the research and the type of information to be collected
were more important in determining patients' consent choices. In
particular, they were very wary of allowing their personal information
to be put to commercial use.
Contact: Graeme Baldwin
graeme.baldwin@biomedcentral.com
44-203-192-2165
BioMed Central
Unsung
heroes save net from chaos
Crack teams of volunteers keep
the net online and functioning, according to leading internet lawyer
Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard University.
By
Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
22 July 2009 13:26 UK
Wireless power system shown off
A
system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has
been shown off at a hi-tech conference.
By
Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
23 July 2009 17:28 UK
TierneyLab
Researcher
Condemns Conformity Among His Peers
A psychologist and well-known
researcher of twins decries conformity in scientific culture.
By
Nicholas Wade
July 23, 2009, 3:35 pm
Swine Flu May Cause Seizures in
Children
The warning of possible
neurological side effects to swine flu should not cause alarm, doctors
say, although some questions remain.
By
SARAH ARNQUIST
July 23, 2009
Public
Release: 23-Jul-2009
Cell
Human
cells secrete cancer-killing protein, UK study finds
The tumor-suppressor protein
Par-4 is secreted by human and rodent
cells and activates a novel extrinsic pathway involving cell surface
GRP78 receptor for induction of apoptosis, researchers at the
University of Kentucky led by Vivek Rangnekar announced in Cell.
National Institutes of Health
Contact: Keith Hautala
keith.hautala@uky.edu
859-257-1754
University of Kentucky
Artificial
brain '10 years away'
A detailed, functional artificial
human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist
has claimed.
By
Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
22 July 2009 20:05 UK
Radioactive Drug for Tests Is in
Short Supply
The closing of two nuclear
reactors is creating a shortage in a drug crucial to tests for cardiac
disease and cancer.
By
MATTHEW L. WALD
July 23, 2009
Is your cat left or right pawed?
Like humans, cats tend to
prefer one paw over the other when tackling tricky tasks, find
researchers
10:28 24 July 2009
How to make ice melt at -180 °C
Tiny
crystals of ice can melt at surprisingly low temperatures – but only if
the crystals contain a sprinkling of water molecules
IN
BRIEF: 16:02 24 July 2009
Public
Release: 24-Jul-2009
Journal of Pediatrics
Pinpointing
cause of colic: UT Houston researchers identify organism
Researchers
at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
say one organism discovered during their study may unlock the key to
what causes colic, inconsolable crying in an otherwise healthy baby.
Gerber Foundation
Contact:
Melissa McDonald
Melissa.E.McDonald@uth.tmc.edu
713-500-3308
University of Texas
Health Science Center at Houston
Public
Release: 24-Jul-2009
UAB
computer forensics links internet postcards to virus
Fake Internet postcards
circulating through e-mail inboxes worldwide
are carrying links to the virus known as Zeus Bot, said Gary Warner,
director of computer forensics at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham. Zeus Bot has been named America's most pervasive computer
Botnet virus by Network World magazine, reportedly infecting 3.6
million US computers.
Contact:
Andrew Hayenga
ahayenga@uab.edu
205-934-1676
University of Alabama at
Birmingham
Public Release: 26-Jul-2009
Nature Medicine
Common
allergy drug reduces obesity and diabetes in mice
Two new studies connect the
immune system with obesity and type 2
diabetes. In the first study, researchers used two common
over-the-counter allergy medications known to stabilize a group of
inflammatory immune cells to reduce obesity and symptoms of type 2
diabetes in mice. In the second study, researchers found that a kind of
regulatory white blood cell once thought to manage only immune cells
also controls inflammation in non-obese fat tissue.
National Institutes of Health
Contact: David Cameron
communications@hms.harvard.edu
617-432-0442
Harvard Medical School
Public Release: 26-Jul-2009
Nature Geoscience
Hydrocarbons
in the deep Earth?
Oil and gas started out as living
organisms that died, were compressed,
and were heated under layers of sediments in the Earth's crust.
Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons
could have been created deeper in the mantle and formed without organic
matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and
heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under conditions of the upper
mantle.
Carnegie Institution, US Department of
Energy, W.M. Keck Foundation
Contact: Alexander Goncharov
agoncharov@ciw.edu
202-478-8947
Carnegie Institution
Should
Thursday Be the New Friday? The Environmental and Economic Pluses of
the 4-Day Workweek
Evidence builds that
working 40 hours in four days makes good sense for employee health and
well-being, too
By Lynne Peeples July
24, 2009
