Curated News: Staff Picks

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Brain scans from nearly 200 adolescent boys provide evidence that the brains of compulsive video game players are wired differently. Chronic video game play is associated with hyperconnectivity between several pairs of brain networks. Some of the changes are predicted to help game players respond to new information. Other changes are associated with distractibility and poor impulse control. The new findings, a collaborative effort between the University of Utah School of Medicine, and Chung-Ang University in South Korea, were published online in Addiction Biology on Dec. 21, 2015.

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Bottom Line: Postmenopausal women with periodontal disease were more likely to develop breast cancer than women who did not have the chronic inflammatory disease. A history of smoking significantly affected the women's risk.

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Men are more likely to go missing – with a fatal outcome – during a night out in the UK in December than at any other time of year, a new study led by an expert from London’s Kingston University has revealed

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Estimates of future global temperatures based on recent observations must account for the differing characteristics of each important driver of recent climate change, according to a new NASA study published Dec. 14 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

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New smartphone-based system could accelerate development of driverless cars.

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Small price differences are highly effective in shifting demand to healthy low calorie alternatives, new study in INFORMS journal finds.

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Scientists from James Cook University have discovered two critically endangered species of sea snakes, previously thought to be extinct, off the coast of Western Australia.

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Japanese supercomputer model overthrows existing theory of auroral breakup.

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In new Nature Climate Change article, researchers estimate widespread tree death in Southwestern forests during the next century as temperatures rise under global warming scenarios.

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Studies have shown that obese children tend to have more muscle, but recent University of Georgia research on the muscle and bone relationship shows that excess body fat may compromise other functions in their bodies, such as bone growth.

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Ongoing studies of a massive volcanic field in the Andes mountains show that the rapid uplift which has raised the surface more than six feet in eight years has occurred many times during the past 10,000 years.

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A well-known ‘superbug’ which was thought to have been a static or non-motile organism has been observed showing signs of active motility by scientists at The Universities of Nottingham and Sheffield.

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Despite the risks, the number approaches that for FDA-approved hormone therapies.

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Adolescents with moderate emotional health problems do not smoke, but they may vape, USC study finds.

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Saint Louis University public health research study calls for immediate, low-cost steps to address issue.

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At least once a week, two thirds of all children of primary-school age will play an internet game that was created to draw attention to a brand. Most of these advertisements are for snacks and candy. Only 6% of these children are aware that such advergames are advertisements. In the meantime, such games do affect their behaviour, discovered Frans Folkvord, and if it were up to him they would be banned. Folkvord, a behavioural scientist at Radboud University, will be awarded a PhD for his work on 13 January 2016.

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In a discovery that could offer valuable new insights into understanding, diagnosing and even treating autism, Harvard scientists for the first time have linked a specific neurotransmitter in the brain with autistic behavior.

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KAIST researchers have developed an application that helps people restrain themselves from using smartphones during meetings or social gatherings.

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A network of interacting brain regions known as the default mode network (DMN) was found to have stronger connections in adults and children with a high risk of depression compared to those with a low risk. These findings suggest that increased DMN connectivity is a potential precursor, or biomarker, indicating a risk of developing major depressive disorder (MDD).

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Genetic influence on intelligence varies according to people’s social class in the United States, but not in Western Europe or Australia, according to a psychology study at The University of Texas at Austin.

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redictions of physicists of the University of Luxembourg recently lead to the discovery of a material with special electric properties which engages the interest of plastics producing industry.

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An international group of biologists say that policies regulating the hunting of large carnivores do not always align with basic scientific data, which can undermine conservation efforts.

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A thigh bone found in China suggests an ancient species of human thought to be long extinct may have survived until as recently as the end of the last Ice Age.

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Accelerating rates of sea-level rise linked to climate change pose a major threat to coastal marshes and the vital carbon capturing they perform. But a new Duke University study finds marshes may be more resilient than previously believed.

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Research on police shootings by Keon Gilbert, DrPH, assistant professor of behavioral science and health education at Saint Louis University, identifies solutions to address a timely problem. Gilbert says Ferguson, Missouri, could be anywhere, USA.

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The caffeine in a morning cup of coffee could help improve athletic endurance, according to a new University of Georgia review study. Authored by Simon Higgins, the study was published in this month’s issue of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

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This first evidence of a Jewish village on the site strengthens the hypothesis, that until now was no more than folklore, that this is the “Kursi” mentioned in the New Testament as one of the sites where Jesus performed his miracles

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Scientists have shown for the first time that an enzyme crucial to keeping our immune system healthy “surfs” along the strands of DNA inside our cells.

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Evolutionary biologists at Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, University of Washington and the University of Utah may have solved a century-old evolutionary riddle: How did two related fruit fly species arise from one?

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New research has revealed that the thick donut-shaped disks of gas and dust that surround most massive black holes in the universe are ‘clumpy’ rather than smooth as originally thought.

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Just in time for the release of the movie "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens," NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is releasing a new image of what looks like a cosmic, double-bladed lightsaber.

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Recent studies conclude that people with epilepsy have a 27-fold greater risk of sudden death than people without the disorder. However, many of these deaths could be prevented through greater identification of epilepsy as a cause of death, and in educating the public more effectively about the disease’s life-threatening dangers, according to a new opinion article from epilepsy researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center

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A team of researchers from Stony Brook University, led by Yusuf Hannun, MD, have found quantitative evidence proving that extrinsic risk factors, such as environmental exposures and behaviors weigh heavily on the development of a vast majority (approximately 70 to 90 percent) of cancers.

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A study published today finds a surprising and very recent shift away from the steady relationship among species that prevailed for more than 300 million years. The study, published in the journal Nature, offers the first long-term view of how species associated with each other for half of the existence of multicellular life on Earth.

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The music collection of novelist Jane Austen and her family is being made freely available to access online as part of a University of Southampton digital library project.

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Plants are able to predict when infections are more likely to occur and regulate their immune response accordingly, new research has found. Led by the University of Warwick, the researchers discovered that a plants’ molecular clock is connected to their immune system to increase levels of resistance to infection at dawn – the time at which fungal infections appear most likely to occur, with plants unable to maintain the highest level of resistance at all times of day.

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Astronomers using ALMA have found the clearest evidence yet that giant planets have recently formed around four young stars.

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The ability of baby fish to find a home, or other safe haven, to grow into adulthood will be severely impacted under predicted ocean acidification, University of Adelaide research has found.

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Su-Chun Zhang, a pioneer in developing neurons from stem cells at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has created a specialized nerve cell that makes serotonin, a signaling chemical with a broad role in the brain.

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The view that androgynous individuals are pathologically deviant has caused scholars to reject the possibility that the mythological figure Hermaphroditus could be perceived as erotically attractive. But the Romans had a different view of sexuality and a new doctoral thesis from the University of Gothenburg shows that Hermaphroditus was an object of in particular men's desire.

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Mountain pine beetle populations have exploded over the past decade, and these insects have infected and killed thousands of acres of western pine forests. Researchers predicted that as trees died, streamflow would increase, but a new study disproved this hypothesis.

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Scientists are learning more about how the upper atmosphere and ionosphere affect space satellites as well as communications and navigation here on Earth, thanks to new data from a U.S. Air Force satellite that recently completed a more than seven-year mission.

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Patients trained to administer their own intravenous antibiotics at home (self-administered outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy or S-OPAT), achieved similar or better outcomes compared to patients who received healthcare-delivered OPAT (H-OPAT) with assistance from a home-care nurse or skilled nursing facility, according to a paper published this week in PLOS Medicine.

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In April 2015, after traveling for about half the age of the universe, a flood of powerful gamma rays from a distant galaxy slammed into Earth's atmosphere. That torrent generated a cascade of light - a shower that fell onto the waiting mirrors of the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) in Arizona. The resulting data have given astronomers a unique look into that faraway galaxy and the black hole engine at its heart.

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Researchers are proposing a new "hydricity" concept aimed at creating a sustainable economy by not only generating electricity with solar energy but also producing and storing hydrogen from superheated water for round-the-clock power production.

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Dogs and Cats are increasingly seen as being a crucial member of a traditional family, but aside from the companionship and love you receive from your pet… can they also make you appear sexier?

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An analysis of fossil corals and mollusk shells from the Pacific Ocean reveals there is no link between the strength of seasonal differences and El Niño, a complex but irregular climate pattern with large impacts on weather, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, and air quality worldwide.

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State-of-the-art atomic force microscopes (AFMs) are designed to capture images of structures as small as a fraction of a nanometer -- a million times smaller than the width of a human hair. In recent years, AFMs have produced desktop-worthy close-ups of atom-sized structures, from single strands of DNA to individual hydrogen bonds between molecules.

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Wyss Institute's human gut-on-a-chip technology used to co-culture gut microbiome and human intestinal cells could lead to new therapies for inflammatory bowel diseases.

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Insomniacs take heart: Humans get by on significantly less sleep than our closest animal relatives. The secret, according to a new study, is that our sleep is more efficient.