Curated News: Staff Picks

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The connection between a family’s income and childhood health has been well-established, with lower income linked to poorer health and a greater likelihood of more chronic conditions. Now a new study by UCLA researchers shows that the size of the paycheck is not all that matters when it comes to children’s health risks. So does the amount that a family has tucked away in savings.

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Feeding premature babies mostly breast milk during the first month of life appears to spur more robust brain growth. Preemies whose daily diets were at least 50 percent breast milk had more brain tissue and cortical-surface area by their due dates than premature babies who consumed significantly less breast milk.

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A drop in the amount of oxygen dissolved in the oceans due to climate change is already discernible in some parts of the world and should be evident across large parts of the ocean between 2030 and 2040, according to a new study.

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In a paper to be published today in the journal Science Advances, lead author Karen Meech of the University of Hawai`i's Institute for Astronomy and her colleagues conclude that C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) formed in the inner Solar System at the same time as the Earth itself, but was ejected at a very early stage.

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High risk, potentially cancer causing human papillomavirus infections are common among women in Papua New Guinea. But self sampling with vaginal swabs may provide materials that screen as accurately as the more labor-intensive approach using cervical samples obtained by clinicians. This finding is critical to developing same day screening and treatment, which is key to ensuring that women with precancerous lesions are treated in this largely unconnected (electronically) country, and in others like it. The research appeared online April 13, 2016 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, which is published by the American Society for Microbiology.

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Generally seen as antithetical to one another, evolution and religion can hardly fit in a scientific discourse simultaneously. However, biologist Dr Aldemaro Romero Jr., Baruch College, USA, devotes his latest research article, now published in the open access Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), to observing the influences a few major religions have had on evolutionists and their scientific thinking over the centuries.

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Nearly 10 billion years ago in a galaxy known as PKS B1424-418, a dramatic explosion occurred. Light from this blast began arriving at Earth in 2012. Now, an international team of astronomers, led by Prof. Matthias Kadler, professor for astrophysics at the university of Würzburg, and including other scientists from the new research cluster for astronomy and astroparticle physics at the universities of Würzburg and Erlangen-Nürnberg, have shown that a record-breaking neutrino seen around the same time likely was born in the same event. The results are published in Nature Physics.

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Research by Nancy Steinhardt, chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, shows that mosques, and ultimately Islam, have survived in China because the Chinese architectural system is adaptable.

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Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have reprogrammed mature blood cells from mice into blood-forming hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), using a cocktail of eight genetic switches called transcription factors. The reprogrammed cells, which the researchers have dubbed induced HSCs (iHSCs), have the functional hallmarks of HSCs, are able to self-renew like HSCs, and can give rise to all of the cellular components of the blood like HSCs.

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Entomologists of the universities of Jena and Kiel shed light on bizarre mating mechanisms of native twisted-winged parasites.

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The scientific breakthrough, carried out by researchers at UGR and the Spanish National Research Council, is of great significance to the field of biological anthropology. It also has further implications for paleoanthropology, paleodemographics, forensic science and orthodontics, among other disciplines.

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Researchers writing in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society recently learned that older women who are frail, and who have six or more chronic health conditions, are twice as likely to have a lower quality of life compared to women with less than three risk factors.

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The brain tissue of persons with alcohol dependence shows a variety of changes compared to non-alcoholic control persons. All alcoholics' brains share some characteristics, but some are exclusive to the brain tissue of anxiety-prone type 1 alcoholics or impulsive type 2 alcoholics, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland.

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How birds' beaks evolved characteristic shapes to eat different food is a classic example of evolution by natural selection.

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Exposure to pathogens early in life is beneficial to the education and development of the human immune system.

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A Stanford-led national collaboration to procure and analyze human pancreatic tissue from deceased donors illustrates how the organ’s function changes as we age, and could point the way toward new diabetes treatments.

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Brain sleep appeared early in vertebrate evolution.

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The tiny crystals probably formed in huge impact craters not long after Earth formed, some 4 billion years ago

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Recently declassified documents on the USS Independence freely available online in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology.

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he pre-Columbian settlements in Amazonia were not limited to the vicinities of rivers and lakes. One example of this can be found in the Santarém region in Brazilian Amazonia, where most archaeological sites are situated in an upland area and are the result of an expansion of settlements in the last few centuries before the arrival of Europeans. This is concluded by a research team consisting of archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg and Brazilian colleagues.

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Here's another reason to start saving for that beach house: New research suggests that residents with a view of the water are less stressed.

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New research challenges the belief that touchscreens are worse input devices because they lack physical buttons. The reason is that key press timing in touchscreen input is unpredictable. When timing is made more predictable, performance improves.

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Surface meltwater draining through and underneath Greenland's tidewater glaciers is accelerating their loss of ice mass, according to a Dartmouth study that sheds light on the relationship between meltwater and subglacial discharge.

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Project allows people to get move with a computer-controlled dancer, which “watches” the person and improvises its own moves based on prior experiences. When the human responds, the computerized figure reacts again, creating an impromptu dance couple based on artificial intelligence.

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A new study led by researchers at the University of Minnesota and Nantes University Hospital in France shows that the bacteria in people’s gut may predict their risk of life-threatening blood infections following high-dose chemotherapy.

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Are humans unique and alone in the vast universe? This question-- summed up in the famous Drake equation--has for a half-century been one of the most intractable and uncertain in science. But a new paper shows that the recent discoveries of exoplanets combined with a broader approach to the question makes it possible to assign a new empirically valid probability to whether any other advanced technological civilizations have ever existed.

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Society believes that those on social assistance - or welfare - should not be paying a premium to purchase ethical goods instead of cheaper alternatives, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business.

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Whilst countries in the tropics and subtropics exhibit diverse patterns of seasonal flu activity, they can be grouped into eight geographical zones to optimise vaccine formulation and delivery timing, according to a study published April 27, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Siddhivinayak Hirve from the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues.

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Micrometric and sub-micrometric contaminant particles — what most of us call “dust” — can cause big problems for art conservators, the electronics industry, aerospace engineers, and others. These nanoparticles can prevent a cellphone from working or rob the vitality of a painting’s colors.

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who studies the most common genetic intellectual disability has used an experimental drug to reverse — in mice — damage from the mutation that causes the syndrome. The condition, called fragile X, has devastating effects on intellectual abilities.

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The pavement sealcoat products used widely around the nation on thousands of asphalt driveways and parking lots are significantly more toxic and mutagenic than previously suspected, according to a new paper published this week by researchers from Oregon State University.

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Science can flourish when experts disagree, but in the governmental realm uncertainty can lead to inadequate policy and preparedness. When it comes to climate change, it can be OK for computational models to differ on what future sea levels will be. The same flexibility does not exist for determining the height of a seawall needed to protect people from devastating floods.

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Millions of native orchids are flourishing on the site of a former iron mine in New York's Adirondacks, suggesting that former industrial sites – typically regarded as blighted landscapes — have untapped value in ecological restoration efforts.

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Professor Elliott founder Queen’s University Belfast's Institute for Global Food Security, is co-author of a paper published in The Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Analyst, outlining a strategy to close the gaps in current processes for detecting and measuring allergens – substances in foods that can trigger an allergic reaction. The publication comes during the UK’s Allergy Awareness Week

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Neighborhoods are becoming less diverse and more segregated by income — but only among families with children, a new study has found.

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Honey bee colonies in the United States are in decline, due in part to the ill effects of voracious mites, fungal gut parasites and a wide variety of debilitating viruses. Researchers from the University of Maryland and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently completed the first comprehensive, multi-year study of honey bee parasites and disease as part of the National Honey Bee Disease Survey. The findings reveal some alarming patterns, but provide at least a few pieces of good news as well.

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Scientists have discovered Sarmientosaurus musacchioi, a new species of titanosaurian dinosaur, based on an complete skull and partial neck fossil unearthed in Patagonia, Argentina, according to a study published April 26, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rubén Martínez from the Laboratorio de Paleovertebrados of the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia San Juan Bosco (UNPSJB), Argentina, and colleagues.

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Researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna for the first time collected quantified data on hybrid forms of two species of the northern house mosquito in eastern Austria. The reproductive hybrid feeds – in contrast to the two known species of house mosquito – on the blood of both birds and humans. Hybrid mosquitoes could therefore serve as a vector for the transmission of avian diseases to people. Identification of the three forms is only possible through molecular biology. Morphologically they are indistinct. The study was published in the journal

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Analysis of exploding star's light curve and color spectrum reveal spectacular demise of one of the closest supernova to Earth in recent years; its parent star was so big it's radius was 200 times larger than our sun.

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Multiple dispersals of penguins reached Australia after the continent split from Antarctica, including 'giant penguins' that may have lived there after they went extinct elsewhere, according to a study published April 26, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Travis Park from Monash University, Australia, and colleagues.

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One of the startling discoveries about life on Earth in the past 25 years is that it can − and does − flourish beneath the ocean floor, in the planet’s dark, dense, rocky crust.

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Chewbacca, the fictional 'Star Wars' character, has given his name to a new species of flightless beetle, discovered in New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Although Trigonopterus chewbacca was only one of the four black new weevil beetles found during the expedition, it stood out with its curious scales, which made the authors think of Han Solo's loyal companion.

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According to new studies, wide hips do not reduce locomotor efficiency.

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A new study by researchers at FAU and Providence College has found that vivid language intended to assure potential whistleblowers they will be protected from retaliation is instead likely to evoke fear and make them less likely to report misconduct.

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Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have discovered a tiny moon orbiting the dwarf planet Makemake. The moon is estimated to be 100 miles wide and is 13,000 miles away from Makemake.

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New study with 'shark-eye' camera reveals that biofluorescent catsharks increase light contrast underwater; might be used for communicating with each other.

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In 1442, 50 years before Columbus “sailed the ocean blue,” Shinto priests in Japan began keeping records of the annual freeze dates of a nearby lake. Along a Finnish river, starting in 1693, local merchants recorded the date the ice broke up each spring. These observations are among the oldest inland water ice records in human history, and now they are contributing to modern understanding of climate change.

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The alarming increase in U.S. childhood obesity rates that began nearly 30 years ago continues unabated, with the biggest increases in severe obesity, according to a study led by a Duke Clinical Research Institute scientist.

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UCLA biologists report in a new study that a species of foxes living on six of California’s Channel Islands have a surprising absence of genetic variation. The research, published today in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, provides a complete genome sequence for a small population of the endangered animals, which have been confined to the islands for thousands of years.

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Open the box of that new smartphone. Oops, it feels differently from expectations based on what you'd seen. Embrace it or be disappointed? Your reaction is likely tied to your perception of the brand, says Aparna Sundar of the University of Oregon.