News Articles

Archaeologists at the University of York, leading a large international team, have revealed surprising new insights into why pottery production increased significantly at the end of the last Ice Age - with culture playing a bigger role than expected.
Investigating the use and expansion of hunter-gatherer pottery in Japan, home to some of the earliest pottery in the world, researchers analysed 143 ceramic vessels from Torihama, an ancient site in western Japan.
Pottery is thought to have originated in Japan around 16,000 years ago, but the numbers produced vastly increased 11,500 years ago, coinciding with a shift to a warmer climate. As resurgence in forests took place, an increase in vegetation and animals led to new food sources becoming available.

Heatwaves from Europe to China are likely to be more intense and result in maximum temperatures that are 3°C to 5°C warmer than previously estimated by the middle of the century - all because of the way plants on the ground respond to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
This projected temperature increase found by Australian researchers and published in Nature Scientific Reports is more than half the change forecast by the IPCC under the business-as-usual model. The biggest temperature changes were projected to occur over needleleaf forests, tundra and agricultural land used to grow crops.

Groundbreaking research at Griffith University is leading the way in clean energy, with the use of carbon as a way to deliver energy using hydrogen.
Professor Xiangdong Yao and his team from Griffith's Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre have successfully managed to use the element to produce hydrogen from water as a replacement for the much more costly platinum.
"Hydrogen production through an electrochemical process is at the heart of key renewable energy technologies including water splitting and hydrogen fuel cells," says Professor Yao.
"Despite tremendous efforts, exploring cheap, efficient and durable electrocatalysts for hydrogen evolution still remains a great challenge.

A new study has shown that people who reverse their Type 2 diabetes and then keep their weight down remain free of it - even if they have had it for up to 10 years. The study in Diabetes Care is part of a growing body of evidence showing that people with Type 2 diabetes who successfully lose weight can reverse their condition because fat is removed from their pancreas, returning insulin production to normal.

PISCATAWAY, NJ - Many people believe a glass of wine with dinner will help them live longer and healthier--but the scientific evidence is shaky at best, according to a new research analysis.
The findings, published in the March 2016 issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, may sound surprising: Countless news stories have reported on research tying moderate drinking to a range of health benefits--including a lower heart disease risk and a longer life.
But the new analysis took a deeper look at those studies, 87 in all. And it found that many were flawed, with designs suggesting benefits where there were likely none.

Researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have discovered that the benefits of stimulating the brain with direct current come from its effects on astrocytes -- not neurons -- in the mouse brain. Published in Nature Communications, the work shows that applying direct current to the head releases synchronized waves of calcium from astrocytes that can reduce depressive symptoms and lead to a general increase in neural plasticity -- the ability of neuronal connections to change when we try to learn or form memories.

Researchers have discovered a 'bizarre' microorganism which plays a key role in the food web of Earth's oceans.
Researchers from Spain's Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), alongside colleagues at the University of Bristol in the UK, discovered that symbiotic phytoplankton capable of fertilising the ocean with nitrogen 'fertilizer' evolved back in the Cretaceous at a time when the oceans were nutrient deprived.
This study, which used data from the Tara Oceans circumnavigation expedition, is published in Nature Communications today [22 March].

They look like small, translucent gems but these tiny 'gel' slivers hold the world of a patient's tumour in microcosm ready for trials of anti-cancer drugs to find the best match between treatment and tumour.
The 'gel' is a new 3D printable material developed by QUT researchers that opens the way to rapid, personalised cancer treatment by enabling multiple, simultaneous tests to find the correct therapy to target a particular tumour.
Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation said the new material was a gelatine-based hydrogel that mimicked human tissue.

Athens, Ga. - An overwhelming number of researchers still struggle within the black hole of the effectiveness and safety of stem cell therapy for neurological diseases. While the complexity of understanding how neurons grow, connect and function has long been studied, it remains a mystery, one that graduate student Forrest Goodfellow in the University of Georgia Regenerative Bioscience Center is helping unravel.
Goodfellow, a graduate student in the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center, has developed a unique approach of marrying stem cell biology and 3-D imaging to track and label neural stem cells. His findings were published in the journal Advanced Functional Material.

A new analysis based on two long-term aging studies--one of Roman Catholic nuns, the other of Japanese American men--provides what may be the most compelling evidence yet that dementia commonly results from a blend of brain ailments, rather than from a single condition. This is often the case even when an Alzheimer's diagnosis has been given, say the researchers.
A team led by Dr. Lon White, with the University of Hawaii and the Veterans Affairs-affiliated Pacific Health Research and Education Institute, analyzed data on more than 1,100 people who had taken part in the Nun Study or the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study. Both studies followed hundreds of aging adults and included brain autopsies upon their death.

High-risk prescribing and preventable drug-related complications in primary care are major concerns for health care systems internationally, responsible for up to 4 per cent of emergency hospital admissions.
Now a major study of drug prescribing has shown that intervening in primary care health practices can significantly reduce rates of high-risk prescribing of drugs.
The results of the study have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The study, led by NHS Tayside and the University of Dundee, has also shown that the change in prescribing patterns can lead to significant reductions in related emergency admissions to hospital, although the researchers say this finding requires further examination.

Biogas is an important energy source that plays a central role in the energy revolution. Unlike wind or solar energy, biogas can be produced around the clock. Could it soon perhaps even be produced to meet demand? A team of international scientists, including microbiologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), scientists from Aarhus University and process engineers from the Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum (DBFZ), have been studying the feasibility of this kind of flexible biogas production. Among their findings, for example, is the discovery that biogas production can be controlled by altering the frequency at which the reactors are fed.