News Articles

Linguists have conducted what they call an evolutionary analysis to the relationship between North American and Central Siberian languages and say the results indicate that people moved out from the Bering Land Bridge, with some migrating back to central Asia and others into North America.

A 70 million year old fossil found in the Late Cretaceous sediments of Alaska reveals a new small tyrannosaur named Nanuqsaurus hoglundi.  

The team of Francesca Ferlaino, Institute for Experimental Physics of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, has experimentally shown chaotic behavior of particles in a quantum gas. "For the first time we have been able to observe quantum chaos in the scattering behavior of ultracold atoms," says an excited Ferlaino. The physicists used random matrix theory to confirm their results, thus asserting the universal character of this statistical theory. Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner formulated random matrix theory to describe complex systems in the 1950s. Although interactions between neutrons with atomic nuclei were not well-known then, Wigner was able to reliably predict properties of complex spectra by using random matrices.

Can you catch a mood from someone online? Most people would answer 'yes', because lots of comments on the Internet enrage them.
A political science paper says they can confirm it.

After a 30-year search, scientists have uncovered how an enzyme critical to plants' rapid immune response against microbes is activated.
"The insights will open up new ways to improve disease resistance and stress tolerance in plants," says Professor Cyril Zipfel of The Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich.
The enzyme, the NAPDH oxidase RBOHD, triggers a rapid generation of signalling molecules derived from oxygen that are believed to be detrimental to microbial growth. The newly-discovered way this enzyme is activated, by a protein (called BIK1) fills a gap in how plants perceive a threat and how signals are activated to trigger an immune response.

Washington, DC— John F. Strang, PsyD, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children's National Health System, and colleagues, found that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) were more likely to exhibit gender variance, the wish to be the other gender, than children with no neurodevelopmental disorder, or a medical neurodevelopmental disorder such as epilepsy or neurofibromatosis.

Will one-atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide, a compound that occurs naturally in rocks, prove to be better than graphene for electronic applications? There are many signs that might prove to be the case. But physicists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw have shown that the nature of the phenomena occurring in layered materials are still ill-understood and require further research.

NEW ORLEANS─The number of total knee replacement (TKR) procedures continues to climb, as does the number of revision total knee replacement (RTKR) surgeries. In the study, "The Epidemiology of Revision Total Knee Arthroplasty in the United States," presented today at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), researchers used the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) to evaluate the cause of knee failure for 301,718 revision RTKR surgeries performed between 2005 and 2010.

Poisoning of dingoes - wild dogs - has a deleterious effect on small native mammals such as marsupial mice, bandicoots and native rodents, according to a new paper which found that loss of dingoes after baiting is associated with greater activity by foxes, which prey on small marsupials and native rodents.
As well, the number of kangaroos and wallabies increases when dingoes, the top predators in the Australian bush, disappear. Grazing by these herbivores reduces the density of the vegetation in which the small ground-dwelling mammals live.

The instant gratification and the pleasure derived from consuming excessive chocolate and deep-fried foods can lead way to a double-edged sword of negative consequences ranging from weight gain to feelings of low self-esteem. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, combating this type of self-destructive behavior may be achieved simply by making a person feel sad.
"We found that when people who are sad are exposed to pictures of indulgent food or indulgent words, their sadness highlights the negative consequences of indulging and encourages them to indulge less," write authors Anthony Salerno, Juliano Laran (both University of Miami), and Chris Janiszewski (University of Florida).

Children who use their hands to gesture during a math lesson gain a deep understanding of the problems they are taught, according to new research from University of Chicago's Department of Psychology.
Previous research has found that gestures can help children learn. This study in particular was designed to answer whether abstract gesture can support generalization beyond a particular problem and whether abstract gesture is a more effective teaching tool than concrete action.
"We found that acting gave children a relatively shallow understanding of a novel math concept, whereas gesturing led to deeper and more flexible learning," explained the study's lead author, Miriam A. Novack, a PhD student in psychology.

A new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that a diet high in animal protein - meat - may helped elderly individuals function at higher levels physically.