Culture
A total of 174 chicken breeds are described in a publicly accessible database which scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Neustadt-Mariensee have built up in recent years with numerous international partners. This database, the Synbreed Chicken Diversity Panel (SCDP), includes information about a large proportion of the available chicken species and their diversity. In the accompanying scientific study, the researchers genotyped 3,235 animals for nearly 600,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).
All living things - from the simplest animal and plant organisms to the human body - live closely together with an enormous abundance of microbial symbionts, which colonise the insides and outsides of their tissues. The functional collaboration of host and microorganisms, which scientists refer to as a metaorganism, has only recently come into the focus of life science research. Today we know that we can only understand many of life's processes in connection with the interactions between organism and symbionts.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Despite improvements in median and short-term survival rates for patients with glioblastoma, the most common brain tumor in adults, the percentage of patients achieving five-year survival remains low, according to new Mayo Clinic research.
A study to be published next month in Mayo Clinic Proceedings finds that little has changed in terms of five-year survival -- only 5.5% of patients live for five years after diagnosis -- and calls for more aggressive treatments to be considered for all glioblastoma patients.
When it comes to keeping track of prescribed medications between clinic visits, many patients rely on printed medication lists automatically generated from electronic health records (EHRs).
An examination of the EHRs of a cohort of ophthalmology patients revealed that one-third had at least one discrepancy between the medications discussed in the clinician's notes and those on the medication list.
These findings raise concerns about patient safety and continuity of care.
New UC Riverside-led research settles a longstanding debate about whether the most ancient animal communities were deliberately mobile. It turns out they were, because they were hungry.
"This is the first time in the fossil record we see an animal moving to get food," said study lead Scott Evans, a UCR paleontology doctoral candidate.
Older smartphone users tend to rely more on their phones' auto lock feature compared to younger users, a new UBC study has found. They also prefer using PINs over fingerprints to unlock their phones.
Researchers also found that older users are more likely to unlock their phones when they're stationary, such as when working at a desk or sitting at home.
The study is the first to explore the link between age and smartphone use, says Konstantin Beznosov, an electrical and computer engineering professor at UBC who supervised the research.
People who are obese from childhood through to middle age are more than twice as likely to have difficulty with daily tasks such as lifting, climbing stairs and carrying shopping by the time they are 50, a new UCL study has found.
The study, published today in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found that those who became obese in early life had more than double the risk of difficulties with such tasks than those who were never obese.
A genomic strategy implemented by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine can efficiently increase the molecular diagnostic rate of undiagnosed diseases. The researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine that reanalysis of preexisting molecular data, taking into consideration new disease-causing genes and other genetic knowledge that have been identified since the original analysis, resulted in an increase in the diagnostic yield of cases, nearly doubling it in one of the reanalysis cohorts.
Five- and six-year-old boys and girls who are inattentive in kindergarten are more likely to report lower incomes than other children when they reach 33 to 35 years of age, a new Université de Montréal study has found.
On the other hand, the most "pro-social" boys (those who help others, are considerate and willing to participate in educational projects) are overwhelmingly headed for careers that pay more than the average, the researchers discovered.
A new study from UC San Francisco suggests that a protein found in the common bullfrog may one day be used to detect and neutralize a poisonous compound produced by red tides and other harmful algal blooms. The discovery comes as these waterborne toxic events are becoming increasingly common, a consequence of climate change making the world's oceans more hospitable to the microbes responsible for these formerly infrequent flare-ups.
If the fatty fish we eat were free of environmental pollutants, it would reduce our risk of developing type 2 diabetes. However, the pollutants in the fish have the opposite effect and appears to eliminate the protective effect from fatty fish intake. This has been shown by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, using innovative methods that could be used to address several questions about food and health in future studies.
Considering the ever-growing percentage of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, interest in medical use of plasma is increasing. In collaboration with colleagues from Kiel, researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) investigated if bacteria may become impervious to plasmas, too. They identified 87 genes of the bacterium Escherichia coli, which potentially protect against effective components of plasma. "These genes provide insights into the antibacterial mechanisms of plasmas," says Marco Krewing.
Non-precious metal nanoparticles could one day replace expensive catalysts for hydrogen production. However, it is often difficult to determine what reaction rates they can achieve, especially when it comes to oxide particles. This is because the particles must be attached to the electrode using a binder and conductive additives, which distort the results. With the aid of electrochemical analyses of individual particles, researchers have now succeeded in determining the activity and substance conversion of nanocatalysts made from cobalt iron oxide - without any binders.
Dog attacks have been on the rise and it may the owners who need to go back to school. A new study published in Risk Analysis: An International Journal investigated what leads dog owners to train their pets using positive reinforcement methods.
Positive reinforcement training methods are considered to be the most effective and humane approach to training dogs but many owners fail to effectively implement the technique.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Biochar may not be the miracle soil additive that many farmers and researchers hoped it to be, according to a new University of Illinois study. Biochar may boost the agricultural yield of some soils - especially poor quality ones - but there is no consensus on its effectiveness. Researchers tested different soils' responses to multiple biochar types and were unable to verify their ability to increase plant growth. However, the study did show biochar's ability to affect soil greenhouse gas emissions.