"That blasted siren. I can`t focus." That reaction to undesired distraction may signal a person`s low working-memory capacity, according to a new study. Based on a study of 84 students divided into four separate experiments, University of Oregon researchers found that students with high memory storage capacity were clearly better able to ignore distractions and stay focused on their assi...

Scientists have debated how many mass extinction events in Earth`s history were triggered by a space body crashing into the planet`s surface. Most agree that an asteroid collision 65 million years ago brought an end to the age of dinosaurs, but there is uncertainty about how many other extinctions might have resulted from asteroid or comet collisions with Earth. In fact, astronomers know the inner...

Poor parenting is not the reason for an increase in problem behaviour amongst teenagers, according to research led by Oxford University. A team led by Professor Frances Gardner from the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford found no evidence of a general decline in parenting. Their findings show that differences in parenting according to family structure and incom...

Senior Scientist Christian Bahl and Development Engineer Dan Eriksen from Risø DTU have invented a three-way valve that controls the flow through a magnetic material which is attracted by an external magnet when the liquid reaches a certain temperature. The design is promising and the group is now looking for a partner in the industry who would like to join them in this work. To be – ...

New research shows that training your brain may be just as effective as training your muscles in preventing ACL knee injuries, and suggests a shift from performance-based to prevention-based athletic training programs. The ACL, or anterior cruciate ligament, is one of the four major ligaments of the knee, and ACL injuries pose a rising public health problem as well as an economic strain on the med...

Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell. Their results appear in the July issue of the journal Human Mutation. This discovery may undercut the rationale behind numerous large-scale genetic studies conducted over the last 15 years...

Long-term declines of elephants, giraffe, impala and other animals in Kenya are occurring at the same rates within the country`s national parks as outside of these protected areas, according to a new study. "This is the first time we`ve taken a good look at a national park system in one country, relative to all of the wildlife populations across the whole country," said David Western, an...

A new study suggests that lipid-adjusted concentrations of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and furans and organochlorine pesticides in women’s blood serum and milk do not decrease during lactation as previously thought. This new insight should improve researchers’ ability to assess infant exposures to environmental chemicals ...

Biologically speaking, many animals besides dogs bark, according to Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but the evolutionary biologist also says domestic dogs vocalize in this way much more than birds, deer, monkeys and other wild animals that use barks. The reason is related to dogs’ 10,000-year history of hanging around human food refuse dumps, she suggests. In her rec...

The interaction represented produced the famous explanation of the structure of DNA, but the model pictured is a stiff snapshot of idealized DNA. As researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston note in a report that appears online in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, DNA is not a stiff or static. It is dynamic with high energy. It exists naturally in a slightly under...