Research Behind the News: Frail Pharoah Tut

The News: A frail King Tut died from malaria, broken leg. Egypt's most famous pharaoh, King Tutankhamun, was a frail boy who suffered from a cleft palate and club foot. He died of complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria and his parents were most likely brother and sister. (Read more in the Feb 16th Guardian Online)

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Vol. 303 No. 7, February 17, 2010, p. 638-47.

Research News: Faster internet possibilities, among other things

The News: A new, more efficient low-cost microring resonator for high speed telecommunications systems has been developed and tested by Professor Roberto Morandotti's INRS team in collaboration with Canadian, American, and Australian researchers. This technological advance capitalizes on the benefits of optical fibers to transmit large quantities of data at ultra-fast speeds. Read more in ScienceDaily.

The Research:
Read the research behind this story "CMOS-compatible integrated optical hyper-parametric oscillator" by L. Razzari, D. Duchesne, M. Ferrera, R. Morandotti, S. Chu, B. E. Little & D. J. Moss in Nature Photonics 4, 41 - 45 (2009).

Research News: Neural basis of spirituality

The News: New research provides fascinating insight into brain changes that might underlie alterations in spiritual and religious attitudes. More in ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2010)

The Research:
Read the research behind this story "The Spiritual Brain: Selective Cortical Lesions Modulate Human Self-Transcendence", by Cosimo Urgesi, Salvatore M. Aglioti, Miran Skrap and Franco Fabbro in Neuron, Volume 65, Issue 3, 11 February 2010, Pages 309-319.

Is There an Ecological Unconscious?

The News: A branch of psychology says that there is-- and that ignoring it puts not just the planet but also our minds at risk... (read more in the New York Times Magazine, from 31 Jan 10)


The Research:
Read some of the research behind this story in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 28, Issue 2, June 2008, Pages 192-199

Research News: Less Salt Could Mean Fewer Heart Attacks, Strokes and Deaths

The News:
"Even Small Dietary Reductions in Salt Could Mean Fewer Heart Attacks, Strokes and Deaths" Reducing salt in the American diet by as little as one-half teaspoon (or three grams) per day could prevent nearly 100,000 heart attacks and 92,000 deaths each year, according to a new study. Such benefits are on par with the benefits from reductions in smoking and could save the United States about $24 billion in healthcare costs, the researchers add. ... more in Science Daily ... more at NPR


The Research:
Read the research behind this story in New England Journal of Medicine, Projected Effect of Dietary Salt Reductions on Future Cardiovascular Disease, Bibbins-Domingo K, et al., Jan. 20, 2010.

Research News: How Plants 'Feel' the Temperature Rise

The News: Plants are incredibly temperature sensitive and can perceive changes of as little as one degree Celsius. Now, a report in the January 8th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows how they not only 'feel' the temperature rise, but also coordinate an appropriate response -- activating hundreds of genes and deactivating others; it turns out it's all about the way that their DNA is packaged. Read more in Science Daily.

The Research: Read the research behind this story in Cell, January 8, 2010.

Research News: Out for an early stroll

The News:
Trackways preserved in 395-million-year-old rocks push back evidence for tetrapods by at least 18 million years, researchers say. The center diagram depicts individual footprints and the schematic at right shows a walking style that may have produced this pattern. Read more in Science News.

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in Nature Jan. 7, 2010.

Research News: Encounters with Animal Minds

The News: Smuts was following a small group of Gombe baboons on the eastern edge of Kenya. She'd been with them seven days a week for weeks and weeks, joining them before dawn, spending 10 hours a day just following, watching and taking notes. One day, she says, the whole noisy group was ambling back to its "sleeping trees" (baboons sleep off the ground, up on the limbs of trees or cliffs to keep away from predators) along the shore of a stream. "I followed them walking along this stream many, many times before and many times after," she says, "but this time was different." More of the NPR story, by Robert Krulwich.


The Research:
Read the article and more encounters from an animal researcher behind this story in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 8, Numbers 5-7, 2001 , pp. 293-309(17).

Research News: One Dose May Be Enough

The News: Study shows one dose of H1N1 vaccine may be enough for children...
Australian researchers find that more than 90% of those in study had effective immunity after a single dose, but the 15-microgram dose of antigen is twice that used in the United States. Australian researchers have shown that a single dose of vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza can provide effective immunity against the swine flu virus in infants and children, a finding that, if corroborated, could help damp the spread of the virus by reducing the logistical complications associated with the currently recommended regimen of two doses. (Read more)


The Research:
Read the research behind this story in JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Return of Research Behind the News!

The News: Biologists studying the habits of veined octopuses in the waters of Indonesia have noticed that the animal has a most unusual hobby: collecting discarded coconut shells and using them for shelter. Beyond the fact that it’s hilarious to watch the octopuses slithering across the ocean floor dragging halved coconut shells and even assembling two of them to make a creative hiding spot..., it also could be the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal... (read more)


The Research:
Read the research behind this story in Current Biology