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(ST. LOUIS): Humans are frequently blamed for deforestation and the destruction of environments, yet there are also examples of peoples and cultures around the world that have learned to manage and conserve the precious resources around them. The Yanesha of the upper Peruvian Amazon and the Tibetans of the Himalayas are two groups of indigenous peoples carrying on traditional ways of life, even in the face of rapid environmental changes. Over the last 40 years, Dr. Jan Salick, senior curator and ethnobotanist with the William L.

An irregular heartbeat — atrial fibrillation — is a strong predictor of cognitive decline and the loss of independence in daily activities in older people at risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Hispanics are enrolling in the higher education system at a greater rate than ever, yet they are less likely than their non-Hispanic peers to enter college or earn degrees, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. A new study by a University of Missouri researcher found that Mexican-American college students' family and peer attachments are associated with prosocial and physically aggressive behaviors that can affect their success in college.

A nationwide study of racioethnic representation between retail employees and their customers finds that mirroring a customer base improves consumer satisfaction and employee productivity – and contributes to nearly $100,000 in annual gains or losses per store.

New research has shown that visual alerting methods are still considered to be the most trustworthy, as compared to auditory or tactile alerts. This is shown by research conducted by a team of scientists at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, USA.

The research Alert Characteristics and Identification of Avatars on a Virtual Battlefield by James P. Bliss, Rachel Liebman and J. Christopher Brill is published in the current issue (6:2) of the journal Intelligent Decision Technologies.

Why is it that Mycobacterium tuberculosis can cause tuberculosis with as little as 10 cells, whereas Vibrio cholerae requires the host to ingest up to tens of millions of cells to cause cholera? This is the question that two research teams, from the Pasteur Institute, in France, and the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia and the University of Lisbon, in Portugal, answer in the latest issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens.

A collaboration between scientists in Trinity College Dublin and the United Kingdom has identified new processes that lead to the development of a novel cell implicated in allergies. The discovery has the potential for new strategies to treat asthma and other allergic diseases.The research findings have just been published in the leading international journal Nature Immunology.

PHILADELPHIA (February 24, 2012)— A new report from researchers at the Drexel University School of Public Health identifies patterns in the misuse of illicit drugs among young adults who also misuse prescription drugs. The report, "Misuse of Prescription and Illicit Drugs among High-Risk Adults" in Los Angeles and New York, was recently published in the first issue of the Journal of Public Health Research.

Researchers of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland have shown that surface tension on a solid material is unconnected to the energy required to create a new surface. Consequently, surface tension on a solid does not exist in its conventional meaning.

An emerging class of long-lasting flu vaccines could do more than just save people the trouble of an annual flu shot.

Princeton University-based researchers have found that the "universal" vaccine could for the first time allow for the effective, wide-scale prevention of flu by limiting the influenza virus' ability to spread and mutate. Universal, or cross-protective, vaccines — so named for their effectiveness against several flu strains — are being developed in various labs worldwide and some are already in clinical trials.

Researchers at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP), the Museu de la Conca Dellà (MCD) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have published this week in the online edition of the journal Cretaceous Research the discovery and description of a turtle from the end of the age of dinosaurs.

Mathematically, is it possible to continuously deform a rough sphere into a perfect sphere? Under what situations can we solve the differential equations?

Professor Xu Xingwang of the Department of Mathematics at National University of Singapore (NUS), along with Dr Chen Xuezhang from Nanjing University of China, has established a new method to tackle this long-standing problem.

What it used to be

This study is part of broader research that these scientists are carrying out on the imbalance of the sexes in China and its potential consequences. This phenomenon started to be noticed during the nineteen eighties and can currently be seen in the birth rate of approximately 120 boys for every 100 girls born in the People's Republic of China. The objective of this research is precisely to analyze the effects that this disproportion can have on this society and to attempt to prevent the possible negative results it may produce.

Genomes are catalogs of hereditary information that determine whether an organism becomes a plant, animal, fungus or microbe, and whether the organism is adapted to its surroundings. Determining the sequence of DNA within genomes is crucial to human medicine, crop genetics, biotechnology, forensic science, threatened species management, and evolutionary studies. The last 5 years have witnessed tremendous advances in DNA sequencing technologies, and it is now possible to sequence millions of fragments of DNA in a single analysis, and at a fraction of their previous cost.

New findings from an international team of researchers show that most neandertals in Europe died off around 50,000 years ago. The previously held view of a Europe populated by a stable neandertal population for hundreds of thousands of years up until modern humans arrived must therefore be revised.