LA JOLLA--(January 19, 2016) Agricultural grafting dates back nearly 3,000 years. By trial and error, people from ancient China to ancient Greece realized that joining a cut branch from one plant onto the stalk of another could improve the quality of crops.

Now, researchers at the Salk Institute and Cambridge University have used this ancient practice, combined with modern genetic research, to show that grafted plants can share epigenetic traits, according to a new paper published the week of January 18, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In results published on October 19, 2015 in the Journal of Lipid Research, a team of translational scientists at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) report a new reason why non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) worsens in people who are obese.

The results may help prevent cirrhosis and liver cancer, according to co-senior authors Kenneth D. Chavin, M.D., PhD, a transplant surgeon in the MUSC Health Department of Surgery, and Lauren Ashley Cowart, PhD, Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Co-Director of the MUSC Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in Lipidomics and Pathobiology.

As musicians, figure skaters and anyone who takes a driving test will know, the anxiety of being watched can have a disastrous effect on your performance.

Now neuroscientists at the University of Sussex's Sackler Centre and Brighton and Sussex Medical School have identified the brain network system that causes us to stumble and stall just when we least want to.

Dr Michiko Yoshie and her colleagues Professor Hugo Critchley, Dr Neil Harrison, and Dr Yoko Nagai were able to pinpoint the brain area that causes the performance mishaps during an experiment using functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging (fMRI).

The quality of your writing will likely get better if you simply type slower, according to a recent study.

Researchers from the University of Waterloo asked study participants to type essays using both hands or with only one. Using text-analysis software, the team discovered that some aspects of essay writing, such as sophistication of vocabulary, improved when participants used only one hand to type.

"Typing can be too fluent or too fast, and can actually impair the writing process," said Srdan Medimorec, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts at Waterloo and lead author of the study. "It seems that what we write is a product of the interactions between our thoughts and the tools we use to express them."

People of the Neolithic age around 6,000 years ago were closely connected both in life and death. This became evident in a detailed archaeological and anthropological of a collective grave containing 50 bodies near Burgos, northern Spain. In the pioneering study, researchers used a whole array of modern methods to examine the way of life in the region at that time.

MAYWOOD, Ill. - A study by researchers at Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago is providing new evidence that the vast majority of babies who are born with severe brain damage are not the result of mismanaged deliveries.

Lead author Jonathan Muraskas, MD, and colleagues examined the medical records of 32 full-term infants who developed severe cerebral palsy and mental retardation. The records indicate that this brain damage occurred after the babies were born, and despite proper resuscitation.

The study is published in the Journal of Perinatology

Pearls have adorned the necklines of women throughout history, but some evidence suggests that the gems' future could be uncertain. Increasingly acidic seawater causes oyster shells to weaken, which doesn't bode well for the pearls forming within. But, as scientists report in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, the mollusks might be more resilient to changing conditions than previously thought.

Genes play a crucial role over time although environmental factors matter most in the short term, according to a major study into social anxiety and avoidant personality disorders from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

"The results show a surprisingly high heritability of the long-term risk of developing social anxiety," says Fartein Ask Torvik, a researcher in the Department of Genetics, Environment and Mental Health at the institute.

It has long been known that both genetics and the environment play a role in the development of social anxiety, but researchers have been previously unaware of the strong effect of genetic factors over time.

A bacterium found in the remote Gobi Desert has shown talents for using the sun's light as energy, and now researchers reveal that it can be found in surprisingly many different places, including water treatment plants. The bacterium may become a valuable partner for researchers working with environmentally friendly biofuels.

Photosynthesis is one of the most fundamental biological processes on Earth. Normally photosynthesis is performed by plants, but a few bacterial phyla also have the talent.

Ayahuasca, known by various names by different indigenous groups in South America, is a generic term commonly associated with preparations of the mildly psychoactive vine Banisteriopsis caapi.

Ayahuasca literally translates from the Quechua language of the North Andes as “soul vine” or “vine of the dead” and has traditionally been consumed by indigenous communities such as the Aruák, Chocó, Jívaro, Pano, and Tukano across the upper reaches of the Amazon River system in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.