Frontiers | Science News

Science News post list

FC

Frontiers Communications

Editor

1,343 news posts

Top news

21 Aug 2016

Frontiers publishes its 50,000th article

Frontiers has reached a major milestone and published its 50,000th article. Frontiers was born digital as an open-access publisher in 2007. It has grown to become the home to 57 journals covering sciences, technology and the humanities that span across 440 specialty sections.  More than 150’000 authors have published with Frontiers journals. Community driven, our editorial board is the largest in the world, consisting of over 63,000 researchers from the most prestigious universities.  Frontiers journals have risen to become some of the most-citied open-access journals in their fields. We have also pioneered the collaborative peer-review, crowd-sourced metrics and created our own unique in-house Digital Editorial Office to ensure quality at scale. Pioneering the Collaborative Peer Review Our Collaborative Peer Review is the first of its kind and mandates that all reviews are impact neutral, meaning we publish all research that is correct.  Each manuscript undergoes rigorous and constructive feedback from expert reviewers who have direct interactions with the authors.  The reviewers and editors are also acknowledged on the published articles.  This combination of transparency, collaboration and applying an impact neutral philosophy has become a powerful model for publishing quality academic papers at scale. Freeing the flow of knowledge and enabling correct and […]

Health

18 Aug 2016

Just ten weeks of exercise can protect heart

— by Emily Barker, Frontiersin.org Just ten-weeks of exercise is nearly 100% effective at protecting the heart from potentially lethal changes in heart rhythms. Professor George Billman, Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Physiology, works on preventing ventricular fibrillation, a very specific and potentially lethal change in cardiac rhythm, since 1980. In his current work, he has found that exercise could be the best non-pharmacological way to protect our hearts after sudden cardiac arrest. During ventricular fibrillation the heart does not beat in a coordinated fashion, instead it is a disorganized electrical event. “This is what you will see when they call a code blue and bring in a defibrillator to try to restore a cardiac rhythm,” he explained. The heart receives two sets of nerves, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. A change in cardiac rhythms can be found when there is high sympathetic activity and low parasympathetic activity. To find the best way to protect the heart, Prof. Billman and his research team induced animals with a sudden cardiac arrest. They then put some of the animals on a ten week training program. About 95% of those who exercised were protected at the end of the program, whereas the sedentary animals got worse over time. […]

Health

17 Aug 2016

Hospitalized patients at risk if sodium levels are low

by Emily Barker, Frontiersin.org Hospitalized ‪patients could be at risk of weak ‪‎bones‬ and increased infections if physicians ignore signs of low-sodium in the body, known as hyponatremia. Scientists knew that hyponatremia caused swelling in the brain, however new research shows that the condition is actually systemic and affects all of the body. Hyponatremia can demineralize the bones causing osteopenia – weak bones – leading to increased risk of falls and fractures, it can also lead to greater risk of infection and cause sepsis. This is particularly dangerous for elderly patients. The sodium in the body is very tightly regulated in a very narrow range, certain illnesses can mean the body is unable to get rid of water properly causing the sodium level to get low.    “When that happens water moves from outside of the cells to inside of the cells, but we are finding that low blood sodium alters cellular function so that cells do not function properly;” explained Dr. Michael Moritz, Field Chief Editor for Frontiers in Pediatrics, and Associate Editor for Nephrology in Frontiers in Medicine. Patients who are acutely ill have high vasopressin, which decreases their ability to get rid of water, increasing the risk of […]

Open science and peer review

16 Aug 2016

Reject or publish? Kids discuss peer-review

Is the paper fact or fiction? Is the paper boring? These are all things this panel of children look for when reviewing a paper for our journal for kids, Frontiers for Young Minds. Watch the panel of kids explain  what criteria should be used when deciding whether a paper should be accepted or not. Learn how to submit your paper to Frontiers for Young Minds.  The open-access journal for kids is free to access and free to publish, which means that there are no publishing fees.

Featured news

15 Aug 2016

Sewage sludge as a sustainable fertilizer

by Hedwig Ens, Frontiersin.org Ever thought of putting sewage on your plants? Scientists say thermally conditioned sewage sludge serves as an excellent fertilizer to improve soil properties. This was recently published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Nutrition. The major advantage over commercial fertilizers? Sustainable re-use of essential and finite phosphorus resources. Phosphorus is a key nutrient for all living beings. When deficient in the diet, it severely compromises human health, and when deficient in agriculture, it restricts crop productivity. Without phosphorus, there can be no food production. As the source of phosphorus is non-renewable phosphate rocks, there is a strong need for increased recycling to ensure phosphorus security. Efficient use and reduced environmental dissemination of phosphorus throughout the food system is needed to secure the ability to feed a growing global population. As technological improvements increased the phosphorus content of sewage sludge, it now is a readily available alternative to commercial fertilizers in agriculture. To assess its effectiveness, Andry Andriamananjara from the University of Antananarivo (Madagascar) and his colleagues used a phosphorus radiotracer technique to measure the availability of phosphorus for plants in thermally conditioned sewage sludge. They grew ryegrass in pots filled with soil that underwent isotopic P-labelling, […]

Psychology

12 Aug 2016

Burnout is caused by mismatch between unconscious needs and job demands

New research shows that burnout is caused by a mismatch between a person’s subconscious needs and the opportunities and demands at the workplace. These results have implications for the prevention of job burnout. Imagine an accountant who is outgoing and seeks closeness in her social relationships, but whose job offers little scope for contact with colleagues or clients. Now imagine a manager, required to take responsibility for a team, but who does not enjoy taking center-stage or being in a leadership role. For both, there is a mismatch between their individual needs and the opportunities and demands at the workplace. A new study in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology shows that such mismatches put employees at risk of burnout. Burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion from work, which results in a lack of motivation, low efficiency, and a helpless feeling. Its health effects include anxiety, cardiovascular disease, immune disorders, insomnia, and depression. The financial burden from absenteeism, employee turnover, reduced productivity, and medical, legal, and insurance expenses due to burnout and general work-related stress is staggering: for example, the American Institute of Stress estimates the total cost to American enterprises at 300 billion US$ per […]

Frontiers news

08 Aug 2016

Most viewed Psychology articles in July 2016

Realistic Expectations in STEM Students: Paradoxical Effects of a Motivational Intervention Nathan C. Hall* and Anna Sverdlik The Experience of Depression during the Careers of Elite Male Athletes Steve Doherty, Barbara Hannigan and Mark J. Campbell* Smartphone-Based Psychotherapeutic Micro-Interventions to Improve Mood in a Real-World Setting Gunther Meinlschmidt, Jong-Hwan Lee, Esther Stalujanis, Angelo Belardi, Minkyung Oh, Eun Kyung Jung, Hyun-Chul Kim, Janine Alfano, Seung-Schik Yoo and Marion Tegethoff* How Many Words Do We Know? Practical Estimates of Vocabulary Size Dependent on Word Definition, the Degree of Language Input and the Participant’s Age Marc Brysbaert*, Michaël Stevens, Paweł Mandera and Emmanuel Keuleers Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention Maxwell J. D. Ramstead*, Samuel P. L. Veissière* and Laurence J. Kirmayer* Disorganization, COMT, and Children’s Social Behavior: The Norwegian Hypothesis of Legacy of Disorganized Attachment Zhi Li*, Beate W. Hygen, Keith F. Widaman, Turid S. Berg-Nielsen, Lars Wichstrøm and Jay Belsky The Phantom Vanish Magic Trick: Investigating the Disappearance of a Non-existent Object in a Dynamic Scene Matthew L. Tompkins*, Andy T. Woods and Anne M. Aimola Davies* Pay What You Want! A Pilot Study on Neural Correlates of Voluntary Payments for Music Simon Waskow, Sebastian Markett*, Christian Montag*, Bernd Weber, Peter Trautner, Volkmar Kramarz […]

Frontiers news

08 Aug 2016

Most viewed Neurology articles in July 2016

Longitudinal Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging CO2 Stress Testing in Individual Adolescent Sports-Related Concussion Patients: A Pilot Study W. Alan C. Mutch*, Michael J. Ellis, Lawrence N. Ryner, Marc P. Morissette, Philip J. Pries, Brenden Dufault, Marco Essig, David J. Mikulis, James Duffin and Joseph A. Fisher Functional Connectivity Is Altered in Concussed Adolescent Athletes Despite Medical Clearance to Return to Play: A Preliminary Report Mary R. Newsome*, Xiaoqi Li, Xiaodi Lin, Elisabeth A. Wilde, Summer Ott, Brian Biekman, Jill V. Hunter, Pramod K. Dash, Brian A. Taylor and Harvey S. Levin State Anxiety Subjective Imbalance and Handicap in Vestibular Schwannoma Yougan Saman*, Lucie Mclellan, Laurence Mckenna, Mayank B. Dutia, Rupert Obholzer, Gerald Libby, Michael Gleeson and Doris-Eva Bamiou An Abbreviated Diagnostic Maneuver for Posterior Benign Positional Paroxysmal Vertigo Pia Michael, Carolina Estibaliz Oliva, Marcia Nuñez, Cristian Barraza, Juan Pablo Faúndez and Hayo A. Breinbauer* Intrusive Thoughts Elicited by Direct Electrical Stimulation during Stereo-Electroencephalography Irina Popa, Cristian Donos, Andrei Barborica, Ioan Opris, Mihai Dragoş Mălîia, Mirela Ene, Jean Ciurea and Ioana Mîndruţă* Aging Increases Compensatory Saccade Amplitude in the Video Head Impulse Test Eric R. Anson*, Robin T. Bigelow, John P. Carey, Quan-Li Xue, Stephanie Studenski, Michael C. Schubert, Konrad P. Weber and Yuri Agrawal

Neuroscience

08 Aug 2016

Seasonal allergies could change your brain

by Reeteka Sud, Frontiersin.org Hay fever may do more than give you a stuffy nose and itchy eyes — seasonal allergies may change the brain, says a study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. Scientists found that brains of mice exposed to allergen actually produced more neurons than controls, they did this using a model of grass pollen allergy. The research team examined the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for forming new memories, and the site where neurons continue be formed throughout life. During an allergic reaction, there was an increase in the numbers of new neurons in the hippocampus, raising the question: what could be the consequences of allergies on memory? The formation and functioning of neurons is linked to the brain’s immune cells, the microglia.  Scientists used to believe that immune cells are not active unless there is a threat such as injury or disease. That belief went out the window when it was discovered that microglia are in fact very active even in healthy brains, sculpting connections between neurons. The research team monitored the functioning of microglia in allergic animals. To the scientists surprise, they found that the same allergic reaction that kicks the […]