NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has recently taken images of Jupiter in support of the New Horizons Mission. The images were taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys from Feb. 17-21. Hubble will continue to photograph Jupiter, as well as its volcanically active moon, Io, over the next month as the New Horizons spacecraft flies past Jupiter.
A 17-year University of Utah study of ground movements shows that the power of the huge volcanic hotspot beneath Yellowstone National Park is much greater than previously thought when the giant volcano is slumbering. Findings show gradual ground movements overpower quake movements at Yellowstone, and the hotspot makes the Teton fault behave unexpectedly.
Small populations of Melanesians "” among the most genetically diverse people on the planet "” have significant differences in their mitochondrial DNA that can be linked to where they live, the size of their home island and the language they speak.
Research reveals that exposure to stress at a young age increases the probability of depression and PTSD in adulthood.
In 2000, Georgia Tech researchers showed that fluid dynamics theory could be modified to work on the nanoscale, albeit in a vacuum. Now, seven years later they've shown that it can be modified to work in the real world, too "“ that is, outside of a vacuum.
People in Kenya's semiarid Samburu region face growing water shortages, water quality issues, and conflicts between livestock and wildlife over water. Scientists and volunteers at Earthwatch's Samburu Field Center have developed a GIS resource to help the Samburu community cope with water issues and avert public health crises.
Scientific studies of why foods such as Brussels sprouts and stout beer are horribly bitter-tasting to some people but palatable to others are shedding light on a number of questions, from the mechanisms of natural selection to understanding how our genes affect our dietary habits.
Scientists have wondered how four-winged insects most active at low-light times of the day accomplish complex navigational maneuvers, since they lack the structures that help two-winged insects to navigate. New research has demonstrated that, in hawk moths, an organ near the base of the antennae assists in flight control.
The largest climate change in central North America since the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a temperature drop of nearly 15 degrees Fahrenheit, is documented within the fossilized teeth of horses and other plant-eating mammals, a new study reveals.
It appears that the skin, the largest organ in our body, is a kind of zoo and some of the inhabitants are quite novel, according to a new study.
Nobody questions that the color of our eyes is encoded in our genes. When it comes to behavior the concept of "DNA as fate" quickly breaks down "“ it's been long accepted that both genes and the environment shape human behavior. But just how much sway the environment holds over our genetic destiny has been difficult to untangle.
A University of Florida-led study has determined that Titanis walleri, a prehistoric 7-foot-tall flightless "terror bird," arrived in North America from South America long before a land bridge connected the two continents.
Researchers have synthesized new aluminum-hydrogen compounds with a unique chemistry that could lead to the development of more powerful solid rocket fuel and may also, in time, be useful for hydrogen-powered vehicles or other energy applications.
The Atlantic Ocean doesn't receive the mother lode of fixed nitrogen after all. Instead the Pacific and Indian oceans experience twice the amount of nitrogen fixing as the Atlantic, say researchers in the Jan. 11 issue of Nature. The title of an accompanying News and Views piece says it all, "Looking for N2 Fixation in all the Wrong Places."
More than 75 percent of global biodiversity is found in tropical ecosystems, yet these areas are using data taken from temperate ecosystems for protection from toxic chemicals. A new study highlights concerns and provides direction as to how these sensitive species can better be protected. The study is published in the latest issue of Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management.
Urban sprawl might not be as harmful to wildlife as previously thought, according to a new study by researchers from the Landscape Analysis Lab at Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee.
Ohio State University chemists have probed an unusual high-energy state produced in nucleotides -- the building blocks of DNA and RNA -- when they absorb UV light. This is the first time scientists have been able to probe the so-called "dark" energy state of DNA.
A team of American and French scientists has developed a method to determine the influence of past volcanic eruptions on climate and the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, and significantly reduce uncertainty in models of future climate change.
For years, polymer chemistry textbooks have stated that a whole class of little molecules called 1,2-disubstituted ethylenes could not be transformed into polymers--the stuff of which plastics and other materials are made. However, the UD scientists were determined to prove the textbooks wrong. However, the UD scientists were determined to prove the textbooks wrong. As a result of their persistence, the researchers have discovered a new class of ultra-thin polymer films with potential applications ranging from coating tiny microelectronic devices to plastic solar cells.
Much like flipping a light switch, the hepatitis C virus turns on human immune defenses upon entering the body but also turns off those defenses by manipulating interaction of key cellular proteins, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found.
Two Northwestern University engineers have been studying the whisker system of rats to better understand how mechanical information from the whiskers gets transmitted to the brain. Now they have developed arrays of robotic whiskers that sense in two dimensions and that can sense information about both object shape and fluid flow. The arrays could find application on assembly lines, in pipelines or on land-based autonomous rovers or underwater vehicles.
A Tulane University physics professor was a leader in a recent experiment that made the first laboratory observation of radiative - or light-emitting - neutron decay. Neutron decay, which creates other subatomic particles, played a key role in the formation of matter in the universe during the first few minutes after the Big Bang.
Approximately 6 percent of human and chimp genes are unique to those species, report scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions. The new estimate, reported in Public Library of Science ONE (Dec. 2006), takes into account something other measures of genetic difference do not -- the genes that aren't there.
A University at Buffalo theoretical physicist who published research in 2001 demonstrating that it someday may be possible to build buildings and other structures that are nearly blast-proof, now has published results showing how a shock-absorption system might be constructed to accomplish that goal.
A heat-loving archaeon capable of fixing nitrogen at a surprisingly hot 92 degrees Celsius, or 198 Fahrenheit, may represent Earth's earliest lineages of organisms capable of nitrogen fixation, perhaps even preceding the kinds of bacteria today's plants and animals rely on to fix nitrogen.
In the first test of a new radar instrument, scientists have seen through more than a mile of Greenland ice to reveal an image of land that has been hidden for millions of years. Scientists will use what they learn from the instrument, dubbed GISMO (for Global Ice Sheet Mapping Orbiter), to determine how global climate change will affect the ice.
Preliminary findings from a revolutionary satellite system launched earlier this year show that the system can boost the accuracy of forecasts of hurricane behavior, significantly improve long-range weather forecasts, and monitor climate change with unprecedented accuracy. There will be a press conference/teleconference at 5 p.m. Eastern Time today.
Scientists have identified the first biochemical marker linked to sleep loss, an enzyme in saliva known as amylase, which increases in activity when sleep deprivation is prolonged.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will produce a 3 percent reduction in the density of Earth's outermost atmosphere by 2017, according to a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Pennsylvania State University (PSU).
Are you one of those people who never forgets a face? New research from Vanderbilt University suggests that we can remember more faces than other objects and that faces "stick" the best in our short-term memory. The reason may be that our expertise in remembering faces allows us to package them better for memory.
Researchers in Southern California have isolated brain regions that respond selectively to the cues of gender, ethnicity and identity in faces.
Scientists create genome-scale map of genetic variation for malaria parasite; initial use unlocks genes involved in drug resistance.
A discovery by an international team led by University of Maryland researcher Sarah Tishkoff identifies, for the first time, genetic mutations in East Africans that are associated with the ability to digest milk as adults. The findings are not only evidence of how genes and culture co-evolve, they reveal one of the most striking genetic footprints of natural selection ever observed in humans.
New measure techniques have improved the understanding of how biological molecules form their 3-D structures. The improved precision of the measurements means that researcher can now trace the whole route taken when a bio-molecule is formed which should help researchers improve their understanding of what causes mis-folding diseases like Mad Cow (BSE) and Alzeimer's.
Using a technique called laser temperature-jump, biophysicist Anjum Ansari and her colleagues have made the first direct observation of DNA bending when bound to a DNA-bending protein. DNA bending plays a key role in regulating gene expression, and better understanding of the process may help in developing gene-based therapies.
Ray Charles was really good at snapping, says musical acoustician Kenneth Lindsay of Southern Oregon University in Ashland. According to a new computer analysis, Charles's snaps that open his famous song "Fever" with Natalie Cole are timed so well that he is never more than 5 milliseconds off the tight beat, a new study shows.
A new study by a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher provides compelling evidence that one impact by a meteorite killed the dinosaurs, along with the majority of all other animal species on Earth, approximately 65 million years ago.
A new type of stethoscope enables doctors to hear the sounds of the body in extremely loud situations, such as during the transportation of wounded soldiers in Blackhawk helicopters.
Rising sea levels, fueled by melting polar ice caps, may well pose a greater threat to Louisiana than the sinking of its land, a new Tulane University study says.
Scientists now understand how an important protein converts chemical energy to mechanical force, thus powering the process of cell division, thanks to a new structural model by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers.
A multidisciplinary research team from six institutions has for the first time successfully anticipated and then chronicled a seafloor eruption along the global mid-ocean ridge, the most active volcanic system on Earth. The event along the East Pacific Rise has provided researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) with a rare opportunity to observe what happens in the immediate aftermath of an eruption.
New research shows that at least 10 percent of genes in the human population can vary in the number of copies of DNA sequences they contain"”a finding that alters current thinking that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9 percent similar in content and identity. This discovery of the extent of genetic variation is expected to change the way scientists think about genetic diseases and human evolution.
It's not hard to recall the pungent scent of a handful of pocket change. Similar smells emanate from a sweat-covered dumbbell or the water emerging from an old metal pipe. Yet no one has been able to identify the exact chemical cause of these familiar odors.
The University at Buffalo team that developed the world's first transgenic butterfly now has developed an innovative tool that will allow scientists studying "non-model" organisms to test directly the function of certain genes, even in the absence of genome sequencing information.
Chop off a salamander's leg and a brand new one will sprout in no time. But most animals have lost the ability to replace missing limbs. Now, a research team at the Salk Institute has been able to regenerate a wing in a chick embryo "“ a species not known to be able to regrow limbs - suggesting that the potential for such regeneration exists innately in all vertebrates, including humans.
A team of scientists has discovered two new subatomic particles, rare but important relatives of the familiar, commonplace proton and neutron.
Cornell researchers have built a robot that works out its own model of itself and can revise the model to adapt to injury. First, it teaches itself to walk. Then, when damaged, it teaches itself to limp.
Researchers have found that a class of RNA molecules, previously thought to have no function, may in fact protect sex cells from self-destructing.
As wildfires put more and more human lives and property at risk, people are looking to fire managers for protection.
An analysis of slip rates for 26 active faults in the Los Angeles metropolitan area finds that some faults may be moving faster than previously estimated. The new model incorporates interactions that occur deep in the Earth's crust, offering more accurate data to earthquake probability models, which are used by the state of California to set insurance rates.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right