A team of highly determined high school students discovered a never-before-seen pulsar by painstakingly analyzing data from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Further observations by astronomers using the GBT revealed that this pulsar has the widest orbit of any around a neutron star and is part of only a handful of double neutron star systems.
A team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and other groups has focused its attention on fishery improvement projects (FIPs), which are designed to bring seafood from wild fisheries to the certified market, with only a promise of sustainability in the future. They conclude that FIPs need to be fine-tuned to ensure that fisheries are delivering on their promises.
A new study suggests that engaging in low intensity activities such as standing may not be enough to offset the health hazards of sitting for long periods of time. On the bright side, adding two minutes of walking each hour to your routine just might do the trick. These findings were published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).
Washington University School of Medicine neuroscientists have attached the light-sensing protein rhodopsin to opioid receptor parts to activate the receptor pathways using light from a laser fiber-optic device. They also influenced the behavior of mice using light, rather than drugs, to activate the reward response.
Researchers have perfected a noninvasive “chemogenetic” technique that allows them to switch off a specific behavior in mice – such as voracious eating – and then switch it back on. The method works by targeting two different cell surface receptors. It’s the first fruit of the NIH BRAIN Initiative.
Writing in the April 30 online issue of the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine report pancreatic cancer rates are highest in countries with the least amount of sunlight. Low sunlight levels were due to a combination of heavy cloud cover and high latitude.
Tax cuts for ordinary Americans boost economic growth and create jobs, while tax breaks for the rich do little to help the economy.
Bats must rapidly integrate different types of sensory information to catch insects and avoid obstacles while flying. A study shows, for the first time, that a unique array of sensory receptors in the wing provides feedback to a bat during flight. The findings also suggest that neurons in the bat brain respond to incoming airflow and touch signals, triggering rapid adjustments in wing position to optimize flight control.
A lack of safety at school is one of the correlates of childhood obesity, say researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated Research Centre at CHU Sainte Justine children’s hospital.
Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, are significantly more likely to have an eating disorder — a loss of control eating syndrome (LOC-ES) — akin to binge eating, a condition more generally diagnosed only in adults, according to results of a new Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study.
A new microneedle patch being developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) could make it easier to vaccinate people against measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases.
Columbia Engineering Professor James Hone led a team in 2013 that dramatically improved the performance of graphene by encapsulating it in boron nitride. They’ve now shown they can similarly improve the performance of another 2D material, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2. Their findings provide a demonstration of how to study all 2D materials and hold great promise for a broad range of applications including high-performance electronics, detection and emission of light, and chemical/bio-sensing. Nature Nanotechnology , week of April 27, 2015
Scientists have discovered that neurons are risk takers: They use minor “DNA surgeries” to toggle their activity levels all day, every day. Since these activity levels are important in learning, memory and brain disorders, the researchers think their finding will shed light on a range of important questions.
A patented passive cooling system for computer processors invented at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) could save U.S. consumers more than $6.3 billion per year in energy costs.
A study from the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health finds students with standing desks are more attentive than their seated counterparts. Preliminary results show 12 percent greater on-task engagement in classrooms with standing desks.
Nearly half of American hospitals aren’t taking key steps to prevent C. difficile, a kind of gut infection that kills nearly 30,000 people annually and sickens hundreds of thousands more – despite strong evidence that such steps work, according to a new study.
The recent Great Recession was accompanied by a significant and sustained increase in major depression in U.S. adults, according to a Loyola study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
University of Utah seismologists discovered and made images of a reservoir of hot, partly molten rock 12 to 28 miles beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, and it is 4.4 times larger than the shallower, long-known magma chamber. The hot rock in the newly discovered, deeper magma reservoir would fill the 1,000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times.
Many studies have linked more sleep to better memory, but new research in fruit flies demonstrates that extra sleep helps the brain overcome catastrophic neurological defects that otherwise would block memory formation, report scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
An international team of researchers has sequenced the nearly complete genome of two Siberian woolly mammoths—revealing the most complete picture to date—including new information about the species’ evolutionary history and the conditions that led to its mass extinction at the end of the Ice Age.
Assistant Professor of Oceanography Robert Spencer writes in Geophysical Research Letters that single-cell organisms called microbes are rapidly devouring the ancient carbon being released from thawing permafrost soil and ultimately releasing it back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Increased carbon dioxide levels, of course, cause the Earth to warm and accelerate thawing.
Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have discovered a new method to detect a bacterium that has contaminated New England oyster beds and sickened consumers who ate the contaminated shellfish. The new detection method is a significant advance in efforts to identify shellfish harboring disease-carrying strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus.
Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, are significantly more likely to have an eating disorder — a loss of control eating syndrome (LOC-ES) — akin to binge eating, a condition more generally diagnosed only in adults, according to results of a new Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study. The findings, reported ahead of print April 9 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, suggest a common biological mechanism linking the two disorders, and the potential for developing treatment that works for both.
Researchers need to find ways to measure how the changes in climate are affecting biodiversity. One of the best places to look may be down at our feet, at beetles. That`s because, as a McGill research team discovered after doing the first large-scale survey of Arctic beetles, these six-legged critters are not only abundant in number but also diverse in feeding habits and what they eat is closely linked to the latitude in which they are found.
Researchers have uncovered the first evidence of a genetic link between prodigy and autism. The scientists found that child prodigies in their sample share some of the same genetic variations with people who have autism.
A new study from the Santa Fe Institute confirms quantitatively that partisan disagreements in the U.S. Congress are worsening and that polarization is harmful to policy innovation.
Using statistics that describe how an infectious disease spreads, a University of Utah anthropologist analyzed different theories of how people first settled islands of the vast Pacific between 3,500 and 900 years ago. Adrian Bell found the two most likely strategies were to travel mostly against prevailing winds and seek easily seen islands, not necessarily the nearest islands.
In a new study from Johns Hopkins University, two researchers have taken this idea a step further to consider how tweets affect the performances of initial public offerings (IPOs). They believe that their paper is the first to look closely at the connection between Twitter sentiment and IPOs.
New research from the Monell Center reveals that tumor necrosis factor (TNF), an immune system regulatory protein that promotes inflammation, also helps regulate sensitivity to bitter taste. The finding may explain taste abnormalities and decreased food intake associated with infections, autoimmune disorders, and chronic inflammatory diseases.
Research by scientists at The University of Manchester has revealed that the colour of light has a major impact on how our body clock measures the time of day.
University at Buffalo researchers have discovered a way to easily and effectively fasten proteins to nanoparticles – essentially an arranged marriage – by simply mixing them together. The biotechnology, described April 20 online in the journal Nature Chemistry, is in its infancy. But it already has shown promise for developing an HIV vaccine and as a way to target cancer cells.
Following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in 2010, many people were concerned that seafood was contaminated by either the oil or dispersants used to keep the oil from washing ashore. Ina University of Florida study, all seafood tested so far has shown “remarkably low contaminant levels,” based on FDA standards, and revealed that: • 74 percent of samples were below quantifiable limits; • 23 percent of samples were between 0.1-0.9 parts per billion, and; • 3 percent of samples were between 1.0 and 48 parts per billion.
Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine, collaborating with a multicenter team of U.S. and Venezuelan researchers, have discovered the most diverse collection of bacteria yet in humans among an isolated tribe of Yanomami Amerindians in the remote Amazonian jungles of Venezuela.
An international team of scientists, including researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have found antibiotic resistance genes in the bacterial flora of a South American tribe that never before had been exposed to antibiotic drugs. The findings suggest that bacteria in the human body have had the ability to resist antibiotics since long before such drugs were ever used to treat disease.
The increase in use of e-cigarettes has led to heated debates between opponents who question the safety of these devices and proponents who claim the battery-operated products are a useful cessation tool. In a new study, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that smokers who used e-cigarettes were 49 percent less likely to decrease cigarette use and 59 percent less likely to quit smoking compared to smokers who never used e-cigarettes.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed an extremely powerful magnetic field, beyond anything previously detected in the core of a galaxy, very close to the event horizon of a supermassive black hole.
Transit stops close to home and workplace incentives are associated with higher likelihood that commuters will choose public transportation, according to research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study is co-authored by Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School.
Two primatologists working in the forests of the Republic of Congo have returned from the field with a noteworthy prize: the first-ever photograph of the Bouvier’s red colobus monkey, a rare primate not seen for more than half a century and suspected to be extinct by some, according to WCS (the Wildlife Conservation Society).
UNC researchers have published the first direct evidence that a low dose of electric current can enhance the brain’s natural alpha oscillations to boost creativity by an average of 7.4 percent. Next up: using the method to treat depression.
Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a way to make trees grow bigger and faster, which could increase supplies of renewable resources and help trees cope with the effects of climate change.
Bee pollination is a big deal. Just think about the buzz surrounding colony collapse disorder and the effects it could have on agriculture worldwide. But while honey bees get all the press, there are thousands of other bee species that are just as critical to the continued propagation of flowering plants.
A team led by Shree K. Nayar, Computer Science Professor at Columbia Engineering, has invented a prototype video camera that is the first to be fully self-powered—it can produce an image each second, indefinitely, of a well-lit indoor scene. They designed a pixel that can not only measure incident light but also convert the incident light into electric power. The work will be presented at the International Conference on Computational Photography in Houston, 4/24-26
A newly developed spectroscopy method is helping to clarify the poorly understood molecular process by which an anti-HIV drug induces lethal mutations in the virus’s genetic material. The findings could bolster efforts to develop the next generation of anti-viral treatments.
An injection of stem cells into the eye may soon slow or reverse the effects of early-stage age-related macular degeneration, according to new research from scientists at Cedars-Sinai. Currently, there is no treatment that slows the progression of the disease, which is the leading cause of vision loss in people over 65.
A medicinal liquid form of marijuana may show promise as a treatment for children with severe epilepsy that is not responding to other treatments, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015.
Why are modern humans the only species to have chins? University of Iowa researchers say it's not due to mechanical forces, such as chewing, but may lie in our evolution: As our faces became smaller, it exposed the bony prominence at the lowest part of our heads. Results appear in the Journal of Anatomy.
Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have released the first in a series of dark matter maps of the cosmos. These maps, created with one of the world's most powerful digital cameras, are the largest contiguous maps created at this level of detail and will improve our understanding of dark matter's role in the formation of galaxies.
Compared to other types of breast cancer, triple negative breast cancers are often more aggressive and have fewer treatment options. In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute and the University of Utah have identified a molecular mechanism that triple negative breast cancer cells use to survive and grow.
Researchers studying the commonly used pain reliever acetaminophen found it has a previously unknown side effect: It blunts positive emotions.
While the phrase “an apple a day” is a popular saying, a new study suggests that pears as part of a healthy diet could play a role in helping to manage type 2 diabetes and diabetes-induced hypertension. The results of research published in Food Research International show potential health benefits of Bartlett and Starkrimson pears.
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