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Informal social networks are more effective than mailers and "media blitzes" at encouraging Hispanics to prepare for disasters.

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Researchers discover new ‘golden ratios’ for female facial beauty.

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Over three decades, a world-recognized medical team at UC San Diego Medical Center has spurred the evolution of a complex surgery to destroy dangerous clusters of arteries and veins in the brain. Integrating innovative approaches in radiology, anesthesia, and surgery, the team has perfected a method to systematically starve these abnormal brain lesions, artery by artery, vein by vein.

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The most widely used human embryonic stem cell lines lack genetic diversity, a finding that raises social justice questions that must be addressed to ensure that all sectors of society benefit from stem cell advances, according to a University of Michigan research team.

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A University of Alabama researcher is embarking on a $5.6 million clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of an innovative treatment that uses a noise-generating device, along with counseling, to alleviate tinnitus.

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DNA replication is a basic function of living organisms, allowing cells to divide and multiply, all while maintaining the genetic code and proper function of the original cell. The process, or mechanism, by which this is accomplished presents many challenges as the double helical (coil-shaped) DNA divides into two strands that are duplicated by different methods, yet both strands complete the replication at the same time. New research by a team from UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in conjunction with the University of Illinois and published in the Dec. 17 issue of Nature, has addressed this fundamental problem. The study identifies three essential ways the synthesis of the two strands is coordinated by enzymes, settling scientific deliberations on how the two DNA strands are copied in the same time span.

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The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) today announced an expansion of its services to include veterans of the U.S. Coast Guard, who have been identified as having a service-connected disability as a result of their support of Operations Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom.

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University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center dietitians offer tips to help you enjoy the holiday season while keeping a balanced and healthy diet.

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Led by a number of scientific breakthroughs and operational milestones at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, UT-Battelle has again earned high performance ratings from the Department of Energy.

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Are you a verbal learner or a visual learner? Chances are, you’ve pegged yourself or your children as either one or the other and rely on study techniques that suit your individual learning needs. However, a new report finds no evidence for the learning styles hypothesis.

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The latest edition of The George Washington University Battleground Poll finds a majority of voters (56%) believing that the country is on the wrong track. Their top areas of concern are the economy and jobs, health care costs, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the federal budget deficit.

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Scientists have developed a new web-based tool that may better predict whether a person will suffer a second stroke within 90 days of a first stroke, according to research published in the December 16, 2009, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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The Blount Undergraduate Initiative for 10 years has drawn curious students and dedicated faculty to an intense living-and-learning environment starting with the freshman year.

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Despite a 100-fold increase in H1N1 influenza cases in the Seattle area during spring 2009, an aggressive infection control program to protect immunocompromised cancer patients and thorough screening measures resulted in no corresponding increase in H1N1 cases among the total patient population at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, according to a new study by researchers and physicians at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the SCCA.

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Scientists from the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson have discovered a possible way for malignant breast tumors to be identified, without the need for a biopsy. The findings were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

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Aided by next-generation DNA sequencing technology, an international team of researchers has gained insights into how more than 60 carcinogens associated with cigarette smoke bind to and chemically modify human DNA, ultimately leading to cancer-causing genetic mutations.

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In a paper published in Nature, Hilke Schlichting of the California Institute of Technology is reporting that the telltale signature of a Kuiper Belt Object measuring only one-half mile across was extracted from Hubble's Fine Guidance Sensors engineering data, not direct observations.

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The world’s rarest—and most camera shy—great ape has finally been captured on professional video on a forested mountain in Cameroon, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society and Germany’s NDR Naturfilm.

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The omega-3 essential fatty acids commonly found in fatty fish and algae help animals avoid sensory overload, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. The finding connects low omega-3s to the information-processing problems found in people with schizophrenia; bipolar, obsessive-compulsive, and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorders; Huntington’s disease; and other afflictions of the nervous system.

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Many young children in child care centers are not getting as much active playtime as they should, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A study published in the December 2009 issue of the journal Pediatrics found only 13.7 percent of child care centers in North Carolina offered 120 minutes of active playtime during the school day.

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A team of Canadian researchers probed 45 pediatric clinicians to learn about possible indicators that could help identify infants with chronic pain and provide guidance on how to differentiate chronic pain from lingering pain caused by medical procedures.

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Those seeking to understand and predict climate change can now use an additional tool to calculate carbon dioxide exchanges on land, according to a scientific journal article publishing this week.

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Michele Dillon, religion scholar and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, is available to discuss the significance of Oral Roberts in the U.S. evangelical movement. Roberts died Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009. He was 91.

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Sandia National Laboratories will use $4.2 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to modify and enhance its existing Battery Abuse Testing Laboratory (BATLab), with the goal of developing low-cost batteries for electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

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A diet rich in methionine, an amino acid typically found in red meats, fish, beans, eggs, garlic, lentils, onions, yogurt and seeds, can possibly increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

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To give his students the hands-on experience of studying water beneath the Earth's surface, Tufts Geology Professor Grant Garven took the ambitious step of having a system of underground boreholes installed on Tufts' Medford/Somerville campus. Monitoring wells are uncommon on university campuses in the Boston area. Garven's project will twill enhance his students' understanding of hydrogeology – which is the study of how water moves underground through soil and bedrock.

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War is hell, as the old saying goes -- with loss of life and limb, destruction of infrastructure and the environment, and devastating costs. Recent biomedical research has shed light on another pernicious consequence of military conflict: psychological and neurological conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. At the same time, researchers have worked to uncover some of the motives and meanings of war.

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The roving, walking robotic soldiers of the “Terminator” films are becoming less sci-fi and more certain future every day. Now, a team of robotics researchers from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering will build a team of fully autonomous cooperative battle-ready robots as part of a 2010 international war games challenge that could spur real-life battle bots.

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On the heels of the launch of President Obama’s campaign promoting math and science achievement, a new report finds that students in rural areas and small towns have less access to advanced math courses than their peers elsewhere.

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Experts in sports medicine and musculoskeletal health discuss the common misuse of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs by athletes and the need for high school winter sports athletes to baby their immune systems with good nutrition and flu vaccines.

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Thousands of dermatologists across the country offer free skin cancer screenings in their communities through the American Academy of Dermatology’s National Melanoma/Skin Cancer Screening Program. The program recently reached a milestone – two million screenings have been conducted since the program’s inception in 1985.

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James Martin, who specializes in the study of infrastructure for increased resilience to natural or terrorist activities, advocates community-based leadership to minimize disasters. "Government must coordinate efforts but ... we need the transportation, water, power, and other industries to share the leadership."

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As the healthcare reform debate continues, legislators and businesspeople alike might be surprised to learn that Americans are looking not only to government but also to business to improve our nation’s health, even beyond employee wellness efforts. People are more likely to purchase from, recommend, and invest in companies that act on health issues—creating a compelling case for businesses to step up their efforts.

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CIHR experts discuss the impact of holiday stress on people’s health.

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Whether the result of injury, illness or a chronic condition, 70 million Americans experience pain annually. To help fight this debilitating condition and combat its detrimental impact, the ASA is offering practical ways for sufferers to take an active role in the treatment of pain.

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Studies reveal that deaths from heart disease peak in December and January, with spikes on Christmas and New Year's Day. The goal is to diagnose them as quickly as possible.

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Cancer patients in both the United States and the United Kingdom face challenges in gaining access to expensive treatments.

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Tissue-specific genes, thought to be dormant or not marked for activation in embryonic stem cells, are indeed marked by transcription factors, with proper marking potentially crucial for the function of tissues derived from stem cells.

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Ellen Voorhees, leader of the text retrieval group in the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was recently recognized as a “Distinguished Scientist” by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for establishing “key components of information retrieval evaluation methodology through individual research and directing international evaluation projects.”

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The deadline is extended to Jan. 15 for the 2010 NIST Mobile Microrobotics Challenge.

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A NIST team has prototyped a new handheld touch-screen application, a fingerprint identification system suitable for use by the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team.

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Bobbie Laird was suffering a life-threatening stroke triggered by a blood clot in her brain nearly half an inch long. Her physician stopped the stroke in its tracks by using a cathether device that busted up the clot and suctioned the debris.

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If you've seen an Internet ad for capacitor-type power factor correction devices, you might be led to believe that using one can save you money on your residential electricity bill. A new NIST report explains why the devices actually provide no savings by discussing the underlying physics.

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Verifying the accuracy of network analyzers was once an awkward process involving multiple steps and pieces of equipment. Now, thanks to researchers at NIST, much of that process can be automated. Results are both more complete and available in a matter of minutes, not hours or days.

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NIST has issued a draft publication for public comment that describes changes to the Security Content Automation Protocol, a suite of specifications that standardize how software products exchange information about software flaws and security configurations.

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Solitary waves that run a long distance without losing their shape or dying out are a special class of waves called solitons. These everlasting waves are exotic enough, but theoreticians at the Joint Quantum Institute now believe that there may be a new kind of soliton that's even more special.

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NIST has released for public comment a new revision of one of its key computer security documents, a set of information processing standards governing the use of cryptographic modules by civilian federal agencies and government contractors.

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NIST and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration have announced plans to create a demonstration broadband communications network for the nation's emergency services agencies using a portion of the radiofrequency spectrum freed up by the recent transition of U.S. broadcast television from analog to digital technologies

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Researchers at NIST and George Washington University have shown that the teeth of some apes are formed primarily to handle the most stressful times when food is scarce. Their findings imply that if humanity is serious about protecting its close evolutionary cousins, the food apes eat during these tough periods must be included in conservation efforts.

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NIST today announced funding for 20 new research projects under its Technology Innovation Program, including projects ranging from unmanned, hovering aircraft for inspecting bridges to a high-speed sorting system for recycling aerospace metals to nanomaterials for advanced batteries.