May  27

  • Bursting 'Bubbles' the Origin of Galactic Gas Clouds. Like bubbles bursting on the surface of a glass of champagne, ‘bubbles’ in our Galaxy burst and leave flecks of material in the form of clouds of hydrogen gas, researchers using CSIRO’s Parkes telescope have found.  (CSIRO)

May  26

  • Grinding Mouth, Wrinkle Eye. A team of paleontologists, including a University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate, has described a new species of dinosaur based upon an incomplete skeleton found in western New Mexico. The new species, Jeyawati rugoculus, comes from rocks that preserve a swampy forest ecosystem that thrived near the shore of a vast inland sea 91 million years ago. (U. Penn)
  • NASA's Swift Survey Finds 'Smoking Gun' of Black Hole Activation. Data from an ongoing survey by NASA's Swift satellite have helped astronomers solve a decades-long mystery about why a small percentage of black holes emit vast amounts of energy. (GSFC)
  • Advances Made in Walking, Running Robots. Researchers at Oregon State University have made an important fundamental advance in robotics, in work that should lead toward robots that not only can walk and run effectively, but use little energy in the process. (Oregon SU)
  • How Do Bumblebees Get Predators to Buzz Off? Researchers funded by Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the German Research Foundation and Wellcome Trust have found that bumblebees' distinctive black and yellow "warning" colours may not be what protects them from flying predators.  (BBSRC)

May  25

May  20

  • Gesture-based Computing on the Cheap. Ever since Steven Spielberg’s 2002 sci-fi movie Minority Report, in which a black-clad Tom Cruise stands in front of a transparent screen manipulating a host of video images simply by waving his hands, the idea of gesture-based computer interfaces has captured the imagination of technophiles.  (MIT)

May  19

  • New Microneedle Antimicrobial Techniques May Foster Medical Tech Innovation. A team led by researchers from North Carolina State University has developed two new approaches for incorporating antimicrobial properties into microneedles – vanishingly thin needles that hold great promise for use in portable medical devices. Researchers expect the findings to spur development of new medical applications using microneedles. (NCSU)
  • An island as a Reflection of the World. Réunion is to Ralf Sommer and Matthias Herrmann from the Max Plank Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen what the Galápagos Islands were to Charles Darwin. The island in the Indian Ocean is where the biologists are studying biological diversity with the help of a very unremarkable creature: the nematode. (MPG)
  • Garden Birds Shun Organic. The notion that birds and animals prefer organic feed has been called into question by new research from Newcastle University. (Newcastle U.)

May  18

  • Fermilab Scientists Find Evidence for Significant Matter-antimatter Asymmetry. Scientists of the DZero collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced Friday, May 14, that they have found evidence for significant violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in the behavior of particles containing bottom quarks beyond what is expected in the current theory, the Standard Model of particle physics. (Fermilab)

May  17

  • Wrinkles Rate Worse than Cancer for Tanners. What's the most effective way to convince young women to cut back on their indoor tanning, a habit that hikes their risk of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, by 75 percent? Warn them that it will cause leathery, wrinkled skin. (Northwestern U.)

May  14

  • Water Was Present During Birth of Earth. New research by The University of Manchester and the Carnegie Institution of Washington is to make scientists rethink their understanding of how Earth formed. (Manchester U.)

May  12

  • Easter Island Discovery Sends Archaeologists Back to Drawing Board. Archaeologists have disproved the fifty-year-old theory underpinning our understanding of how the famous stone statues were moved around Easter Island. (Manchester U.)
  • Study Finds Music Aids Alzheimer's Patients in Remembering New Information. Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are better able to remember new verbal information when it is provided in the context of music even when compared to healthy, older adults. The findings, which currently appear on-line in Neuropsychologia, offer possible applications in treating and caring for patients with AD. (Boston U.)
  • Marriage and Life Expectancy. Marriage is more beneficial for men than for women - at least for those who want a long life. Previous studies have shown that men with younger wives live longer. While it had long been assumed that women with younger husbands also live longer, in a new study Sven Drefahl from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany, has shown that this is not the case. Instead, the greater the age difference from the husband, the lower the wife’s life expectancy. This is the case irrespective of whether the woman is younger or older than her spouse. (MPG)
  • Greenland Glacier Study will Help Improve Sea Level Forecasts. Predicting sea levels could become more accurate thanks to a new discovery about how melting ice in the summer affects the movement of glaciers. (Newcastle U.)

May  11

  • Quantum Move Toward Next Generation Computing. Physicists at McGill University have developed a system for measuring the energy involved in adding electrons to semi-conductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots – a technology that may revolutionize computing and other areas of science. Dr. Peter Grütter, McGill’s Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Education, Faculty of Science, explains that his research team has developed a cantilever force sensor that enables individual electrons to be removed and added to a quantum dot and the energy involved in the operation to be measured. (McGill U.)

May  10

  • Can a Mother's Voice Spur Recovery From a Coma? Karen Schroeder's voice, recorded on a CD, reminded her son, Ryan, of his 4-H project when he was 10 and decided to raise pigs. "You bid on three beautiful squealing black and white piglets at the auction," she said softly. "We took them home in the trunk of our Lincoln Town Car, because we didn't have a truck." (Northwestern U.)
  • New Project Aims for Fusion Ignition. Russia and Italy have entered into an agreement to build a new fusion reactor outside Moscow that could become the first such reactor to achieve ignition, the point where a fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining instead of requiring a constant input of energy. The design for the reactor, called Ignitor, originated with MIT physics professor Bruno Coppi, who will be the project’s principal investigator. (MIT)

May  6

  • Genes as Fossils. When exactly did oxygen first appear in Earth’s atmosphere? Although many physical and chemical processes are thought to be responsible for that profound transformation, scientists have tried to answer at least part of that question by looking for the origin of oxygenic photosynthesis — the process that organisms use to split water to make oxygen — in rocks that are billions of years old. One way they try to pinpoint the start of that process is by searching for biological links between the distant past and the present. Specifically, they study molecules known as biomarkers that are produced by modern organisms and can be traced to the origins of certain biological processes because they are found in rocks that are 2.5 billion years old. (MIT)

May  5

  • Weight Management Strategies of Men and Women Differ When Eating Out. When eating out, women more often use weight management strategies — such as ordering salad dressing on the side and having half of the meal packaged to go — than men do, according to a University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing researcher. (UTA)
  • Aseismic Slip as a Barrier to Earthquake Propagation. On August 15, 2007, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck in Central Peru, killing more than 500 people—primarily in the town of Pisco, which was heavily damaged by the temblor—and triggering a tsunami that flooded Pisco's shore and parts of Lima's Costa Verde highway. The rupture occurred as the Nazca tectonic plate slipped underneath the South American plate in what is known as a subduction zone. (CIT)

May  4

  • Researchers Find Future Temperatures Could Exceed Livable Limits. Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia. (Purdue U.)
  • Maya Plumbing, First Pressurized Water Feature Found in New World. A water feature found in the Maya city of Palenque, Mexico, is the earliest known example of engineered water pressure in the new world, according to a collaboration between two Penn State researchers, an archaeologist and a hydrologist. How the Maya used the pressurized water is, however, still unknown. (PSU)
  • Blinking Neurons Give Thoughts Away. Electrical currents are invisible to the naked eye - at least they are when they flow through metal cables. In nerve cells, however, scientists are able to make electrical signals visible. Working with fellow experts from Switzerland and Japan, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg successfully used a specialized fluorescent protein to visualize electrical activity in neurons of living mice. In a milestone study, scientists are able to apply the method to watch activity in nerve cells during animal behaviour. (MPG)

May  3

  • Can Exercise Prevent Disability? A new study will test if exercise can prevent or delay the declining ability to walk in older adults. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine will be the Chicago site of a national trial funded by the National Institutes of Health. It is the largest randomized, controlled trial ever conducted on physical activity in older adults. (Northwestern U.)
  • Male Obesity Linked to Low Testosterone Levels. Obesity, a condition linked to heart disease and diabetes, now appears to be associated with another health problem, but one that affects men only -- low testosterone levels. (U. Buffalo)

April  30

April  28

  • Study Finds Conscientious People Have Better Health. A recent study led by a researcher at UT Dallas reported that people classified as “conscientious” also tended to have better health, possibly because of more preventive health care. (UTD)
  • U of C Scientists Probe Earth's Core. We know more about distant galaxies than we do about the interior of our own planet. However, by observing distant earthquakes, researchers at the University of Calgary have revealed new clues about the top of the Earth’s core in a paper published in the May edition of the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors. (U. Calgary)
  • CSIRO Telescope Spots Mega-star Cradle. Using a CSIRO radio telescope, an international team of researchers has caught an enormous cloud of cosmic gas and dust in the process of collapsing in on itself – a discovery which could help solve one of astronomy’s enduring conundrums: ‘How do massive stars form?’ (CSIRO)

April  27

  • A New Way to Swap DNA. The discovery that the tomato wilt fungus can acquire whole chromosomes from other fungi took researchers by surprise. It also opens an avenue for combating diseases that attack crops and even some . (U. Minnesota)

April  26

  • Stem Cells from Surgery Leftovers Could Repair Damaged Hearts. Scientists have for the first time succeeded in extracting vital stem cells from sections of vein removed for heart bypass surgery. Researchers funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) found that these stem cells can stimulate new blood vessels to grow, which could potentially help repair damaged heart muscle after a heart attack. (Bristol U.)
  • Study Finds Body’s Response to Repetitive Laughter is Similar to The Effect of Repetitive Exercise. Laughter is a highly complex process. Joyous or mirthful laughter is considered a positive stress (eustress) that involves complicated brain activities leading to a positive effect on health. Norman Cousins first suggested the idea that humor and the associated laughter can benefit a person’s health in the 1970s. His ground-breaking work, as a layperson diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, documented his use of laughter in treating himself—with medical approval and oversight—into remission. He published his personal research results in the New England Journal of Medicine and is considered one of the original architects of mind-body medicine. (APS)

April  21

  • Link Discovered Between Carbon, Nitrogen May Provide New Ways to Mitigate Pollution Problems. A new study exploring the growing worldwide problem of nitrogen pollution from soils to the sea shows that global ratios of nitrogen and carbon in the environment are inexorably linked, a finding that may lead to new strategies to help mitigate regional problems ranging from contaminated waterways to human health. (UCB)
  • Bizarre Matter Could Find Use in Quantum Computers. There are enticing new findings this week in the worldwide search for materials that support fault-tolerant quantum computing. New results from Rice University and Princeton University indicate that a bizarre state of matter that acts like a particle with one-quarter electron charge also has a "quantum registry" that is immune to information loss from external perturbations. (Rice U.)

April  20

  • Long-distance Journeys are Out of Fashion. The results of genetic studies on migratory birds substantiate the theory that in the case of a continued global warming, and within only a few generations, migratory birds will - subject to strong selection and microevolution - at first begin to fly shorter distances and at a later stage, stop migrating, and will thus become so-called "residents". (MPG)

April  19

  • New Bony-Skulled Dinosaur Species Discovered in Texas. Paleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur with a softball-sized lump of solid bone on top of its skull, according to a paper published in the April issue of the journal Cretaceous Research. (Yale U.)
  • Neutrinos: Clues to the Most Energetic Cosmic Rays. We’re constantly being peppered by showers of debris from cosmic rays colliding with atoms in the atmosphere. Cosmic rays aren’t actually rays, of course, they’re particles; ninety percent are protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, and most of the rest are heavier nuclei like iron. Some originate from our own sun but most come from farther off, from the Milky Way or beyond. (LBNL)

April  14

  • Major Breakthrough Offers Hope of Preventing Mitochondrial Diseases. Scientists at Newcastle University have developed a pioneering technique which enables them for the first time to successfully transfer DNA between two human eggs. The technique has the potential to help prevent the transmission of serious inherited disorders known as mitochondrial diseases. (Newcastle U.)
  • Anti-cancer Agent Stops Metastasis in its Tracks. Like microscopic inchworms, cancer cells slink away from tumors to travel and settle elsewhere in the body. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College report in today’s online edition of the journal Nature that new anti-cancer agents break down the looping gait these cells use to migrate, stopping them in their tracks. (BNL)

April  13

April  12

  • Deepest Core Drilled From Antarctic Peninsula; May Contain Glacial Stage Ice. Researchers here are hopeful that the new core they drilled through an ice field on the Antarctic Peninsula will contain ice dating back into the last ice age. If so, that record should give new insight into past global climate changes. (OSU)
  • A Different Kind of Mine Disaster. The world's largest antimony mine has become the world's largest laboratory for studying the environmental consequences of escaped antimony -- an element whose environmental and biological properties are still largely a mystery. (Indiana U.)

April  7

  • Phantom Traffic Jams. This Easter, motorists will experience the familiar frustration of being stuck on a motorway in a ‘phantom’ traffic jam that eventually disperses with no road works to blame, or any other apparent cause. (Bristol U.)

April  6

  • Archaeologists Uncover Land Before Wheel. A team of archaeologists from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, along with a team of Syrian colleagues, is uncovering new clues about a prehistoric society that formed the foundation of urban life in the Middle East prior to invention of the wheel. (NSF)
  • UCSB Geologist Discovers Pattern in Earth's Long-Term Climate Record. In an analysis of the past 1.2 million years, UC Santa Barbara geologist Lorraine Lisiecki discovered a pattern that connects the regular changes of the Earth's orbital cycle to changes in the Earth's climate. (UCSB)
  • To Starve a Tumor. Since the 1920s, scientists have known that cancer cells generate energy differently than normal cells, a phenomenon dubbed the “Warburg effect” after its discoverer, German biochemist Otto Warburg. However, the field of cancer-cell metabolism has been largely ignored since the 1970s, when researchers flocked to study newly discovered cancer-causing genes. (MIT)

April  5

  • For Stem Cells, Practice Makes Perfect. Multipotent stem cells have the capacity to develop into different types of cells by reprogramming their DNA to turn on different combinations of genes, a process called “differentiation.” In a new study, researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science have found that reprogramming is imperfect in the early stages of differentiation, with some genes turned on and off at random. As cell divisions continue, the stability of the differentiation process increases by a factor of 100. The finding will help scientists understand how stem cells reprogram their genes and why fully differentiated cells are very hard to reprogram, knowledge with potential impacts on aging, regenerative medicine, and cancer research. (Carnegie I.)

April  1

March 30

  • New Path To Solar Energy Via Solid-State Photovoltaics. A newly discovered path for the conversion of sunlight to electricity could brighten the future for photovoltaic technology. Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found a new mechanism by which the photovoltaic effect can take place in semiconductor thin-films. This new route to energy production overcomes the bandgap voltage limitation that continues to plague conventional solid-state solar cells. (LBNL)

March 29

  • Scientists Discover World’s Smallest Superconductor. Scientists have discovered the world’s smallest superconductor, a sheet of four pairs of molecules less than one nanometer wide. The Ohio University-led study, published today as an advance online publication in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, provides the first evidence that nanoscale molecular superconducting wires can be fabricated, which could be used for nanoscale electronic devices and energy applications. (Ohio U.)
  • Extreme Weather Impacts Migratory Birds. Every year, hurricanes and droughts wreak havoc on human lives and property around the world. And according to a pair of new NASA-funded studies, migratory birds also experience severe impacts to their habitats and populations from these events. (GSFC)

March 28

  • Common Mechanisms of Drug Abuse and Obesity. Some of the same brain mechanisms that fuel drug addiction in humans accompany the emergence of compulsive eating behaviors and the development of obesity in animals, according to research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a component of the National Institutes of Health. (NIH)

March 25

  • Bacteria Produce Oxygen Even Without Light. Dutch researchers from the University of Nijmegen have discovered bacteria that oxidize the methane without oxygen. Instead, these bacteria used nitrite, commonly available in freshwater sediments in agricultural areas. Methane is a very stable molecule and its degradation was generally believed to be impossible without oxygen (or sulfate). Now an international team from the Netherlands, France and Germany has shown that the bacteria actually do use oxygen for methane oxidation. They produce this oxygen themselves, like plants - only without light. The oxygen is manufactured from the nitrite. Until now, scientists believed that the art of making oxygen was restricted to plants, algae and cyanobacteria. Now it looks as if the researchers are on the track of a mechanism which may have existed before green plants first appeared on earth. (MPG)

March 24

  • Even Soil Feels the Heat. Twenty years of field studies reveal that as the Earth has gotten warmer, plants and microbes in the soil have given off more carbon dioxide. So-called soil respiration has increased about one-tenth of 1 percent per year since 1989, according to an analysis of past studies in today's issue of Nature. (PNNL)
  • The Universe’s First Black Holes. Up to now, primitive black holes, which occupy the cores of active galaxies and were around as far back as the early days of the universe, only existed in astronomer’s models. Researchers have now found two such gravitational monsters, however, which revealed themselves as brightly glowing quasars. Their light originates from a time when the universe was barely one billion years old - and we can see them now exactly as they appeared 12.7 billion years ago. (MPG)

March 23

  • New Theory Of Down Syndrome Cause May Lead To New Therapies. Conventional wisdom among scientists for years has suggested that because individuals with Down syndrome have an extra chromosome, the disorder most likely results from the presence of too many genes or proteins contained in that additional structure. (OSU)
  • Could Smell Play a Role in the Origin of New Bird Species? Two recently diverged populations of a southern California songbird produce unique odors, suggesting smell could contribute to the reproductive isolation that accompanies the origin of new bird species. The Indiana University Bloomington study of organic compounds present in the preen oils of Dark-eyed Juncos is described in this month's Behavioral Ecology. (Indiana U.)
  • Roasting Biomass May Be Key Process in Bioenergy Economy. Biorefineries may soon rely on a process akin to roasting coffee beans to get more energy-dense biomass. (INL)

March 19

March 17

  • UA Astronomers Discover Most Primitive Supermassive Holes Known. Astronomers have come across what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known. The discovery will provide a better understanding of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies and stars all came to be. (U. Arizona)

March 16

March 15

  • For Better Romantic Relationships, Be True To Yourself. Be true to yourself, and better romantic relationships will follow, research suggests. A new study examined how dating relationships were affected by the ability of people to see themselves clearly and objectively, act in ways consistent with their beliefs, and interact honestly and truthfully with others. (CU Boulder)
  • New CU-Boulder Hand Bacteria Study Holds Promise for Forensics Identification. Forensic scientists may soon have a valuable new item in their toolkits -- a way to identify individuals using unique, telltale types of hand bacteria left behind on objects like keyboards and computer mice, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. (CU Boulder)
  • Computational Feat Speeds Finding of Genes to Milliseconds Instead of Years. Like a magician who says, “Pick a card, any card,” Stanford University computer scientist Debashis Sahoo, PhD, seemed to be offering some kind of trick when he asked researchers at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine to pick any two genes already known to be involved in stem cell development. Finding such genes can take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but Sahoo was promising the skeptical stem cell scientists that, in a fraction of a second and for practically zero cost, he could find new genes involved in the same developmental pathway as the two genes provided. (Stanford U.)

March 9

  • “Catastrophic Event” Behind the Halt of Star Birth in Early Galaxy Formation. Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe. They report their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. (RAS)
  • Stars in the Fast Lane - Going Round and Round. That is real fast: Two suns orbit each other in a mere 5.4 minutes. This makes HM Cancri the binary star system with by far the shortest known orbital period - and at the same time the smallest binary known. Its size is equivalent to no more than a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Moon, about 100,000 kilometres. (MPG)

March 8

  • Researchers Show How Far South American Cities Moved In Quake. The massive magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck the west coast of Chile last month moved the entire city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, and shifted other parts of South America as far apart as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil. (OSU)

March 5

  • ASU Scientists Narrow Down Origins of Malaria. From King Tut to Alexander the Great to Mother Theresa, the mosquito-borne illness malaria has long been a menace to human civilization. Now, an international team of scientists, including Arizona State University School of Life Sciences professor Ananias Escalante, has attempted to better understand this scourge by tracing it back to its earliest origins. (ASU)

March 4

  • Genome Sequenced for Amoeba that Flips into Free-swimming Cell. In the long evolutionary road from bacteria to humans, a major milestone occurred some 1.5 billion years ago when microbes started building closets for all their stuff, storing DNA inside a nucleus, for example, or cramming all the energy machinery inside mitochondria. (UC Berkeley)

March 3

  • UM Study Lays Groundwork for New, Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interface Technology. New findings by a team of University of Maryland researchers may lead to new, non-invasive technologies for portable brain-computer interface systems. Such technologies potentially could allow people with disabilities or paralysis to operate a robotic arm, motorized wheelchair or other prosthetic device using a headset with scalp sensors that send signals from the brain to the device. (U. Maryland)
  • Ecological Balancing Act. Phytoplankton are single-celled organisms that serve as the base of the marine food web and provide half the oxygen we breathe on Earth. They also play a key role in global climate change by removing carbon from the atmosphere and injecting it deep into the oceans. (MIT)
  • Old Star is “Missing Link” in Galactic Evolution. A newly discovered star outside the Milky Way has yielded important clues about the evolution of our galaxy. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 280,000 light-years away, the star has a chemical make-up similar to the Milky Way’s oldest stars, supporting theories that our galaxy grew by absorbing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks. (Carnegie I.)

March 2

  • Snakes Alive! Study Shows that the Reptiles Ate Baby Dinosaurs. Sixty-seven million years ago, when dinosaur hatchlings first scrambled out of their eggs, their first-and last-glimpse of the world might have been the open jaws of a 3.5-metre-long snake named Sanajeh indicus, based on the discovery in India of a nearly complete fossilized skeleton of a primitive snake coiled inside a dinosaur nest. (U. Toronto)

March 1

  • Dark Matter Used to Measure Age of Universe. Astronomers from the United States and Europe have used a gravitational lens -- a distant, light-bending clump of dark matter -- to make a new estimate of the Hubble constant, which determines the size and age of the universe. (UC Davis)
  • Scientists Make Tiny New Magnets from Old Bugs. Scientists in Manchester have found a clean and green way of making tiny magnets for high tech gadgets – using natural bacteria that have been around for millions of years. (U. Manchester)
  • Darkness Increases Dishonest Behavior. Darkness can conceal identity and encourage moral transgressions; thus Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Worship” in The Conduct of Life (1860), “as gaslight is the best nocturnal police, so the universe protects itself by pitiless publicity.” New research in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that darkness may also induce a psychological feeling of illusory anonymity, just as children playing “hide and seek” will close their eyes and believe that other cannot see them, the experience of darkness, even one as subtle as wearing a pair of sunglasses, triggers the belief that we are warded from others’ attention and inspections. (APS)

February 24

February 23

  • Alien Invaders Pack the Milky Way. Around a quarter of the globular star clusters in our Milky Way galaxy are invaders from other galaxies, according to a team of scientists from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. In a paper accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Swinburne astronomer Professor Duncan Forbes has shown that many of our galaxy’s globular star clusters are actually foreigners - having been born elsewhere and then migrated to our Milky Way. (RAS)
  • Anti-drinking Ads Can Increase Alcohol Use. Public service advertising campaigns that use guilt or shame to warn against alcohol abuse can actually have the reverse effect, spurring increased drinking among target audiences, according to new research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. (Inidana U.)

February 22

  • An Afternoon Nap Markedly Boosts the Brain’s Learning Capacity. If you see a student dozing in the library or a co-worker catching 40 winks in her cubicle, don't roll your eyes. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour’s nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter. (UC Berkeley.)
  • CU Team Discovers Tiny RNA Molecule With Big Implications for the Origin of Life. An extremely small RNA molecule created by a University of Colorado at Boulder team can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize proteins, the building blocks of life. The findings could be a substantial step toward understanding "the very origin of Earthly life," the lead researcher contends. (U. Colorado, B.)
  • Caltech Neuroscientists Find Brain System Behind General Intelligence. A collaborative team of neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California (USC), and the Autonomous University of Madrid have mapped the brain structures that affect general intelligence. (LBNL)

February 21

February 17

  • Most Precise Test Yet of Einstein's Gravitational Redshift. While airplane and rocket experiments have proved that gravity makes clocks tick more slowly — a central prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity — a new experiment in an atom interferometer measures this slowdown 10,000 times more accurately than before, and finds it to be exactly what Einstein predicted. (UC Berkeley)
  • Upside-down Answer for Deep Earth Mystery. When Earth was young, it exhaled the atmosphere. During a period of intense volcanic activity, lava carried light elements from the planet's molten interior and released them into the sky. However, some light elements got trapped inside the planet. In this week's issue of Nature, a Rice University-based team of scientists is offering a new answer to a longstanding mystery: What caused Earth to hold its last breath? (Rice U.)
  • People Likely to Form Extreme Perceptions of Reality While Learning. People may develop distorted views of certain types of people, places or experiences depending on how they compare those categories during the learning process, according to new research at The University of Texas at Austin. (UTA)
  • Cancer Breakthrough Could Save Children’s Lives. A cancer which claims the lives of thousands of children worldwide every year is a step closer to being cured thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Newcastle University. (Newcastle U.)

February 16

  • NASA's Fermi Closes on Source of Cosmic Rays. New images from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope show where supernova remnants emit radiation a billion times more energetic than visible light. The images bring astronomers a step closer to understanding the source of some of the universe's most energetic particles -- cosmic rays. (GSFC)
  • Caltech Researchers Create Highly Absorbing, Flexible Solar Cells with Silicon Wire Arrays. Using arrays of long, thin silicon wires embedded in a polymer substrate, a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has created a new type of flexible solar cell that enhances the absorption of sunlight and efficiently converts its photons into electrons. The solar cell does all this using only a fraction of the expensive semiconductor materials required by conventional solar cells. (Caltech)

February 14

  • Digging Deep into Diamonds. By creating diamond-based nanowire devices, a team at Harvard University has taken another step toward making applications based on quantum science and technology possible. (Harvard U.)

February 10

February 9

  • Leaf Veins Inspire a New Model for Distribution Networks. A straight line may be the shortest path from A to B, but it’s not always the most reliable or efficient way to go. In fact, depending on what’s traveling where, the best route may run in circles, according to a new model that bucks decades of theorizing on the subject. A team of biophysicists at Rockefeller University developed a mathematical model showing that complex sets of interconnecting loops — like the netted veins that transport water in a leaf — provide the best distribution network for supplying fluctuating loads to varying parts of the system. It also shows that such a network can best handle damage. The findings could change the way engineers think about designing networks to handle a variety of challenges like the distribution of water or electricity in a city (Rockefeller U.)
  • Clothing Solution for Chilly Operating Room Environment. Hugging heated IV bags, layering undergarments and wrapping themselves in blankets - Barry Finegan and his co-workers do what they can to get warm before heading into the surgical theatre. (U. Alberta)

February 5

  • Migrating Insects Fly in the Fast Lane. A study involving researchers at the University of York sheds new light on the flight behaviours that enable insects to undertake long-distance migrations, and highlights the remarkable abilities of these insect migrants. (U. York)
  • Record-breaking Collisions. In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. (MIT)

February 3

  • Some Morbidly Obese People are Missing Genes. A small but significant proportion of morbidly obese people are missing a section of their DNA, according to research published today in Nature. The authors of the study, from Imperial College London and ten other European Centres, say that missing DNA such as that identified in this research may be having a dramatic effect on some people's weight. (ICL)
  • Bad News For Mosquitoes: Yale Study May Lead to Better Traps, Repellents. Yale University researchers have found more than two dozen scent receptors in malaria-transmitting mosquitoes that detect compounds in human sweat, a finding that may help scientists to develop new ways to combat a disease that kills 1 million people annually. (Yale U.)
  • Madly Mapping the Universe. To map our home planet, Google Earth depends mostly on satellite imagery for land surfaces and sonar imagery for the sea floor. Maps of the Universe likewise depend on different kinds of detectors for different kinds of features. Maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), for example, depend on measuring minute differences in the temperature of the sky. (LBNL)

February 1

  • Seeing the Brain Hear Reveals Surprises About How Sound Is Processed. New research shows our brains are a lot more chaotic than previously thought, and that this might be a good thing. Neurobiologists at the University of Maryland have discovered information about how the brain processes sound that challenges previous understandings of the auditory cortex, which had suggested an organization based on precise neuronal maps. (U. Maryland)

January 29

  • Study Shows Cigarette Smoking a Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease. A UCSF analysis of published studies on the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and smoking indicates that smoking cigarettes is a significant risk factor for the disease. After controlling for study design, quality of the journals, time of publication, and tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, the UCSF research team also found an association between tobacco industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual studies. Industry-affiliated studies indicated that smoking protects against the development of AD, while independent studies showed that smoking increased the risk of developing the disease. (UCSF)
  • Cell Growth Regulates Genetic Circuits. Genetic circuits control the activity of genes and thereby the function of cells and organisms. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and the University of California at San Diego have shown how various genetic circuits in bacterial cells are influenced by growth conditions. According to their findings, even genes that are not regulated can display different activities - depending on whether they are translated into proteins in slow- or fast-growing cells. The results provide researchers with new insights into gene regulation and will help them in the design of synthetic genetic circuits in the future. (MPG)
  • Learning from Toys. Scientists have long studied how atoms and molecules structure themselves into intricate clusters. Unlocking the design secrets of nature offers lessons in engineering artificial systems that could self-assemble into desired forms. (Harvard U.)

January 27

  • National Ignition Facility Achieves Unprecedented 1 Megajoule Laser Shot. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced today that scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have successfully delivered an historic level of laser energy — more than 1 megajoule — to a target in a few billionths of a second and demonstrated the target drive conditions required to achieve fusion ignition. (LLNL)
  • Perfect Landing. Scientists have found that people who run barefoot, or in minimal footwear, tend to avoid “heel-striking,” and instead land on the ball of the foot or the middle of the foot. In so doing, these runners use the architecture of the foot and leg and some clever Newtonian physics to avoid hurtful and potentially damaging impacts, equivalent to two to three times body weight, that shod heel-strikers repeatedly experience. (Harvard U.)
  • Microbes Produce Fuels Directly from Biomass. A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids. (LBNL)

January 26

  • Diamond in Space. When viewed through a telescope, the Steins planetoid is an inconspicuous spot of light. Viewed in more detail, it shows itself to be a kind of debris heap with a diamond-like shape and large craters on its surface. A team headed by Horst Uwe Keller from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau has taken a closer look. The scientists used the OSIRIS camera system aboard the European space probe Rosetta for this task. (MPG)

January 20

January 19

January 17

  • Organized Chaos Gets Robots Going. Göttingen scientists develop an autonomous walking robot that flexibly switches between many different gaits by using "chaos control". (MPG)

January 14

  • Y Chromosomes Evolving Rapidly. The Y chromosome is often considered somewhat of a genetic oddball. Short and stubby, it carries hardly any genes, most of which are related to traits associated with maleness. Most of the chromosome consists of highly repetitive sequences of DNA, known as massive palindrome sequences, whose function is unknown. (MIT)

January 13

January 11

January 6

  • For this Microbe, Cousins not Particularly Welcome. A bacterial species that depends on cooperation to survive is discriminating when it comes to the company it keeps. Scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and Netherlands' Centre for Terrestrial Ecology have learned Myxococcus xanthus cells are able to recognize genetic differences in one another that are so subtle, even the scientists studying them must go to great lengths to tell them apart. (Indiana U.)
  • UM-Led Team Shines Cosmic Light on Missing Ordinary Matter. An international team of scientists, led by University of Maryland astronomer Stacy McGaugh, has found that individual galactic objects have less ordinary matter, relative to dark matter, than does the Universe as a whole. (U. Maryland)
  • Honeybees Can Help Dissect How Disease Spreads in Livestock, Other Animal and Human Groups. The study of honeybees and their social structure can give scientists a greater understanding of how infectious disease spreads among animals and humans, says a Colorado State University professor who has embarked on a five-year study of honeybee behavior, funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER award. (CSU)

January 5

  • Image Reveals Unprecedented View of Universe. Shown in an extremely broad range of color and showcasing more than 12 billion years of cosmic history, Hubble's recent image is a full-glory cosmic renaissance of the history of the Universe. This image provides a record of the Universe's most exciting formative years, from the birth of stars in the early Universe all the way through the materialization of the Milky Way. (ASU)

January 4

  • Biodegradable Nanoparticles Can Bypass Mucus Barrier and Release Drugs Over Time. Johns Hopkins University researchers have created biodegradable nanosized particles that can easily slip through the body’s sticky and viscous mucus secretions to deliver a sustained-release medication cargo. The researchers say these nanoparticles, which degrade over time into harmless components, could one day carry life-saving drugs to patients suffering from dozens of health conditions, including diseases of the eye, lung, gut or female reproductive tract. (JHU)

December 31

December 28

  • Researchers Find Clues to Why Some Eat When Full. The premise that hunger makes food look more appealing is a widely held belief – just ask those who cruise grocery store aisles on an empty stomach, only to go home with a full basket and an empty wallet. (UTSMC)
  • Molars Provide Insight into Evolution of Apes, Humans. The timing of molar emergence and its relation to growth and reproduction in apes is being reported by two scientists at Arizona State University's Institute of Human Origins in the Dec. 28 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). (ASU)

December 24

  • Scientists Identify Protein that Keeps Stem Cells Poised for Action. Like a child awaiting the arrival of Christmas, embryonic stem cells exist in a state of permanent anticipation. They must balance the ability to quickly become more specialized cell types with the cellular chaos that could occur should they act too early (stop shaking those presents, kids!). Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have now identified a critical component, called Jarid2, of this delicate balancing act — one that both recruits other regulatory proteins to genes important in differentiation and also modulates their activity to keep them in a state of ongoing readiness. (Stanford U.)

December 23

  • Sun and Moon Trigger Deep Tremors on San Andreas Fault. The faint tug of the sun and moon on the San Andreas Fault stimulates tremors deep underground, suggesting that the rock 15 miles below is lubricated with highly pressurized water that allows the rock to slip with little effort, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, seismologists. (UC Berkeley)
  • Cancer, Alzheimer's Less Likely to Strike in Combination. It may seem a small consolation from either point of view, but a new study has affirmed that patients with cancer are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, and patients with Alzheimer's disease are less likely to get cancer. (WUSTL)

December 22

  • Genetic Study Traces African-Americans' Ancestry. Researchers may now reliably use genetics data to tell a person's ancestry -- what percent of an African-American's genome stems from Europe, for example, and what percent comes from Africa. (Cornell U.)

December 21

  • Next Generation Lens Promises More Control. Duke University engineers have created a new generation of lens that could greatly improve the capabilities of telecommunications or radar systems to provide a wide field of view and greater detail. (Duke U.)

December 16

  • An Advance in Superconducting Magnet Technology Opens the Door for More Powerful Colliders. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has just started producing collisions, but scientists and engineers have already made significant progress in preparing for future upgrades beyond the collider’s nominal design performance, including a 10-fold increase in collision rates by the end of the next decade and, eventually, higher-energy beams. (LBNL)
  • Argonne Scientists Use Bacteria to Power Simple Machines. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University have discovered that common bacteria can turn microgears when suspended in a solution, providing insights for designs of bio-inspired dynamically adaptive materials for energy. (ANL)

December 15

  • Black Holes in Star Clusters Stir up Time and Space. Within a decade scientists could be able to detect the merger of tens of pairs of black holes every year, according to a team of astronomers at the University of Bonn’s Argelander-Institut fuer Astronomie, who publish their findings in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. By modelling the behaviour of stars in clusters, the Bonn team find that they are ideal environments for black holes to coalesce. These merger events produce ripples in time and space (gravitational waves) that could be detected by instruments from as early as 2015. (RAS)
  • Pollution Alters Isolated Thunderstorms. New climate research reveals how wind shear — the same atmospheric conditions that cause bumpy airplane rides — affects how pollution contributes to isolated thunderstorm clouds. Under strong wind shear conditions, pollution hampers thunderhead formation. But with weak wind shear, pollution does the opposite and makes storms stronger. (PNNL)
  • Greenland Glaciers: What Lies Beneath. Scientists who study the melting of Greenland’s glaciers are discovering that water flowing beneath the ice plays a much more complex role than they previously imagined. (OSU)

December 14

  • Yellowstone's Plumbing Exposed. The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup. (U. Utah)
  • Brain Plaques in Healthy Individuals Linked to Increased Alzheimer's Risk. Scientists have long assumed that amyloid brain plaques found in autopsies of Alzheimer's patients are harmful and cause Alzheimer's disease. But autopsies of people with no signs of mental impairment have also revealed brain plaques, challenging this theory. (WUSTL)

December 10

  • New Meat-Eating Dinosaur Alters Evolutionary Tree. Paleontologists, aided by amateur volunteers, have unearthed a previously unknown meat-eating dinosaur from a fossil bone bed in northern New Mexico, settling a debate about early dinosaur evolution, revealing a period of explosive diversification and hinting at how dinosaurs spread across the supercontinent Pangaea. (UTA)

December 9

  • Non-Invasive Technique Blocks a Conditioned Fear in Humans. Scientists have for the first time selectively blocked a conditioned fear memory in humans with a behavioral manipulation. Participants remained free of the fear memory for at least a year. The research builds on emerging evidence from animal studies that reactivating an emotional memory opens a 6-hour window of opportunity in which a training procedure can alter its. (NIH)

December 8

  • Social Scientists Build Case for 'Survival of the Kindest'. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive. (UC Berkeley)
  • Reinvigorated Hubble Reveals Most Distant Galaxies Yet. Using the recently updated Hubble Space Telescope (HST) two teams of UK astronomers have identified galaxies which are likely to be the most distant yet seen. The UK teams, one led by Andrew Bunker and Stephen Wilkins at the University of Oxford and the other by Ross McLure and Jim Dunlop at the University of Edinburgh, analysed infrared images from the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument on HST, installed during the most recent Space Shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. Infrared light is light invisible to the human eye, with wavelengths about twice as long as visible light - beyond the red. (RAS)
  • A Special Kind of Flight Training. Whether for a business trip to a neighbouring country or a holiday in the Caribbean: What most people take for granted, actually poses a great challenge not only for the transport business, but also particularly for pilots. The goal of the European Union project SUPRA, funded with 3.7 million Euro, is to train pilots in the best manner possible and prepare them for hazardous scenarios. (MPG)

December 7

  • A See-through Surprise. Very often in science, the unexpected discovery turns out to be the most significant. Rice University Professor Junichiro Kono and his team weren't looking for a breakthrough in the transmission of terahertz signals, but there it was: a plasmonic material that would, with adjustments to its temperature and/or magnetic field, either stop a terahertz beam cold or let it pass completely. (Rice U.)

December 4

  • Galapagos the Rosetta Stone of Evolution Faces Devastation from Climate Change and Fishing. The coastal wildlife of the Galapagos Islands – arguably the world’s most celebrated environmental treasure – has suffered outright transformations due to a combination of climate change and over fishing, with several species of marine plants and animals believed to have gone extinct and many others seriously threatened, a new report reveals. (Conservation I.)

December 3

December 2

  • Newly Discovered Star One of Hottest in Galaxy. Astronomers at The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics have discovered one of the hottest stars in the Galaxy with a surface temperature of around 200,000 degrees - 35 times hotter than the Sun. (Manchester U.)
  • New Cell Phone Technology Allows Deaf People to Communicate Anytime, Anywhere. For those who are deaf or hard of hearing, cell phone use has largely been limited to text messaging. But technology is catching up: Cornell researchers and colleagues have created cell phones that allow deaf people to communicate in sign language -- the same way hearing people use phones to talk. (Cornell U.)
  • Why a Short Run is Better than a Long Walk. Using the latest technology, researchers are uncovering evidence of exactly how major a role activity plays in the battle to keep obesity at bay. In new report published in the British Medical Journal, scientists have shown that it’s the type of exercise you do, rather than the amount, that’s most important. (Bristol U.)

December 1

  • Fear of Anxiety Linked to Depression in Above-average Worriers. Anxiety sensitivity, or the fear of feeling anxious, may put people who are already above-average worriers at risk for depression, according to Penn State researchers. Understanding how sensitivity to anxiety is a risk factor for depression may make anxiety sensitivity a potential target for treating depression in the future. (PSU)

     

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