The Southern constellation Tucana (the Toucan) is probably best known as the home of the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky…
Washington, D.C. Astronomers detected unusually high quantities of carbon, the basis of all terrestrial life, in an infant solar system around nearby star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away. “For years we’ve looked to this early forming solar system as one that might be going through the same processes our own solar system did when the rocky planets, including Earth, were forming,” commented lead author Aki Roberge,* who began the research while at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magne
A new analysis of earthquake data indicates that aftershocks are triggered by the shaking associated with the mainshock, rather than by the added stress on nearby faults resulting from rearrangement of the Earth’s crust.
The triggering of aftershocks by shaking may seem obvious, but is in fact a surprising result, said Emily Brodsky, assistant professor of Earth sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“The problem is that it’s not clear how s
A study focusing on a new non-invasive imaging technology—one that may enable more precise diagnosis of coronary artery disease and treatment tailoring in individual patients—was released by Israeli researchers at SNM’s 53rd Annual Meeting June 3–7 in San Diego.
“This work presents a new non-invasive cardiac imaging technology for the assessment of ischemic heart disease—also known as coronary artery or coronary heart disease—caused by the narrowing of heart arteries, which prevents
Thousands of residents of rural villages in India are receiving quality eye care thanks to a collaborative effort between an Indian hospital network and the researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Intel Corporation who have developed a new technology for low-cost rural connectivity.
This new technology, based on “Wi-Fi” wireless networks, allows eye specialists at Aravind Eye Hospital at Theni in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu to interview and exami
New protected area proves timely in fight against fungus epidemic
The rediscovery of two frog species feared extinct has made a new Colombian protected area the focal point for efforts to save amphibians from a deadly fungus decimating their populations in Central and South America.
Scientists recently found the two Critically Endangered frogs – the Santa Marta harlequin frog (Atelopus laetissimus) and the San Lorenzo harlequin frog (Atelopus nahumae) – for the first t
Surf clam egg study may change thinking about centrosomes
Despite more than a century of study, scientists know relatively little about the inner workings of centrosomes–organelles essential to cell division in humans and animals. Now new research by scientists studying surf clams at the MBL (Marine Biological Laboratory) shows that centrosomes may contain ribonucleic acid (RNA), the molecule that translates genes into proteins.
The research, published June 5 in
New insights into the structure of space and time, climate modeling, and the design of novel drugs, are but a few of the many research areas that will be transformed by the installation of three supercomputers at the University of Bristol.
At peak performance the multi-million pound high performance computers (HPCs) will carry out over 13 trillion calculations per second. That is equivalent to the entire population of the world working simultaneously on hand-held calculators
Wheat producers have more than the drought cutting into their yields this year, said two Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers.
Dr. Tom Allen, Experiment Station assistant research scientist and plant disease diagnostician, saw more than 150 wheat samples sent to the Great Plains Diagnostic Network lab this growing season, in addition to 400-plus samples the plant pathology staff gathered across the Panhandle.
Ninety-five percent of these samples were diagnos
There is a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer in Asia where people smoke heavily, which may be accounted for by high consumption of tea, particularly green tea, according to a review article published by a Yale School of Medicine researcher.
“We do not yet have a full explanation for the ’Asian paradox,’ which refers to the very low incidence of both heart disease and cancer in Asia, even though consumption of cigarettes is greater than in most other countries,” said
New nanofabrication technique
Researchers have developed a new technique that could provide detailed information about the growth of carbon nanotubes and other nanometer-scale structures as they are being produced. The technique offers a way for researchers to rapidly and systematically map how changes in growth conditions affect the fabrication of nanometer-scale structures.
Instead of a large furnace that is normally used to grow nanotubes as part of the chemical vapor dep
Between 8 and 12 million Americans are affected by peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, where the arteries that bring blood to the legs are blocked by atherosclerotic plaque. The incidence of PAD is expected to rise in coming decades as the population ages, one reason it’s vital to develop new methods to diagnose the severity of PAD and develop new drugs to treat it.
By examining the physiology of patients who exercised under a magnetic resonance imaging scanner (MRI), doc
Hormonal treatments reduce risk of cancer returning, finds 10-year study
Women diagnosed with breast cancer who carry a certain genetic mutation can have breast-sparing surgery but should consider hormonal treatments to reduce their risk of cancer returning.
Those are the findings of a 10-year study led by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The study authors found that women with the genetic mutation who had their ovaries removed or too
A protein called calpain can be the key to either preventing or promoting the cell death, a Queen’s University study has found.
“This work provides proof in principle that pharmacological inhibition of calpain may be used to block cell death in situations where this is not desirable, such as in neuronal cells of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s patients, but to promote cell death in cancer cells where this is clearly a very desirable outcome,” says lead researcher Peter Greer
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole and Louisiana State University (LSU) Health Sciences Center have discovered the presence of the genetic material RNA in the centrosome, the organizing structure inside each cell that assures proper cell division.
The findings, detailed June 5 in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, present evidence that individual centrosomes within a
A USC Information Sciences Institute system pulls answers from online conversations by identifying the alpha chatterers.
The system, to be presented at a conference on human language technology on June 6, was developed to analyze technical conversations in which an objectively correct answer exists. But the method for statistically characterizing response by the group to individuals is generalizable.
Online communities are now firmly established in domains ranging fro
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