Older women using estrogen-alone hormone therapy could be at a slightly greater risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), than women who do not use any menopausal hormone therapy, according to a new report by scientists with the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS). The scientists also found that estrogen alone did not prevent cognitive decline in these older women. These findings from WHIMS appear in the June 23/30, 2004, Journal of the American Medical Association
When the Nisqually earthquake struck western Washington in 2001, brick chimneys in parts of West Seattle and Bremerton were left looking like so much straw after the Big Bad Wolf had gone huffing and puffing through. Hundreds of brick chimneys at the north end of West Seattle and north of Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton were seriously damaged or toppled by the magnitude 6.7 temblor.
New research suggests the main culprit might have been the Seattle fault, even though the earthquake
New findings suggest that surface geometry determines volcanic activity
What causes the peaks and valleys of the world’s great mountains? For continental ranges like the Appalachians or the Northwest’s Cascades, the geological picture is clearer. Continents crash or volcanoes erupt, then glaciers erode away. Yet scientists are still puzzling out what makes the highs high and the lows low for the planet’s largest mountain chain, the 55,000-mile-long Mid-Ocean Ridge.
This we
NASA’s Cassini-Huygens spacecraft carrying a $12.5 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument package is expected to enter Saturn’s orbit June 30, beginning a four-year mission to probe the planet, its fabulous ring system and bizarre moons.
Launched Oct. 15, 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the NASA spacecraft has traveled more than 2 billion miles during a roundabout, 6.7-year journey to the ringed planet. The most ambitious planetary mission ever, the $3 billion international proje
Rapid urbanization in southeastern China in the past 25 years is responsible for an estimated warming rate much larger than previous estimates for other periods and locations, according to a new study funded by NASA.
Researchers led by the Georgia Institute of Technology report that the mean surface temperature in the region has risen 0.09 degrees Fahrenheit (0.05 degrees Celsius) per decade since 1979. Also, nighttime low temperatures have risen much faster than the daytime high temperatur
How low can you go…safely?
Thanks to a landmark study involving the UW Health Sports Medicine Center, physicians and coaches can evaluate the effectiveness of methods widely used to measure body composition and predict the minimum weight an athlete should maintain.
Using a four-component model that included independent assessment of bone, body fat, muscle and total body water, 53 Division-I collegiate athletes were measured, yielding a precise reading that allowed for th
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed new evidence that extremely hot gas exists in a large region at the Milky Way’s center. The discovery came to light as a team of astronomers used Chandra’s unique resolving power to study a region about 100 light years across. The Marshall Center manages the Chandra program.
A long look by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed new evidence that extremely hot gas exists in a large region at the center of the Milky Way. The intensi
Research indicates that wood chip bedding can be an economic alternative to straw bedding for beef cattle without increasing greenhouse gas emissions during the manure handling process.
Research from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) suggests that wood chip bedding for beef cattle can be an economic alternative to straw bedding, without increasing greenhouse gas emissions during the manure handling process.
Composting is gaining rapid acceptance by the beef cattle industry
Discovery yields hope for universal treatment
Researchers at the University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins and the Institute of Bioinformatics in India have discovered a gene-expression “signature” common to distinct types of cancer, renewing hope that a universal treatment for the nation’s second leading killer might be found.
Scientists essentially abandoned the search for a common approach to cancer therapy after research launched by the 1970s “War on Cancer” revealed the
Marriage of quantum well, quantum dots could produce white light
A wireless nanodevice that functions like a fluorescent light – but potentially far more efficiently – has been developed in a joint project between the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories.
The experimental success, reported in the June 10 issue of Nature, efficiently causes nanocrystals to emit light when placed on top of a nearby energy source, eliminating the ne
For the past several years, a team of University of California astrophysicists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory have been using a cluster of roughly 300 computer processors to model some of the most intriguing aspects of the Universe. Called the Space Simulator, this de facto supercomputer has not only proven itself to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, but has also demonstrated that modeling and simulation of complex phenomena, from supernovae to cosmology, can be done on a
Study suggests that the chronic bacterial infections found in periodontal diseases may affect reproduction success and the outcome of infertility treatment
Researchers found that women undergoing ovulation induction for infertility treatment for more than three menstrual cycles experience higher gingival inflammation, bleeding and gingival crevicular fluid (GCF). This study appeared in the recent issue of the Journal of Periodontology.
In this study, the gingival inflammatio
A University of Arizona astronomer and his collaborators are using a novel camera to hunt for extrasolar planets.
The project is being funded over the next five years by a $545,000 National Science Foundation award. NSF awarded the highly competitive Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant to Associate Professor Laird M. Close. The CAREER program is a foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards for new faculty members. The CAREER program recognizes
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., is unveiling a powerful new version of a supercomputer-based system to model Earth’s climate and to project global temperature rise in coming decades. Scientists will contribute results to the next assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international research body that advises policymakers on the likely impacts of climate change. The system, known as the Community Climate System Model, version
Adverse drug reactions to alternative medicines have more than doubled in three years
Since traditional, complementary and alternative medicines remain largely unregulated, consumers worldwide need to be informed and given the tools to access appropriate, safe and effective treatment. To help address this issue, the World Health Organization (WHO) today releases a new set of guidelines for national health authorities to develop context specific and reliable information for consumer
More than half of head and neck cancer patients surveyed were disabled by their cancer or by cancer treatment, according to an article in the June issue of The Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
According to information in the article, more than 40,000 new cases of head and neck cancer are diagnosed annually in the United States, with 12,000 deaths each year. Patients with head and neck cancer often experience problems with eating and communi
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