Through a combination of data analysis and numerical modeling work, researchers have found a record of the ancient Moon-forming giant impact observable in stony meteorites. Their work will appear in the April 2015 issue of the Journal Science. The work was done by NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) researchers led by Principal Investigator Bill Bottke of the Institute for the Science of Exploration Targets (ISET) team at the Southwest Research Institute and included Tim Swindle, director of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. The ...

A skin cell responsible for scarring, and a molecule that inhibits the cell's activity, have been identified by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The molecule slowed wound healing in mice but alleviated scarring, the researchers said. The researchers also found that the cell may play a role in the growth of melanoma and in skin damage caused by radiation. A drug that acts in the same way as the inhibitory molecule is already approved for use in humans as a treatment for type-2 diabetes, so it could potentially move quickly into clinical trials ...

For more than 250 million years, four-limbed land animals known as tetrapods have repeatedly conquered the Earth's oceans. These creatures--such as plesiosaurs, penguins and sea turtles--descended from separate groups of terrestrial vertebrates that convergently evolved to thrive in aquatic environments. In a new scientific review, a team of Smithsonian scientists synthesized decades of scientific discoveries to illuminate the common and unique patterns driving the extraordinary transitions that whales, dolphins, seals and other species underwent as they moved from land ...

Supermassive black holes, often with masses billions of times that of the Sun, are located at the heart of almost all galaxies in the Universe. These black holes can accrete huge amounts of matter in the form of a surrounding disc. While most of this matter is fed into the black hole, some can escape moments before capture and be flung out into space at close to the speed of light as part of a jet of plasma. How this happens is not well understood, although it is thought that strong magnetic fields, acting very close to the event horizon, play a crucial part in this process, ...

A global study on canine rabies, published today (16 April 2015), has found that 160 people die every single day from the disease. The report is the first study to consider the impact in terms of deaths and the economic costs of rabies across all countries. Even though the disease is preventable, the study says that around 59,000 people die every year of rabies transmitted by dogs. The multi-author study, by the Global Alliance for Rabies Control's Partners for Rabies Prevention Group, also shows that annual economic losses because of the disease are around 8.6 billion ...

Scientists have discovered a protein that plays a central role in promoting immunity to viruses and cancer, opening the door to new therapies. Experiments in mice and human cells have shown that the protein promotes the proliferation of cytotoxic T cells, which kill cancer cells and cells infected with viruses. The discovery was unexpected because the new protein had no known function and doesn't resemble any other protein. Researchers from Imperial College London who led the study are now developing a gene therapy designed to boost the infection-fighting cells, and ...

A major astrophysical mystery has centred on how massive, quiescent elliptical galaxies, common in the modern Universe, quenched their once furious rates of star formation. Such colossal galaxies, often also called spheroids because of their shape, typically pack in stars ten times as densely in the central regions as in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and have about ten times its mass. Astronomers refer to these big galaxies as red and dead as they exhibit an ample abundance of ancient red stars, but lack young blue stars and show no evidence of new star formation. The ...

San Antonio -- April 16, 2015 -- A NASA-funded research team led by Dr. Bill Bottke of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) independently estimated the Moon's age as slightly less than 4.5 billion years by analyzing impact-heated shock signatures found in stony meteorites originating from the Main Asteroid Belt. Their work will appear in the April 2015 issue of the journal Science. "This research is helping to refine our time scales for 'what happened when' on other worlds in the solar system," said Bottke, of the Institute for the Science of Exploration Targets (ISET). ...

April 16, 2015, NEW HAVEN, CT - With poor sanitation estimated to cause 280,000 deaths per year worldwide, improving sanitation is a key policy goal in many developing countries. Yet governments and major development institutions disagree over how to address the problem. A new study released in Science today found that in Bangladesh, a community-motivation model that has been used in over 60 countries to increase use of hygienic latrines had no effect, yet latrine coverage expands substantially when that model is combined with subsidies for hygienic latrines targeted to ...

Astronomers from Chalmers University of Technology have used the giant telescope Alma to reveal an extremely powerful magnetic field very close to a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. The results appear in the 17 April 2015 issue of the journal Science. A team of five astronomers from Chalmers University of Technology have 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. This new observation helps astronomers to understand the structure and ...

Astronomers have shown for the first time how star formation in "dead" galaxies sputtered out billions of years ago. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed that three billion years after the Big Bang, these galaxies still made stars on their outskirts, but no longer in their interiors. The quenching of star formation seems to have started in the cores of the galaxies and then spread to the outer parts. The results will be published in the 17 April 2015 issue of the journal Science. A major astrophysical mystery has centred ...

"The answers to extinction, survival and evolution are right here in the dirt," says University of Cincinnati Quaternary science researcher Ken Tankersley, associate professor of anthropology and geology. "And we are continually surprised by what we find." While many scientists focus on species' extinction wherever there has been rapid and profound climate change, Tankersley looks closely at why certain species survived. For many years he has invited students and faculty from archeology and geology, and representatives from the Cincinnati Museum Center and Kentucky ...

Washington, DC--Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can suppress the hormone cortisol and stress responses in the brain, but diet beverages sweetened with aspartame do not have the same effect, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. "This is the first evidence that high sugar - but not aspartame - consumption may relieve stress in humans," said one of the study's authors, Kevin D. Laugero, PhD, of the University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service. ...

Washington, DC--People who have osteoporosis face a 1.76-fold higher risk of developing sudden deafness than those who do not have the bone disease, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Osteoporosis is a progressive condition in which bones become structurally weak and are more likely to fracture or break, according to the Hormone Health Network. More than 40 million people nationwide already have osteoporosis or are at risk of developing the condition due to low bone mass, according to the National ...

This news release is available in French. Quebec City, April 16, 2015--An international study led by researchers from Université Laval and CHU de Québec-Université Laval has identified significant vascular changes in the brains of people with Huntington's disease. This breakthrough, the details of which are published in the most recent issue of Annals of Neurology, will have significant implications for our understanding of the disease and could open the door to new therapeutic targets for treating this fatal neurodegenerative condition. Huntington's ...

If you are looking to raise money online for your favorite cause, listen up. A real-world analysis of human behavior reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 16 shows that men treat online giving as a competitive enterprise. Men will donate four times more money to an attractive female fundraiser in response to the contribution of another male. Researchers say that they suspect this tendency is a subconscious part of human psychology that exists because it is (or was) evolutionarily beneficial to us. "People are really generous and are right, a lot ...

The body plan of octopuses is nothing if not unique, with a sophisticated brain in a soft, bilaterally symmetrical body, encircled by eight radially symmetrical and incredibly flexible arms. Now, researchers reporting the first detailed kinematic analysis of octopus arm coordination in crawling show that the animals have a unique motor control strategy to match their "odd" form. The researchers report their findings in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 16. "Octopuses use unique locomotion strategies that are different from those found in other animals," ...

Bacteria that naturally reside in the gut are important for health, but recent studies consistently show that a modern lifestyle depletes the gut's collection of microbes. How lifestyle affects the diversity of this gut "microbiome" is unclear, but an analysis of the gut microbiomes of Papua New Guinean and US residents in Cell Reports now suggests that western lifestyle may diminish the variety of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract by limiting their ability to be transmitted among humans. "There are several aspects of western lifestyle that have been hypothesized ...

Oral infections are the most common diseases of mankind and are also a key risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide. In a review article published in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism on April 16, researchers summarize the latest clinical evidence supporting a link between oral infections, which are caused by the bacteria in our mouth, and heart disease, and they emphasize the important role of inflammation in both of these conditions. "Given the high prevalence of oral infections, any risk they contribute to future cardiovascular ...

By analyzing the activity of "GPS" neurons in mice, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that the mental maps created by these cells accumulate errors, which are corrected when the animal encounters a wall. The findings support the theory that these cells, called grid cells, use an animal's perceived speed and direction to help it navigate familiar places. Thus, as you stumble through your pitch-black kitchen in the middle of the night for a glass of water, your body knows how many steps to take and when to turn to get to the sink. ...

Men give more money through fundraising websites after seeing that other men have donated large amounts and when the fundraiser is an attractive woman, according to new UCL and University of Bristol research. The scientists say this response by men is unlikely to be conscious and could have an evolutionary function as theories predict that generous actions can honestly signal hidden qualities, such as wealth or desirable personality attributes, to potential partners. Co-author Dr Nichola Raihani from UCL (Life Sciences), said: "We looked at why people behave generously ...

A nerve neglected in today's era of molecular and genetic analysis has yielded a surprising secret. A handful of neurons control breathing in a fine-tuned but powerful way, scientists have discovered in mice. Among these sensory neurons, two types are dedicated to two specific respiratory functions. The findings, published in Cell, suggest new ways of considering clinical conditions related to the vagus nerve. The team, led by Stephen Liberles, Harvard Medical School associate professor of cell biology, has effectively deconstructed the vagus nerve, a key connection ...

The enzyme AMPK initiates a dizzying array of cellular activities, from breaking down worn-out cellular parts to turning on energy production. How does a single protein, activated by a single switch, fulfill so many different tasks without getting them mixed up? To get at such a complex question, cell biologists at Johns Hopkins designed several molecular tools that allowed them to watch, measure and manipulate the activity of the enzyme AMPK in individual compartments within the cell. The new tools have confirmed that at least some of AMPK's ability to multitask comes ...

Angiogenesis inhibitors--a widely used class of cancer drugs designed to shrink tumors by preventing them from forming new blood vessels--often work in the short term, but usually become ineffective within months. Now, a team led by UC San Francisco scientists has discovered a possible reason, one that could lead to a way to address the problem and prevent cancer relapse. Working with laboratory models of pancreatic and breast cancer, the scientists found that myeloid cells, which originate in bone marrow and are part of the body's first-line of defense--the so-called ...

How does climate change affect the occurrence and distribution of species? This is a key question in the climate debate, and one that is hard to answer without information about natural variation in species abundance. Now researchers from Uppsala University can, for the first time, give us a detailed picture of natural variation through a major study published today in the leading scientific journal Current Biology. The impact of climate change on species occurrence and distribution is a central issue in the climate debate, since human influence on the climate risks posing ...