Tropical Cyclone Bakung is moving in a westerly direction over the open waters of the Southern Indian Ocean and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the sea storm. Aqua passed over Bakung on Dec. 12 at 07:35 UTC (2:35 a.m. EST) and the MODIS instrument aboard took a visible image of the storm. The image showed that deeper convection (stronger currents of rising air that form the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone) was occurring around the low-level center of circulation, so the center was not apparent in the MODIS imagery. The bulk of the clouds associated ...

Splashy blue and green hues pop from under the glassy finish of the Tinamou species' (bird relatives of ostriches, rheas and emus) eggs. Pigments covered by a thin, smooth cuticle reveal the mystery behind these curious shells, University of Akron researchers discovered. The finding could lead to the development of glossy new coatings for ceramics and floors, potentially enhancing their aesthetic qualities and durability. After removing the outer layer of the eggshells and examining their chemistry and nanostructure, the researchers discovered the presence of a weak ...

Extreme climate and weather events such as record high temperatures, intense downpours and severe storm surges are becoming more common in many parts of the world. But because high-quality weather records go back only about 100 years, most scientists have been reluctant to say if global warming affected particular extreme events. On Wednesday, Dec. 17, at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at the Stanford School of Earth Sciences, will discuss approaches to this ...

PHILADELPHIA -- Frequent kidney dialysis is essential for the approximately 350,000 end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients in the United States. But it can also cause systemic inflammation, leading to complications such as cardiovascular disease and anemia, and patients who rely on the therapy have a five-year survival rate of only 35 percent. Such inflammation can be triggered when the complement cascade, part of the body's innate immune system, is inadvertently activated by modern polymer-based dialysis blood filters. New work by Penn researchers has found an effective ...

Like a smart sensor that adjusts the lighting in each room and a home's overall temperature, a protein that governs the making of other proteins in the cell also appears capable of controlling fat levels in the body. The finding, which appeared in Cell Reports on Dec. 11, applies to the Maf1 protein in worms. A version of the protein, which exists in humans, also regulates protein production in the cell, raising the possibility that it too may control fat storage. A protein with such a function would offer a new target for pharmaceuticals to regulate fat, said Sean ...

The Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model consistently and significantly improves quality of care for patients and reduces health care costs, reports a first-of-its-kind, large-scale literature review of the PSH in the United States and abroad. The review, published online this month in Milbank Quarterly, provides further evidence to support the benefits, and encourage the adoption, of the PSH model. "There is a global push for more rigorously coordinated and integrated management of surgical patients to enhance patient satisfaction and improve quality of care and ...

Oil reservoirs are scattered deep inside the Earth like far-flung islands in the ocean, so their inhabitants might be expected to be very different, but a new study led by Dartmouth College and University of Oslo researchers shows these underground microbes are social creatures that have exchanged genes for eons. The study, which was led by researchers at Dartmouth College and the University of Oslo, appears in the ISME Journal. A PDF is available on request. The findings shed new light on the "deep biosphere," or the vast subterranean realm whose single-celled residents ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. - Cathy Cripps doesn't seem to worry about the grizzly bears and black bears that watch her work, but she is concerned about the ghosts and skeletons she encounters. The ghosts are whitebark pine forests that have been devastated by mountain pine beetles and white pine blister rust, said the Montana State University scientist who studies fungi that grow in extreme environments. The skeletons are dead trees that no longer shade snow or produce pine cones. The round purple pine cones hold the seeds that feed bears, red squirrels and Clark's nutcracker birds. ...

Amsterdam, NL, December 12, 2014 - A patient who had suffered a traumatic brain injury unexpectedly recovered full consciousness after the administration of midazolam, a mild depressant drug of the GABA A agonists family. This resulted in the first recorded case of an "awakening" from a minimally-conscious state (MCS) using this therapy. Although similar awakenings have been reported using other drugs, this dramatic result was unanticipated. It is reported in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience. Traumatic brain injuries occur at high rates all over the world, estimated ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 11, 2014--In cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI), predicting the likelihood of a cranial lesion and determining the need for head computed tomography (CT) can be aided by measuring markers of bone injury in the blood. The results of a new study comparing the usefulness of two biomarkers released into the blood following a TBI are presented in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/neu.2013.3245 ...

Training older people in the use of social media improves cognitive capacity, increases a sense of self-competence and could have a beneficial overall impact on mental health and well-being, according to a landmark study carried out in the UK. A two-year project funded by the European Union and led by the University of Exeter in partnership with Somerset Care Ltd and Torbay & Southern Devon Health and Care NHS Trust gave a group of vulnerable older adults a specially-designed computer, broadband connection and training in how to use them. Those who received training ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass.--Since the first "catalog" of the normal bacterial makeup of the human body was published in 2012, numerous connections between illness and disturbances in the human microbiota have been found. This week, scientists report yet another: Cancerous tumors in the ascending colon (the part nearest to the small intestine) are characterized by biofilms, which are dense clumps of bacterial cells encased in a self-produced matrix. "This is the first time that biofilms have been shown to be associated with colon cancer, to our knowledge," says co-author Jessica ...

PITTSBURGH--An interest in the gender gap between the representations of female candidates in U.S. elections compared to their male counterparts led two University of Pittsburgh professors to take the issue into the laboratory for three years of research. Associate Professors of Political Science Kristin Kanthak and Jonathan Woon have published an article about the first phase of their research findings. "Women Don't Run? Election Aversion and Candidate Entry" was published online Dec. 2 in the American Journal of Political Science. "Past research has shown that women ...

A group of researchers from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Faculty of Fisheries in Turkey discovered a new trout species. The newly described species Salmo kottelati, belongs to the Salmonidae family, which includes salmons, trouts, chars, graylings and freshwater whitefishes. Salmonids include over 200 species, which have a high economic value because of their taste and famed sporting qualities. The genus Salmo is widely distributed in rivers and streams of basins of the Marmara, Black, Aegean and Mediterranean seas. The genus is represented by 12 species in ...

In a contribution to an extraordinary international scientific collaboration the University of Sydney found that genomic 'fossils' of past viral infections are up to thirteen times less common in birds than mammals. "We found that only found only five viral families have left a footprint in the bird genome (genetic material) during evolution. Our study therefore suggests that birds are either less susceptible to viral invasions or purge them more effectively than mammals," said Professor Edward Holmes, from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre, School of ...

A new study analyses the violent behaviours exhibited towards pregnant women. While 21% of women suffer emotional violence during pregnancy, 3.6% encounter physical or sexual violence. Furthermore, 36.1% of those who reported physical violence claimed that it happened "very often" or "daily". Whilst for many women pregnancy is a happy time, for almost one in four it turns out not to be so enjoyable. An investigation into the prevalence of domestic violence against pregnant women has found that 22.7% endure some kind of violence - emotional, physical or sexual - within ...

For the first time researchers have measured large distances in the Universe using data, rather than calculations related to general relativity. A research team from Imperial College London and the University of Barcelona has used data from astronomical surveys to measure a standard distance that is central to our understanding of the expansion of the universe. Previously the size of this 'standard ruler' has only been predicted from theoretical models that rely on general relativity to explain gravity at large scales. The new study is the first to measure it using ...

About 95 percent of the more than 10,000 bird species known only evolved upon the extinction of dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. According to computer analyses of the genetic data, today's diversity developed from a few species at a virtually explosive rate after 15 million years already. KIT scientists designed the algorithms for the comprehensive analysis of the evolution of birds. To obtain the results that are now presented in the Science journal, a computing capacity of 300 processor-years was required. (DOI 10.1126/science.1253451) "Computation of these trees ...

This news release is available in Spanish. What is more, this study is the first one conducted using forensic samples taken from deceased individuals. So they examined all the sudden deaths that underwent forensic analysis and which took place in Bizkaia over a seven-year period, between January 2003 and December 2009. The post-mortem examinations were conducted by the only service existing in the province: the Forensic Pathology Service of Bizkaia of the Basque Institute of Forensic Medicine. The research has been published by the specialised journal Addiction, the ...

A study involving scientists from the University of Leicester has established a link between hypoglycaemia and increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality in patients with diabetes. Professors Kamlesh Khunti and Melanie Davies, scientists from the University of Leicester's Diabetes Research Centre, have confirmed an association between hypoglycaemia and an increased risk of cardiovascular events and mortality in insulin-treated patients with diabetes, which could lead to changes in the way some patients' treatment is managed. The results were published online ...

Communication protocols for digital devices are very efficient but also very brittle: They require information to be specified in a precise order with a precise number of bits. If sender and receiver -- say, a computer and a printer -- are off by even a single bit relative to each other, communication between them breaks down entirely. Humans are much more flexible. Two strangers may come to a conversation with wildly differing vocabularies and frames of reference, but they will quickly assess the extent of their mutual understanding and tailor their speech accordingly. Madhu ...

Crocodilians, including the Australian saltwater crocodile, mutate at about a quarter of the rate of birds, new research has revealed. The discovery is the result of genome sequencing three crocodilian species - the Australian saltwater crocodile, the American alligator and the Indian gharial - by an international collaboration of scientists, including six from the University of Sydney's Faculty of Veterinary Science. The research is reported in a special edition of Science published on 12 December dedicated to all aspects of bird evolution and its closest living biological ...

New research published today in the journal Physical Review Letters describes how recreating isotopes that occur when a star explodes, can help physicists understand where life-supporting elements may be found in space. For the first time, a research team led by the University of Surrey, Japan's RIKEN Nishina Centre and the University of Beihang, was able to observe the isotopes of certain elemental chemicals formed as a star explodes. The isotopes of these elements (samarium and gadolinium) are sensitive tracers of the way that stars explode, and therefore help in ...

The first ever landing of a man-made probe onto a comet has been named Physics World Breakthrough of the Year for 2014. From a shortlist of 10 highly commended breakthroughs, the historic achievement by scientists working on the Rosetta mission was singled out by the Physics World editorial team for its significance and fundamental importance to space science. The landing of the Philae probe, which captivated not only the physics community but millions of people worldwide, was the culmination of 10 years' work by scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA), who successfully ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Dec. 12, 2014 - Understanding how nitrite can improve conditions such as hypertension, heart attack and stroke has been the object of worldwide research studies. New research from Wake Forest University has potentially moved the science one step closer to this goal. In a paper published online ahead of print in the February issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, senior co-author Daniel Kim-Shapiro, professor of physics at Wake Forest, and others show that deoxygenated hemoglobin is indeed responsible for triggering the conversion of nitrite ...