The moon is engulfed in a permanent but lopsided dust cloud that increases in density when annual events like the Geminids spew shooting stars, according to a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder. The cloud is made up primarily of tiny dust grains kicked up from the moon's surface by the impact of high-speed, interplanetary dust particles, said CU-Boulder physics Professor Mihaly Horanyi. A single dust particle from a comet striking the moon's surface lofts thousands of smaller dust specks into the airless environment, and the lunar cloud is maintained by ...

In a remarkable demonstration of the curative power of memory, published in Nature, scientists have established that artificial reactivation of memories stored during a positive experience can suppress the effects of stress-induced depression. The research, conducted by scientists at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, a joint collaboration of RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and MIT, shows how positive and negative memories interact in mood disorders, and provides a specific brain circuit for future clinical interventions. The research, conducted ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Sit down with a friend in a quiet restaurant and begin talking, just before the dinner crowd's arrival. Business is slow at first, but picks up quickly, just like the sound level. Music plays, glasses clink, servers discuss specials. Discussions are everywhere, colliding and competing with the other noises. All of these sounds are hitting the eardrum at the same time, yet the initial conversation that began amidst surrounding silence continues easily because of a process that allows humans to isolate, identify and prioritize overlapping sounds. Sometimes ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An international team of researchers from Indiana University and Switzerland is using data mapping methods created to track the spread of information on social networks to trace its dissemination across a surprisingly different system: the human brain. The research team from the IU Bloomington Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and School of Informatics and Computing found that applying social network models to the brain reveals specific connections and nodes that may be responsible for higher forms of cognition. The results are reported ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 17, 2015) -- Infants and children who are given prescription acid-reducing medications face a substantially higher risk of developing Clostridium difficile infection, a potentially severe colonic disorder. The findings, reported by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, suggest that pediatricians may do more harm than good by prescribing these drugs for children who have non-specific gastrointestinal symptoms such as occasional vomiting. The study was published recently in the online edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases. "There's ...

PITTSBURGH--The role of history in negotiations is a double-edged sword. Although different sides can develop trust over time, there are also countless instances of prolonged feuds that developed because of conflicting histories. A prime example is World War II, which was fought in part to rectify perceived wrongs from the past. The phenomenon also extends to day-to-day situations such as sharing utility costs with a roommate or jockeying for position at grocery store checkout lanes. New research published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization examines ...

For the first time in the long and vaunted history of scanning electron microscopy, the unique atomic structure at the surface of a material has been resolved. This landmark in scientific imaging was made possible by a new analytic technique developed by a multi-institutional team of researchers, including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). "We've developed a reasonably direct method for determining the atomic structure of a surface that also addresses the very challenging problem of buried interfaces," ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - For those wishing to lose weight and keep it off, here's a simple strategy that works: step on a scale each day and track the results. A two-year Cornell study, recently published in the Journal of Obesity, found that frequent self-weighing and tracking results on a chart were effective for both losing weight and keeping it off, especially for men. Subjects who lost weight the first year in the program were able to maintain that lost weight throughout the second year. This is important because studies show that about 40 percent of weight lost with any ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Alaska's melting glaciers are adding enough water to the Earth's oceans to cover the state of Alaska with a 1-foot thick layer of water every seven years, a new study shows. The study found that climate-related melting is the primary control on mountain glacier loss. Glacier loss from Alaska is unlikely to slow down, and this will be a major driver of global sea level change in the coming decades, according to the study's authors. "The Alaska region has long been considered a primary player in the global sea level budget, but the exact details on ...

Thanks to the extraordinary sensitivity of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have detected what they believe is the long-sought radio emission coming from a supermassive black hole at the center of one of our closest neighboring galaxies. Evidence for the black hole's existence previously came only from studies of stellar motions in the galaxy and from X-ray observations. The galaxy, called Messier 32 (M32), is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy, our own Milky Way's giant neighbor. Unlike the Milky Way and Andromeda, which are star-forming spiral ...

The percentage of patients with early-stage breast cancer undergoing breast-conserving therapy increased from 54.3 percent in 1998 to 60.1 percent in 2011, although nonclinical factors including socioeconomic demographics, insurance and the distance patients must travel to treatment facilities persist as key barriers to the treatment, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a consensus statement in 1990 in support of this treatment method and that led to a substantial decline in rates of mastectomy and widespread ...

Sunscreen labels may still be confusing to consumers, with only 43 percent of those surveyed understanding the definition of the sun protection factor (SPF) value, according to the results of a small study published in a research letter online by JAMA Dermatology. UV-A radiation is associated with skin aging, UV-B radiation is associated with sunburns, and exposure to both is a risk factor for skin cancer. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced new regulations for sunscreen labels to emphasize protection against both UV-A and UV-B radiation, now known ...

The risk for tic disorders, including Tourette syndrome and chronic tic disorders, increased with the degree of genetic relatedness in a study of families in Sweden, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. While tic disorders are thought to be strongly familial and heritable, precise estimates of familial risk and heritability are lacking, although gene-searching efforts are under way. Limitations also exist in previous research. David Mataix-Cols, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and coauthors tried to overcome some of those limitations ...

Previous studies have led researchers to believe that individuals with social anxiety disorder/ social phobia have too low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. A new study carried out at Uppsala University, however, shows that the situation is exactly the opposite. Individuals with social phobia make too much serotonin. The more serotonin they produce, the more anxious they are in social situations. Many people feel anxious if they have to speak in front of an audience or socialise with others. If the anxiety becomes a disability, it may mean that the person suffers ...

WASHINGTON - The ongoing outbreak in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) is an important reminder that the Middle East respiratory virus (MERS-CoV) requires constant vigilance and could spread to other countries including the United States. However, MERS can be brought under control with effective public health strategies, say two Georgetown University public health experts. In a JAMA Viewpoint published online June 17, Georgetown public health law professor Lawrence O. Gostin and infectious disease physician Daniel Lucey outline strategies for managing the outbreak, ...

Chicago, June 17, 2015 - Being the daddy isn't important for male gorillas when it comes to their relationships with the kids; it's their rank in the group that makes the difference, says new research published in Animal Behaviour. The authors of the study, from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - now with Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago - the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (Atlanta USA) and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) say this supports the theory that for most of their evolution, gorillas lived in groups ...

A multi-institutional team of scientists has taken an important step in understanding where atoms are located on the surfaces of rough materials, information that could be very useful in diverse commercial applications, such as developing green energy and understanding how materials rust. Researchers from Northwestern University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new imaging technique that uses atomic resolution secondary electron images in a quantitative way to determine ...

Reducing short breaks between shifts helps nurses recover from work, according to a new study from Finland. The study analysed the effects of longer rest and recovery periods between shifts on heart rate variability, which is an indicator of recovery. Shift work can increase the risk of many diseases, for example cardiovascular diseases. The increased risk is partially caused by insufficient recovery from work, which interferes with the normal function of the autonomic nervous system regulating heart function and blood pressure, among other things. Nurses have too little ...

People make dramatically different decisions about who should receive hypothetical transplant organs depending on whether the potential recipients are presented as individuals or as part of a larger group, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings show that when recipients are considered in groups, people tend to allocate organs equally across the groups, ignoring information about the patients' chances of success. "This is important because public policies about prioritizing resources ...

June 17, 2015 (Washington, D.C.) - Whether sealed with a handshake, a million-dollar contract, or a string of curses, every business deal is a reflection of trust. Both parties trust that the other will hold up their end of the bargain. Good negotiators have a store of social capital before bargaining begins; built up through interactions outside the negotiations that establish trust. Working with a team of researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and Technische Universität in Munich, Germany, American University's Kogod School of Business professor of ...

Someday, treating patients with nanorobots could become standard practice to deliver medicine specifically to parts of the body affected by disease. But merely injecting drug-loaded nanoparticles might not always be enough to get them where they need to go. Now scientists are reporting in the ACS journal Nano Letters the development of new nanoswimmers that can move easily through body fluids to their targets. Tiny robots could have many benefits for patients. For example, they could be programmed to specifically wipe out cancer cells, which would lower the risk of complications, ...

Needle injections have been around since 1657 and remain a key delivery method for many drugs, including vaccines that have prevented countless illnesses. But for patients that require daily pricks or for people in remote locations, the syringe model has major drawbacks. An article in Chemical & Engineering News looks at potential alternatives, their successes and their roadblocks. Alex Scott, a senior editor at C&EN, explains that many pharmaceuticals, particularly large-molecule drugs such as insulin, are not good candidates for oral delivery. If swallowed, they would ...

A new approach to skin rejuvenation developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may be less likely to have unintended side effects such as scarring and altered pigmentation. In the online journal Scientific Reports, an MGH research team reports that treatment with pulsed electric fields - a noninvasive procedure that does not involve the generation of heat - removed skin cells in an animal model without affecting the supporting extracellular matrix, eventually leading to renewal of the skin surface. "We showed that non-thermal pulsed electric field or PEF treatment ...

ANN ARBOR--A University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues are forecasting an average but still large "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico this year. The forecast calls for an oxygen-depleted, or hypoxic, region of 5,483 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut. It was announced today by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which sponsors the work. Farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste, much of it from as far away as the Corn Belt, is the main source of the nitrogen and phosphorus that cause the annual Gulf of Mexico ...

A NASA animation of imagery from NOAA's GOES-East satellite shows the progression of Tropical Storm Bill through the western Gulf of Mexico, landfall in east Texas and weakening into a depression west of Dallas. A GOES-East animation of infrared and visible imagery from June 15 through June 17 shows Tropical Storm Bill's movement and landfall. The animation was created by NASA/NOAA GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. At 5 a.m. EDT 0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Depression Bill was located near latitude 31.0 North, longitude ...