UC Davis researchers have identified the molecular interactions that allow capsaicin to activate the body's primary receptor for sensing heat and pain, paving the way for the design of more selective and effective drugs to relieve pain. Their study appeared online June 8 in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. Capsaicin is the ingredient that makes chili peppers spicy and hot. The same pathway in the body that responds to spicy food is also activated after injury or when the immune system mounts an inflammatory response to bacteria, viruses, or in the case of autoimmune ...

Our sun is a volatile star: explosions of light, energy and solar materials regularly dot its surface. Sometimes an eruption is so large it hurls magnetized material into space, sending out clouds that can pass by Earth's own magnetic fields, where the interactions can affect electronics on satellites, GPS communications or even utility grids on the ground. The clouds can be large or small. They can be relatively slow or as fast as 3,000 miles per second, but only one component has a strong effect on how much a CME will arrange the magnetic fields in near-Earth space. ...

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a three to five percent reduction in the probability of criminal recidivism among a sample of juveniles arrested for felony drug offenses, some of whom were processed as adults due to their age at the time of their arrests. In a study published in the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Charles Loeffler, an assistant professor of criminology in the School of Arts & Sciences and Ben Grunwald, a doctoral candidate in the criminology department, analyzed the effect of processing juveniles as adults using ...

For engine designers in the digital age, time is money. And that time is measured in computer cycles. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory are partnering with Convergent Science, Inc. (CSI), to speed up a key piece of modeling and simulation software to ensure those cycles are used as effectively as possible, reducing product development time and resulting in better engines and savings for consumers. The scale of the speed gains were recently demonstrated when researchers ran the largest engine simulation to date on more than 4,000 ...

Irvine, Calif., June 9 -- Brain inflammation caused by chronic nerve pain alters activity in regions that regulate mood and motivation, suggesting for the first time that a direct biophysical link exists between long-term pain and the depression, anxiety and substance abuse seen in more than half of these patients, UC Irvine and UCLA researchers report. This breakthrough finding also points to new approaches for treating chronic pain, which is second only to bipolar disorder among illness-related causes of suicide. About a quarter of Americans suffer from chronic pain, ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Brain lesions in children can be especially challenging to diagnose, according to a report in the journal Frontiers in Neurology by a multidisciplinary team of Loyola University Medical Center physicians. Lesions include tumors, abnormal blood vessel formations and abscesses and inflammation due to infections. In the pediatric population, such lesions 'can have a large variety of underlying etiologies (causes), which can be challenging to differentiate on neuroimaging,' lead author Marisa McGinley, M.D., and colleagues report. The Loyola physicians ...

Promotion of handwashing with soap and weekly nail clipping are both successful strategies to decrease intestinal parasite re-infection rates in school aged Ethiopian children, according to a study published by Mahmud Abdulkader Mahmud and colleagues from Mekelle University, Ethiopia, in this week's PLOS Medicine. The researchers reached these conclusions by conducting a cluster randomized controlled trial in which 367 parasite-negative school-aged children in Northern Ethiopia were randomly assigned to either the handwashing intervention, the nail clipping intervention, ...

Tropical cyclones are not too common in the Arabian Sea, but tropical cyclone 01A, now renamed Ashobaa, formed this week. NASA/JAXA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite flew over Ashobaa and gathered data that provided a 3-D look at the rainfall in the storm. The GPM core observatory satellite flew over Ashobaa on the morning of June 8 at 0811 UTC (4:11 a.m. EDT). Tropical cyclone Ashobaa had sustained wind speeds of about 40 knots (46 mph) when the satellite passed overhead. On June 9 at 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT), tropical cyclone Ashobaa had maximum ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Scientists have prior evidence that the hormone estrogen is a major driver in the growth of cervical cancer, but a new study examining genetic profiles of 128 clinical cases reached a surprising conclusion -- estrogen receptors all but vanish in cervical cancer tumors. This counterintuitive finding, reported June 8 in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, further bolsters the understanding of cervical cancer's progression and offers valuable new targets to fight the disease. Lead author Johan den Boon, associate scientist with ...

The economic impact of the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was $872.3 million nationwide in fiscal year 2014, according to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder's Leeds School of Business. The study estimates NREL's impact to Colorado's economy totaled $701 million, a decline of 1.6 percent from the prior year. The slight year-over-year drop was largely attributed to a decline in major construction spending that came as NREL completed the planned build-out of its sustainable campus. Jefferson County, where the largest concentration ...

Two of our nation's most advanced wind energy research and test facilities have joined forces to help the wind energy industry improve the performance of wind turbine drivetrains and better understand how the turbines can integrate more effectively with the electrical grid. Through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Clemson University will partner to share resources and capabilities in the operation and development of testing facilities. The CRADA also includes the exchange ...

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. - June 9, 2015 - The percentage of U.S. female physician authors of original research in major gastroenterology journals has grown over time, yet the percentage of women in the senior author position remains lower than expected based on the proportion of female gastroenterologists in academia. A look at the evolution of gender in the GI publishing landscape is presented in "Female authorship in major academic gastroenterology journals: a look over 20 years," published in the June issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific ...

SAN FRANCISCO--Seismologists studying the recent dramatic upswing in earthquakes triggered by human activity want to clear up a few common misconceptions about the trend. There is increasing evidence that these earthquakes are caused by injecting fluids from oil and gas operations deep into the earth. These human-caused earthquakes are sometimes called "induced earthquakes." A Seismological Research Letters focus section to be published online June 10 addresses some common misconceptions about induced seismicity--the biggest of which is that it is primarily related ...

Scientists at the University of York have made a significant advance that could make cell-based treatments for arthritis less of a lottery. Researchers in the Departments of Biology and Physics at York, working with colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, have identified individual stem cells that can regenerate tissue, cartilage and bone. The stem cells are mixed within human bone marrow stromal cells (MSCs) but are similar in appearance and previously, scientists had difficulty in distinguishing between them. The York researchers isolated individual MSCs ...

An unexpected finding by an international team of scientists based at The University of Manchester and National Institutes of Health in America has shed new light on how immune cells are programmed to either repair or protect the body. It's hoped the discovery will inform the development of better treatments for a range of conditions from inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) to certain cancers. The research, led by Dr John Grainger from the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR) and Dr Yasmine Belkaid from the National Institute of Allergy and ...

Large magnetic storms from the Sun, which affect technologies such as GPS and utility grids, could soon be predicted more than 24 hours in advance. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are eruptions of gas and magnetised material from the Sun that have the potential to wreak havoc on satellites and Earth-bound technologies, disrupting radio transmissions and causing transformer blowouts and blackouts. These mass ejections can cause problems with GPS technology - used by all kinds of vehicles, from cars to oil tankers to tractors. For example, they can affect the ability of ...

What: The Makona strain of Ebola virus (EBOV) circulating in West Africa for the past year takes roughly two days longer to cause terminal disease in an animal model compared to the original 1976 Mayinga strain isolated in Central Africa, according to a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) report. The results provide important information to scientists who have wondered if the Ebola virus in West Africa is becoming more severe. In fact, the new study suggests the current virus has a decreased ability to cause disease in their animal model compared to the 1976 strain. Using ...

This news release is available in Spanish. CRG scientists describe a new mechanism shaping cells and generating cell contractile forces during development and organogenesis. The new mechanism, which has been published today in the journal Developmental Cell, includes strategies shared with programmed cell death but which have not previously been directly associated with force generation. Studying developmental processes such as the one presented in the Dev. Cell paper contributes to a better understanding of organ development and maintenance. Also, ...

Simple steps that include the consistent use of experienced medical teams for a single type of surgery, preemptive antibiotics before the procedure, less reliance on potent opioids during recovery and urging patients to get out of bed and move around sooner can not only prevent infections, blood clots and other serious complications in people undergoing colorectal operations, but can also accelerate recovery and reduce cost of care, according to results of an ongoing program at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. The approach, dubbed Integrated Recovery Pathway, or IRP, and its ...

In a small clinical trial, scientists at Johns Hopkins' Kimmel Cancer Center and James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute found that men with advanced prostate cancer and detection of androgen receptor splice variant-7 (AR-V7) respond to chemotherapy just as well as men who lack the variant. The findings, the researchers say, may be significant for patients who carry the AR-V7 variant, because they are more likely to develop resistance to one of two hormone drugs routinely used to treat their disease. Results of the trial are published online in the June 4 issue of JAMA ...

Young adults who use social media to quit smoking are twice as successful in their efforts as those who use a more traditional method, according to new research from the University of Waterloo. The study, published last week in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, compared the success of the social media-based campaign Break It Off with Smokers' Helpline, a telephone hotline for young adults looking to quit smoking. After three months in the program, 32 per cent of smokers who used Break It Off apps and web tools had quit smoking, compared to 14 per cent of their peers who ...

Monsoon rainfall, although a little later than normal, started on June 5, 2015, in southern India. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core satellite gathered rainfall data that was used to create an animation that shows where the precipitation fell as the season started. Due to El Nino conditions some meteorologists predict that monsoon rainfall will be below normal this year. Cooling rainfall comes to the country after high temperatures preceding the monsoon have caused the reported deaths of more than 2,300 people. Data from the NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE ...

The remnants of former Hurricane Blanca are blanking out over the northern part of Mexico's Baja California today, June 9. NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an infrared image of Blanca's remnants revealing a disorganized storm. All watches and warnings have been dropped. NOAA's GOES-West satellite took an image of Blanca's remnants as it continued moving over the northern Baja California peninsula on June 9 at 1245 UTC (8:45 a.m. EDT). The clouds associated with the remnants were over the northern Baja and over the northern portion of mainland Mexico. The western-most ...

WASHINGTON, DC, June 9, 2015 - If you want to assign blame on an overcast day, then cast your eyes on the tropics. Water vapor originating from the Earth's tropics is transported to midlatitudes on long filaments of flowing air that intermittently travel across the world's oceans. When these airy tendrils make landfall, they can cause severe floods and other extreme weather events. Yet despite the importance of these "atmospheric rivers" for the global water and heat cycles, the mechanism behind their formation is still a mystery. But a new study, published this week ...

Between 1993 and 2012, the incidence rate of acute traumatic spinal cord injury remained relatively stable in the U.S., although there was an increase among older adults, mostly associated with an increase in falls, according to a study in the June 9 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on the Americans with Disabilities Act. Traumatic spinal cord injury leads to chronic impairment and disability. Despite the substantial effects of this injury on health-related quality of life and health care spending, contemporary data on trends in incidence, causes, and medical care are limited, ...