Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have, for the first time, spotted four images of a distant exploding star. The images are arranged in a cross-shaped pattern by the powerful gravity of a foreground galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies. The supernova discovery paper will appear on 6 March 2015 in a special issue of Science celebrating the centenary of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Whilst looking closely at a massive elliptical galaxy and its associated galaxy cluster MACS J1149+2223 -- whose light took over 5 billion years ...

San Diego, CA--A new soybean oil genetically modified to be healthier than conventional soybean oil causes obesity, pre-diabetes and fatty liver in a nearly identical manner to that of regular soybean oil when part of a typical American high-fat diet, an animal study shows. The study results will be presented Friday at The Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting in San Diego. The recently introduced high-oleic soybean oil (Plenish, from DuPont Pioneer) had not been tested for long-term metabolic effects until this study, said the senior investigator, Frances Sladek, PhD, ...

A pilot study in 51 N.C. classrooms shows the effectiveness of a new measure in assessing the quality of practices in inclusive preschools. Not only is the Inclusive Classroom Profile (ICP) a reliable instrument, researchers say it also reveals the types of inclusive settings that may be best serving preschoolers with disabilities. "Inclusion encourages active participation and a sense of belonging and membership for all children, with and without disabilities, who learn and develop in the same classroom," explained the study's lead author Elena P. Soukakou, senior lecturer ...

New York University chemists have developed a computational approach for determining the viability and suitability of complex molecular structures--an advancement that could aid in the development of pharmaceuticals as well as a range of other materials. "Understanding how molecules interact and achieve stable conformations in different environments is vital to many industries," says Mark Tuckerman, a professor in NYU's Department of Chemistry and the senior author of the study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "However, the ...

Scientists from the University of Southampton have found that ocean tides have changed significantly over the last century at many coastal locations around the world. Increases in high tide levels and the tidal range were found to have been similar to increases in average sea level at several locations. The findings of the study are published online in the journal Earth's Future. It is well documented that global average sea levels are rising; but tide levels, have generally been considered to have undergone little change on decadal time scales. It is also often ...

New Haven, Conn. - For once, slower is better in a new piece of technology. A Yale lab has developed a new, radio frequency processing device that allows information to be controlled more effectively, opening the door to a new generation of signal processing on microchips. One of the keys to the technology involves slowing information down. The new system, described in the March 5 edition of the journal Nature Communications, combines photons and phonons -- electromagnetic energy and sound energy -- to conduct sophisticated signal processing tasks by harnessing the properties ...

Dr. Liang Luo and associate prof. Jianchao Cai, a renowned researcher on fractal and capillarity and guest chief editor of FRACTALS, have published their latest paper entitled Numerical simulation of tortuosity for fluid flow in two-dimensional pore fractal models of porous media. The tortuosity of different generations of Sierpinski carpet is calculated and analyzed by the finite volume method. A simple linear relation between the generations and tortuosity in pore fractal model of porous media is obtained. The results show a more realistic tortuosity predication for ...

Weight loss surgery does not stunt the growth of obese children when applied within a clinical pathway. It is a safe option to use and provides hope for youngsters who are unable to shed pounds through weight management programs that include counseling and lifestyle changes. So says Professor Aayed Alqahtani of King Saud University (KSU) in Saudi Arabia, after tracking the progress of almost 300 children who had all undergone such surgery through a standardized clinical pathway that was created and applied by Alqahtani in his practice at KSU. The findings are published ...

Over the next two centuries, climate change is likely to impact everything from industrial agriculture to the shape of our coastlines. The changing climate will certainly cause huge changes around the world, and the challenge is to predict exactly what impact those changes will have. In the world of marine science, this means grappling with a process called ocean acidification. As human activity pumps carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, some of the carbon dioxide gets absorbed into the sea, which raises its acidity. Scientists have been concerned about this for more than ...

The planet candidate was spotted using a spectrometer which measures the 'wobble', small changes in the wavelength of light emitted by a star, caused as a planet orbits it. In 2014 researchers revisiting the data said that the 'planet' was actually just noise in the data caused by starspots. The possible existence of the planet was widely dismissed without further questioning. But now researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and University of Hertfordshire have questioned the methods used to challenge the planet's existence. The statistical technique used ...

LOS ANGELES (March 5, 2015) - The benefits of weight loss surgery, along with a treatment plan that includes exercise and dietary changes, are well documented. In addition to a significant decrease in body mass, many patients find their risk factors for heart disease are drastically lowered and blood sugar regulation is improved for those with Type 2 diabetes. Some patients, however, do not experience the optimal weight loss from bariatric surgery. The presence of a specific methane gas-producing organism in the gastrointestinal tract may account for a decrease in optimal ...

Tropical Cyclone 15S formed in the Mozambique Channel of the Southern Indian Ocean, and the Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite gathered data on its rainfall rates. The GPM (core satellite) flew over the northwestern half of newly formed Tropical Cyclone 15S on March 5 at 15:36 UTC (10:36 a.m. EST). The GPM satellite is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency known as JAXA. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument found that the heaviest precipitation was then occurring on the western side of the circulation center. Powerful ...

Bubbles gushing from melting glaciers and their icebergs make fjords the noisiest places in the oceans, a new study of waters near Alaska and Antarctica shows. The underwater noise is much louder than previously thought, researchers found. That led them to ask how the noise affects the behavior of harbor seals and whales in Alaska's fjords. "The ocean ambient sound gives us clues to the physical processes going on, but it also is an important aspect of the environment in which marine mammals and fish live. Like teenagers at a loud rock concert, the seals and whales modify ...

No one really knows how the High Plains got so high. About 70 million years ago, eastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, western Kansas and western Nebraska were near sea level. Since then, the region has risen about 2 kilometers, leading to some head scratching at geology conferences. Now researchers at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder have proposed a new way to explain the uplift: Water trapped deep below Earth's crust may have flooded the lower ...

This news release is available in German. The water content of soil has a great impact on the regional climate, but many of the connections are still not clear. Researchers at ETH Zurich's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, together with colleagues from Belgium and the Netherlands, examined when and where it rains most frequently on summer afternoons. They wanted to clarify whether more rain fell on days when the soil was dry or moist. And where exactly it was most likely to rain on these days. The contradictory findings of other scientists was the reason ...

Good supervisors aren't easily duped by the motives of underlings who go the extra mile - they know when an employee is sucking up to them because of personal ambition, or when such actions truly have what's best for the organization at heart. This is one of the insights from a study in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology, led by Magda Donia of the University of Ottawa in Canada. Supervisors play an important role in making decisions about rewards and promotions within an organization. They should therefore be able to effectively distinguish between so-called ...

About four billion years ago, the young planet would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 140 metres deep, but it is more likely that the liquid would have pooled to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars's northern hemisphere, and in some regions reaching depths greater than 1.6 kilometres. "Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space," said Geronimo Villanueva, a scientist working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, and lead ...

PITTSBURGH--The ancient Mongols have a reputation for having been fierce warriors. A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh shows them to have been unmatched polluters. Graduate student Aubrey Hillman recently published a paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that shows copper and silver production in southwest China produced tremendous quantities of harmful heavy metals, such as lead, silver, zinc, and cadmium, starting in 1500 BC and continuing through the era of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 AD). Hillman is near to earning her PhD from ...

(BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE) - In nature, pores can continuously control how a living organism absorbs or excretes fluids, vapors and solids in response to its environment; for example, tiny holes invisible to the naked eye called stomata cover a plant's leaves and stems as gated openings through which oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapors are transported in and out during photosynthesis and respiration. And some scientists have proposed that micropores in the tissues of the air sacs of human lungs can open or close to modulate fluid flow based on changes in air pressure or ...

PITTSBURGH--"Why doesn't she just leave?" is a timeworn question about women trapped in relationships that are physically and/or emotionally abusive to them. Economic dependence is clearly part of the story--many women lack the financial means to leave and find themselves trapped by both poverty and abuse. Of the women who do attempt to escape the abuse, some opt to petition a judge for a civil restraining order, also called a Protection From Abuse (PFA) order, for protection from abuse, harassment, threats, or intimidation. Research shows that PFAs can promote women's ...

Fast food ads aimed at kids fail to de-emphasize toy premiums, making them deceptive by industry self-regulation standards. They also fail to emphasize healthy menu items, investigators at Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center have found. The research was published in the March 4 edition of the journal PLOS ONE. "Kids were just as likely to notice the toy premiums in the kid's ads as they were the food, when their own standards require a de-emphasis on premiums compared to foods," said James D. Sargent, MD, researcher at Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton ...

African American men at elevated risk for developing type 2 diabetes may have fewer beneficial and more harmful intestinal bacteria, according to research presented by University of Illinois at Chicago endocrinologist Dr. Irina Ciubotaru at the ENDO 2015 meeting in San Diego. "The 'signature' of the gut microbiota - the relative abundance of various bacteria and other microbes in the digestive system - could be another useful tool in assessing a person's risk for developing diabetes," said Ciubotaru. Ciubotaru and her colleagues, including principal investigator Dr. Elena ...

San Diego, CA--Losing as little as 30 minutes of sleep per day on weekdays can have long-term consequences for body weight and metabolism, a new study finds. The results will be presented Thursday, March 5, at ENDO 2015, the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in San Diego. "While previous studies have shown that short sleep duration is associated with obesity and diabetes, we found that as little as 30 minutes a day sleep debt can have significant effects on obesity and insulin resistance at follow up," said lead study author Professor Shahrad Taheri, MBBS, PhD, ...

San Diego, CA--Obesity is associated with substantial increases in older adults' hospitalizations, emergency room admissions and use of outpatient health care services, according to a new study of 172,866 Medicare Advantage members throughout the U.S. Results of the one-year study will be presented Thursday at the Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting in San Diego. "There is an urgent need to control the obesity epidemic and its excessive health and economic burden on both individuals and the health care system," said lead investigator Brandon Suehs, PharmD, PhD, a ...

In a large study of middle-aged to elderly smokers, men were more likely than women to have osteoporosis and fractures of their vertebrae. Smoking history and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were independent risk factors for low bone density among both men and women in the study, which has been published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Current guidelines do not recommend osteoporosis screening for men. While current smoking is a recognized risk factor for osteoporosis, neither smoking history nor COPD are among criteria for bone-density ...