PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As Congress adjourns this month for the November elections, one of the killed bills senators will step over on their way out the chamber door will be the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014. In a new commentary in the journal JAMA Surgery, Dr. Eli Adashi recounts what he and other advocates saw as the merits of the originally bipartisan bill. The perennial trouble with how Medicare pays doctors will return for the next Congress, Adashi said, and broader trends in health care practice ...

A team of researchers, including an astronomer from Michigan State University, has discovered a huge black hole at the center of an ultra-compact galaxy – the smallest galaxy known to contain one. The galaxy, known as M60-UCD1, was discovered last year by a team led by Jay Strader, MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy. Strader was a member of the team that found the black hole. The findings are detailed in the recent edition of the journal Nature. The finding suggests that other ultra-compact galaxies also may contain massive black holes. And that those ...

Bioluminescence, nanoparticles, gene manipulation – these sound like the ideas of a science fiction writer, but, in fact, they are components of an exciting new approach to imaging local and metastatic tumors. In preclinical animal models of metastatic prostate cancer, scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have provided proof-of-principle of a new molecular imaging approach that could revolutionize doctors' ability to see tumors that have metastasized to other sites ...

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground observation have found an unlikely object in an improbable place -- a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies ever known. The black hole is five times the mass of the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It is inside one of the densest galaxies known to date -- the M60-UCD1 dwarf galaxy that crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, which is only 1/500th of our galaxy's diameter. If you lived inside this dwarf galaxy, the night sky would dazzle ...

Historically, spaceflight has been reserved for the very healthy. Astronauts are selected for their ability to meet the highest physical and psychological standards to prepare them for any unknown challenges. However, with the advent of commercial spaceflight, average people can now fly for enjoyment. The aerospace medicine community has had very little information about what medical conditions or diseases should be considered particularly risky in the spaceflight environment, as most medical conditions have never been studied for risk in space — until now. The aerospace ...

On Sept. 10, 2014, NASA's newest solar observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, mission joined other telescopes to witness an X-class flare – an example of one of the strongest solar flares -- on the sun. Combing observations from more than one telescope helps create a much more complete picture of such events on our closest star. Watch the movie to see how the flare appears different through the eyes of IRIS than it does through NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The movie shows IRIS imagery focused in on material at around 60,000 Kelvin (107,500 ...

NEW YORK—With the National Football League in full damage-control mode, there are many questions about how the NFL's leader handled the Ray Rice case. Was Goodell ignoring the pleas of stakeholders—former NFL players, the media and domestic violence groups—when deciding on a two game penalty? The answer may lie in a study out today by Columbia Business School. The research, just published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, finds that leaders who fail to take into account their audiences' perspective have a far greater propensity to bungle the issue and conversation. ...

At the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress last week, MIT researchers received one of the best-paper awards for a new system, dubbed RoadRunner, that uses GPS-style turn-by-turn directions to route drivers around congested roadways. In simulations using data supplied by Singapore's Land Transit Authority, the researchers compared their system to one currently in use in Singapore, which charges drivers with dashboard-mounted transponders a toll for entering congested areas. The Singapore system gauges drivers' locations with radio transmitters mounted on ...

Tropical Storm Odile continues to spread moisture and generate strong thunderstorms with heavy rainfall over northern Mexico's mainland and the Baja California as well as the southwestern U.S. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite measured rainfall rates from space as it passed over Odile. Odile had weakened to a tropical storm with winds of about 55 knots (63.3 mph) when the TRMM satellite flew over on September 16, 2014 at 0917 UTC (2:19 a.m. PDT). Odile was still well organized and TRMM's Precipitation Radar (PR) measured rain falling at a rate ...

Furnishing a research lab can be pretty expensive. Now a team led by an engineer at Michigan Technological University has published an open-source library of designs that will let scientists slash the cost of one commonly used piece of equipment: the syringe pump. Syringe pumps are used to dispatch precise amounts of liquid, as for drug delivery or mixing chemicals in a reaction. They can also cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Joshua Pearce and his team of Michigan Tech students published the library of free syringe-pump designs, which anyone can make on a ...

Climate change may expand suitable cropland, particularly in the Northern high latitudes, but tropical regions may becoming decreasingly suitable, according to a study published September 17, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Florian Zabel from Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany and colleagues. Most of the Earth's accessible agricultural land are already under cultivation. Ecological factors such as climate, soil quality, water supply and topography determine the suitability of land for agriculture. Climate change may impact global agriculture, but some ...

New research has found clownfish larvae can swim up to 400 kilometres in search of a home, which makes them better able to cope with environmental change. Clownfish spend their entire adult lives under the protection of their host anemone but as babies they must wander the open ocean, says study co-author, Dr Hugo Harrison from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University. "In the past we haven't known where they go, but now we've been given a rare glimpse into how far they can swim, crossing large tracts of ocean to find ...

Some treatments for prostate cancer, while initially effective at controlling the disease, not only stop working over time but actually start driving tumour growth, a major new study shows. Researchers identified the emergence of drug-resistant cancer cells by testing repeated blood samples from patients with advanced prostate cancer. They set out a new 'treatment paradigm' – the constant monitoring of patients using a blood test for signs that therapy is becoming counter-productive. The study was conducted at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, The Royal Marsden ...

Clownfish spend their entire lives nestling in the protective tentacles of host anemones, but new research shows that as babies they sometimes travel hundreds of kilometres across the open ocean. Although the process of long-distance dispersal by reef fish has been predicted, this is the first time that the high level exchange of offspring between distant populations has been observed. Dr Steve Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology and Global Change at the University of Exeter, and colleagues from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Like everything else in the body, the white-matter fibers that allow communication between brain regions also decline with age. In a new study, researchers found a strong association between the structural integrity of these white-matter tracts and an older person's level of daily activity – not just the degree to which the person engaged in moderate or vigorous exercise, but also whether he or she was sedentary the rest of the time. The study, reported in the journal PLOS ONE, tracked physical activity in 88 healthy but "low-fit" participants aged 60 ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17, 2014 – Patients with a recurrence of head and neck cancer who have previously received radiation treatment can be treated more quickly, safely and with fewer side effects with high doses of targeted radiation known as Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) in combination with a drug that also carefully targets cancerous tumors. These findings from a UPMC CancerCenter study were presented today at the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting in San Francisco. SBRT uses concentrated radiation beams in high doses to destroy ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA -- "Nature has developed, very cleverly, some lessons on how to create the features that we desire in optical design," said Joseph Shaw, director of the Optical Technology Center at Montana State University. "As we explore surfaces and structures at the nanoscale, we'll discover them." Some of those lessons were presented in San Diego in August during a conference called "The Nature of Light: Light in Nature" chaired by Shaw and Rongguang Liang of the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences. The conference was part of SPIE Optics ...

BOSTON – September 17, 2014 – Why are Asian Americans at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than Caucasian Americans, and prone to develop the disease at lower body weights? One part of this puzzle may lie in the transition from traditional high-fiber, low-fat Asian diets to current westernized diets, which may pose extra risks for those of Asian heritage, says George King, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Joslin Diabetes Center and the senior author of the study. A Joslin randomized clinical trial now has demonstrated that both Asian ...

Exposure to verbal and physical aggression between parents may hurt a child's ability to identify and control emotions, according to a longitudinal study led by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. The findings, which appear in the journal Development and Psychopathology, also suggest that household chaos and prolonged periods of poverty during early childhood may take a substantial toll on the emotional adjustment of young children. "Our study points to ways in which aggression between parents may powerfully shape children's emotional ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 17, 2014) – The shifting regional geopolitics of the Middle East have created new opportunities for the Persian Gulf states to engage in Arab-Israeli conflict resolution, according to a new paper from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. "The Gulf States and Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution," authored by Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, proposes a set of policy recommendations on how the Gulf states can engage with regional and international partners to create new pathways for action and cooperation. Ulrichsen is the fellow for the Middle ...

From accessible and affordable health care to reproductive technologies, the justice and well-being of our society depend on the ability of people to identify key issues, articulate their values and concerns, deliberate openly and respectfully, and find the most defensible ways forward. But what are the best educational practices to support these societal conversations? The Hastings Center and the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues have teamed up to publish a series of essays to highlight the best practices in teaching bioethics and to identify ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 17, 2014 – A University of Utah astronomer and his colleagues discovered that an ultracompact dwarf galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object. The finding suggests huge black holes may be more common than previously believed. "It is the smallest and lightest object that we know of that has a supermassive black hole," says Anil Seth, lead author of an international study of the dwarf galaxy published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's also one of the most black ...

Artificial sweeteners, promoted as aids to weight loss and diabetes prevention, could actually hasten the development of glucose intolerance and metabolic disease; and they do it in a surprising way: by changing the composition and function of the gut microbiota – the substantial population of bacteria residing in our intestines. These findings, the results of experiments in mice and humans, were published today in Nature. Among other things, says Dr. Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute's Immunology Department, who led this research together with Prof. Eran Segal of Computer ...

The setting: Europe, about 7,500 years ago. Agriculture was sweeping in from the Near East, bringing early farmers into contact with hunter-gatherers who had already been living in Europe for tens of thousands of years. Genetic and archaeological research in the last 10 years has revealed that almost all present-day Europeans descend from the mixing of these two ancient populations. But it turns out that's not the full story. Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the University of Tübingen in Germany have now documented a genetic contribution from a third ancestor: ...

ANN ARBOR—Man's nearest relatives kill each other in order to eliminate rivals and gain better access to territory, mates, food or other resources—not because human activities have made them more aggressive. That is the conclusion of an international analysis of lethal aggression among different groups of chimpanzees in Africa studied over five decades. The research appears in the current issue of Nature. "Observations that chimpanzees kill members of their own species have influenced efforts to understand the evolution of human violence," said University of Michigan ...