Researchers from the University of Hawai'i (UH) and NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries today announced the discovery of an intact "ghost ship" in 2,000 feet of water nearly 20 miles off the coast of Oahu. Sitting upright, its solitary mast still standing and the ship's wheel still in place, the hulk of the former cable ship Dickenson, later the USS Kailua, was found on the seabed last year on a maritime heritage submersible mission with the UH Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory's (HURL) Terry Kerby and Drs. James Delgado and Hans Van Tilburg of the maritime ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY - Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have devised a powerful algorithm that improves the effectiveness of an important research technology harnessing RNA interference, or RNAi. Discovered in the late 1990s, RNAi is a naturally occurring biological mechanism in which short RNA molecules bind to and "interfere" with messages sent by genes that contain instructions for protein production. Such interference can prevent a gene from being expressed. In addition to helping regulate gene expression, the RNAi pathway in many species, ...

LA JOLLA-Pain typically has a clear cause-but not always. When a person touches something hot or bumps into a sharp object, it's no surprise that it hurts. But for people with certain chronic pain disorders, including fibromyalgia and phantom limb pain, a gentle caress can result in agony. In a major breakthrough, a team led by researchers at the Salk Institute and Harvard Medical School have identified an important neural mechanism in the spinal cord that appears to be capable of sending erroneous pain signals to the brain. By charting the spinal circuits that process ...

When you go to bed and how long you sleep at a time might actually make it difficult for you to stop worrying, according to researchers at Binghamton University. The study, led by Binghamton Anxiety Clinic Director Meredith Coles and graduate student Jacob Nota, found that people who sleep for shorter periods of time and go to bed very late at night are often overwhelmed with more negative thoughts than those who keep more regular sleeping hours. The findings appear in Springer's journal Cognitive Therapy and Research, being published this month. People are said to have ...

ANN ARBOR--An odd, iridescent material that's puzzled physicists for decades turns out to be an exotic state of matter that could open a new path to quantum computers and other next-generation electronics. Physicists at the University of Michigan have discovered or confirmed several properties of the compound samarium hexaboride that raise hopes for finding the silicon of the quantum era. They say their results also close the case of how to classify the material--a mystery that has been investigated since the late 1960s. The researchers provide the first direct evidence ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - December 5, 2014) An international research collaborative has determined that a promising anti-malarial compound tricks the immune system to rapidly destroy red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite but leave healthy cells unharmed. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study, which appears in the current online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The compound, (+)-SJ733, was developed from a molecule identified in a previous St. Jude-led study that helped to jumpstart worldwide anti-malarial ...

This news release is available in Spanish. This is a pioneering study in the world of the physiology of exercise, given that it describes for the first time that elite Kenyan athletes have greater brain oxygenation during periods of maximum physical effort, and which contributes to their success in long-distance races. Doctor Jordan Santos-Concejero, of the Department of Physical Education and Sport at the UPV/EHU, carried out research the aim of which was to analyse the response of cerebral oxygenation at maximum and progressive rhythms amongst elite Kenyan runners ...

Pretty soon, powering your tablet could be as simple as wrapping it in cling wrap. That's Illan Kramer's hope. Kramer and colleagues have just invented a new way to spray solar cells onto flexible surfaces using miniscule light-sensitive materials known as colloidal quantum dots (CQDs)--a major step toward making spray-on solar cells easy and cheap to manufacture. "My dream is that one day you'll have two technicians with Ghostbusters backpacks come to your house and spray your roof," says Kramer, a post-doctoral fellow with The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical ...

This news release is available in German. The consumption of a sugary banquet before sex can have far-reaching consequences for a fruit fly and its offspring: it makes the young flies more prone to obesity. Together with researchers from Spain and Sweden, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have discovered that even a brief change in the diet of male fruit flies triggers obesity in the next generation. Specifically, high-sugar nutrition consumed one to two days before mating causes the male offspring to accumulate more ...

Computers are good at identifying patterns in huge data sets. Humans, by contrast, are good at inferring patterns from just a few examples. In a paper appearing at the Neural Information Processing Society's conference next week, MIT researchers present a new system that bridges these two ways of processing information, so that humans and computers can collaborate to make better decisions. The system learns to make judgments by crunching data but distills what it learns into simple examples. In experiments, human subjects using the system were more than 20 percent better ...

Study results that challenge the idea that bilingual speakers have a cognitive advantage are less likely to be published than those that support the bilingual-advantage theory, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. This research suggests that a publication bias in favor of positive results may skew the overall literature on bilingualism and cognitive function. "Publishing only 'successful' studies means that we do not have access to many valuable studies that could increase our understanding ...

Toronto, Dec. 5, 2014 - The number of children and youth treated for concussions in both emergency departments and physician's offices in Ontario increased significantly between 2003 and 2010, with falls, hockey and skating injuries identified as the leading causes of pediatric concussion, according to a new joint study out of York University and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). The study," A population-based study of pediatric emergency department and office visits for concussions from 2003 to 2010", published today in the journal Paediatrics & ...

With so much focus on risk factors for disease, we are living in an era of surveillance medicine, in which the emphasis on risk blurs the lines between health and illness, argue researchers at Yale and Syracuse universities in a study published in the December issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Co-authors Rene Almeling, assistant professor of sociology at Yale, and Shana Kushner Gadarian, assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University, conducted a nationwide survey of American adults to determine if healthy people react to hypothetical ...

The Ku Klux Klan's failure to defeat the black civil rights moment is well documented, but the group's lesser-known legacy may be its lasting impact on the U.S. political system, according to a paper published in the December issue of the American Sociological Review. David Cunningham, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Brandeis University, Rory McVeigh of the University of Notre Dame and Justin Farrell of Yale University report that KKK activity played a significant role in shifting voters' political party allegiance in the South in the 1960s -- from ...

(NEW YORK - December 5, 2014) A key protein may represent a new way to use the immune system to speed healing and counter inflammatory, infectious and autoimmune diseases, according to study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published in the December issue of Cell Reports. The current study results revolve around proteinases, enzymes that break down proteins as part of cellular life. Matrix metalloproteinases or MMPs specifically target the extracellular matrix, the non-cell, structural framework within tissues. Beyond that role, ...

CHICAGO (December 5, 2014): Malnutrition is an important factor predicting long-term survival in older patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) (commonly called the Whipple procedure) to treat benign tumors and cysts of the pancreas as well as pancreatitis, according to new study results published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. "A comprehensive geriatric assessment of elderly patients who are being evaluated for the Whipple procedure is essential," said lead study author Dominic Sanford, MD, MPHS, a general surgery ...

Super Typhoon Hagupit is forecast to make landfall in the eastern Philippines bringing heavy rainfall, damaging winds and storm surge. NASA/JAXA's TRMM satellite and the RapidScat instrument provided rainfall and wind data, while NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of the storm. In the Philippines, Hagupit is known locally as "Typhoon Ruby." The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite caught a good view of Super Typhoon Hagupit on December 4, 2014 at 1721 UTC (12:21 p.m. EST) when its sustained winds were estimated at over 145 knots ...

ABBOTT PARK, Ill., Dec. 4, 2014 - Even in food-abundant industrialized countries like the U.S., an alarming number of people, particularly seniors, are in a state of diseased-associated malnutrition . Because of the impact on patient health, disease-associated malnutrition imposes a significant economic burden on society of $157 billion per year, according to new research published in a supplemental issue of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN) and supported by Abbott . Researchers looked at malnutrition across eight specific diseases* and evaluated ...

(Salt Lake City) --How can people who are dependent on prescription opioids reduce their cravings? Learn to enjoy other aspects of their lives. That's the key finding in a new study published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine by Eric L. Garland, associate professor at the University of Utah College of Social Work. Garland and colleagues studied how an intervention program for chronic pain patients called Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) decreased patients' desire for prescription drugs. The MORE intervention concentrates on helping people ...

As California finally experiences the arrival of a rain-bearing Pineapple Express this week, two climate scientists from the University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have shown that the drought of 2012-2014 has been the worst in 1,200 years. Daniel Griffin, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota, and Kevin Anchukaitis, an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, asked the question, "How unusual is the ongoing California drought?" Watching the severity of ...

Genetic mutations may cause more cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) than scientists previously had realized, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The scientists also showed that the number of mutated genes influences the age when the fatal paralyzing disorder first appears. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, destroys the nerve cells that control muscles, leading to loss of mobility, difficulty breathing and swallowing, and eventually paralysis and death. Understanding ...

The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) investigated in a dossier assessment whether propranolol offers an added benefit in comparison with the appropriate comparator therapy in infants with proliferating infantile haemangioma (sometimes called "strawberry mark"). According to the findings, there is an indication of major added benefit of propranolol in some children, i.e. those with haemangioma with a risk of permanent scars or disfigurement. In contrast, an added benefit is not proven for children with life- or function-threatening haemangioma, ...

The vicious cycle of diabetes describes a scenario where people are becoming fatter, often with elevated levels of glucose, and at increased risk for women to develop gestational diabetes (GDM). Intrauterine exposure to GDM, itself, is a major risk factor for later obesity and diabetes, thus perpetuating this maternal-offspring cycle of disease. Researchers from Lund University have published an overview of evidence across the past few decades in the journal Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity: Targets and Therapy. They emphasize the need to update diabetes prevention ...

It means cancer "in place" but a carcinoma "in situ" often does not want to keep its place. Standing between a cancer cell in situ and the surrounding tissue of fibroblasts and extracellular matrix is the basement membrane, a thin sheet of fibers that normally cradles the cells above it. The basement membrane is also the frontline physical barrier that keeps primary tumors from spreading into the matrix below. Perforating the basement membrane is a cancer cell's first move toward invasion, but how? Fibroblasts are most commonly found in connective tissue that synthesizes ...

In the human brain, the BBB is not the Better Business Bureau but the blood brain barrier and the BBB is serious business in human physiology. The human BBB separates circulating blood from the central nervous system, thus protecting the brain from many infections and toxins. But the BBB also blocks the passage of many potentially useful drugs to the brain and it has long stymied scientists who want to learn more about this vital tissue because of the lack of realistic non-human lab models. Even less is known about the BBB in children. There are significant structural and ...