The Himalaya features some of the most impressive gorges on Earth that have been formed by rivers. The geologic history of the famous Tsangpo Gorge, in the eastern Himalaya, now needs to be rewritten. A team of German, Chinese, and American geoscientists have namely discovered a canyon, filled with more than 500 m of sediments beneath the bed of the present-day Yarlung Tsangpo River upstream from the gorge. Using drill cores, the scientists were able to reconstruct the former valley floor of this river, which allowed them to reconstruct the geological history of the Tsangpo ...

Doctors have long been mystified as to why HIV-1 rapidly sickens some individuals, while in others the virus has difficulties gaining a foothold. Now, a study of genetic variation in HIV-1 and in the cells it infects reported by University of Minnesota researchers in this week's issue of PLOS Genetics has uncovered a chink in HIV-1's armor that may, at least in part, explain the puzzling difference -- and potentially open the door to new treatments. HIV-1 harms people by invading immune system cells known as T lymphocytes, hijacking their molecular machinery to make more ...

A team of researchers from Caltech and the China Earthquake Administration has discovered an ancient, deep canyon buried along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in south Tibet, north of the eastern end of the Himalayas. The geologists say that the ancient canyon--thousands of feet deep in places--effectively rules out a popular model used to explain how the massive and picturesque gorges of the Himalayas became so steep, so fast. "I was extremely surprised when my colleagues, Jing Liu-Zeng and Dirk Scherler, showed me the evidence for this canyon in southern Tibet," says Jean-Philippe ...

Bangkok (Thailand)- A recent study from the Thai-Myanmar border highlights the severe and previously under-reported adverse impact of readily treatable tropical rickettsial illnesses, notably scrub typhus and murine typhus, on pregnancy outcomes, finding that more than one third of affected pregnancies resulted either in stillbirth or premature and/or low birth weight babies. Conducted by Prof Rose McGready and Assoc. Prof Daniel Henry Paris from the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit (SMRU) in Mae Sot, Thailand, and the Mahidol Oxford Research Unit (MORU) in Bangkok, affiliated ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 20, 2014) - A landmark study published today in the journal Science by an international group of scientists, led by the laboratory of Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, professor & vice chair of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of Kentucky, reports that HIV/AIDS drugs that have been used for the last 30 years could be repurposed to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), as well as other inflammatory disorders, because of a previously undiscovered intrinsic and inflammatory activity those drugs possess. AMD is a progressive ...

Scientists developed a new method which allows to estimate the magnetic field of a distant exoplanet, i.e., a planet, which is located outside the Solar system and orbits a different star. Moreover, they managed to estimate the value of the magnetic moment of the planet HD 209458b.The group of scientists including one of the researchers of the Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia) published their article in the Science magazine. In the two decades which passed since the discovery of the first planet outside the Solar system, astronomers have made a great progress ...

MADISON, Wis. -- As real as that daydream may seem, its path through your brain runs opposite reality. Aiming to discern discrete neural circuits, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have tracked electrical activity in the brains of people who alternately imagined scenes or watched videos. "A really important problem in brain research is understanding how different parts of the brain are functionally connected. What areas are interacting? What is the direction of communication?" says Barry Van Veen, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering. ...

MADISON, Wis. - The influenza virus, like all viruses, is a hijacker. It quietly slips its way inside cells, steals the machinery inside to make more copies of itself, and then -- having multiplied -- bursts out of the cell to find others to infect. Most drugs currently used to treat influenza are designed to attack the virus, to render it incapacitated. But influenza viruses are sneaky, capable of mutating to avoid destruction by the drug. In a comprehensive new study published today in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Yoshihiro ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Nov. 20, 2014 -- A potential path to identify imperfections and improve the quality of nanomaterials for use in next-generation solar cells has emerged from a collaboration of University of Oregon and industry researchers. To increase light-harvesting efficiency of solar cells beyond silicon's limit of about 29 percent, manufacturers have used layers of chemically synthesized semiconductor nanocrystals. Properties of quantum dots that are produced are manipulated by controlling the synthetic process and surface chemical structure. This process, however, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The majority of preschoolers may not be getting the amount of sleep they need each night, placing them at higher risk of being overweight or obese within a year, according to a new study. Published online by the journal Sleep Medicine, the study investigated links between mothers' employment status and their children's weight over time, exploring the impact of potential mediators, such as children's sleep and dietary habits, the amount of time they spent watching TV and family mealtime routines. "The only factor of the four that we investigated that ...

Washington, DC--Levels of testosterone and other naturally-occurring reproductive hormones play a limited role in driving menopausal women's interest in sex and sexual function, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. While testosterone is the main sex hormone in men, women also have small amounts of it. The ovaries naturally produce testosterone. Researchers set out to examine the role the hormone plays in sexual function as women go through menopause. "While levels of testosterone and other reproductive ...

Washington, DC--As many as one in five people with Type 2 diabetes do not see any improvement in blood sugar management when they engage in a supervised exercise regimen, according to a new scientific review published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. People develop Type 2 diabetes when their bodies become resistant to the hormone insulin, which carries sugar from the blood to cells. This leads to excess sugar in the bloodstream. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects about 40 percent of Americans will develop ...

Enzymes carry out fundamental biological processes such as photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation and respiration, with the help of clusters of metal atoms as "active" sites. But scientists lack basic information about their function because the states thought to be critical to their chemical abilities cannot be experimentally observed. Now, researchers at Princeton University have reported the first direct observation of the electronic states of iron-sulfur clusters, common to many enzyme active sites. Published on August 31 in the journal Nature Chemistry, the states were ...

LIVERMORE, California -- Using ocean observations and a large suite of climate models, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have found that long-term salinity changes have a stronger influence on regional sea level changes than previously thought. "By using long-term observed estimates of ocean salinity and temperature changes across the globe, and contrasting these with model simulations, we have uncovered the unexpectedly large influence of salinity changes on ocean basin-scale sea level patterns," said LLNL oceanographer Paul Durack, lead author of a paper ...

BANGALORE, INDIA (November 20, 2014) - Participation of non-scientists as volunteers in conservation can play a significant role in saving wildlife, finds a new scientific research led by Duke University, USA, in collaboration with Wildlife Conservation Society and Centre for Wildlife Studies, Bengaluru. The study has shown that citizen science projects greatly contribute to 'increased environmental awareness among the general public'. It also reported direct impacts on conservation including - shift in formal profession by volunteers to become conservationists, initiation ...

Moderate rainfall was occurring around the center of Tropical Storm Adjali before it dissipated, according to data from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM satellites. Adjali became the first named storm of the Southwest Indian Ocean 2014/2015 cyclone season when it formed on November 16, 2014. Adjali became a strong tropical storm the next day and just two days later started to dissipate. The GPM observatory captured data on Adjali's rainfall rates on Nov. 18. GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument is similar to ...

This new survey was released November 19 as a Web First by Health Affairs. The full text is available free until November 26. International Survey Of Older Adults Finds Shortcomings In Access, Coordination, And Patient-Centered Care By Robin Osborn, Donald Moulds, David Squires, Michelle M. Doty, and Chloe Anderson All authors are affiliated with The Commonwealth Fund in New York. This study was supported by The Commonwealth Fund and also will appear in the December issue of Health Affairs. The study surveyed 15,617 adults ages sixty-five and older in Australia, ...

In many firms sales people spend as much time negotiating internally for lower prices as they do interacting with customers. A new study appearing in the November issue of Marketing Science, a publication of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) finds that firms should allow their sales people to "waste" energy on internal negotiations. In fact, it says, firms should make the process wasteful on purpose. The study, "Why do sales people spend so much time lobbying for low prices?" was conducted by Duncan Simester, the Nanyang Technological ...

When blood vessels are damaged through surgery, it can trigger an endless cycle of scarring and repair. "Scar tissue will always form inside the blood vessel and, in many cases, eventually block blood flow," said Guillermo Ameer, professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. "Then surgeons have to go back in, eliminate the obstruction, or put in a new graft or stent to restore blood flow. In the case of a prosthetic vascular graft used for bypass surgery, it will scar again and ultimately fail." Ameer, who is also ...

High blood pressure is a leading cause of death around the world, and its prevalence continues to rise. A study published by Cell Press on November 20th in the journal Immunity shows that a protein in the spleen called placental growth factor (PlGF) plays a critical role in activating a harmful immune response that leads to the onset of high blood pressure in mice. The findings pave the way for the development of more effective treatments for this common and deadly condition. High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, affects more than 1 billion people worldwide ...

The portion of the adult brain responsible for complex thought, known as the cerebral cortex, lacks the ability to replace neurons that die as a result of Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and other devastating diseases. A study in the International Society for Stem Cell Research's journal Stem Cell Reports, published by Cell Press on November 20 shows that a Sox2 protein, alone or in combination with another protein, Ascl1, can cause nonneuronal cells, called NG2 glia, to turn into neurons in the injured cerebral cortex of adult mice. The findings reveal that NG2 glia represent ...

As we age, we have an increasingly harder time ignoring distractions. But new research online November 20 in the Cell Press journal Neuron reveals that by learning to make discriminations of a sound amidst progressively more disruptive distractions, we can diminish our distractibility. A similar strategy might also help children with attention deficits or individuals with other mental challenges. Distractibility, or the inability to sustain focus on a goal due to attention to irrelevant stimuli, can have a negative effect on basic daily activities, and it is a hallmark ...

CINCINNATI - Researchers have successfully targeted an important molecular pathway that fuels a variety of cancers and related developmental syndromes called "Rasopathies." Reporting their results Nov. 20 in Chemistry & Biology, scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center say they identified a class of lead compounds that successfully recognize a key target in the Ras signaling pathway - opening the door to future development of therapies that could make treatments more effective with fewer side effects. Although still in the early stages of the development ...

While investigating a rare genetic disorder, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that a ubiquitous signaling molecule is crucial to cellular reprogramming, a finding with significant implications for stem cell-based regenerative medicine, wound repair therapies and potential cancer treatments. The findings are published in the Nov. 20 online issue of Cell Reports. Karl Willert, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and colleagues were attempting to use induced pluripotent ...

VIDEO: Researchers at the Salk Institute explain how a new technology, called ReBiL, can spot protein interactions more accurately, providing a new tool for cancer and other drug diagnostics. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA--For decades, researchers have struggled to translate basic scientific discoveries about cancer into therapeutics that effectively--and with minimal side effects--shrink a tumor. One avenue that may hold great potential is the development of ...