VIDEO: The movie is quantitative imaging of cells with potassium channels, bathed in dilute fluorescent tarantula toxin. Pixel color indicates intensity of tarantula toxin concentration. The circular shapes are cell surfaces,... Click here for more information. WOODS HOLE, Mass.--A novel probe that reports on the electrical activity of cells, made by fusing tarantula toxin with a fluorescent compound, is described in a paper today by scientists from the University of California, ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—Researchers led by a Washington State University biologist have found the optimal mechanism by which plants heal the botanical equivalent of a bad sunburn. Their work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to the development of crops that can repair the sun's damage more easily, improving yields and profitability. Helmut Kirchhoff, an assistant professor in WSU's Institute of Biological Chemistry and corresponding author of the PNAS paper, said plants have had to deal with solar damage since the evolution of photosynthesis ...

PHILADELPHIA — Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine and School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have used graphene -- a two-dimensional form of carbon only one atom thick -- to fabricate a new type of microelectrode that solves a major problem for investigators looking to understand the intricate circuitry of the brain. Pinning down the details of how individual neural circuits operate in epilepsy and other neurological disorders requires real-time observation of their locations, firing patterns, ...

Hurricane Gonzalo departed from Bermuda leaving power outages, downed trees, and damaged homes and buildings. An on-the ground account of the storm indicated the eye passed over the island. By Oct. 20, post-tropical storm Gonzalo was approaching the United Kindgom, sparking severe weather warnings. By Sunday, Oct. 19 Gonzalo was affecting eastern Canada. Forecasters expect Gonzalo to hold together over while traveling east across the North Atlantic where it will affect Scotland as an extra-tropical storm on Tuesday, Oct. 21. Camille Haley was former NASA intern and ...

Tropical Storm Trudy formed on Saturday, Oct. 17 and by Oct.19 the storm made landfall in southern Mexico and weakened to a remnant low pressure area. Tropical Storm Trudy formed near the southwestern coast of Mexico during the morning of Oct. 18 triggering warnings and watches. A Hurricane Watch was posted from east of Acapulco to Laguna De Chacahua Mexico and a Tropical Storm Warning was posted for Tecpan De Galeana to Laguna De Chacahua Mexico. On Sat. Oct. 18 at 8 a.m. EDT, radar from Mexico indicated that the center of Tropical Storm Trudy was located on the coast ...

VIDEO: This video shows the movement of Tropical Storm Ana near the Hawaiian Islands from Oct. 17-20. Click here for more information. Tropical Storm Ana made a slow track west of the Hawaiian islands over the last couple of days, and by Oct. 20 was moving westward away from the main Hawaiian islands and heading toward the northwest Hawaiian islands. NASA's Terra satellite caught Ana on a flyby on Oct. 19 that showed the storm's clouds blanketing the chain of islands. The ...

This NASA satellite image is of the Egyptian River Delta. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. Each hot spot, which appears as a red mark, is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires in this image and confirmation from the Ministry of Environment in Egypt. Fires are witnessed every year in October and November, caused ...

Looking forward in science often requires looking back, evaluating trends to extrapolate future outcomes. A classic case is Moore's Law, which predicts that the density of components on an integrated circuit will double every 24 months. The estimate has helped guide many developments in the computer industry. In a new study, Rolf Halden, PhD, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, examines the trajectory of chemicals appearing as emergent threats to human or environmental health. Halden's meta-analysis of 143,000 peer-reviewed research papers ...

About 20% of younger siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will develop the condition by age 3. A new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers has found that 57% of these younger siblings who later develop the condition already showed symptoms at age 18 months. Published in the October Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, this is the first large-scale, multi-site study aimed at identifying specific social-communicative behaviors that distinguish infants with ASD from their typically and atypically developing high-risk ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Obesity affects individual patient care, the healthcare system and nearly every organ in the body. People with obesity often have other health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, certain tumors and cancers, and psychiatric disorders. However, the role of obesity in orthopaedic conditions and their treatment is less well-publicized. According to orthopaedic surgeon William M. Mihalko, MD, PhD, of Campbell Clinic Orthopaedics in Memphis, Tenn., "obesity can accompany a multitude of comorbidities that can have a significant impact on a patient's ...

Older individuals who are subliminally exposed to positive stereotypes about aging showed improved physical functioning that can last for several weeks, a new study led by the Yale School of Public Health has found. Researchers used a novel intervention method to examine for the first time whether exposure to positive age stereotypes could weaken negative age stereotypes and their effects over time, and lead to healthier outcomes. The study, to be published online in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, consisted of 100 older individuals (average ...

Antibiotics—one of modernity's great success stories—are charms that come with a curse. Their overuse in human and animal populations can lead to the development of resistant microbial strains, posing a dire threat to global health. In a new study, Hansa Done, PhD candidate, and Rolf Halden, PhD, researchers at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, examine antibiotic use in the rapidly expanding world of global aquaculture. Done and Halden measured the presence of antibiotics in shrimp, salmon, catfish, trout, tilapia and swai, originating from ...

This news release is available in German. Physical exercise in old age can improve brain perfusion as well as certain memory skills. This is the finding of Magdeburg neuroscientists who studied men and women aged between 60 and 77. In younger individuals regular training on a treadmill tended to improve cerebral blood flow and visual memory. However, trial participants who were older than 70 years of age tended to show no benefit of exercise. Thus, the study also indicates that the benefits of exercise may be limited by advancing age. Researchers of the German Center ...

ATLANTA (October 20, 2014) – New data presented today indicate that consumers of frozen meals (1) had higher daily intakes of dietary fiber, potassium, calcium and protein, and lower daily intakes of calories and saturated fat than consumers of quick service restaurant (QSR) meals (2). The poster, Consumption of Frozen Meals as Compared to Quick Service Restaurant Meals is Associated with Better Nutrient Intakes in Adult Participants of The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2003-2010), was presented at the 2014 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Food ...

Boulder, CO, USA — Ryan McKellar's research sounds like it was plucked from Jurassic Park: he studies pieces of amber found buried with dinosaur skeletons. But rather than re-creating dinosaurs, McKellar uses the tiny pieces of fossilized tree resin to study the world in which the now-extinct behemoths lived. New techniques for investigating very tiny pieces of fragile amber buried in dinosaur bonebeds could close the gaps in knowledge about the ecology of the dinosaurs, said McKellar, who is a research scientist at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Saskatchewan, ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 20, 2014—When it comes to picking an egg donor, until recent years, recipients tended to prefer someone with a similar appearance. Donor trait choices are changing, though, and which traits are now more preferable and why is the focus of "Beauty, Brains or Health: Trends in Ovum Recipient Preferences," an article published in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jwh.2014.4792 ...

Boulder, CO, USA — Venus is hiding something beneath its brilliant shroud of clouds: a first order mystery about the planet that researchers may be a little closer to solving because of a new re-analysis of twenty-year-old spacecraft data. Venus's surface can't be seen from orbit in visible light because of the planet's hot, dense, cloudy atmosphere. Instead, radar has been used by spacecraft to penetrate the clouds and map out the surface – both by reflecting radar off the surface to measure elevation and by looking at the radio emissions of the hot surface. ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Enara Herran, a researcher at the UPV/EHU's Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology, is working to improve the way Alzheimer's and Parkinson's treatments are administered. And it is a fact that, as Herran herself stressed, "both diseases are becoming more and more common in our society". Both disorders affect the neurones: their structure and function is lost, and this in turn leads to the deterioration in the patient's motor, cognitive, sensory and emotional functions. As Herran pointed out, in many cases ...

VIDEO: The Internet "sleeps " -- but not everywhere. Find out why. Click here for more information. Researchers studying how big the Internet is have found that it "sleeps," almost like a living creature. The finding will help scientists and policymakers develop better systems to measure and track Internet outages, such as those that struck the New York area after Hurricane Sandy. Understanding how the Internet sleeps will help them avoid confusing a sleeping Internet with ...

Fish just want to have fun, according to a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, study that finds even fish "play." The research is published in the academic journal Ethology and can be viewed at http://bit.ly/1tLunpC. Gordon Burghardt, a professor in the departments of Psychology and Ecology are Evolutionary Biology, is known for defining "play" in a way that allows us to identify it in species not previously thought capable of play, such as wasps, reptiles and invertebrates. "Play is repeated behavior that is incompletely functional in the context or at the age ...

This news release is available in German. Diatoms play an important role in water quality and in the global climate. They generate about one fourth of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere and perform around one-quarter of the global CO2 assimilation, i.e. they convert carbon dioxide into organic substances. Their light receptors are a crucial factor in this process. Researchers at the Leipzig University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research have now discovered that blue and red light sensing photoreceptors control the carbon flow in these algae. These ...

WASHINGTON, DC – A mass of marine debris discovered in a giant sinkhole in the Hawaiian islands provides evidence that at least one mammoth tsunami, larger than any in Hawaii's recorded history, has struck the islands, and that a similar disaster could happen again, new research finds. Scientists are reporting that a wall of water up to nine meters (30 feet) high surged onto Hawaiian shores about 500 years ago. A 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast of the Aleutian Islands triggered the mighty wave, which left behind up to nine shipping containers worth of ocean ...

Since World War II, more than 45 international human-rights treaties have been signed by many of the world's roughly 200 countries. But why do some states sign such accords, especially if they lack a strong human-rights commitment in the first place? One prominent idea holds that treaty-ratifying countries are essentially bought off: They agree to lend support to the human-rights movement in exchange for material good, such as foreign aid or more trade. However, a new study co-authored by an MIT political scientist finds that not to be the case; the actions of states, ...

This news release is available in German. What started out as a mathematical oddity, has now become a new kind of laser technology. Two years ago, physicists at TU Wien predicted a paradoxical laser effect: Under certain conditions, a laser can be switched on not by supplying it with more energy, but by taking energy away from the laser. First experimental signatures of this effect were recently reported at TU Wien. In collaboration with colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, USA and at Riken, Japan the researchers have now succeeded in transferring the paradoxical ...

Amsterdam, NL, October 20, 2014 – White Canes provide low-tech assistance to the visually impaired, but some blind people object to their use because they are cumbersome, fail to detect elevated obstacles, or require long training periods to master. Electronic travel aids (ETAs) have the potential to improve navigation for the blind, but early versions had disadvantages that limited widespread adoption. A new ETA, the "EyeCane," developed by a team of researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, expands the world of its users, allowing them to better estimate ...