For the last decade, astronomers have observed curious "hotspots" on Saturn's poles. In 2008, NASA's Cassini spacecraft beamed back close-up images of these hotspots, revealing them to be immense cyclones, each as wide as the Earth. Scientists estimate that Saturn's cyclones may whip up 300 mph winds, and likely have been churning for years. While cyclones on Earth are fueled by the heat and moisture of the oceans, no such bodies of water exist on Saturn. What, then, could be causing such powerful, long-lasting storms? In a paper published today in the journal Nature ...

New research by NOAA, University of Alaska, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the journal Oceanography shows that surface waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could reach levels of acidity that threaten the ability of animals to build and maintain their shells by 2030, with the Bering Sea reaching this level of acidity by 2044. "Our research shows that within 15 years, the chemistry of these waters may no longer be saturated with enough calcium carbonate for a number of animals from tiny sea snails to Alaska King crabs to construct and maintain their shells ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a groundbreaking new energy-absorbing structure to better withstand blunt and ballistic impact. The technology, called negative stiffness (NS) honeycombs, can be integrated into car bumpers, military and athletic helmets and other protective hardware. The technology could have major implications for the design and production of future vehicles and military gear to improve safety. The new NS honeycomb structures are able to provide repeated protection ...

ALEXANDRIA VA, JUNE 15, 2015 - A statistical analysis of poll performance in battleground states over the last three presidential elections shows polling firms produced estimates that were fairly accurate in 2004 and 2008, but underestimated support for President Obama in 2012, a new article reports. The article's authors--Ole J. Forsberg and Mark E. Payton, professors in the department of statistics at Oklahoma State University--believe the culprit for bad polling in the 2012 election may have roots in "outdated and possibly flawed sampling methodology" that resulted ...

SAN FRANCISCO--For many generations, Bedouin people living in the Abu Dabbab area on the Egyptian Red Sea coast have heard distinct noises--like the rumbling of a quarry blast or cannon shot--accompanying small earthquakes in the region. Now, a new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America offers an explanation for this uniquely noisy seismic event. Seismic activity in the area of the Egyptian seaside resort Abu Dabbab may be caused by an active fault that lays below a 10-kilometer thick block of old, now rigid igneous rock. The surface of ...

(Philadelphia, PA) - It's long been known that scratching evokes a rewarding and pleasurable sensation in patients with chronic itch. Now, researchers in the Department of Dermatology and Temple Itch Center at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM) may be closer to understanding why. Using advanced fMRI imaging, the researchers looked at activity in the brain while 10 chronic itch patients and 10 healthy subjects scratched an itch. They found that areas of the brain involved in motor control and reward processing were more activated in chronic itch patients while ...

There is little information about bee populations in Alaska, where native bee pollination is critical to the maintenance of subarctic ecosystems. A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the USDA have now completed a two-year study on bumble bees in agricultural areas in the region. The research was published in the Biodiversity Data Journal. Pollination is one of the most fundamental processes sustaining agricultural production and natural ecosystems. While decrease in bee populations is a common concern, most press coverage has been directed towards Colony ...

Recent genomic research has prompted a petition that calls for the reclassification of African elephants from one threatened species to two endangered species to protect both from imminent extinction. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FSW) has 90 days to respond to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity at http://www.biologicaldiversity.org, a public interest environmental organization dedicated to the protection of native species and their habitats. The Center requests that the FWS recognize the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) and savannah elephant ...

A strain of bacteria that "breathes" uranium may hold the key to cleaning up polluted groundwater at sites where uranium ore was processed to make nuclear weapons. A team of Rutgers University scientists and collaborators discovered the bacteria in soil at an old uranium ore mill in Rifle, Colorado, almost 200 miles west of Denver. The site is one of nine such mills in Colorado used during the heyday of nuclear weapons production. The research is part of a U.S. Department of Energy program to see if microorganisms can lock up uranium that leached into the soil years ...

Zinc plays an important role in a woman's ability to successfully breast-feed her child, according to health researchers. It has long been known that zinc, an essential trace element, is passed to infants through mother's breast milk. The levels of zinc in mother's milk and the effects of zinc deficiency in infants have been previously studied, but the role of zinc in breast development and function in lactating mothers is a relatively new area of research. The protein ZnT2 transports zinc in specific tissues in the body, including the mammary glands. Shannon L. Kelleher ...

This news release is available in German. ETH material engineers found that the performance of ion-conducting ceramic membranes that are so important in industry depends largely on their strain and buckling profiles. For the first time, scientists can now selectively manipulate the buckling profile, and thus the physical properties, allowing new technical applications of these membranes. "Ionics, ion-based data processing and energy conversion, is the electronics of the future", says Jennifer Rupp, a professor of Electrochemical Materials at ETH Zurich, and therewith ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The high seas of Mars may never have existed, according to a new study that looks at two opposite climate scenarios of early Mars and suggests that a cold and icy planet billions of years ago better explains water drainage and erosion features seen on the planet today. For decades, researchers have debated the climate history of Mars and how the planet's early climate led to the many water-carved channels seen today. The idea that 3 to 4 billion years ago Mars was once warm, wet and Earth-like with a northern sea -- conditions that could have led ...

Researchers who paired Siamese fighting fish in mock fights found that winning fish could supply more energy to their muscles during fights than losing fish. The findings link the invisible processes going on inside cells to tangible consequences in the visible world, and they show how a behavior such as aggression can be affected by underlying biochemical processes that help sustain an animal's life. "Conspicuous adaptations like antlers are usually what come to mind when thinking about traits that maximize success in aggressive interactions, but as these interactions ...

Rich, creamy, nutritious and now cancer fighting. New research reveals that molecules derived from avocados could be effective in treating a form of cancer. Professor Paul Spagnuolo from the University of Waterloo has discovered a lipid in avocados that combats acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by targeting the root of the disease - leukemia stem cells. Worldwide, there are few drug treatments available to patients that target leukemia stem cells. AML is a devastating disease and proves fatal within five years for 90 per cent of seniors over age 65. Spagnuolo's new avocado-derived ...

The world's first study into the brain anatomy of a marine reptile that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs sheds light on how the reptilian brain adapted to life in the oceans. The fossils of ichthyosaurs, which lived 150 to 200 million years ago, are often very well preserved, but they are commonly flattened. Now investigators have used computed tomography to create a 3-D scan of the animal's skull, revealing internal details of the palate and braincase that usually cannot be seen. A reconstruction of the brain shows the importance of vision for the predator, which ...

In a new study, older women who lived in places with higher air pollution had significantly reduced white matter in the brain. For the study, a research team took brain MRIs of 1403 women who were 71 to 89 years old and used residential histories and air monitoring data to estimate their exposure to air pollution in the previous 6 to 7 years. The findings suggest that ambient particulate air pollutants may have a deleterious effect on brain aging. "Investigating the impact of air pollution on the human brain is a new area of environmental neurosciences. Our study provides ...

The prevalence of smoking among undergraduate nursing and physiotherapy students in Spain decreased from 29.3% in 2003 to 18.2% in 2013. Many of the students remained unaware of the link between smoking and diseases such as bladder cancer or the negative health effects of second-hand smoke, which points to a significant deficiency in undergraduate training. The majority of nursing and physiotherapy students recognized that healthcare professionals were role models in society, noted Dr. Beatriz Ordás, lead author of the Journal of Advanced Nursing study. INFORMATION: ...

Following a decade of steady growth, use of bisphosphonates--medications that are effective for treating osteoporosis--declined in the United States by more than 50% from 2008 to 2012. The sudden drop seemed to occur after media reports highlighted safety concerns, such as the development of certain fractures that occurred rarely in long-term users, despite the fact that the US Food and Drug Administration and the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research did not recommend any specific safety restrictions on bisphosphonates. The findings are published in the Journal ...

A new study shows that shorter telomeres--which are the protective caps at the end of a cell's chromosomes--are linked with worse survival in a progressive respiratory disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). In patients with IPF, excessive scar tissue forms in the lungs. The average telomere length of IPF patients was significantly shorter than that of healthy individuals. Also, the telomere length of patients with IPF who died from their disease during the study was shorter than that of patients who survived. The Respirology results support the theory that ...

A new global review reveals that elder abuse--which includes psychological, physical, and sexual abuse; neglect; and financial exploitation--is common among community-dwelling older adults and is especially prevalent among minority older adults. Older adults with cognitive and physical impairments or psychosocial distress are also at increased risk of elder abuse. In North and South American epidemiological studies, the prevalence of elder abuse ranged from about 10% among cognitively intact older adults to 47% in older adults with dementia. In Europe, the prevalence ...

One of the body's own tools for preventing wound infections may actually interfere with wound healing, according to new research from Boston Children's Hospital. In a study published online in Nature Medicine, scientists from the hospital's Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (PCMM) found they could speed up wound healing in diabetic mice by keeping immune cells called neutrophils from producing bacteria-trapping neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). The study, led by PCMM senior investigator Denisa Wagner, Ph.D., and postdoctoral fellow Siu Ling Wong, Ph.D., ...

University of California, Berkeley, scientists have identified more than 35 new groups of bacteria, clarifying a mysterious branch of the tree of life that has been hazy because these microbes can't be reared and studied in the lab. The new groups make up more than 15 percent of all known groups or phyla of bacteria, the scientists say, and include the smallest life forms on Earth, microbes a mere 400 nanometers across. The number of new bacterial phyla is equal to all the known animal phyla on Earth. The scientists, who recently also identified nine new groups of microbes ...

Researchers estimate that 48.5 percent of the nearly 346,000 deaths from 12 cancers among adults 35 and older in 2011 were attributable to cigarette smoking, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Researcher Rebecca L. Siegel, M.P.H., of the American Cancer Society, Atlanta, and coauthors provide an updated estimate because they note smoking patterns and the magnitude of the association between smoking and cancer death have changed in the past decade. While smoking prevalence decreased from 23.2 percent in 2000 to 18.1 percent in 2012, some ...

New York, June 15 -- Led by Young Duck Kim, a postdoctoral research scientist in James Hone's group at Columbia Engineering, a team of scientists from Columbia, Seoul National University (SNU), and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) reported today that they have demonstrated -- for the first time -- an on-chip visible light source using graphene, an atomically thin and perfectly crystalline form of carbon, as a filament. They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed a current through ...

Diatoms in the world's oceans exhale more oxygen than all the world's rainforests. These tiny drifting algae generate about 20 percent of the oxygen produced on Earth each year and invisibly recycle gases enveloping our planet. How diatoms will respond to the rising carbon dioxide levels is still unknown. A new study by the University of Washington and Seattle's Institute for Systems Biology, published June 15 in Nature Climate Change, finds the genetic ways that a common species of diatom adjusts to sudden and long-term increases in carbon dioxide. 'There are certain ...