The first of two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft landed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, on Aug. 27 after surveying Hurricane Cristobal for the first science flight of NASA's latest hurricane airborne mission. NASA's airborne Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, mission returns to NASA Wallops for the third year to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. HS3 is a collaborative effort that brings together several NASA centers with federal and university partners. The ...

A diet of junk food not only makes rats fat, but also reduces their appetite for novel foods, a preference that normally drives them to seek a balanced diet, reports a study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology. The study helps to explain how excessive consumption of junk food can change behavior, weaken self-control and lead to overeating and obesity. The team of researchers, led by Professor Margaret Morris, Head of Pharmacology from the School of Medical Sciences, UNSW Australia, taught young male rats to associate each of two different sound ...

Most of North America's megafauna — mastodons, short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, saber-toothed cats and American camels and horses — disappeared close to 13,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene period. The cause of this massive extinction has long been debated by scientists who, until recently, could only speculate as to why. A group of scientists, including UC Santa Barbara's James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science, posited that a comet collision with Earth played a major role in the extinction. Their hypothesis suggests that ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An Indiana University study has found that social class can account for differences in how parents coach their children to manage classroom challenges. Such differences can affect a child's education by reproducing inequalities in the classroom. "Parents have different beliefs on how to deal with challenges in the classroom," said Jessica McCrory Calarco, assistant professor in IU Bloomington's Department of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. "Middle-class parents tell their children to reach out to the teacher and ask questions. Working-class ...

Wolves may be susceptible to yawn contagion, according to a study published August 27, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Teresa Romero from The University of Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues. Researchers suggest that contagious yawning may be linked to human capacity for empathy, but little evidence apart from studies on primates, exists that links contagious yawning to empathy in other animals. Recently, researchers have documented domestic dogs demonstrating contagious yawning when exposed to human yawns in a scientific setting, but it is unclear whether this ...

Experimental comparison may show that stone-tipped spears do not penetrate as deep, but may still cause more damage, than sharpened wooden spears, according to a study published August 27, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jayne Wilkins from Arizona State University and colleagues. The creation of stone-tipped weapons (wooden shaft + binding materials + stone point) by our ancestors ~500,000 years ago points to the development of new cognitive and social learning at the time. The development may have provided an advantage over simpler hunting methods, such as ...

A Bronze Age palace excavation reveals an ancient wine cellar, according to a study published August 27, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrew Koh from Brandeis University and colleagues. Wine production, distribution, and consumption are thought to have played a role in the lives of those living in the Mediterranean and Near East during the Middle Bronze Age (1900-1600 BC), but little archaeological evidence about Bronze Age wine is available to support art and documentation about the role wine played during this period. During a 2013 excavation of the Middle ...

Belmont, MA — McLean Hospital researchers are reporting that xenon gas, used in humans for anesthesia and diagnostic imaging, has the potential to be a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other memory-related disorders. "In our study, we found that xenon gas has the capability of reducing memories of traumatic events," said Edward G. Meloni, PhD, assistant psychologist at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "It's an exciting breakthrough, as this has the potential to be a new treatment for individuals ...

Pain from inflammation sidelines thousands of Americans each year. Many face a tough choice: deal with the pain, take a potentially addictive opioid or use a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug that may increase risk for cardiovascular disease or gastrointestinal bleeding. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered a compound thought to be nonaddictive and safe for the heart and gastrointestinal system that reduces inflammatory pain in mice and rats. They call the compound Alda-1. "Finding a new pain medication is important because ...

Attaching a stone tip on to a wooden spear shaft was a significant innovation for early modern humans living around 500,000 years ago. However, it was also a costly behavior in terms of time and effort to collect, prepare and assemble the spear. Stone tips break more frequently than wooden spears, requiring more frequent replacement and upkeep, and the fragility of a broken point could necessitate multiple thrusts to an angry animal. So, why did early hunters begin to use stone-tipped spears? To learn if there was a "wounding" advantage between using a wooden spear or ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The removal of institutions or group homes will not lead to better child well-being and could even worsen outcomes for some orphaned and separated children, according to new findings from a three-year study across five low- and middle-income countries. Children in institutions are as healthy and, in some ways, healthier than those in family-based care, according to the study, which was led by Kathryn Whetten, a Duke professor of public policy and director of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research (CHPIR). In the largest and most geographically ...

Over confident people can fool others into believing they are more talented than they actually are, a study has found. These 'self-deceived' individuals could be more likely to get promotions and reach influential positions in banks and other organisations. And these people are more likely to overestimate other people's abilities and take greater risks, possibly creating problems for their organisations. The study by researchers from Newcastle University and the University of Exeter, has also found that those who are under confident in their own abilities are viewed ...

Depression may be better predicted and understood now that University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have discovered that young adults who previously experienced the mental illness have hyper-connected emotional and cognitive networks in the brain. UIC researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the brain connectivity of young adults ages 18 to 23 while they were in a resting state. Thirty unmedicated young adults who had previously experienced depression and 23 healthy controls were used in the study, which has been published online in the journal ...

Children who repeatedly become infected with malaria often experience no clinical symptoms with these subsequent infections, and a team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered that this might be due at least in part to a depletion of specific types of immune cells. Working in Uganda, one of the most malaria-plagued nations in Africa and one in which individuals are repeatedly exposed to the malaria parasite, UCSF scientists found that a depletion of immune cells known as gamma delta T cells diminishes inflammatory responses in infected children — responses ...

LEBANON, NH ­– Recent growth in health care spending for commercially insured individuals is due primarily to increases in prices for medical services, rather than increased use, according to a new study led by researchers at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, published in the August issue of the American Journal of Managed Care. There is increasing concern that consolidation in the health care marketplace will lead to increased prices faced by payers and, ultimately, consumers," said Carrie Colla, PhD, assistant professor at The Dartmouth ...

A big step in understanding the mysteries of the human genome was unveiled today in the form of three analyses that provide the most detailed comparison yet of how the genomes of the fruit fly, roundworm, and human function. The research, appearing August 28 in in the journal Nature, compares how the information encoded in the three species' genomes is "read out," and how their DNA and proteins are organized into chromosomes. The results add billions of entries to a publicly available archive of functional genomic data. Scientists can use this resource to discover ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 27, 2014 – Recycled tires could see new life in lithium-ion batteries that provide power to plug-in electric vehicles and store energy produced by wind and solar, say researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. By modifying the microstructural characteristics of carbon black, a substance recovered from discarded tires, a team led by Parans Paranthaman and Amit Naskar is developing a better anode for lithium-ion batteries. An anode is a negatively charged electrode used as a host for storing lithium during charging. The ...

Being involved in a gang poses considerable health-related risks for adolescent African American girls, including more casual sex partners and substance abuse combined with less testing for HIV and less knowledge about preventing sexually transmitted diseases, according to a new study. The findings come from a questionnaire survey with 188 African American females, ages 13 to 17, who were incarcerated in a short-term detention facility in Atlanta. The data showed that low self-esteem, emotional problems, trauma history, low parental monitoring, friends who engage in risky ...

West Orange, NJ. August 27, 2014. Using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), Kessler Foundation researchers have shown differential brain activation patterns between people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and healthy controls. This is the first MS study in which brain activation was studied using fNIRS while participants performed a cognitive task. The article, "Neuroimaging and cognition using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in multiple sclerosis," was published online on June 11 by Brain Imaging and Behavior. Authors are Jelena Stojanovic-Radic, PhD, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University researchers have identified a gene that could help scientists engineer drought-resistant crops. The gene, called OSCA1, encodes a protein in the cell membrane of plants that senses changes in water availability and adjusts the plant's water conservation machinery accordingly. "It's similar to a thermostat," said Zhen-Ming Pei, an associate professor of biology at Duke. The findings, which appear Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, could make it easier to feed the world's growing population in the face of climate change. Drought is the ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team of physicists including Andrea Pocar, Laura Cadonati and doctoral student Keith Otis at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report in the current issue of Nature that for the first time they have directly detected neutrinos created by the "keystone" proton-proton (pp) fusion process going on at the sun's core. The pp reaction is the first step of a reaction sequence responsible for about 99 percent of the Sun's power, Pocar explains. Solar neutrinos are produced ...

VIDEO: Learning a new skill is easier when it is related to an ability we already have. For example, a trained pianist can learn a new melody easier than learning how... Click here for more information. PITTSBURGH—Learning a new skill is easier when it is related to an ability we already have. For example, a trained pianist can learn a new melody easier than learning how to hit a tennis serve. Scientists from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) – a joint program ...

Fruit flies and roundworms have long been used as model organisms to learn more about human biology and disease. Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that although many aspects of regulatory networks are conserved among the three distantly related organisms, other differences have emerged over evolutionary time. These differences may explain why, for example, worms slither, flies fly and humans walk on two legs, even though they all use the same basic genetic building blocks. "We're trying to understand the basic principles that ...

Although separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution, flies, worms, and humans share ancient patterns of gene expression, according to a massive Yale-led analysis of genomic data. Two related studies led by scientists at Harvard and Stanford, also published Aug. 28 in the same issue of the journal Nature, tell a similar story: Even though humans, worms, and flies bear little obvious similarity to each other, evolution used remarkably similar molecular toolkits to shape them. However, the same Yale lab reports in a separate paper published in the Proceedings ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Most memories have some kind of emotion associated with them: Recalling the week you just spent at the beach probably makes you feel happy, while reflecting on being bullied provokes more negative feelings. A new study from MIT neuroscientists reveals the brain circuit that controls how memories become linked with positive or negative emotions. Furthermore, the researchers found that they could reverse the emotional association of specific memories by manipulating brain cells with optogenetics — a technique that uses light to control neuron activity. The ...