NASA's TRMM and Aqua satellites have been providing views of the outside and inside of Hurricane Cristobal as it heads for Bermuda. The National Hurricane Center posted a Tropical Storm Watch for Bermuda as Cristobal heads in that direction. Strong winds and flooding associated with Tropical Storm Cristobal caused deaths in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite captured rainfall data from Cristobal on August 24, 2014 at 1150Z (7:50 a.m. EDT). Light to moderate rainfall was occurring throughout much of the ...

Massive Hurricane Marie appears like a giant fish about to swallow tiny Tropical Depression Karina on satellite imagery today from NOAA's GOES-West satellite. Karina, now a tropical depression is being swept into Marie's circulation where it is expected to be eaten, or absorbed. An image from NOAA's GOES-West satellite on Aug. 26 at 8 a.m. EDT shows Karina being drawn into the powerful and large circulation of Hurricane Marie to the east of the depression. The image was created by NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Forecasters ...

NASA's Terra satellite passed over Hurricane Marie when its eye was just to the west of Socorro Island in the Eastern Pacific. Marie's eye may have been near the island, but the storm extended several hundreds of miles from there. On Aug. 25 at 18:20 UTC (2:20 p.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured Hurricane Marie's center just west of Socorro Island. The image showed Marie's tightly wound center and eye. A thick band of powerful thunderstorms surrounded the center of circulation, and bands ...

Scientists at the University of Warwick have provided the first evidence that the lack of a naturally occurring protein is linked to early signs of dementia. Published in Nature Communications, the research found that the absence of the protein MK2/3 promotes structural and physiological changes to cells in the nervous system. These changes were shown to have a significant correlation with early signs of dementia, including restricted learning and memory formation capabilities. An absence of MK2/3, in spite of the brain cells (neurons) having significant structural ...

Irvine, Calif. — Existing power plants around the world will pump out more than 300 billion tons of carbon dioxide over their expected lifetimes, significantly adding to atmospheric levels of the climate-warming gas, according to UC Irvine and Princeton University scientists. Their findings, which appear Aug. 26 in the journal Environmental Research Letters, are the first to quantify how quickly these "committed" emissions are growing – by about 4 percent per year – as more fossil fuel-burning power plants are built. Assuming these stations will operate for 40 years, ...

Washington, DC—Weight loss surgery can curb alterations in brain activity associated with obesity and improve cognitive function involved in planning, strategizing and organizing, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Obesity can tax the brain as well as other organs. Obese individuals face a 35 percent higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared to normal weight people. Bariatric surgery is used to help people who are dangerously obese lose weight. Bariatric surgery procedures ...

The world's accounting system for carbon emissions, run by the United Nations, disregards capital investments in future coal-fired and natural-gas power plants that will commit the world to several decades and billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study from Princeton University and the University of California-Irvine published Aug. 26 in the journal Environmental Research Letters. In the paper, Robert Socolow, a Princeton professor, emeritus, of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and co-author Steven Davis, a professor of earth system science ...

A new argument has just been added to the growing case for graphene being bumped off its pedestal as the next big thing in the high-tech world by the two-dimensional semiconductors known as MX2 materials. An international collaboration of researchers led by a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has reported the first experimental observation of ultrafast charge transfer in photo-excited MX2 materials. The recorded charge transfer time clocked in at under 50 femtoseconds, comparable to the fastest times ...

PRINCETON, N.J.—Expanding the age of eligibility for measles vaccination from 12 to 15 months could have potentially large effects on coverage in Africa, according to a new report published by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. If combined with improvements to the vaccination process itself, such a change could help the country inch closer to the national coverage levels required for measles eradication. The findings were published in Epidemiology & Infection. "The age of routine vaccination is usually set to around 12 ...

At the stroke of a pen a New Zealand endemic tree has for the last 31 years been incorrectly regarded the same as a group of 'weedy' Australian shrubs and small trees. A New Zealand botanist has completed a 15-year study to reveal some surprises and discover astonishing cryptic diversity behind what was long considered a single tree species. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. Known to botanists as Kunzea ericoides, this species was one of the many discoveries made in the north-western South Island of New Zealand by Jules Sébastien César Dumont ...

An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) -- among other telescopes -- has obtained the best view yet of a collision between two galaxies when the Universe was only half its current age. To make this observation, the team also enlisted the help of a gravitational lens, a galaxy-size magnifying glass, to reveal otherwise invisible detail. These new studies of galaxy HATLAS J142935.3-002836 have shown that this complex and distant object looks surprisingly like the comparatively ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Each year, more than 300,000 Americans, primarily adults over age 65, sustain a hip fracture, a debilitating injury that can diminish life quality and expectancy, and result in lost work days and substantial, long-term financial costs to patients, families, insurers and government agencies. And while surgery, the primary treatment for hip fractures, successfully reduces mortality risk and improves physical function, little is known about the procedure's value and return on investment. A new study, appearing in the journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related ...

The Ames test, a widely used method to determine whether a chemical has the potential to cause cancer, has been successfully adapted for use with cigarette smoke and other complex aerosols. The traditional Ames test is not suitable for use with aerosols and gases, which means that in the past, the toxicity of cigarette smoke was tested using just the particulate extract from smoke and not the whole smoke, thereby giving an incomplete picture of the toxic profile. The particulate fraction is only a small part of the whole-smoke aerosol, which also comprises a vapour phase ...

Philadelphia, Aug. 25, 2014 – Reporting on 100 recent cases of fetal surgery for spina bifida, specialists at a premier fetal surgery program achieved results similar to those published three years previously in a landmark clinical trial that established a new standard of care for prenatal repair of this birth defect. Specialists from the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) published their findings online August 15 in Fetal Diagnosis and Therapy. The single-center results comprised the largest series reported since ...

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have demonstrated the effectiveness of a fibre-based dietary ingredient that makes people feel less hungry and consume less food. Hunger is a major barrier to successful weight control and consumers need healthy foods that will help them control their appetite. Although fibres have the potential to modulate appetite without adding additional calories, they can make foods less appealing. Moreover, most studies employing fibres have failed to demonstrate positive effects on either appetite or food intake, and certainly no effects ...

A study from the University of Liverpool has recommended investing in dog owner education and facilities as a strategy to target physical inactivity and problems such as obesity in both people and their pets. In a review of scientific papers published since 1990, the researchers found that access to dog-friendly walking environments and better education about dogs' physical needs, could all motivate people to get out and take more exercise with their pets. It is estimated that 40% of dog owners don't take their dogs for a walk. In the UK, almost a quarter of households ...

By combining plasmonics and optical microresonators, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a new optical amplifier (or laser) design, paving the way for power-on-a-chip applications. "We have made optical systems at the microscopic scale that amplify light and produce ultra-narrowband spectral output," explained J. Gary Eden, a professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Illinois. "These new optical amplifiers are well-suited for routing optical power on a chip containing both electronic and optical components. "Their ...

While the importance of enteral nutrition (EN), or feeding patients through a tube, in an intensive care unit is well understood, underfeeding is still common. A practice of a certain amount of feeding per hour can be interrupted by tests, procedures, or emergencies. Changing to a volume-based system, which calls for a certain nutrition volume per day, could reduce underfeeding. Such a system was found to be effective in ICU patients according to a quality improvement audit published in the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition's (A.S.P.E.N.) Nutrition ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – New research findings from a study of 634 couples found that the more often they smoked marijuana, the less likely they were to engage in domestic violence. The study, conducted by researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions and Research Institute on Addictions (RIA), appeared in the online edition of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors in August. The study attempted to clarify inconsistent findings about domestic violence among pot-smoking couples that primarily has been based on cross-sectional data (i.e., ...

MANHATTAN, Kansas — Gender is often related to what type of severe or fatal crash a young male or young female driver will be involved in, according to a Kansas State University study. The university's Sunanda Dissanayake, professor of civil engineering, and Niranga Amarasingha, doctoral student in civil engineering, looked at the gender differences and similarities of young drivers involved in all motor vehicle crashes in Kansas across five years. Their findings may help reduce the number and severity of these crashes by improving educational material used in young driver ...

New Haven, Conn. – New national guidelines can improve the way statin drugs are prescribed to patients at risk for cardiovascular disease, a Yale University study has found. The research, published Aug. 25 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, also showed the new guidelines produce only a modest increase in the number of patients being given the drugs. Statins are a class of drugs that help lower cholesterol by blocking the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase, which the body needs in order to produce cholesterol. Common statin medications include Lipitor, Levacor, ...

Health care workers in some of the world's poorest countries lack basic equipment to shield them from HIV and other bloodborne infections during surgical and other procedures, new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests. The findings underscore the lack of adequate protective supplies in nations at the center of the current Ebola outbreak. In Liberia, one of the countries most affected by Ebola, 56 percent of hospitals had protective eyewear for its doctors and nurses, while 63 percent had sterile gloves, the study found. In Sierra Leone, ...

Ask any parent raising kids in today's fast-paced society and chances are they would agree that there are only so many hours in the day. Recognizing a need for help, many businesses now offer traditional caregiving services ranging from planning birthday parties to teaching children how to ride a bike. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, by outsourcing traditional parental duties, modern-day parents feel they are ultimately protecting parenthood. "Parents are increasingly outsourcing caregiving activities. The expanding array of caregiving services ...

A unique experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory called the Holometer has started collecting data that will answer some mind-bending questions about our universe – including whether we live in a hologram. Much like characters on a television show would not know that their seemingly 3 - D world exists only on a 2 - D screen, we could be clueless that our 3 - D space is just an illusion. The information about everything in our universe could actually be encoded in tiny packets in two dimensions. Get close enough to your TV screen ...

Are environmental and social problems such as global warming and poverty the result of inadequate governmental regulations or does the burden fall on our failure as consumers to make better consumption choices? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, responsible consumption shifts the burden for solving global problems from governments to consumers and ultimately benefits corporations more than society. "When businesses convince politicians to encourage responsible consumption instead of implementing policy changes to solve environmental and social ...