Solar panels made in China have a higher overall carbon footprint and are likely to use substantially more energy during manufacturing than those made in Europe, said a new study from Northwestern University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. The report compared energy and greenhouse gas emissions that go into the manufacturing process of solar panels in Europe and China. "We estimated that a solar panel's carbon footprint is about twice as high when made in China and used in Europe, compared to those locally made and used in Europe," said ...

May 29, 2014 -- The sudden loss of a loved one can trigger a variety of psychiatric disorders in people with no history of mental illness, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues at Columbia's School of Social Work and Harvard Medical School. While previous studies have suggested there is a link between sudden bereavement and an onset of common psychiatric disorders, this is the first study to show the association of acute bereavement and mania in a large population sample. Findings are published online in the American ...

A new analysis of European archaeological sites containing large numbers of dead mammoths and dwellings built with mammoth bones has led Penn State Professor Emerita Pat Shipman to formulate a new interpretation of how these sites were formed. She suggests that their abrupt appearance may have been due to early modern humans working with the earliest domestic dogs to kill the now-extinct mammoth -- a now-extinct animal distantly related to the modern-day elephant. Shipman's analysis also provides a way to test the predictions of her new hypothesis. Advance publication of ...

VIDEO: During this year's Atlantic hurricane season, NASA is redoubling its efforts to probe the inner workings of hurricanes and tropical storms with two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flying over storms... Click here for more information. During this year's Atlantic hurricane season, NASA is redoubling its efforts to probe the inner workings of hurricanes and tropical storms with two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flying over storms and two new space-based missions. NASA's ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study has discovered how resistance develops in patients taking ibrutinib, a new and highly effective drug for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). It identifies gene mutations that cause ibrutinib resistance in CLL patients. "Knowledge of these mutations is the first step in the development of ...

Athens, Ga. – New tools to collect and share information could help stem the loss of the world's threatened species, according to a paper published today in the journal Science. The study—by an international team of scientists that included John L. Gittleman, dean of the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology—was led by Stuart L. Pimm of Duke University and Clinton N. Jenkins of the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas in Brazil. "As databases coalesce and policymakers have access to greater information, we see real and improving successes for conservation science," ...

VIDEO: In addition to monitoring weather on Earth, the GOES-R satellites will monitor weather in space caused by electromagnetic radiation and charged particles released from solar storms on the Sun. Many... Click here for more information. Two of the six instruments that will fly on NOAA's first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R (GOES-R) satellite have completed integration with the spacecraft. The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and Extreme Ultraviolet and ...

Alexandria, Va. – In the American Geosciences Institute's newest Status of the Geoscience Workforce Report, released May 2014, jobs requiring training in the geosciences continue to be lucrative and in-demand. Even with increased enrollment and graduation from geoscience programs, the data still project a shortage of around 135,000 geoscientists needed in the workforce by the end of the decade. "Industry has recognized, and is mitigating the upcoming shortage of skilled geoscientists in their employ, but the federal geoscience workforce is still demonstrably shrinking" ...

Smoking waterpipes, or hookahs, creates hazardous concentrations of indoor air pollution and poses increased risk from diminished air quality for both employees and patrons of waterpipe bars, according to a new study from the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In an analysis of air quality in seven Baltimore waterpipe bars, researchers found that airborne particulate matter and carbon monoxide exceeded concentrations previously measured in public places that allowed cigarette smoking and that air nicotine was markedly ...

Washington, DC—Women who have polycystic ovary syndrome – the most common hormone disorder in women of reproductive age – are more likely to experience chronic low-grade inflammation during pregnancy than counterparts who do not have the condition, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is a leading cause of infertility. Symptoms can include irregular or absent menstrual periods, infertility, weight gain, acne, excess hair on the face and body, or thinning ...

What mode of transportation makes you happiest? Clemson researchers investigated how emotions like happiness, pain, stress, sadness and fatigue vary during travel and by travel mode in a new study published in the journal Transportation. Utilizing data from the American Time Use Survey, collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the researchers were able to determine the average mood felt by people during different types of travel. "We found that people are in the best mood while they are bicycling compared to any other mode of transportation," said Eric Morris, ...

DETROIT – Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit have uncovered previously unidentified genes that may be responsible for keloid scarring, a discovery that could unlock the mystery of keloid development and provide insight for more effective treatment. "Much of the uncertainty surrounding keloids is rooted in there being no known cause for their development," says study lead author Lamont R. Jones, M.D., vice chair, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Henry Ford. "But it is believed that keloids have a genetic component given the correlation ...

About one in eight women in the United States will contract breast cancer in her lifetime. Now new research from Tel Aviv University-affiliated researchers, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, has provided another tool to help women, clinicians, and scientists searching for a cure to the one of the most widespread yet incurable diseases on the planet. Dr. Ella Evron and Dr. Ayelet Avraham of the TAU-affiliated Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, together with Prof. Saraswati Sukumar of Johns Hopkins, have found that "gene regulation," the process that shuts off ...

A study into how organic molecules in the atmosphere affect cloud formation has found that a main component of biodiesel, methyl oleate, reacts with ozone surprisingly fast. This process may counterbalance the growth of water droplets resulting from emissions, which would in turn inhibit cloud formation and therefore affect the water cycle in a highly complex way. The research, published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, was performed by an international team of scientists working at the ILL (Institut Laue-Langevin) in Grenoble, France. Methyl oleate ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (May 29, 2014) – In any animal's lifecycle, the shift from egg cell to embryo is a critical juncture. This transition represents the formal initiation of development—a remarkably dynamic process that ultimately transforms a differentiated, committed oocyte to a totipotent cell capable of giving rise to any cell type in the body. Induction of totipotency (as well as the pluripotency characteristic of embryonic stem cells) requires dramatic changes in gene expression. To date, investigations of such changes have largely focused on transcription, when DNA ...

For most of us, crickets are probably most recognizable by the distinctive chirping sounds males make with their wings to lure females. But some crickets living on the islands of Hawaii have effectively lost their instruments and don't make their music anymore. Now researchers report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 29 that crickets living on different islands quieted their wings in different ways at almost the same time. "There is more than one way to silence a cricket," says Nathan Bailey of the University of St Andrews. "Evolution by natural selection ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a therapeutic target for treating the most common form of eye cancer in adults. They have also, in experiments with mice, been able to slow eye tumor growth with an existing FDA-approved drug. The findings are published online in the May 29 issue of the journal Cancer Cell. "The beauty of our study is its simplicity," said Kun-Liang Guan, PhD, professor of pharmacology at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and co-author of the study. "The genetics of this cancer are very simple ...

When electrical pulses are applied to the ventral tegmental area of their brain, macaques presented with two images change their preference from one image to the other. The study by researchers Wim Vanduffel and John Arsenault, KU Leuven and Massachusetts General Hospital, is the first to confirm a causal link between activity in the ventral tegmental area and choice behavior in primates. The ventral tegmental area is located in the midbrain and helps regulate learning and reinforcement in the brain's reward system. It produces dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an ...

Artificially stimulating a brain region believed to play a key role in learning, reward and motivation induced monkeys to change which of two images they choose to look at. In experiments reported online in the journal Current Biology, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the University of Leuven in Belgium confirm for the first time that stimulation of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) – a group of neurons at the base of the midbrain – can change behavior through activation of the brain's reward system. "Previous studies had correlated increased ...

Baltimore, MD— A woman's supply of eggs is a precious commodity because only a few hundred mature eggs can be produced throughout her lifetime and each must be as free as possible from genetic damage. Part of egg production involves a winnowing of the egg supply during fetal development, childhood and into adulthood down from a large starting pool. New research by Carnegie's Alex Bortvin and postdoctoral fellow Safia Malki have gained new insights into the earliest stages of egg selection, which may have broad implications for women's health and fertility. The work is reported ...

Scientists combined observations from two NASA missions to check out the moon's lopsided shape and how it changes under Earth's sway – a response not seen from orbit before. The team drew on studies by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been investigating the moon since 2009, and by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, mission. Because orbiting spacecraft gathered the data, the scientists were able to take the entire moon into account, not just the side that can be observed from Earth. "The deformation of the moon due to Earth's pull ...

Lincoln, Neb., May 29, 2014 -- Using a genetically modified form of the HIV virus, a team of University of Nebraska-Lincoln scientists has developed a promising new approach that could someday lead to a more effective HIV vaccine. The team, led by chemist Jiantao Guo, virologist Qingsheng Li and synthetic biologist Wei Niu, has successfully tested the novel approach for vaccine development in vitro and has published findings in the international edition of the German journal Angewandte Chemie. With the new approach, the UNL team is able to use an attenuated -- or weakened ...

New research by an international consortium, including a researcher from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, may help physicians better understand the chronological development of a brain aneurysm. Using radiocarbon dating to date samples of ruptured and unruptured cerebral aneurysm (CA) tissue, the team, led by neurosurgeon Nima Etminan, found that the main structural constituent and protein – collagen type I – in cerebral aneurysms is distinctly younger than once thought. The new research helps identify patients more likely to suffer from an aneurysm and embark ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 29, 2014—Women have accounted for half the students in U.S. medical schools for nearly two decades, but as professors, deans, and department chairs in medical schools their numbers still lag far behind those of men. Why long-held gender stereotypes are keeping women from achieving career advancement in academic medicine and what can be done to change the institutional culture are explored in an article 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 ...

Crime fighters could have a new tool at their disposal following promising research by Queen's professor Diane Beauchemin. Dr. Beauchemin (Chemistry) and student Lily Huang (MSc'15) have developed a cutting-edge technique to identify human hair. Their test is quicker than DNA analysis techniques currently used by law enforcement. Early sample testing at Queen's produced a 100 per cent success rate. "My first paper and foray into forensic chemistry was developing a method of identifying paint that could help solve hit and run cases," explains Dr. Beauchemin. "Last year, ...