Although the heart beats out a very familiar "lub-dub" pattern that speeds up or slows down as our activity increases or decreases, the pattern itself isn't as regular as you might think. In fact, the amount of time between heartbeats can vary even at a "constant" heart rate—and that variability, doctors have found, is a good thing. Reduced heart rate variability (HRV) has been found to be predictive of a number of illnesses, such as congestive heart failure and inflammation. For athletes, a drop in HRV has also been linked to fatigue and overtraining. However, the underlying ...

Infrared satellite imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed only a swirl of low-level clouds some deep clouds around Polo's weakening center on Sept. 22 as the storm weakened to a depression. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard Aqua gathered infrared data on Polo on Sept. 22 at 5:11 a.m. EDT, reading cloud top temperatures. There was a small area of high clouds, indicating that most thunderstorms in the depression had weakened or already dissipated except for that area. At 5 a.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 22, Tropical Depression Polo's maximum sustained ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Xanthohumol, a type of flavonoid found in hops and beer, has been shown in a new study to improve cognitive function in young mice, but not in older animals. The research was just published in Behavioral Brain Research by scientists from the Linus Pauling Institute and College of Veterinary Medicine at Oregon State University. It's another step toward understanding, and ultimately reducing the degradation of memory that happens with age in many mammalian species, including humans. Flavonoids are compounds found in plants that often give them their ...

University of Minnesota electrical engineering researchers have developed a unique nanoscale device that for the first time demonstrates mechanical transportation of light. The discovery could have major implications for creating faster and more efficient optical devices for computation and communication. The research paper by University of Minnesota electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Mo Li and his graduate student Huan Li has been published online and will appear in the October issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Researchers developed a novel nanoscale ...

Researchers have discovered a way to create a highly sensitive chemical sensor based on the crystalline flaws in graphene sheets. The imperfections have unique electronic properties that the researchers were able to exploit to increase sensitivity to absorbed gas molecules by 300 times. The study is available online in advance of print in Nature Communications. Amin Salehi- Khojin, asst professor of mechanical and industrial engineering in the lab with Mohammad Asadi, graduate student and Bijandra Kumar, post doc where they are doing research in graphene sensors. Photo: ...

No one has ever directly observed gravitational waves, phenomena predicted by Einstein's theory of General Relativity, and such a discovery would have profound implications for the study of the Universe. Last March, however, the team behind the BICEP2 project made a ground-breaking announcement: the Antarctic observatory had detected a signal referable to gravitational waves. The study claimed to have excluded possible contaminants (other sources that could have generated the same signal) and that the observation was therefore to be considered genuine. But not everyone ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Miranda, a small, icy moon of Uranus, is one of the most visually striking and enigmatic bodies in the solar system. Despite its relatively small size, Miranda appears to have experienced an episode of intense resurfacing that resulted in the formation of at least three remarkable and unique surface features -- polygonal-shaped regions called coronae. These coronae are visible in Miranda's southern hemisphere, and each one is at least 200 km across. Arden corona, the largest, has ridges and troughs with up to 2 km of relief. Elsinore corona has ...

Japanese researchers showed monkeys a number of images representing various glosses and then they measured the responses of 39 neurons by using microelectrodes. They found that a specific population of neurons changed the intensities of the responses linearly according to either the contrast-of-highlight, sharpness-of-highlight, or brightness of the object. This shows that these 3 perceptual parameters are used as parameters when the brain recognizes a variety of glosses. They also found that different parameters are represented by different populations of neurons. This ...

September 19, 2014 -- Recent two-generation approaches to reducing poverty that help children and their parents are receiving increasing attention from researchers, advocates, and foundations. By combining education and training for parents to enable them to move to jobs that offer a path out of poverty with high-quality early care and education for children, these programs aim to improve the life opportunities of both. However, according to a new report from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), State Policies through a Two-Generation Lens, while research ...

Bethesda, MD (Sept. 22, 2014) — The success of a colonoscopy is closely linked to good bowel preparation, with poor bowel prep often resulting in missed precancerous lesions, according to new consensus guidelines released by the U.S. Multi-Society Task force on Colorectal Cancer. Additionally, poor bowel cleansing can result in increased costs related to early repeat procedures. Up to 20 to 25 percent of all colonoscopies are reported to have an inadequate bowel preparation. "When prescribing bowel preparation for their patients, health-care professionals need to be ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Almost three-quarters (74%) of parents are aware of online rating sites for physicians, and more than one-quarter (28%) have used those online ratings to choose a healthcare provider for their children, according to U-M research published today in Pediatrics. Using the University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, researchers surveyed 1,619 parents about how online ratings of physicians influenced their choices in seeking healthcare providers for their children. They found that parents had a higher level ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Less supportive and punitive parenting techniques used by some Chinese parents might lead to the development of low self-esteem and school adjustment difficulties in their children and leave them vulnerable to depression and problem behaviors, according to a paper recently published by a University of California, Riverside assistant professor and other researchers. The study, believed to be the first that provides empirical support to this idea, refutes the idea that the traditional, strict "Chinese" upbringing, which gained widespread attention in ...

If you're overweight, you may be at greater risk for stress-related diseases like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to a new study by Brandeis University. It's long known that psychological stress can trigger biological responses similar to the effects of illness or injury, including inflammation. While normal inflammation is an important part of our body's healing response, runaway inflammation can contribute to chronic and life-threatening diseases. In a recently published paper in Brain, Behavior and Immunity, Brandeis researchers observed ...

Researchers have found that environment has a much stronger role than genetics in eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), a severe, often painful food allergy that renders children unable to eat a wide variety of foods. Eosinophils are normal cellular components of the blood, but when the body produces too many eosinophils they can cause a variety of eosinophilic disorders. These are disorders involving chronic inflammation and resulting tissue damage, often in the gastrointestinal system. In an international collaboration involving multiple institutions, researchers at ...

Influenza infection can enhance the ability of the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae to cause ear and throat infections, according to research published ahead of print in the journal Infection and Immunity. In the study, the investigators infected mice with either influenza alone, pneumococci alone, or both at once, and then monitored the populations of bacteria and virus over time. They also monitored the mice for development of middle ear infection. Influenza infection enhanced the bacterium's ability to colonize the nasopharynx, and to infect the normally sterile ...

Mobile robots could be much more useful in homes, if they could locate people, places and objects. Today's robots usually see the world with cameras and lasers, which have difficulty reliably recognizing things and can miss objects that are hidden in clutter. A complementary way robots can "sense" what is around them is through the use of small ultra-high frequency radio-frequency identification (UHF RFID) tags. Inexpensive self-adhesive tags can be stuck on objects, allowing an RFID-equipped robot to search a room for the correct tag's signal, even when the object is hidden ...

Fatigue, weight gain, chills, hair loss, anxiety, excessive perspiration — these symptoms are a few of the signs that the thyroid gland, which regulates the body's heart rate and plays a crucial role in its metabolism, has gone haywire. Now, new research from Tel Aviv University points to an additional complication caused by thyroid imbalance: congenital deafness. The study, published in Mammalian Genome, was conducted by Prof. Karen B. Avraham and Dr. Amiel Dror of the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at TAU's Sackler School of Medicine. Using ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Many parents whose kids participate in athletics will be asked to sign a waiver about concussion education, but that's not enough to ensure parents are confident about handling the injury, according to a new University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. In the poll, about half of the 912 parents of middle and high school children surveyed reported participation in some type of concussion education: 23% have read a brochure or online information 17% have watched a video or attended a presentation ...

Evacuations of 2,819 people have occurred in the wake of the huge King Fire blazing out of control near the Eldorado National Forest. The King Fire is burning in steep terrain in the South Fork of the American River Canyon, Silver Creek Canyon, and the Rubicon Canyon, north of the community of Pollock Pines. The fire has crossed into Placer County and burned onto the Tahoe National Forest north of the Eldorado National Forest. The anticipated spread is expected to be minimal on Sept. 22 due to thunderstorms that moved through the area overnight, bringing lightning and ...

A study led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers represents an important step forward in the accurate diagnosis of people who are experiencing the earliest stages of psychosis. Psychosis includes hallucinations or delusions that define the development of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Schizophrenia emerges in late adolescence and early adulthood and affects about 1 in every 100 people. In severe cases, the impact on a young person can be a life compromised, and the burden on family members can be almost as severe. The study published ...

During the week of Sept. 15, Hurricane Odile and its weakened remnants produced heavy rainfall that caused dangerous flooding over Mexico's Baja California peninsula and southwestern United States. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite gathers data on rainfall that was used to create a map that showed estimated totals that in one case neared almost three feet! Some of Odile's may have been welcomed in the U.S. Southwest where some areas have been experiencing extreme to exceptional drought conditions, but some was extreme and led to flooding. TRMM ...

In a big step for securing critical information systems, such as medical records in clinical settings, Dartmouth College researchers have created a new approach to computer security that authenticates users continuously while they are using a terminal and automatically logs them out when they leave or when someone else steps in to use their terminal. Dartmouth's Trustworthy Health and Wellness (THaW)/ researchers recently presented their findings at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy. Common authentication methods based on passwords, tokens or fingerprints perform ...

Tropical Storm Fung-Wong weakened over the weekend of Sept. 20-21 as it moved over Taiwan and approached Shanghai, China. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Fung-Wong when it was approaching Taiwan on Sept. 20 at 1:35 a.m. EDT. On Sunday, Sept. 21, Tropical Storm Fung-Wong was over Taiwan. It was centered at 26.0 north latitude and 122.0 east longitude, just 60 miles north-northeast of Taipei, Taiwan and moving to the north. Maximum sustained winds were near 50 knots (57 knots/92.6 kph). By Monday, Sept. 22, Fung-Wong's center was approaching ...

A person's face is the first thing that others see, and much remains unknown about how it forms — or malforms — during early development. Recently, Chong Pyo Choe, a senior postdoctoral fellow working in the lab of USC stem cell researcher Gage Crump, has begun to unwind these mysteries. In a September study published in the journal Development, Choe and Crump describe how a mutation in a gene called TBX1 causes the facial and other deformities associated with DiGeorge syndrome. During prenatal development, a series of segments form that eventually organize many features ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have generated a new star-shaped molecule made up of interlocking rings, which is the most complex of its kind ever created. Known as a 'Star of David' molecule, scientists have been trying to create one for over a quarter of a century and the team's findings are published in the journal Nature Chemistry. Consisting of two molecular triangles, entwined about each other three times into a hexagram, the structure's interlocked molecules are tiny – each triangle is 114 atoms in length around the perimeter. The molecular triangles ...