Ecologist Thomas Mueller uses satellite data to study how the patterns of plant growth relate to the movement of caribou and gazelle. The research sparked an idea: Would the footprint of human activity show up in the data? Mueller, of the University of Maryland in College Park (now at the Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt) teamed up with university and NASA colleagues to find out. Their new analysis shows that on a global scale, the presence of people corresponds to more plant productivity, or growth. Specifically, populated areas that have undergone ...

Strong northwesterly wind shear took its toll on Tropical Storm Elida, weakening it to a remnant low early on July 2. In infrared satellite imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite, Elida appeared to be a tight swirl of low clouds devoid of any deep convection. Infrared satellite instruments are used to see the heat objects emit. During night-time hours when there's no sunlight to light clouds, satellites like NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES-West satellite looks at clouds in infrared light. Infrared data from NOAA's GOES-West satellite ...

Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool to monitor the accessibility of Web pages around the world that can be installed by adding a single line of code to a web page. The tool, Encore, runs when a user visits a website where the code is installed and then discreetly collects data from potentially censored sites. The researchers hope the data they collect will allow them to determine the wheres, whens and hows of what's blocked, as well as identify ways to get around restricted access. "Web censorship is a growing problem affecting users in an increasing number ...

Tropical Storm Arthur appears to be ramping up, and NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite spotted heavy rainfall occurring around the storm's center on July 1 when it was centered over the Bahamas. Those heavy rains are expected to affect the southern U.S. coastline over the next several days as the National Hurricane Center expects Arthur to strengthen into a hurricane. On July 2, the NHC issued a Hurricane Watch for Bogue Inlet to Oregon Inlet, North Carolina and Pamlico Sound. In addition, a Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the east coast ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured a picture of Tropical Storm Douglas as it began moving into cooler waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Those cooler waters, coupled with drier air are expected to bring about the storm's demise, according to the National Hurricane Center. A visible image of Tropical Storm Douglas was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite on July 1 at 21:20 UTC (5:20 p.m. EDT). The thickest band of thunderstorms appeared over the southern semi-circle of the weakening storm while bands ...

Squid tentacles are loaded with hundreds of suction cups, or suckers, and each sucker has a ring of razor-sharp "teeth" that help these mighty predators latch onto and take down prey. In a study published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers report that the proteins in these teeth could form the basis for a new generation of strong, but malleable, materials that could someday be used for reconstructive surgery, eco-friendly packaging and many other applications. Ali Miserez and colleagues explain that in previous research, they discovered that sharp, tough squid sucker ...

The "green building" trend is often associated with helping the environment by using eco-friendly materials and energy-saving techniques, but these practices are designed to improve people's health, too. Now scientists are reporting evidence that they can indeed help people feel better, including those living in low-income housing. Published in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, the study found that certain health problems of public housing residents who moved into green buildings noticeably improved. Gary Adamkiewicz, Meryl Colton and colleagues note that ...

Computer technology has transformed the way we live, but as consumers expect ever more from their devices at faster speeds, personal computers as well as larger electronic systems can overheat. This can cause them to slow down, or worse, completely shut down. Now researchers are reporting in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research that liquids containing nanoparticles could help devices stay cool and keep them running. Rahman Saidur and colleagues point out that consumers demand a lot out of their gadgets. But that puts a huge strain on the tiny parts ...

VIDEO: After the diffuser, the information content of the object is scrambled so that the light distribution at the pixelated sensor looks like the familiar speckle noise. Click here for more information. Optical imaging methods are rapidly becoming essential tools in biomedical science because they're noninvasive, fast, cost-efficient and pose no health risks since they don't use ionizing radiation. These methods could become even more valuable if researchers could find a way ...

Deliberate practice may not have nearly as much influence in building expertise as we thought, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Scientists have been studying and debating whether experts are "born" or "made" since the mid-1800s. In recent years, deliberate practice has received considerable attention in these debates, while innate ability has been pushed to the side, due in part to the famous "10,000-hour rule" coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers. The new study, from psychological ...

BOSTON – July 1, 2014 – Building upon their earlier research on the biology of fat metabolism, Joslin scientists discovered that microRNAs –small RNA molecules that play important roles in regulation in many types of tissue – play a major role in the distribution and determination of fat cells and whole body metabolism. Also, the study is the first to reveal that microRNAs (miRNAs) influence the development of lipodystrophy (abnormal fat accumulation) which affects many people with HIV receiving anti-retroviral therapy. The findings appear in the August issue of the Journal ...

HOUSTON, July 1, 2014 – There are a handful of naturally occurring materials, known as piezoelectric materials, that generate electricity if you bend, stretch or apply another mechanical force to them, and vice versa – if you apply a voltage across them, they'll deform accordingly. These materials are currently the subject of intense research for their potential applications in energy harvesting, artificial muscles and sensors, among others. These materials are also used in everyday devices, such as loudspeakers, which rely on piezoelectrics to convert electrical signals ...

Braille is a tactile writing system, which is commonly used by the visually impaired and partially sighted. With the recent development of braille printers, written materials in braille has greatly helped the visually impaired and partially sighted individuals but, this is not to say that there are still many remaining problems such as books that are immobile due to their size and volume as well as durability. Moreover, there are other problems such as not enough books, materials, works, and data for such individuals. New technology has been developed to make tactile ...

This news release is available in Spanish. This research studies the presence and visibility of the gay world in Spanish cinema between 1940 and 1975. The report, published in the journal Zer by Alejandro Melero, professor in the UC3M Department of Journalism and Audiovisual Communication, shows that there were genres that homosexuality appeared in more frequently. One such genre is comedy, in which it was very usual to portray gays as funny characters. Beyond our borders—and in sharp contrast to Spanish cinema—directors like Alfred Hitchcock were forerunners in ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University has developed a wireless network on a computer chip that could reduce energy consumption at huge data farms by as much as 20 percent. Researchers led by Partha Pande, a computer engineering professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, have filed two patents on their wireless multicore chip design, which could also speed up data processing. The team, which includes associate professors Deukhyoun Heo and Benjamin Belzer, has a paper on their work in the May issue of ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies ...

Alcohol sponsorship and hazardous drinking in UK athletes are linked, a new study has found. The research, led by Monash University and the University of Manchester, is the first to examine alcohol sponsorship of athletes in the UK, and comes at a time when there are calls in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, and South Africa for greater restriction or bans on alcohol sponsorship and advertising in sport. The research was published today in the scientific journal Addiction. The researchers surveyed more than 2000 sportspeople from universities in the North West, ...

The stigma of buying in a flood-prone suburb after the 2011 Brisbane floods was short-lived for middle and high-value homes with property prices rebounding within 12-months, a QUT study has found. Property economics expert Professor Chris Eves, from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty, studied the short-term impact of the 2011 flood on the Brisbane residential housing market and found flood fear had a minimal on-going effect on property prices, with low-value suburbs being the exception. "What we found was that because people in the higher-value suburbs (St Lucia, ...

Graphene is gaining heated attention, dubbed a "wonder material" with great conductivity, flexibility and durability. However, graphene is hard to come by due to the fact that its manufacturing process is complicated and mass production not possible. Recently, a domestic research team developed a carbon material without artificial defects commonly found during the production process of graphene while maintaining its original characteristics. The newly developed material can be used as a substitute for graphene in solar cells and semiconductor chips. Further, the developed ...

Consumption was one of the worst known diseases of the 18th century. Thanks to medical advances, the number of deaths from this lung disease – which is today known as tuberculosis – has declined significantly. Efforts to eradicate the disease in the 1950s and 1960s resulted in a wide range of new drugs entering the market. And yet 1.4 million people still continue to die each year from tuberculosis. Multidrug-resistant strains of the disease-causing pathogen are especially dangerous because they can no longer be treated with today's drugs (see box). "In the past 50 years, ...

Foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni, which results in more than 300,000 cases of food poisoning each year in England and Wales, had previously not been considered to cause disease in chickens and the bacteria were thought to be part of the normal microbe environment of the birds. Reader in Foodborne Zoonoses, Dr Paul Wigley, explains: "Our findings change the way we view the biology of this bacterial infection. It can cause problems in the gut, as it does in humans, but when the chickens walk through the wet excrement left in their bedding it can damage their feet ...

Fine-scale climate model projections suggest the possibility that population centers in cool, highland regions of East Africa could be more vulnerable to malaria than previously thought, while population centers in hot, lowland areas could be less vulnerable, according to a team of researchers. The team applied a statistical technique to conventional, coarse-scale climate models to better predict malaria dynamics at local levels. "People might have an interest in predictions for global malaria trends and even more so for regional patterns, but they probably care most ...

Although food allergies are common, sufferers often don't know exactly what in foods cause their allergic reactions. This knowledge could help develop customized therapies, like training the body's immune system to respond to certain proteins found in foods. However, determining which protein in a food causes an allergic response to a patient requires time-consuming tests that often ignore rare or unexpected allergens. Publishing in Analytical Chemistry, EPFL scientists have developed a highly-sensitive method that can quickly and accurately identify the culprit proteins ...

Previous research has established a link between lower socioeconomic status and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. In a new study led by Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), researchers have found that there are also higher rates of peripheral artery disease (PAD) in individuals with low income and lower attained education levels in the United States. These findings are published online ahead of print in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. "Our finding highlights the need to focus on education and advocacy efforts for these at-risk populations," ...

This news release is available in Spanish. In cosmology, cold dark matter is a form of matter the particles of which move slowly in comparison with light, and interact weakly with electromagnetic radiation. It is estimated that only a minute fraction of the matter in the Universe is baryonic matter, which forms stars, planets and living organisms. The rest, comprising over 80%, is dark matter and energy. The theory of cold dark matter helps to explain how the universe evolved from its initial state to the current distribution of galaxies and clusters, the structure ...

Children who undergo simple emergency surgeries, such as hernia repairs or appendix removals, on weekends are more likely to suffer complications and even die than children getting the same kind of treatment during the week, according to results of a Johns Hopkins Children's Center study. The Johns Hopkins team says that although the number of deaths was small, the marked difference in death and risk of other complications points to a worrisome "weekend effect" observed across hospitals nationwide that calls for an in-depth examination of possible after-hours safety lapses ...