NASA's TRMM satellite saw heavy rain falling south of Tropical Storm Humberto's center as it continues to strengthen in the Eastern Atlantic. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called TRMM passed near Humberto on September 10, 2013 at 0147 UTC (9:47 p.m. Sept. 9) and collected data used in this rainfall analysis. TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) showed a large area of heavy rain south of Humberto's center of circulation. Rain was falling at a rate of 2 inches/50 mm per hour. At 11 a.m. EDT on Sept. 10, Humberto's maximum sustained ...

VIDEO: NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a view of Tropical Storm Humberto (far right) and the remnants of tropical storm Gabrielle near the Bahamas on Sept. 9 at 7:45 a.m. EDT.... Click here for more information. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the resurrected Tropical Storm Gabrielle in the Atlantic Ocean today, Sept. 10, 2013 and captured infrared data. Meanwhile, one of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft has set out to investigate the storm and gather data on the ...

Medical scientists at the University of Alberta have made a key discovery about how the immune system kills healthy cells while attacking infections. This finding could one day lead to better solutions for cancer and anti-viral treatments. Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Colin Anderson recently published his team's findings in the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Immunology. His team included colleagues from the United States and the Netherlands, and graduate students from the U of A. Previous research has shown that when the immune system launches an aggressive ...

An important discovery has been made concerning the possible inventory of molecules available to the early Earth. Scientists led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor at Arizona State University, found that the Sutter's Mill meteorite, which exploded in a blazing fireball over California last year, contains organic molecules not previously found in any meteorites. These findings suggest a far greater availability of extraterrestrial organic molecules than previously thought possible, an inventory that could indeed have been important in molecular evolution and life ...

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta have made a basic science discovery that advances the understanding of how DNA repairs itself. When DNA becomes too damaged it ultimately leads to cancer. Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Mark Glover and his colleagues published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal, Structure (Cell Press), earlier this summer. For years, scientists thought two key proteins involved in DNA repair operated in exactly the same way. Glover's team discovered how the proteins operate and communicate is vastly different — information ...

For 30 years, a large near-Earth asteroid wandered its lone, intrepid path, passing before the scrutinizing eyes of scientists while keeping something to itself: (3552) Don Quixote, whose journey stretches to the orbit of Jupiter, now appears to be a comet. The discovery resulted from an ongoing project coordinated by researchers at Northern Arizona University using the Spitzer Space Telescope. Through a lot of focused attention and a little bit of luck, they found evidence of cometary activity that had evaded detection for three decades. "Don Quixote's orbit resembles ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – New Geology studies posted online ahead of print on 6 Sept. 2013 cover faulting and strain; mineralogy; tsunamigenic earthquakes; the formation of banded iron formations by microbial processes; stalagmites in Vanuatu; garnets; the world's largest saltpan complex and one of the world's largest inland deltas; estuaries beneath ice sheets; volcanism; erosion; mirror-like faults; the Baltic Sea dead zone; and the first real-time record of a turbidity current associated with the 2011 Mw 9.0 Tohoku-Oki tsunami. Highlights are provided below. Geology articles ...

The pain and itching associated with shingles and herpes may be due to the virus causing a "short circuit" in the nerve cells that reach the skin, Princeton researchers have found. This short circuit appears to cause repetitive, synchronized firing of nerve cells, the researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This cyclical firing may be the cause of the persistent itching and pain that are symptoms of oral and genital herpes as well as shingles and chicken pox, according to the researchers. These diseases are all caused by ...

Treatment with two common drugs reduced viral replication and lung damage when given to monkeys infected with the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The condition is deadly pneumonia that has killed more than 100 people, primarily in the Middle East. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, was first reported in Saudi Arabia last year. The infection is caused by a coronavirus, called MERS-CoV, which is closely related to several coronaviruses that infect bats. About half of patients who developed the syndrome have died. Currently, there is no proven ...

Paying doctors for how they perform specific medical procedures and examinations yields better health outcomes than the traditional “fee for service” model, where everyone gets paid a set amount regardless of quality or patient outcomes, according to new research conducted by UC San Francisco and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “‘Pay for performance’ programs shift the focus from basic care delivery to high quality care delivery,” said first author Naomi Bardach, MD, assistant professor in the UCSF Department of Pediatrics. “So they are ...

Move over, plaques and tangles. Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine's Alzheimer's Disease Research Center have identified a previously unrecognized type of pathology in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. These tangle-like structures appear at early stages of Alzheimer's and are not found in other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease. What makes these tangles distinct is that they sequester proteins involved in RNA splicing, the process by which instructional messages from genes are cut and pasted together. The researchers ...

The search for the cause of multiple sclerosis, a debilitating disease that affects up to a half million people in the United States, has confounded researchers and medical professionals for generations. But Steven Schutzer, a physician and scientist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, has now found an important clue why progress has been slow – it appears that most research on the origins of MS has focused on the wrong part of the brain. Look more to the gray matter, the new findings published in the journal PLOS ONE suggest, and less to the white. That change of approach ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – After a period of relative calm during the 1990s, rapid changes in American families began anew during the 2000s, a new analysis suggests. Young people delayed marriage longer than ever before, permanent singlehood increased, and divorce and remarriage continued to rise during the first decade of the century. (See the top 5 trends in American families during the 2000s: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/5Trends.htm) But the most troubling finding, researchers say, may be how American families have taken divergent paths: White people, the educated ...

Researchers have discovered the first inherited gene mutation linked exclusively to acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) occurring in multiple relatives in individual families. The discovery of the PAX5 gene mutation was led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and others. The work appears in the current advance online edition of the scientific journal Nature Genetics. The mutation was identified in two unrelated families in which pediatric ALL has been diagnosed in multiple generations. The mutation involved a single change in the DNA sequence of PAX5, a gene that ...

Dingoes have been unjustly blamed for the extinctions on the Australian mainland of the Tasmanian tiger (or thylacine) and the Tasmanian devil, a University of Adelaide study has found. In a paper published in the journal Ecology, the researchers say that despite popular belief that the Australian dingo was to blame for the demise of thylacines and devils on the mainland about 3000 years ago, in fact Aboriginal populations and a shift in climate were more likely responsible. "Perhaps because the public perception of dingoes as 'sheep-killers' is so firmly entrenched, ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — During a three-year period in seven metropolitan areas in the western United States, the emergency medical services system sent more than 85,000 injured patients to major trauma hospitals who didn't need to go there — costing the health care system more than $130 million per year, according to an Oregon Health & Science University study published today in the journal Health Affairs. The study gathered data from emergency services calls from 94 EMS agencies in the seven metropolitan areas from January 2006 through December 2008. The agencies were using ...

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11) 202-872-6042 Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society American Chemical Society issues guidelines for safer research laboratories INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2013 — The world's largest scientific society today issued guidelines to better ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of personnel who work in research laboratories around the country. The American Chemical Society ...

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11) 202-872-6042 Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society The real reason to worry about bees INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2013 — Honeybees should be on everyone's worry list, and not because of the risk of a nasty sting, an expert on the health of those beneficial insects said here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's ...

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 10, 2013 — One of the first analyses of laws banning disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) in municipal landfills has found that state e-waste recycling bans have been mostly ineffective, although California's Cell Phone Recycling Act had a positive impact on cell phone recycling. However, e-waste recycling rates remain "dismally low," and many demographic groups remain unaware of their alternatives for properly disposing of e-waste, according to the study. Presented here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society ...

Charlottesville, VA (September 10, 2013). University of Toronto researchers examined data on patients who had been hospitalized in the United States for subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and found racial/ethnic differences in the rates of inpatient mortality and hospital discharge to institutional care. Compared to white patients, Asian/Pacific Islander patients were more likely and Hispanic patients less likely to die while in the hospital. African-American patients were more likely than white patients to require institutional care following discharge from the hospital, although ...

The ability to form a general concept that connects what we know about the members of a category allows humans to respond appropriately when they encounter a novel member of that category. At an early age, children form categories to, for example, differentiate animals from inanimate objects and to differentiate dogs from cats. New research shows that other apes may form similar categories to represent different types of animals. There are at least two ways to visually identify an animal as being similar to any other: the animals may be within a species and therefore ...

By combining the experience of self-reported positive and negative emotions among 1,400 US-residents, researchers created four affective profiles which they then used to discern differences in happiness, depression, life satisfaction and happiness-increasing strategies. The differences between these profiles suggested that promoting positive emotions can positively influence a depressive-to-happy state (defined as increasing levels of happiness and decreasing levels of depression across the affective profile model), as well as increasing life satisfaction. The study, ...

Barcelona, Spain: A doctor from the UK has shown how an innovative music video can help increase awareness of how to treat asthma. Dr Tapas Mukherjee, from Glenfield Hospital in the UK, produced and starred in a music video to draw attention to new guidelines showing a better way of managing asthma. A study presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona today (10 September 2013), has demonstrated the success of this video and suggests that social media can be used to successfully improve medical practice. In April 2012, an audit ...

Barcelona, Spain: Researchers have developed a new strategy for prescribing antibiotics that could reduce patient harm and help combat the rise in antibiotic resistance. A new study, which is due to be presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona tomorrow (11 September 2013), found that a new prescribing protocol could significant reduce potential misuse of antibiotics. The research followed over 500 patients with lower respiratory tract infections during the course of one year. The new prescribing protocol included automatic stop ...

Barcelona, Spain: An electronic decision support tool helped to reduce deaths from pneumonia in four hospital emergency departments in a new study. The findings, which will be presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona tomorrow (11 September 2013), could lead to improvements in pneumonia care and outcomes for patients. Although guidelines for treating pneumonia exist, it is often difficult for these to be fully implemented in an emergency setting. The researchers therefore developed an electronic tool, linked to a patient's medical ...