Tropical Depression 7E formed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean during the morning of July 30, and a NASA satellite was overhead to get an infrared baby picture. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the depression and saw strong, but fragmented thunderstorms around the center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. AIRS creates infrared data that helps determine temperature, such as cloud top and sea surface temperatures. AIRS captured an infrared image of Tropical Depression 7E on July 30 at 08:08 UTC/4:07 a.m. EDT. AIRS infrared ...

The latest issue of the Journal of Integrated Pest Management -- an open-access, peer-reviewed, extension journal covering the field of integrated pest management (IPM) -- contains articles on using IPM to control corn earworms, beetles, and other insect pests, plus an article highlighting the accomplishments of the Research Program for Deployed Warfighter Protection against disease-carrying insects. In "Corn Earworms (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) as Pests of Soybean," the authors discuss the life history, ecology, plant damage, and management of Helicoverpa zea as it relates ...

Boston - As many as 20 percent of infertile couples in the United States have unexplained reasons for their infertility. Now, new research led by Catherine Racowsky, PhD, director of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), shows that exposure to BPA (Bisphenol-A) could be a contributing factor as to why some infertile couples are having difficulty conceiving. The study will be published online on July 31, 2013 in the journal Human Reproduction. "To our knowledge, this is the first study that has shown that BPA has a ...

Autism is marked by several core features — impairments in social functioning, difficulty communicating, and a restriction of interests. Though researchers have attempted to pinpoint factors that might account for all three of these characteristics, the underlying causes are still unclear. Now, a new study suggests that two key attentional abilities — moving attention fluidly and orienting to social information — can be checked off the list, as neither seems to account for the diversity of symptoms we find in people with autism. "This is not to say that every aspect ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (July 30, 2013)—Exercise has proven health benefits, but easing hot flashes isn't one of them. After participating in a 12-week aerobic exercise program, sedentary women with frequent hot flashes had no fewer or less bothersome hot flashes than a control group. This randomized, controlled study from the MsFLASH Research Network was published today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. The 248 women in the trial were either approaching menopause or were postmenopausal; 142 of them continued to go about their usual activities, ...

Southerners are generally not as trusting as people who live in other parts of the country, but trusting people are more likely to cooperate in recycling, buying green products and conserving water, a new Baylor University study shows. "A lot of researchers have reported trust as kind of a cure-all for protecting the environment through cooperation. Southerners are just as willing, but less trusting," said lead author Kyle Irwin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. "The question our study raised was that if trust isn't a catalyst for ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 31, 2013 – Could harvesting stem cells for therapy one day be as simple as asking patients for a urine sample? Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and colleagues have identified stem cells in urine that can be directed to become multiple cell types. "These cells can be obtained through a simple, non-invasive low-cost approach that avoids surgical procedures," said Yuanyuan Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of regenerative medicine and senior researcher on the project. Reporting online ...

Homeless young women may be at greater risk for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) than homeless young men because of the structure of their social groups and friendships, according to new research from UC San Francisco. The findings underscore how the social networks of homeless youth can be highly influential, affecting their participation in risky and protective behaviors. The study examined the relationship between STI rates and the characteristics of the social networks of 258 homeless young people ages 15 to 24 in San Francisco. The youth were surveyed ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that exposure to stress in the first few days of life increases stress responses, anxiety and the consumption of palatable "comfort" foods in adulthood. "Comfort foods" have been defined as the foods eaten in response to emotional stress, and are suggested to contribute to the obesity epidemic. Hormonal responses to chronic stress in adulthood seem ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, found that aging elicits changes in taste preferences and that such changes appear to be independent of taste nerve activity. In humans and animals aging decreases dietary and energy requirements and it is generally believed that reduced consumption is related to alterations in taste preference. However, the mechanisms underlying an age-induced shift in taste ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, suggests that feeding behavior and preferences may be shaped very early during development, even during fetal life. Newborns of different species react to the sweet taste demonstrating facial expressions of pleasure, such as licking (tongue protusions) and thumb sucking. These "hedonic" responses are related to brain activity in regions that respond to pleasure ...

7/30/13, New Orleans, LA. Research to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior (SSIB), the foremost society for research into all aspects of eating and drinking behavior, shows that eating a junk-food diet during pregnancy changes the development of the opioid signalling pathway in the baby's brain and permanently alters the way this system operates after birth. Opioids are chemicals which are released when we eat foods that are high in fat and sugar, and that are responsible for causing the release of another 'feel good' chemical, ...

José Domingo Villarroel, a researcher at the Teacher Training College in Bilbao (UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country) has studied the capacity to differentiate between living and non-living beings and how this relates to environmental awareness. 118 girls and boys between the ages of 4 and 7 from public primary schools in Plentzia, Urduliz and Sopelana participated in the research and were interviewed by Villarroel himself. He himself says that the work was very laborious, "but enjoyable and what is more, the results were very striking." Each interview consisted ...

OAKLAND, Calif., July 30, 2013 — Patients with diabetes who take certain types of medications to lower their blood sugar sometimes experience severe low blood sugar levels, whether or not their diabetes is poorly or well controlled, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente and Yale University School of Medicine. The finding, published in the current online issue of Diabetes Care, challenges the conventional wisdom that hypoglycemia is primarily a problem among diabetic patients with well-controlled diabetes (who have low average blood sugar levels). Low blood sugar ...

A JOLLA, Calif., July 30, 2013 — One major hallmark of cancer cells is their ability to survive under stressful conditions. A new study spearheaded by researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute reveals how a promising anticancer compound called SMIP004 specifically kills prostate cancer cells by compromising their ability to withstand environmental stress. The study, recently published in Oncotarget, uncovers novel mechanisms of anticancer activity and could lead to the development of more effective therapies for advanced and hard-to-treat forms of prostate ...

New Australian research suggests that a small dose of testosterone directed solely to the liver stimulates protein synthesis, likely preventing muscle loss and wasting, and potentially promoting muscle growth. The researchers believe they have developed a safe and effective treatment for men and women, that could prevent the muscle wasting associated with many chronic diseases and with ageing. Dr Vita Birzniece and Professor Ken Ho, from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, showed in healthy postmenopausal women that a small dose of the male hormone testosterone ...

Whenever we have to acquire new knowledge under stress, the brain deploys unconscious rather than conscious learning processes. Neuroscientists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have discovered that this switch from conscious to unconscious learning systems is triggered by the intact function of mineralocorticoid receptors. These receptors are activated by hormones released in response to stress by the adrenal cortex. The team of PD Dr Lars Schwabe from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, together with colleagues from the neurology department at the university clinic ...

This news release is available in German. Materials that have the ability to switch between being good conductors and being good insula-tors are considered good potential candidates for electronic building blocks – for use in transis-tors, for example. The iron oxide magnetite is the best known representative of this class of ma-terials. At low temperatures, magnetite has insulating properties; at high temperatures, the oxide is a good conductor. This switching mechanism however happens so quickly that it's been im-possible until now to fully grasp it on an atomic ...

This news release is available in German. Does psychotherapy via the Internet work? For the first time, clinical researchers from the University of Zurich have studied whether online psychotherapy and conventional face-to-face therapy are equally effective in experiments. Based on earlier studies, the Zurich team assumed that the two forms of therapy were on a par. Not only was their theory confirmed, the results for online therapy even exceeded their expectations. Six therapists treated 62 patients, the majority of whom were suffering from moderate depression. The ...

TORONTO, July 30, 2013-About nine months after suffering a stroke, the patient noticed that words written in a certain shade of blue evoked a strong feeling of disgust. Yellow was only slightly better. Raspberries, which he never used to eat very often, now tasted like blue – and blue tasted like raspberries. High-pitched brass instruments—specifically the brass theme from James Bond movies—elicited feelings of ecstasy and light blue flashes in his peripheral vision and caused large parts of his brain to light up on an MRI. Music played by a euphonium, a tenor-pitched ...

Modern digital macro photographic equipment allows everybody to shoot marvellous pictures of very small-sized living organisms, including insects. Easy access to the internet facilitates allows the daily upload of thousands of high quality insect pictures to photo sharing websites. This new phenomenon can be considered a democratic revolution in the study of biodiversity. Insect macro-photographs may be useful to illustrate online visual guides and identification keys , such as the BugGuide and Canadian Journal of Arthropod identification, or complement specialized biodiversity ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A new study has found that online tools, access to experimental data and other services provided through "cyberinfrastructure" are helping to accelerate progress in earthquake engineering and science. The research is affiliated with the National Science Foundation's George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), based at Purdue University. NEES includes 14 laboratories for earthquake engineering and tsunami research, tied together with cyberinfrastructure to provide information technology for the network. The cyberinfrastructure ...

If you hear an owl hooting at dusk, don't expect to catch the flute-like song of a Veery nearby. This North American thrush has probably also heard the hoots, and is singing much less to ensure that it does not become an owl's next meal. Research by Kenneth Schmidt of Texas Tech University and Kara Loeb Belinsky of Arcadia University in the US, published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, provides insights into just how eavesdropping between predators and prey around dusk may be shaping communication in birds. The study is the first to use the ...

July 30, 2013, Boston, Mass. -- Sun-drenched rooms make for happy residents, but large glass windows also bring higher air-conditioning bills. Now a bioinspired microfluidic circulatory system for windows developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University could save energy and cut cooling costs dramatically -- while letting in just as much sunlight. The same circulatory system could also cool rooftop solar panels, allowing them to generate electricity more efficiently, the researchers report in the July 29 online ...

Washington, DC, July 30, 2013 – A moderate increase in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) at one hospital can lead to a nearly 3 percent increase in VRE in every other hospital in that county, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). VRE is one of the most common bacteria that cause infections in healthcare facilities. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Pittsburgh Supercomputing ...