The hiss of air escaping from a leaky car tire is no one's favorite sound. Even less pleasant? Hearing that hiss of escaping air 250 miles above Earth's surface while inside the pressurized confines of the International Space Station. According to Eric Madaras, an aerospace technologist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., if an air leak were to occur aboard the station, alarms would sound, and the astronauts would locate and correct the problem according to procedures. But with only the crew's eyes and ears to go on, pinpointing the source of a leak could ...

The local discovery of a species of fly not native to the Midwest could have significant implications on forensic investigations involving decomposing remains, according to a forensic biology researcher at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Christine Picard, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in the School of Science at IUPUI, discovered the fly, Chrysomya megacephala Fabricius (C. megacephala), during a routine collection of fly samples in late September 2012. Until now, entomologists had never documented the fly farther north than New Mexico. "Although ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Feeling faint from the flu? Is your cold causing you to collapse? Your infection is the most likely cause, and, according to a new study by UC Santa Barbara research scientist Ryan Hechinger, it may be possible to know just how much energy your bugs are taking from you. His findings are published in a recent issue of The American Naturalist. "When we get sick –– particularly with infectious agents –– we often talk about having our 'energy drained,' or of 'having low energy,'" said Hechinger, an associate research biologist at UCSB's Marine Science ...

MADISON – A discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison may represent a significant advance in the quest to create a "hydrogen economy" that would use this abundant element to store and transfer energy. Theoretically, hydrogen is the ultimate non-carbon, non-polluting fuel for storing intermittent energy from the wind or sun. When burned for energy, hydrogen produces water but no carbon dioxide. Practically speaking, producing hydrogen from water, and then storing and using the gas, have proven difficult. The new study, now published online at the Journal of ...

Astronomers recently got their hands on Gemini Observatory's revolutionary new adaptive optics system, called GeMS, "and the data are truly spectacular!" says Robert Blum, Deputy Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory with funding by the U.S. National Science Foundation. "What we have seen so far signals an incredible capability that leaps ahead of anything in space or on the ground – and it will for some time." Blum is currently using GeMS to study the environments in and around star clusters, and his preliminary data, targeting the spectacular cluster ...

LOS ANGELES - (July 2, 2013) - Turmeric, a key ingredient in spicy curry dishes, has long been known to have medicinal values. Now new research finds a substance in turmeric, curcumin, may provide lasting protection against potentially deadly lung damage in premature infants. Premature infants often need the assistance of ventilators and forced oxygen therapy because they're frequently born with inadequate lung function. These therapies can cause the infants to suffer lasting lung damage and even death. Researchers at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Aerobic exercise can lessen – or worsen – the symptoms of inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis, depending on the circumstances under which the exercise is undertaken, researchers report. The researchers found that mice allowed to run freely on an exercise wheel for six weeks had fewer symptoms of colitis than sedentary mice after exposure to a chemical agent that induces colitis symptoms in mice. However, mice forced to run at a moderate pace on a treadmill a few times per week for six weeks had more colitis symptoms and higher mortality ...

On July 1, 2013, at 6:09 p.m. EDT, the sun erupted with a coronal mass ejection, or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can affect electronic systems in satellites. Experimental NASA research models based on NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory show that the CME was not Earth-directed and it left the sun at around 570 miles per second. The CME may, however, pass by NASA's Messenger, Spitzer and STEREO-B satellites, and their mission operators have been notified. There is only very slight particle radiation ...

Alexandria, VA – Community colleges provide a strong foundation for the nation's graduating STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) workforce. In its latest Geoscience Currents, the American Geosciences Institute documents the flow of geoscience students from 2–year to 4-year institutions in Texas, adding to an earlier report on similar data from California released in 2012. In 2012, 70 percent of geoscience students in Texas public universities had transferred from Community Colleges. In particular, Texas A&M University admitted students from 32 community ...

This July Fourth the solar system is showing off some fireworks of its own. Superficially resembling a skyrocket, comet ISON is hurtling toward the sun presently at a whopping 48,000 mph. Its swift motion is captured in this time-lapse movie made from a sequence of pictures taken May 8, 2013, by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. At the time the images were taken, the comet was 403 million miles from Earth, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The movie shows a sequence of Hubble observations taken over a 43-minute span and compresses this into just five seconds. The ...

A University of Oklahoma-developed theory provides the rationale for the next-generation particle accelerator—the International Linear Collider. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva Switzerland this past year prompted particle physicists to look ahead to the development of the ILC, an electron-positron collider designed to measure in detail all the properties of the newly discovered Higgs particle. Howard Baer, professor in the OU Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy, was one of the lead authors of the five-volume ...

Amsterdam, NL, July 2, 2013 – Multiple sclerosis (MS) can lead to severe cognitive impairment as the disease progresses. Researchers in Italy have found that patients with high educational levels show less impairment on a neuropsychological evaluation compared with those with low educational levels. Their results are published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience. MS is a progressive immunologic brain disorder with neuropsychological deficits including selective attention, working memory, executive functioning, information processing speed, and long term memory. ...

WASHINGTON — Mothers commonly talk to their children about genetic test results even if they test positive for a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, which sharply increases a woman's risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. That is among the findings of a new study from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, which also suggests mothers who don't discuss their test results are unsatisfied with that decision. "We know from women we've counseled at Georgetown that one of their main considerations of genetic testing for cancer risk is what the results will mean for ...

The early galaxies of the universe were very different from today's galaxies. Using new detailed studies carried out with the ESO Very Large Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers, including members from the Niels Bohr Institute, have studied an early galaxy in unprecedented detail and determined a number of important properties such as size, mass, content of elements and have determined how quickly the galaxy forms new stars. The results are published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Galaxies are deeply fascinating ...

Ulsan, S. Korea, July 2, 2013 – Korean researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), S. Korea, developed a novel bio-inspired composite electrocatalyst outperforming platinum. This research work was published on June 25, in the journal Nature Communications. (Title: Promotion of Oxygen reduction by a bio-inspired tethered iron phthalocyanine carbon nanotube-based catalyst). The research team from UNIST, S. Korea, developed an inexpensive and scalable bio-inspired composite electrocatalyst, iron phthalocyanine with an axial ligand anchored ...

Postmenopausal women who quit smoking reduced their risk of heart disease, regardless of whether they had diabetes, according to a new study conducted by Juhua Luo, an epidemiologist at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington. Her findings, "Smoking Cessation, Weight Change and Coronary Heart Disease Among Postmenopausal Women With and Without Diabetes," were published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women who gained more than 5 kilograms or 11 pounds after they quit smoking still saw their risk for cardiovascular disease ...

Smokers and single men are more likely to acquire cancer-causing oral human papillomavirus (HPV), according to new results from the HPV Infection in Men (HIM) Study. Researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center, the National Cancer Institute, Mexico and Brazil also report that newly acquired oral HPV infections in healthy men are rare and when present, usually resolve within one year. The study results appeared in the July issue of The Lancet. HPV infection is known to cause virtually all cervical cancers, most anal cancers and some genital cancers. It has recently been established ...

New research by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that exposure to a neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee. The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, supports the recent decision taken by the European Commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths. There is growing evidence connecting the decline in the honeybee population that pollinates one-third of the food that we eat, and insecticides, but this is the first comprehensive study to look at changes ...

LA JOLLA, CA--How is it possible for a human eye to figure out letters that are twisted and looped in crazy directions, like those in the little security test internet users are often given on websites? It seems easy to us--the human brain just does it. But the apparent simplicity of this task is an illusion. The task is actually so complex, no one has been able to write computer code that translates these distorted letters the same way that neural networks can. That's why this test, called a CAPTCHA, is used to distinguish a human response from computer bots that try ...

New research reveals that when red blood cells are hit with laser light, they produce high frequency sound waves that contain a great deal of information. Similar to the way one can hear the voices of different people and identify who they are, investigators reporting in the July 2 issue of Biophysical Journal, published by Cell Press, could analyze the sound waves produced by red blood cells and recognize their shape and size. The information may aid in the development of simple tests for blood-related diseases. "We plan to make specialized devices that will allow the ...

An important minority — 13.5% — of Canadian Forces personnel who served in support of the Afghanistan mission in 2001–08 have been found to have a mental health disorder related to their deployment, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Since 2001, more than 40 000 Canadian Forces personnel have been deployed in support of the Afghanistan mission. Although studies from other countries have shown mental health problems in personnel returning from missions in Southwest Asia, there are important differences between nations in areas ...

VIDEO: The article as it appears in JoVE. Click here for more information. On July 2nd, JoVE will publish a video article showing the details of a technique developed by researchers to improve language function in stroke patients with chronic speech-language impairment. Strokes occur when a brain clot blocks blood flow in parts of the brain, essentially starving groups of neurons of oxygen, which is necessary for normal function. Nearly 130,000 of the 795,000 strokes ...

Stanford, CA—Transport proteins are responsible for moving materials such as nutrients and metabolic products through a cell's outer membrane, which seals and protects all living cells, to the cell's interior. These transported molecules include sugars, which can be used to fuel growth or to respond to chemical signals of activity or stress outside of the cell. Measuring the activity of transporter proteins in a living organism has been a challenge for scientists, because the methods are difficult, often require the use of radioactive tracers, and are difficult to use in ...

STANFORD, Calif. —An existing FDA-approved drug improves cognitive function in a mouse model of Down syndrome, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The drug, an asthma medication called formoterol, strengthened nerve connections in the hippocampus, a brain center used for spatial navigation, paying attention and forming new memories, the study said. It also improved contextual learning, in which the brain integrates spatial and sensory information. Both hippocampal function and contextual learning, which are impaired ...

More people die from heart-disease during the winter months, and according to a new study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, the increase in mortality is possibly due to the accelerated growth of atherosclerotic plaque in the blood vessels caused by the activation of brown fat by the cold. It has long been known that the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases increases during the winter. It has been speculated that this might be the result of over-exertion while shovelling snow and a general decrease in physical activity, although the underlying mechanisms ...