Scientists have moved closer to developing a universal flu vaccine after using the 2009 pandemic as a natural experiment to study why some people seem to resist severe illness. Researchers at Imperial College London asked volunteers to donate blood samples just as the swine flu pandemic was getting underway and report any symptoms they experienced over the next two flu seasons. They found that those who avoided severe illness had more CD8 T cells, a type of virus-killing immune cell, in their blood at the start of the pandemic. They believe a vaccine that stimulates ...

The results of the new study imply that it is hard to fool the brain by providing it with 'energyless' sweet flavours. Our pleasure in consuming sweet solutions is driven to a great extent by the amount of energy it provides: greater reward in the brain is attributed to sugars compared to artificial sweeteners. Professor Ivan de Araujo, who led the study at Yale University School of Medicine USA, says: "The consumption of high-calorie beverages is a major contributor to weight gain and obesity, even after the introduction of artificial sweeteners to the market. We believe ...

A lot of energy is wasted when machines turn hot, unnecessarily heating up their environment. Some of this thermal energy could be harvested using thermoelectric materials; they create electric current when they are used to bridge hot and cold objects. At the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna), a new and considerably more efficient class of thermoelectric materials can now be produced. It is the material's very special crystal structure that does the trick, in connection with an astonishing new physical effect; in countless tiny cages within the crystal, cerium ...

New research on the most commonly used anaesthetic drug could help to unravel a long-standing mystery about how it induces a pain-free, sleep-like state. General anaesthetics are administered to tens of millions of people every year in hospitals, where they are used to sedate patients undergoing surgery. Despite this, scientists have yet to understand how the drug interacts with its targets in brain cells to achieve this effect. Following years of research on propofol, which has become the most commonly used anaesthetic since it was introduced in the 1980s, researchers ...

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Imperial College London have identified the site where the widely used anesthetic drug propofol binds to receptors in the brain to sedate patients during surgery. Until now, it hasn't been clear how propofol connects with brain cells to induce anesthesia. The researchers believe the findings, reported online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, eventually will lead to the development of more effective anesthetics with fewer side effects. "For many years, the mechanisms by which anesthetics act ...

Chronic aggressive behaviour exhibited by some boys from disadvantaged families may be due to epigenetic changes during pregnancy and early childhood. This is highlighted by two studies conducted by a team led by Richard E. Tremblay, professor emeritus at the University of Montreal and Moshe Szyf, professor at McGill University, published in the journal PLOS ONE. The first author of the two papers, Nadine Provençal, was jointly supervised by professors Szyf and Tremblay. Epigenetic changes possibly related to the prenatal environment In the first study, published in ...

What woman has not wanted to gobble up a baby placed in her arms, even if the baby is not hers? This reaction, which everyone has noticed or felt, could have biological underpinnings related to maternal functions. For the first time, an international team of researchers has found evidence of this phenomenon in the neural networks associated with reward. "The olfactory -- thus non-verbal and non-visual -- chemical signals for communication between mother and child are intense," explains Johannes Frasnelli, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Montreal's ...

Many older women with newly diagnosed breast cancer have difficulty accomplishing daily tasks, and African-Americans seem to be disproportionately affected. Those are the findings of a new study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study's results suggest that many breast cancer patients could benefit from receiving therapy to improve their physical function. Many studies conducted in older adults have demonstrated that, compared with Caucasians, African-Americans are more likely to experience functional disability, ...

Most new mothers in the United States begin breastfeeding when their children are born, but new research shows that those who report early concerns or problems with breastfeeding are nearly 10 times more likely to abandon breastfeeding within two months. In a new study 92 percent of new moms reported at least one breastfeeding concern three days after birth. The most predominant concern, in 52 percent of mothers, was infant feeding at the breast, which refers to the behavior of the baby, such as not "latching on" properly. Other common concerns included breastfeeding ...

Researchers are conducting a clinical trial to help determine the best timing of delivery in preterm pregnancies complicated by poor fetal growth. Preliminary results from the trial, which are published early online in Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology, demonstrate better than expected health outcomes in this high-risk group of fetuses. Doctors are faced with a dilemma when deciding about the timing of delivery of a baby who does not grow adequately as a fetus, a condition called fetal growth restriction. To deliver early potentially exposes the baby to risks associated ...

People pay more attention to the number of people killed in a natural disaster than to the number of survivors when deciding how much money to donate to disaster relief efforts, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The donation bias can be reversed, however, with a simple change in terminology. "While fatalities have a severe impact on the afflicted community or country, disaster aid should be allocated to people affected by the disaster – those who are injured, homeless, or hungry," says ...

Strict requirements on the use of animal manures in fresh produce production imposed by the new federal food-safety law threatened to adversely impact the mushroom industry, which relies on horse and poultry manure for a specialized growth substrate. But a new study shows that heat generated during the traditional composting process -- originally developed to kill insect and fungal pests of mushrooms -- is adequate for eliminating human pathogens that might be present, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. As a result of those findings, ...

NASA's Global Hawk 872 flew over Tropical Storm Humberto on Sept. 16 and 17 after it was reborn from remnants of its earlier life cycle. Data from NASA 872 showed that the core had a hybrid structure. NASA's Global Hawk 872 unmanned aircraft took off at 10:42 a.m. EDT from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va., Sept. 16 to investigate newly reformed Tropical Storm Humberto. NASA 872 dispersed dropsondes throughout Humberto and gathered data on the environment of the storm. A sonde is a device that measures winds, temperature, and humidity. The instrument ...

One day in 2011, undergraduate student Naomi Martisius was sorting through tiny bone remnants in the University of California, Davis, paleoanthropology lab when she stumbled across a peculiar piece. The bone fragment, from a French archaeological site, turned out to be a part of an early specialized bone tool used by a Neandertal before the first modern humans appeared in Europe. "At the time, I had no idea about the impact of my discovery," said Martisius, who is now pursuing her doctoral degree in anthropology at UC Davis. Martisius' opportunity was the result of ...

Two NASA satellites observed Hurricane Manuel as it made landfall in northwestern Mexico and brought rainfall into southwestern Texas. NASA's TRMM Satellite measured Hurricane Manuel's rainfall from space and found areas where it was falling as fast as 2 inches per hour. NASA's Aqua satellite captured both visible and infrared images that revealed strong thunderstorms associated with Manuel's remnants were streaming northeast into Texas. Those rains are expected to continue to soaking central Texas through Sept. 21. As predicted by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), ...

VIDEO: In this TRMM satellite flyover animation from Sept. 19 rain was falling at a rate of over 140mm/~5.5 inches (red) per hour in the powerful storms within Super Typhoon Usagi's... Click here for more information. The most powerful typhoon of 2013 was passing between northern Philippines and southern Taiwan on Sept. 19. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Usagi, infrared data showed a large area of powerful thunderstorms and heavy rain surrounding the center while ...

Researchers at Saint Louis University School of Medicine have discovered a novel interaction between prostacyclin (PGI2) analogs and phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors, two groups of drugs used in the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). They found that, in combination, these drugs stimulate enhanced release of a potent vasodilator adenosine triphosphate (ATP) from human red blood cells (RBCs). Their study appears in the September 2013 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine. PAH is a chronic disorder characterized by sustained increases in pulmonary ...

DETROIT — Members of an educational organization contribute to its leadership and can blend personal and social needs to help leaders encourage cooperation, a Wayne State University researcher has found. Administrators of college preparatory programs — which are aimed at high school students but housed in colleges or universities — typically have been viewed as leaders, with students seen as followers. Recent scholarship, however, has begun to focus on the impact of followers on educational organizations' leadership and leadership practices. Michael Owens, Ph.D., assistant ...

NASA's TRMM satellite data revealed heavy rainfall and banding of thunderstorms around the southern quadrant of System 98W in the northwestern Pacific near Guam and the Marianas Islands. Those are two signs that the low pressure area may be consolidating into a tropical depression. At 1700 UTC/1 p.m. EDT on Sept. 20, System 98W was centered about 16.2 north and 146.7 east, about 195 nautical miles north-northeast of Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. System 98W had maximum sustained winds near 25 knots/28.7 mph/46.3 kph. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite ...

The sweep of a needle across the grooves of a worn vinyl record carries distinct sounds: hisses, scratches, even the echo of skips. For many years, though, those yearning to hear Frank Sinatra sing "Fly Me to the Moon" have been able to listen to his light baritone with technical clarity, courtesy of the increased signal-to-noise ratio of digital remasterings. Now, with advances in neurofeedback techniques, the signal-to-noise ratio of the brain activity underlying our thoughts can be remastered as well, according to a recent discovery in the Proceedings of the National ...

AUSTIN, Texas — A recently published study strongly suggests men succumb to sexual temptations more than women — for example, cheating on a partner — because they experience strong sexual impulses, not because they have weak self-control. Previous research has shown that men are more likely than women to pursue romantic partners that are "off limits." However, until now, the explanation for this sex difference was largely unexplored. One possible explanation for this effect is that men experience stronger sexual impulses than women do. A second possibility is that ...

After an unusually cold summer in the northernmost latitudes, Arctic sea ice appears to have reached its annual minimum summer extent for 2013 on Sept. 13, the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder has reported. Analysis of satellite data by NSIDC and NASA showed that the sea ice extent shrunk to 1.97 million square miles (5.10 million square kilometers). This year's sea ice extent is substantially higher than last year's record low minimum. On Sept.16, 2012, Arctic sea ice reached its smallest extent ever recorded ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 19, 2013 – The medical community touts the importance of not carrying excess weight, but that has not always been the message delivered to older adults. Weight loss has been discouraged among older adults, partly because of health concerns over inadvertent reductions in muscle and bone mass, which is known to accompany overall weight loss. However, new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center shows that physical activity and weight loss conducted together for older, overweight and obese adults results in improved body composition, translating ...

At some point in elementary school you were shown that opposite charges attract and like charges repel. This is a universal scientific truth – except when it isn't. A research team led by chemist Richard Saykally and theorist David Prendergast of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has shown that when hydrated in water, positively charged ions (cations) can actually pair up with one another. "Through a combination of X-ray spectroscopy, liquid microjets and first principles' theory, we've observed and characterized contact pairing between guanidinium ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Geosphere has posted additions to several themed issues: History and Impact of Sea-Level Change Offshore New Jersey; Geodynamics and Consequences of Lithospheric Removal in the Sierra Nevada, California; Cenozoic Tectonics, Magmatism, and Stratigraphy of the Snake River Plain-Yellowstone Region and Adjacent Areas; Origin and Evolution of the Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane. Two other articles cover terrestrial laser scanning and the earthquake hazard of the Hat Creek fault. Abstracts for these and other Geosphere papers are available at http://geosphere.gsapubs.org/. ...