Although seemingly destructive, wildfires help to maintain biodiversity and are an important element of many ecosystems throughout the world. Not only do fires discourage non-native and invasive species from becoming established, but the quick release of nutrients, heat, and compounds found in ash and smoke play an important role in the life cycle of the native flora. For plants that are adapted to ecosystems where fire is a regular occurrence—such as savannas, grasslands, and coniferous forests—exposure to fire may initiate seed germination or enhance plant growth. Recent ...

A stroll through the produce aisle in your local grocery store exhibits a plethora of vivid colors. From opposing hues, like red apples next to green celery, to subtler variations, such as light to dark purple grapes, every color seems to hold its own unique attraction. Is there a way to precisely measure these hundreds of colors? This is a crucial question for scientists studying the biological importance of color in nature, but measuring color is much more challenging than measuring other characteristics, like size or weight. In recent work, University of Colorado researcher ...

Tropical Cyclone 16P formed near Fiji after lingering in the region for several days as a tropical low pressure area. NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an infrared image of the storm on February 28. NOAA's GOES-West satellite image showed the center of Tropical Cyclone 16P to the northeast of Fiji and over Vanua Levu. Broken bands of thunderstorms wrapping from the north to the east and southeast reached Wallis and Fortuna, Samoa, Niue and Tonga. At 0900 UTC/4 a.m. EST, Tropical Cyclone 16P was centered about 170 nautical miles/`95.6 miles/314.8 km northeast of Suva, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The ability to duplicate an experiment and its results is a central tenet of the scientific method, but recent research has shown an alarming number of peer-reviewed papers are irreproducible. A team of math and statistics professors has proposed a way to address one root of that problem by teaching reproducibility to aspiring scientists, using software that makes the concept feel logical rather than cumbersome. Researchers from Smith College, Duke University and Amherst College looked at how introductory statistics students responded to a curriculum ...

STANFORD, Calif. — An asthma drug accelerates the process of desensitizing patients with food allergies to several foods at the same time, a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford shows. The findings come on the heels of a recent study by the same team showing that people with multiple food allergies can be desensitized to several foods at once. The two studies, both phase-1 safety trials, provide the first scientific evidence that a promising new method for treating people for multiple food ...

URBANA, Ill. – Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is the most expensive and invasive disease for pig producers on a global scale. Though it is not occurring on every farm, it is the biggest disease problem in the pig industry, said a University of Illinois animal sciences researcher. E. coli has also been a problem historically and continues to be on an industry-wide basis, said James Pettigrew. "Either disease can sweep through a farm so their alleviation would substantially reduce production costs. Even though many management practices have been used ...

University of Waterloo physicists have succeeded in measuring how the surfaces of glassy materials flow like a liquid, even when they should be solid. A series of simple and elegant experiments were the solution to a problem that has been plaguing condensed matter physicists for the past 20 years. Understanding the mobility of glassy surfaces has implications for the design and manufacture of thin-film coatings and also sets practical limits on how small we can make nanoscale devices and circuitry. The work is the culmination of a project carried out by a research ...

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. -- The estimated tens of thousands of Burmese pythons now populating the Everglades present a low risk to people in the park, according to a new assessment by U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service scientists. The human risk assessment looked at five incidents that involved humans and Burmese pythons over a 10-year period in Everglades National Park. All five incidents involved pythons striking at biologists who were conducting research in flooded wetlands. "Visitor and staff safety is always our highest priority at Everglades ...

West Orange, NJ. February 28, 2014. Kessler Foundation researchers have found that higher educational attainment (a proxy of intellectual enrichment) attenuates the negative impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on cognitive status. The brief report, Sumowski J, Chiaravalloti N, Krch D, Paxton J, DeLuca J. Education attenuates the negative impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) on cognitive status, was published in the December issue of Archives of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Vol. 94, Issue 12:2562-64. Cognitive outcomes vary post-TBI, even among individuals ...

Tokyo, Japan – February 28, 2014 – REGiMMUNE Corporation announced that the American Journal of Transplantation (AJT) has published its paper that describes a novel approach to long-term tolerance in organ transplantation with continuous administration of immune suppressants. "A Novel Approach Inducing Transplant Tolerance by Activated Invariant Natural Killer T Cells with Costimulatory Blockade" was published in the AJT March 2014 Issue 3, Volume 14, pages 554-567, and was first made available online as an early view on February 6, 2014. Robust, lifelong, donor-specific ...

A new University of Virginia psychology study has found that a sample of mostly white American children – as young as 7, and particularly by age 10 – report that black children feel less pain than white children. The study, which builds on previous research on bias among adults involving pain perception, is published in the Feb. 28 issue of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. "Our research shows that a potentially very harmful bias in adults emerges during middle childhood, and appears to develop across childhood," said the study's lead investigator, Rebecca ...

(Phoenix , Ariz. Feb 28, 2014) -- "The results of this study are counter to most expectations," said Dr. Brachman, Director of Radiation Oncology at Barrow and St. Joseph's. "Bevacizuman had been shown in earlier studies to be an effective drug in the treatment of patients with recurrent disease. But, on newly diagnosed patients, it did not, in fact, prolong survival." The randomized, double-blind placebo controlled trial of 621 adults was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the drug manufacturer Genentech from 2009 to2012. Glioblastoma is the most common primary ...

On February 27, 2014, the Wall Street Journal and Southeast Asia Realtime reported that: "the plantation-rich province of Riau on Indonesia's Sumatra Island has declared a state of emergency as fires set for land clearing have sent pollution levels soaring and smoke made breathing difficult for thousands." Tens of thousands of Riau residents are suffering from the effects of the smoke coming from dozens of fires set to clear land in Sumatra. Riau is the center of Indonesia's more than $20 billion palm oil industry—the world's largest. Fires occur with frequency in Riau ...

BOSTON (February 28, 2014) — If significant climate change occurs in the United States it may be necessary to change where certain foods are produced in order to meet consumer demand. In a paper published online this week in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University provide an overview of current farmland use and food production in the Northeastern U.S., identifying potential vulnerabilities of the 12-state region*. Led by Tim Griffin, Ph.D., associate professor and director ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (February 28, 2014) – Psychiatric advanced practice nurses (APNs) played a critical role in supporting psychological recovery after the Boston Marathon bombing—not only for injured patients, but also for family members and hospital staff, according to an article in Clinical Nurse Specialist, official journal of the the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Barbara Lakatos, DNP, PMHCNS-BC, and colleagues of the Psychiatric Nursing Resource Service ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For people whose hands shake uncontrollably due to a medical condition, just eating can be a frustrating and embarrassing ordeal – enough to keep them from sharing a meal with others. But a small new study conducted at the University of Michigan Health System suggests that a new handheld electronic device can help such patients overcome the hand shakes caused by essential tremor, the most common movement disorder. In a clinical trial involving 15 adults with moderate essential tremor, the device improved patients' ability to hold a spoon still enough ...

An international team of researchers has used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to take snapshots of free molecules. The research team headed by Prof. Jochen Küpper of the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) choreographed a kind of molecular ballet in the X-ray beam. With this work, the researchers have cleared important hurdles on the way to X-ray images of individual molecules, as they explain in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. CFEL is a cooperation of DESY, the University of Hamburg, and the Max Planck Society. "We have captured ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – February 27, 2014 – The control and elimination of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) is one of the most cost-effective ways Indonesia can sustain economic growth and reduce inequality, said scientists today in an analysis published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. While Indonesia is poised to defeat NTDs by 2020, it has an opportunity to scale up national programs, integrate NTDs with other development efforts, strengthen coordination and enhance collaboration among key partners. The analysis calls NTDs "one of the most potent forces" trapping ...

VIDEO: NASA/JAXA's TRMM Satellite provided data of developing Tropical Storm Faxai to make this 3-D image that showed some towering thunderstorms in the area were reaching altitudes of up to 15.5km/~9.6... Click here for more information. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite passed over System 93W in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and saw rainfall rates increasing on February 27 in the developing tropical low pressure area. On February 28, the low organized ...

This news release is available in German. Wetlands, including peatlands, have a high content of humic substances, which are organic compounds that form during incomplete decomposition of biomass. Under anoxic conditions, soil bacteria can use these organic compounds during respiration as electron acceptors. Many organisms (including us humans) instead use oxygen as the electron acceptor. In the mid-1990s, researchers revealed that some anaerobic microorganisms in soils and sediments use humic substances as electron acceptors under anoxic conditions. However, the capacity ...

A giant sunspot – a magnetically strong and complex region on the sun's surface – has just appeared over the sun's horizon. This is the third trip for this region across the face of the sun, which takes approximately 27 days to make a complete rotation. Scientists track sunspots that are part of active regions, which often produce large explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. Each time an active region appears it is assigned a number. Active regions that have survived their trip around the back of the sun and reappear are assigned ...

A team of Australian and American astronomers have been studying nearby galaxy M83 and have found a new superpowered small black hole, named MQ1, the first object of its kind to be studied in this much detail. Astronomers have found a few compact objects that are as powerful as MQ1, but have not been able to work out the size of the black hole contained within them until now. The team observed the MQ1 system with multiple telescopes and discovered that it is a standard-sized small black hole, rather than a slightly bigger version that was theorised to account for all ...

In the race for better treatments and possible cures, rare diseases are often left behind. In a collaboration of researchers at The Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the New York Genome Center (NYGC), an unusual mutation has been found that is strongly linked to one such disease: a rare liver cancer that affects teens and young adults. The results, published this week in Science, suggest that the mutation plays a key role in the development of the disease, called fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma, and may also underlie more common cancers ...

DURHAM, N.C -- When students repeat a grade, it can spell trouble for their classmates, according to a new Duke University-led study of nearly 80,000 middle-schoolers. In schools with high numbers of grade repeaters , suspensions were more likely to occur across the school community. Discipline problems were also more common among other students, including substance abuse, fighting and classroom disruption. Public debate typically focuses on how retention affects an individual student's academic performance, said lead author Clara Muschkin. So she and her colleagues ...

This news release is available in German. Proteins like the so-called heat shock protein Hsp90 play an important role in almost all processes within human cells. They help other proteins fold into their three-dimensional structure or return damaged proteins back into their proper shape. Recently, there has been increasing evidence indicating that the heat shock protein HSP90 may also be involved in the folding processes of the tau protein. Deposits of tau proteins in brain cells are typical for Alzheimer's disease and are held responsible for decaying nerve ...