Typhoon Rumbia developed from a low pressure area east of the Philippines and crossed the country from east to west before moving into the South China Sea. NASA's TRMM satellite flew over Rumbia as it nears southeastern China and identified areas of heavy rainfall in the southern quadrant of the storm. On Sunday, June 30, NASA infrared satellite imagery revealed tightly curved bands of thunderstorms over the southern quadrant of the storm were wrapping into the northern quadrant of the low-level center. However, in the northwestern quadrant, the quadrant that will make ...

HOUSTON – Scientists have tracked down and quantified the diverse origins of cells that drive fibrosis, the incurable, runaway wound-healing that scars and ultimately destroys organs such as the lungs, liver and kidneys. Findings from research conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and continued at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are reported in an advance online publication at Nature Medicine on June 30. "Answering a fundamental question about the origin of these ...

Washington, D.C.—Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in certain materials under specific low-temperature and high-pressure conditions. Research to create superconductors at higher temperatures has been ongoing for two decades with the promise of significant impact on electrical transmission. New research from a team led by Choong-Shik Yoo at Washington State University—and including Carnegie's Viktor Struzhkin, Takaki Muramatsu, ...

Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world's steepest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics. Research from Princeton University published in the journal Applied Geography suggests that people native to low-lying areas can be naturally barred from regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Himalayas by altitude sickness, which is caused by low oxygen concentration in the air and can be life-threatening. ...

Vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary supplements are widely available in supermarkets and drug stores across the nation without a prescription, so it's no surprise that nearly half of all Americans take them. But they do carry risks, including potentially adverse interactions with prescription drugs, and some people may even use them in place of conventional medications. So it's important that primary care physicians communicate the pros and cons of supplements with their patients. In fact, both the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of ...

The pursuit that obsessed some of the world's greatest geniuses for centuries — alchemy and its quest for the "Philosopher's Stone" that would transform lead and other base metals into gold — is the topic of a new episode in the American Chemical Society Bytesize Science video series. The video, from the world's largest scientific society, is at http://www.BytesizeScience.com. It features Laurence Principe, Ph.D., a noted historian of science and expert on alchemy, which, far from being solely a misguided pseudoscience, helped set the stage for the emergence of modern ...

TEMPE, Ariz -- Knowing virtually everything about how the body's cells make transitions from one state to another – for instance, precisely how particular cells develop into multi-cellular organisms – would be a major jump forward in understanding the basics of what drives biological processes. Such a leap could open doors to far-reaching advances in medical science, bioengineering and related areas. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University, with a partner at Imperial College London, report on taking at least a step toward better comprehension ...

Vitamin C affects whether genes are switched on or off inside mouse stem cells, and may thereby play a previously unknown and fundamental role in helping to guide normal development in mice, humans and other animals, a scientific team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered. The researchers found that vitamin C assists enzymes that play a crucial role in releasing the brakes that keep certain genes from becoming activated in the embryo soon after fertilization, when egg and sperm fuse. The discovery might eventually lead to the use of vitamin C to improve ...

The agriculture industry is researching new technologies to help feed the growing population. But feeding the world without harming air quality is a challenge. According to a new article in Animal Frontiers, biotechnologies increase food production and reduce harmful gas output from cattle. "We are increasing the amount of product with same input," said Clayton Neumeier, PhD student at University of California, Davis, in an interview. In the Animal Frontiers paper, Neumeier describes a recent experiment using biotechnologies. In the experiment, a test group of cattle ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Hovering about 70 light-years from Earth –– that's "next door" by astronomical standards –– is a star astronomers call HD 97658, which is almost bright enough to see with the naked eye. But the real "star" is the planet HD 97658b, not much more than twice the Earth's diameter and a little less than eight times its mass. HD 97658b is a super-Earth, a class of planet for which there is no example in our home solar system. While the discovery of this particular exoplanet is not new, determining its true size and mass is, thanks to Diana Dragomir, ...

Thirty percent of severe alcoholics develop liver disease, but scientists have not been able to explain why only a subset is at risk. A research team from Northwestern University and Rush University Medical Center now has a possible explanation: disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms can push those vulnerable over the edge to disease. The team studied mice that essentially were experiencing what shift workers or people with jet lag suffer: their internal clocks were out of sync with the natural light-dark cycle. Another group of mice had circadian disruption due to a faulty ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- An eight-week intervention involving 141 preschoolers in a Head Start program and their parents produced significant improvements in the children's behavior and brain functions supporting attention and reduced levels of parental stress that, in turn, improved the families' quality of life. The findings -- from the first phase of a long-term research project by University of Oregon neuroscientists that will monitor the families over time -- appear this week online in advance of regular publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The ...

MADISON — We rely on our physical environment for many things – clean water, land for crops or pastures, storm water absorption, and recreation, among others. Yet it has been challenging to figure out how to sustain the many benefits people obtain from nature — so-called "ecosystem services" — in any given landscape because an improvement in one may come at the cost of another. Two ecologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison report this week (July 1) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a novel approach to analyzing the production and location ...

Baltimore, MD – June 28, 2013. Acupuncture, when used as a complementary or adjuvant therapy for in vitro fertilization (IVF), may be beneficial depending on the baseline pregnancy rates of a fertility clinic, according to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The analysis from the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine is published in the June 27 online edition of the journal Human Reproduction Update. "Our systematic review of current acupuncture/IVF research found that for IVF clinics with baseline pregnancy rates higher than ...

NASA successfully completed two pre-vibration solar array deployment tests of the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite on June 6 and June 15, 2013. "Cross your fingers. Cross your toes," said Art Azarbarzin, GPM project manager, as he watched engineers take their places around the GPM Core satellite, set up on its end in the middle of the clean room. A loud hiss filled the room as engineers turned on air hoses. The hoses pumped air through tubes attached to the solar panels' supports and out of hockey puck-shaped coasters. Azarbarzin explained that the support ...

A key brain structure that regulates emotions works differently in preschoolers with depression compared with their healthy peers, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The differences, measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), provide the earliest evidence yet of changes in brain function in young children with depression. The researchers say the findings could lead to ways to identify and treat depressed children earlier in the course of the illness, potentially preventing problems later in life. "The ...

While public health officials around the world are on alert about the pandemic potential of new disease threats, a team that includes Penn State University biologist Marcel Salathé is developing innovative new systems and techniques to track the spread of infectious diseases, with the help of news websites, blogs, and social media. Salathé will publish an article in the 1 July 2013 issue of th New England Journal of Medicine, with colleagues from the Harvard Medical School, describing the advantages and challenges of "digital epidemiology" -- a new field of increasing importance ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Cerebral aneurysms of all sizes—even small ones below seven millimeters—are 12 times more likely to rupture if they are growing in size, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. A cerebral aneurysm is a balloon-like bulge in a weakened blood vessel in the brain. If an aneurysm ruptures, blood is leaked into or around the brain, which can cause brain damage or death. According to The Brain Aneurysm Foundation, an estimated 6 million people in the United States have an unruptured brain aneurysm, or 1 in 50 people. Ruptured ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – H7N9 pneumonia is characterized by imaging findings that differentiate it from other types of pneumonia, including rapidly progressive changes in the lungs and pulmonary connective tissues, according to the first study to describe radiologic findings in the disease. The results are published online in the journal Radiology. "The severity of these findings is associated with the severity of the clinical condition of the patients," said study co-author Zhiyong Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Radiology at Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center ...

Children from low-income families tend to do worse at school than their better-off peers. Now a new study of a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of children from across the United States has identified poor planning skills as one reason for the income-achievement gap, which can emerge as early as kindergarten and continue through high school. The study, by researchers at Cornell University, appears in the journal Child Development. "Low-income children appear to have more difficulty accomplishing planning tasks efficiently, and this, in turn, partially ...

The strain of cholera that has sickened thousands in Haiti came from a single source and was not repeatedly introduced to the island over the past three years as some have thought, according to a new study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The results of this latest study are consistent with earlier findings that indicate Vibrio cholerae bacteria were introduced to Haiti by United nations soldiers between July and October 2010, when Nepalese soldiers arrived to assist recovery efforts after the January 2010 earthquake ...

In many ways, the evolution of Chinese agriculture over the past 40 years is a remarkable success story. Spurred by investments in research and government subsidies for fertilizers and other farm technologies, China now feeds 22% of the world's population on just 9% of its total arable land. But as a special collection of papers in the July-August issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality (JEQ) points out, these achievements have come at a cost. Massive losses of nutrients from croplands and manure from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have polluted ...

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's could be better understood thanks to insight into proteins linked to such conditions, a study suggests. Scientists studying thread-like chains of protein – called amyloid fibres – have found that low levels of these proteins may cause more harm to health than high levels. These rarely formed protein chains, which have been linked with dozens of diseases, are produced as a result of a genetic flaw or changes in body chemistry brought about by ageing. When this happens, short fibres are formed which become sticky and attract ...

Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge and peak in adolescence. "Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University. The ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (JULY 1, 2013). Researchers from The Tel-Aviv Medical Center found delays in diagnosis of cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) averaging 2 years in 42 patients who eventually underwent surgery. This is an important finding, because previous studies have shown that early diagnosis and treatment of CSM lead to better outcomes. The majority of patients initially sought a diagnosis for their symptoms from family physicians, who arrived at a correct diagnosis in only 4.8% of cases and never at the first clinic visit. Many other patients initially consulted ...