Today, the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) announced that its scientists have successfully completed the first full-scale simulation of an operating nuclear reactor. CASL is modeling nuclear reactors on supercomputers to help researchers better understand reactor performance with much higher reliability than previously available methods, with the goal of ultimately increasing power output, extending reactor life, and reducing waste. Simulation results from the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) program, developed by CASL, ...

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have discovered that a protein used by cancer cells to evade death also plays a vital role in heart health. This dual role complicates efforts to develop cancer drugs that target the protein, but may lead to new therapies for heart muscle damage. The research appeared in the June 15 edition of the scientific journal Genes & Development. The protein, MCL1, is currently the focus of widespread cancer drug development efforts. MCL1 is best known as an inhibitor of death via the cell's suicide pathway in a process called apoptosis. ...

Cyberbullying in the college environment can pose serious consequences for students' living and learning environments, including physical endangerment, according to newly published research by a UT Arlington associate education professor. Jiyoon Yoon, director of the Early Childhood – Grade 6 Program for the UT Arlington College of Education and Health Professions, co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying Presence, Extent, and Forms in a Midwestern Post-secondary Institution," which appears in the June 2013 issue of Information Systems Education Journal. The researchers ...

Thresher sharks hunt schooling sardines in the waters off a small coral island in the Philippines by rapidly slapping their tails hard enough to stun or kill several of the smaller fish at once, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Simon Oliver of the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project, and colleagues from other institutions. The researchers tracked shark activity with handheld video cameras and analyzed 25 instances of tail-slapping to stun prey. Sharks seemed to initiate the behavior by drawing their pectoral fins ...

On July 9, 2013, at 11:09 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 375 miles per second, which is a fairly ...

The population of the critically endangered large primate known as the drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) has been largely reduced to a few critical habitat areas in Cameroon, according to a recently published study by researchers with the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research. The study highlights the challenges faced by this species as its living area becomes ever more fragmented by human disturbance. In addition, the report directs conservation efforts towards key areas where the populations continue to survive and thrive. "The drill is one of Africa's ...

Half a millennium after Johannes Gutenberg printed the bible, researchers printed a 3D splint that saved the life of an infant born with severe tracheobronchomalacia, a birth defect that causes the airway to collapse. While similar surgeries have been preformed using tissue donations and windpipes created from stem cells, this is the first time 3D printing has been used to treat tracheobronchomalacia—at least in a human. Matthew Wheeler, a University of Illinois Professor of Animal Sciences and member of the Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering research theme ...

[EMBARGOED FOR July 11, 2013, ARLINGTON, Va.] – A new guide developed by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) will help physicians appropriately and accurately use laboratory tests for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Laboratory test results drive approximately two-thirds of physicians' medical decisions. Published today in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, the recommendations provide guidance regarding which lab tests are valuable and should be used in specific contexts; which add little or no ...

Rosemont, IL (July 8, 2013) –There have been dramatic decreases in the number and severity of lower limb amputations over the past decade, according to a new study published in the July 2013 issue of Foot & Ankle International. At the same time, orthopaedic advances in treating diabetic foot ulcers have become more commonplace, hopefully decreasing the need for amputation. The statistics on diabetes prevalence and impact are sobering. Nearly 26 million U.S. children and adults, or 8 percent of the population, have diabetes, says the American Diabetes Association. The ...

The rates of regional brain loss and cognitive decline caused by aging and the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are higher for women and for people with a key genetic risk factor for AD, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a study published online July 4 in the American Journal of Neuroradiology. The linkage between APOE ε4 – which codes for a protein involved in binding lipids or fats in the lymphatic and circulatory systems – was already documented as the strongest known genetic risk factor for sporadic AD, the ...

New research by UM bioclimatology Assistant Professor Ashley Ballantyne models the influence of Arctic sea ice on Arctic temperatures during the Pliocene era. His research was published in the Research Highlight section of the July issue of Nature Geoscience. The full paper will be published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology: An International Journal for the Geosciences. Ballantyne and coauthors from Northwestern University, the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research used a global climate model to investigate the amplification ...

Many vertebrate species would have to evolve about 10,000 times faster than they have in the past to adapt to the rapid climate change expected in the next 100 years, a study led by a University of Arizona ecologist has found. Scientists analyzed how quickly species adapted to different climates in the past, using data from 540 living species from all major groups of terrestrial vertebrates, including amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. They then compared their rates of evolution to rates of climate change projected for the end of this century. This is the first ...

More and more Americans are consuming artificial sweeteners as an alternative to sugar, but whether this translates into better health has been heavily debated. An opinion article published by Cell Press on July 10th in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism reviews surprising evidence on the negative impact of artificial sweeteners on health, raising red flags about all sweeteners—even those that don't have any calories. "It is not uncommon for people to be given messages that artificially-sweetened products are healthy, will help them lose weight or will help ...

SEATTLE — More people are running, biking, and exercising in other ways in hundreds of US counties, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. The rise in physical activity levels will have a positive health impact on Americans by reducing death and chronic disability from cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. But the trend has had little impact so far on stopping the rising tide of obesity. As physical activity increased between 2001 and 2009, so did the percentage of the population considered ...

WASHINGTON, DC — In nearly every major cause of premature death – from ischemic heart disease to diabetes to interpersonal violence – the United States trails its economic peers, according to new research from a global collaborative of scientists led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association today – “The State of US Health, 1990-2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors” – researchers show the impact of premature deaths in children and young ...

New research has shown surface ice melt will be the dominant process controlling ice-loss from Greenland. As outlet glaciers retreat inland the other process, iceberg production, remains important but will not grow as rapidly. The Greenland ice sheet is often considered an important potential contributor to future global sea-level rise over the next century or longer. In total, it contains an amount of ice that would lead to a rise of global sea level by more than seven metres, if completely melted. Changes in its total mass are governed by two main processes - fluctuations ...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and other scientific institutions are using social media and crowdsourcing to learn more about earthquakes, according to a new report. These techniques provide inexpensive and rapid data to augment and extend the capabilities provided by traditional monitoring techniques. The new report, Transforming Earthquake Detection and Science Through Citizen Seismology, released today by the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, outlines these groundbreaking citizen science projects. The report describes ...

Imagine turning a whiteboard, glass window or even a wooden table top into a responsive, touch sensitive surface. A low cost system developed by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), based on the principles of vibration and imaging that is able to track the movements of multiple fingers and of objects, can do just that. Retrofitting the system onto existing flat-panel TVs will transform it into new, touch sensitive display screens, at only a fraction of the cost of new touch-sensitive display screens, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Once hooked up ...

The seeding of marine clouds to cool sea surface temperatures could protect threatened coral reefs from being bleached by warming oceans. Research, published in Atmospheric Science Letters, proposes that a targeted version of the geo-engineering technique could give coral a fifty year 'breathing space' to recover from acidification and warming. "Coral bleaching over the last few decades has been caused by rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification," said Dr Alan Gadian, from Leeds University. "Our research focuses on how Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) could quickly ...

Oxford -- A team of researchers from the University of Rostock in Germany has developed a new way to rapidly produce high strength metallic alloys, at a lower cost using less energy than before. It's expected that this breakthrough will profoundly change how we produce components used in a diverse range of applications; including transport and medical devices. The research, which appears in the latest issue of the open access journal Materials Today, reports on the first Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) system with an integrated gas quenching mechanism, capable of alternating ...

Whether a child is conceived naturally or in a Petri dish in an incubator has no bearing at all on the child's mental health. However, researchers have identified a small but increased risk of developing a mental disorder such as autism, ADHD or behavioural problems in children whose mothers only received medical treatment to stimulate ovulation and egg development before insemination. This is the result of a new research project from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, which has compared the risk of mental illness in artificially fertilised and naturally ...

When did people first begin to express their feelings with flowers? It turns out that in prehistoric times, Mount Carmel residents in what today is northern Israel buried their dead on a literal bed of fragrant wild flowers, such as Judean sage, as well as blooming plants of the mint and figwort families. Assuming they had the same positive associations with flowers that we do today, these ancient humans must have sought to ensure for the deceased a pleasant passage from the world of the living. The discovery is the oldest known use of flowers in grave lining. According ...

This news release is available in German. All the objects around us emit thermal radiation. Usually, this radiation can be described very accurately using Planck's law. If, however, the radiating object is smaller than the thermal wavelength, it behaves according to different rules and cannot emit the energy efficiently. This has now been confirmed by a team of researchers at the Vienna University of Technology. These findings are important for heat management of nano-devices and also for the science of aerosols - microparticles suspended in air, which influence the ...

On 8 July 2013 a huge area of the ice shelf broke away from the Pine Island glacier, the longest and fastest flowing glacier in the Antarctic, and is now floating in the Amundsen Sea in the form of a very large iceberg. Scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute - Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have been following this natural spectacle via the earth observation satellites TerraSAR-X from the German Space Agency (DLR) and have documented it in many individual images. The data is intended to help solve the physical puzzle of this "calving". Scientists from ...

The most massive and brightest stars in the galaxy form within cool and dark clouds but the process remains not just shrouded in dust, but also in mystery [1]. An international team of astronomers has now used ALMA to perform a microwave prenatal scan to get a clearer look at the formation of one such monster star that is located around 11 000 light-years away, in a cloud known as the Spitzer Dark Cloud (SDC) 335.579-0.292. There are two theories on the formation of the most massive stars. One suggests that the parental dark cloud fragments, creating several small cores ...