A group of physicists from Canada have been growing their own icicles in a lab in the hope of solving a mystery that has, up until now, continued to puzzle scientists. The presence of characteristic ripples along the surface of icicles, which remarkably have the same wavelength no matter how big the icicle or where in the world it grows, have led to several studies examining exactly how the ripples form. In a new study published today, 10 October, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, the researchers, from the University ...

The global wheat industry sometimes loses as much as $1 billion a year because prolonged rainfall and high humidity contribute to grains germinating before they are fully mature. The result is both a lower yield of wheat and grains of inferior quality. This phenomenon, known as pre-harvest sprouting or PHS, has such important economic repercussions for farmers around the world that scientists have been working on finding a solution to the problem for at least a couple of decades. Their focus has been on genetic factors, and on the interaction between genotypes and the environment ...

(Cincinnati, OH) - Today, a new study from P&G Beauty, the makers of SecretTM deodorants, and lead investigator Pamela Dalton, PhD. MPH, member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, confirms for the first time that the smell of stress sweat does, in fact, significantly alter how women are perceived by both males and females. Results of the study, published on October 9, 2013 in PLOS ONE, indicate that the odor from stress-related sweat specifically impacts social judgments of one's confidence, trustworthiness and competence. The ability of human body odor to communicate ...

VIDEO: These are movies of three icicles grown under identical conditions of ambient temperature, water supply rate, and nozzle temperature. (1) was made with distilled water only; (2) was made with... Click here for more information. TORONTO, ON – Though it's barely the beginning of autumn, scientists at the University of Toronto are one step closer to explaining why winter's icicles form with Michelin Man-like ripples on their elongated shapes. Experimental physicist ...

Four decades of nutrition research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be invalid because the method used to collect the data was seriously flawed, according to a new study by the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. The study, led by Arnold School exercise scientist and epidemiologist Edward Archer, has demonstrated significant limitations in the measurement protocols used in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The findings, published in PLOS ONE (The Public Library of Science), ...

Using mice, lab-grown cells and clues from a related disorder, Johns Hopkins researchers have greatly increased understanding of the causes of systemic sclerosis, showing that a critical culprit is a defect in the way certain cells communicate with their structural scaffolding. They say the new insights point the way toward potentially developing drugs for the disease, which affects approximately 100,000 people in the United States. "Until now we've had little insight and no effective treatment strategies for systemic sclerosis, and many patients die within a year of ...

October 9, 2013 - There is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to your friends: According to a new study, people evaluate their friends' behavior more positively than do strangers, regardless of actual performance on a series of tasks. Researchers say that we should then think twice before allowing people who know each other to be in positions to judge each other – from job interviews to legal settings. "In judging people we already know, we are more or less unable to ignore our previously established images of those people," says Daniel Leising of Technische ...

Alexandria, VA – An important question asked of recent graduates with geoscience majors is why they chose to major in the earth sciences. Recent analysis of over 400 responses from the National Geoscience Student Exit Survey from 71 geoscience departments identified several common answers among the respondents. Of those surveyed, many declared a geoscience major during their formative undergraduate years for a variety of reasons: enjoyment working in the outdoors, a lifelong interest in the subject and desire for career opportunities are among some of the most common. For ...

Fairfax, Va., October 9, 2013—Standard and reduced high-dose volume radiation therapy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer provide comparable tumor control and decreased late toxicity when compared to surgery, according to a study published in the October 1, 2013 print edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology ● Biology ● Physics, the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). The research is part of the United Kingdom's BC2001 clinical trial, one of the largest randomized trials conducted involving radiation ...

Researchers know that feeding some patients intravenously can save their lives – but also can cause liver damage. Now scientists at the University of Colorado and Children's Hospital Colorado have figured out the likely culprit, one of the ingredients in intravenous food, behind the liver problems. The discovery, published Oct. 9 in Science Translational Medicine, could point the way to better treatments for patients who are medically vulnerable and, often, very young. "We still have more to learn about the optimal mix of lipids for intravenous nutrition," said Ron ...

Terahertz (THz) radiation — radiation in the wavelength range of 30 to 300 microns — is gaining attention due to its applications in security screening, medical and industrial imaging, agricultural inspection, astronomical research, and other areas. Traditional methods of generating terahertz radiation, however, usually involve large and expensive instruments, some of which also require cryogenic cooling. A compact terahertz source — similar to the laser diode found in a DVD player —operating at room temperature with high power has been a dream device in the terahertz community ...

HOUSTON – (Oct. 9, 2013) – Carbyne will be the strongest of a new class of microscopic materials if and when anyone can make it in bulk. If they do, they'll find carbyne nanorods or nanoropes have a host of remarkable and useful properties, as described in a new paper by Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his group. The paper appears this week in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano. Carbyne is a chain of carbon atoms held together by either double or alternating single and triple atomic bonds. That makes it a true one-dimensional material, ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 9, 2013—A national survey has found that uterine fibroids have a disproportionate impact on African American women, causing more severe symptoms, interfering with their daily life, and causing them to miss work. These new findings are reported in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. African American women have a 3-fold higher incidence of uterine fibroids and tend to have them at an ...

A new meta-analysis published today in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (2013;19(10):1-12)1 found the Transcendental Meditation® technique (TM) has a large effect on reducing trait anxiety for people with high anxiety. Trait anxiety is a measure of how anxious a person usually is, as opposed to state anxiety, which refers to how anxious we are at the moment. A meta-analysis is an objective means to draw conclusions from all the research in a field. This meta-analysis covered 16 randomized-controlled trials, the gold standard in medical research, and ...

More than 90 percent of the public supports organ donation, yet less than half the population registers as donors, surveys show. What if registration was better promoted to those who had previously turned it down? And at the place almost everyone makes that decision, the DMV? Research at 40 Department of Motor Vehicles facilities in Illinois shows such efforts can make a difference. An article about the work was published in the September/October issue of the journal Clinical Transplantation. University of Illinois professor Brian Quick and his research colleagues implemented ...

Nyon, Switzerland (October 10, 2013) – According to a new report published today by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), women may expect to live longer but their quality of life will be seriously jeopardized if action to protect their bone health is not taken. Postmenopausal women are the most vulnerable to osteoporosis and fractures. Worldwide, an estimated 200 million women are affected by osteoporosis and around one in three women aged over 50 will suffer from a fracture due to the disease. With an increasingly ageing population huge demands will be put ...

Vast areas on the Northern Hemisphere are covered by tundra. Here, dwarf shrubs, sedges, mosses etc. thrive on top of permafrost in areas where only the uppermost soil layer thaws during the short Arctic summer. New studies show that the tundra may become a source of CO2 in the future. Researcher Magnus Lund from Aarhus University explains: "The soil below the tundra contains very large quantities of carbon – more than twice as much as is present in the planet's entire atmosphere. Therefore, we would like to know if the carbon will stay put – or if it will be released ...

To most people, restoration of Florida's Everglades means recovering and protecting the wetlands of south Florida, including Everglades National Park. But what many don't realize is how intimately the fortunes of the southern Everglades are tied to central Florida's Lake Okeechobee and lands even further north. "The Everglades at the southern tip of Florida—the remains of what was once a vast ecosystem—is interconnected with a large hydrologic system that really begins in Orlando with the northern Everglades," says Patrick Bohlen, a professor of biology at University ...

(CHICAGO) –Although problems with memory become increasingly common as people age, in some persons, memories last long time, even a life time. On the other hand, some people experience milder to substantial memory problems even at an earlier age. Although there are several risk factors of dementia, abnormal fat metabolism has been known to pose a risk for memory and learning. People with high amounts of abdominal fat in their middle age are 3.6 times as likely to develop memory loss and dementia later in their life. Neurological scientists at the Rush University Medical ...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Most of those with the disease will die within the first year of diagnosis, and just 6 percent will survive five years. The disease is typically diagnosed through an invasive and complicated biopsy. But a discovery by researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry may be one major step toward creating a noninvasive tool that would enable clinicians and oncologists to detect pancreatic cancer through a simple risk assessment test using saliva. In a study on a tumor-ridden mouse model, the UCLA researchers were ...

WASHINGTON, DC—Researchers at the University of Michigan Department of Surgery have begun testing an alternative to embryonic stem cells that could one day regenerate muscle tissue for babies with congenital heart defects. A research-in-progress report on this new approach, which uses amniotic stem cells, was presented today at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Although this research is still in an early phase, this new approach has the potential to one day help thousands of babies born each year with congenital heart defects. Typically, ...

(OCTOBER 9, 2013)— The deadly cholera epidemic that rocked earthquake-shattered Haiti in 2010, claiming 8,000 lives and counting, has rallied the public health community to seek water and sewer improvements that, combined with vaccination, could prevent some 89,000 future cholera infections. These findings are among the many insights published this month in a special section of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene - AJTMH and PAHO: Commemorating the 3rd Anniversary of the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti: Invited Papers documenting the public health response ...

Johns Hopkins researchers, working with elderly mice, have determined that combining gene therapy with an extra boost of the same stem cells the body already uses to repair itself leads to faster healing of burns and greater blood flow to the site of the wound. Their findings offer insight into why older people with burns fail to heal as well as younger patients, and how to potentially harness the power of the body's own bone marrow stem cells to reverse this age-related discrepancy. "As we get older, it is harder for our wounds to heal," says John W. Harmon, M.D., ...

Located about 1200 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Carina (The Ship's Keel), the Toby Jug Nebula, more formally known as IC 2220, is an example of a reflection nebula. It is a cloud of gas and dust illuminated from within by a star called HD 65750. This star, a type known as a red giant, has five times the mass of our Sun but it is in a much more advanced stage of its life, despite its comparatively young age of around 50 million years [1]. The nebula was created by the star, which is losing part of its mass out into the surrounding space, forming ...

Zudin A. Puthucheary, M.R.C.P., of University College London, England, and colleagues conducted a study to characterize and evaluate the time course and pathophysiology of acute muscle loss in critical illness. "Survivors of critical illness experience significant skeletal muscle weakness and physical disability, which can persist for at least 5 years. Muscle wasting contributes substantially to weakness acquired in the intensive care unit, but its time course and underlying pathophysiological mechanisms remain poorly characterized and not well understood," according ...