CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In May 2009, the Mars rover Spirit cracked through a crusty layer of Martian topsoil, sinking into softer underlying sand. The unexpected sand trap permanently mired the vehicle, despite months of remote maneuvering by NASA engineers to attempt to free the rover. The mission mishap may have been prevented, says MIT's Karl Iagnemma, by a better understanding of terramechanics — the interaction between vehicles and deformable terrain. Iagnemma says scientists have a pretty good understanding of how soils interact with vehicles that weigh more than 2,000 ...

Two leading neurology researchers have proposed a theory that could unify scientists' thinking about several neurodegenerative diseases and suggest therapeutic strategies to combat them. The theory and backing for it are described in Nature. Mathias Jucker and Lary Walker outline the emerging concept that many of the brain diseases associated with aging, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, are caused by specific proteins that misfold and aggregate into harmful seeds. These seeds behave very much like the pathogenic agents known as prions, which cause mad cow disease, ...

A joint Harvard-Smithsonian study released today in the journal PLOS ONE reveals how much -- and how little -- Northeastern forests have changed after centuries of intensive land use. A hike through today's woods will reveal the same types of trees that a colonial settler would have encountered 400 years ago. But the similarities end there. Jonathan Thompson, research associate at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and lead author of the new study, explains, "If you only looked at a tree species list, you'd have the impression that Northeast forests haven't ...

A quarter of the mature female tiger sharks plying the waters around the remote coral atolls of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands decamp for the populated Main Hawaiian Islands in the late summer and fall, swimming as far as 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) according to new research from University of Florida and the University of Hawaii. Their report is scheduled for publication in the November 2013 issue of Ecological Society of America's journal Ecology. The authors' manuscript is available as a preprint. "When we think of animal migrations, we tend to think of all individuals ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Overgrazing by millions of sheep and goats is the primary cause of degraded land in the Mongolian Steppe, one of the largest remaining grassland ecosystems in the world, Oregon State University researchers say in a new report. Using a new satellite-based vegetation monitoring system, researchers found that about 12 percent of the biomass has disappeared in this country that's more than twice the size of Texas, and 70 percent of the grassland ecosystem is now considered degraded. The findings were published in Global Change Biology. Overgrazing accounts ...

An international team of scientists, including University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital Colorado researchers, has discovered a new disease related to an inability to process Vitamin B12. The disorder is rare but can be devastating. "Some people with rare inherited conditions cannot process vitamin B 12 properly," says CU researcher Tamim Shaikh, PhD, a geneticist and senior author of a paper about the new disease. "These individuals can end up having serious health problems, including developmental delay, epilepsy, anemia, stroke, psychosis and ...

URBANA, Ill. - Because weanling pigs do not tolerate great quantities of soybean meal in the diet, alternative sources of protein must be used. Blood products, such as blood meal and plasma protein, are common ingredients in weanling pig diets and are considered high-quality sources of amino acids. Researchers at the University of Illinois have determined the amino acid digestibility of five blood products produced in the U.S. to provide swine producers with guidance for the use of these products in formulating diets. "Blood meal usually is considered a good source of ...

Although microbes that live in the so-called "dark ocean"—below a depth of some 600 feet where light doesn't penetrate—may not absorb enough carbon to curtail global warming, they do absorb considerable amounts of carbon and merit further study. That is one of the findings of a paper published in the International Society of Microbial Ecology (ISME) Journal by Tim Mattes, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in the University of Iowa College of Engineering, and his colleagues. Mattes says that while many people are familiar with the concept of ...

Even before they are born, babies accumulate changes in their DNA through a process called DNA methylation that may interfere with gene expression, and in turn, their health as they grow up. But until now it's been unclear just how long these changes during the prenatal period persist. In a new study, researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Mailman School of Public Health establish that signs of DNA methylation persist through early childhood, suggesting the factors that influence these changes during or before pregnancy could have ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- By studying hibernation, a Duke University team is providing a window into why humans sleep. Observations of a little-known primate called the fat-tailed dwarf lemur in captivity and the wild has revealed that it goes for days without the deepest part of sleep during its winter hibernation season. The findings support the idea that sleep plays a role in regulating body temperature and metabolism. Despite decades of research, why we sleep is still a mystery. Theories range from conserving energy, to processing information and memories, to removing toxins ...

MINNEAPOLIS -- New research suggests that men who exercise vigorously as young adults may reduce their risk of developing epilepsy later in life. The study is published in the September 4, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Epilepsy is a brain disease that causes repeated seizures over time. "There are a host of ways exercise has been shown to benefit the brain and reduce the risk of brain diseases," said study author Elinor Ben-Menachem, PhD, MD, with the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and an associate member ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- College biology textbooks cater to the needs of pre-med majors and not those of the majority of students who take introductory science classes, a new study reveals. A text analysis of eight commonly used biology textbooks found that all of them closely follow the curriculum suggested for pre-med students by the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). That means the texts put a heavy emphasis on molecular and cellular biology, while giving less attention to the big issues that have more relevance to students who don't plan on being medical doctors, ...

University of Utah bioengineers discovered our understanding of language may depend more heavily on vision than previously thought: under the right conditions, what you see can override what you hear. These findings suggest artificial hearing devices and speech-recognition software could benefit from a camera, not just a microphone. "For the first time, we were able to link the auditory signal in the brain to what a person said they heard when what they actually heard was something different. We found vision is influencing the hearing part of the brain to change your ...

Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs are the only primates known to hibernate, and new research suggests their sleep patterns during hibernation are markedly different from those of ground squirrels, which also hibernate at similar temperatures. The results are published September 4 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Andrew Krystal and colleagues from Duke University School of Medicine and the Duke Lemur Center. During hibernation, dwarf lemurs experience periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at relatively high ambient temperatures, but no non-REM sleep. Ground squirrels, ...

Signs banning smoking may not have as much of an impact on secondhand smoke concentrations as the presence of ashtrays or ashtray equivalents, according to research published September 4 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Constantine Vardavas from the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues from other institutions. The authors measured the success of a non-enforced, nationwide smoke-free legislation in Greece by testing levels of secondhand smoke before the ban and for two years afterward. Following the 2010 legislation, secondhand smoke concentrations dropped ...

Forests in the northeastern US have been radically transformed over the last four centuries by human activity, and their relationship with climate factors like rainfall weakened, according to research published September 4 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jonathan Thompson and colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution. Though the land use history of the northeastern United States is well documented, its ecological consequences remain poorly understood. Based on more than 300,000 references to individual trees within colonial-era property records, the researchers ...

A new, international study from the Chronic Kidney Disease Prognosis Consortium found that use of blood levels of cystatin C to estimate kidney function—alone or in combination with creatinine—strengthens the association between kidney function and risks of death and end-stage renal disease. The findings, reported in the September 5 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that the use of cystatin C as a measurement of kidney function could lead to better staging and risk classification of chronic kidney disease. They also suggest that the measurement ...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health have identified a compound that dramatically bolsters learning and memory when given to mice with a Down syndrome-like condition on the day of birth. As they report in the Sept. 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the single-dose treatment appears to enable the cerebellum of the rodents' brains to grow to a normal size. The scientists caution that use of the compound, a small molecule known as a sonic hedgehog pathway agonist, has not been proven safe to try in people with Down syndrome, but say ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new laser-based technology may make brain tumor surgery much more accurate, allowing surgeons to tell cancer tissue from normal brain at the microscopic level while they are operating, and avoid leaving behind cells that could spawn a new tumor. In a new paper, featured on the cover of the journal Science Translational Medicine, a team of University of Michigan Medical School and Harvard University researchers describes how the technique allows them to "see" the tiniest areas of tumor cells in brain tissue. They used this technique to distinguish ...

Scientists at UC San Francisco are reporting that they have found a way to reverse some of the negative effects of aging on the brain, using a video game designed to improve cognitive control. The findings, published this week in Nature, show how a specially designed 3-D video game can improve cognitive performance in healthy older adults. The researchers said it provides a measure of scientific support to the burgeoning field of brain fitness, which has been criticized for lacking evidence that such training can induce lasting and meaningful changes. In the ...

Back of pack picture or text warnings depicting the dangers of smoking, make little impact on teen smokers, particularly those who smoke regularly, suggests research published online in Tobacco Control. Pictorial warnings work better than text alone, but if positioned on the back of the pack are less visible and less effective, say the researchers. In 2008 the UK became the third European Union country to require pictorial health warnings to be carried on the back of cigarette packs. In only five out of the 60 countries worldwide that have introduced this policy do ...

Becoming infected with chlamydia or gonorrhoea in the lead-up to, or during, pregnancy, increases the risk of complications, such as stillbirth or unplanned premature birth, indicates research published online in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. The researchers analysed the birth records of more than 350,000 women who had had their first baby between 1999 and 2008 in New South Wales, Australia's most heavily populated state. The researchers wanted to find out if infection with either chlamydia or gonorrhoea in the lead-up to, or during, pregnancy, had any ...

The evolution of similar traits in different species, a process known as convergent evolution, is widespread not only at the physical level, but also at the genetic level, according to new research led by scientists at Queen Mary University of London and published in Nature this week. The scientists investigated the genomic basis for echolocation, one of the most well-known examples of convergent evolution to examine the frequency of the process at a genomic level. Echolocation is a complex physical trait that involves the production, reception and auditory processing ...

The amount of ozone created from aircraft pollution is highest from flights leaving and entering Australia and New Zealand, a new study has shown. The findings, which have been published today, Thursday 5 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, could have wide-reaching implications for aviation policy as ozone is a potent greenhouse gas with comparable short-term effects to those of carbon dioxide (CO2). The researchers, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a global chemistry-transport model to investigate which parts of the ...

This news release is available in French. Vancouver, BC – A Terry Fox Research Institute(TFRI)-led study has developed a new clinical risk calculator software that accurately classifies, nine out of ten times, which spots or lesions (nodules) are benign and malignant on an initial lung computed tomography (CT) scan among individuals at high risk for lung cancer. The findings are expected to have immediate clinical impact worldwide among health professionals who currently diagnose and treat individuals at risk for or who are diagnosed with lung cancer, and provide ...