Several fires are currently raging in central and northern California. These fires can be seen in this natural-color Terra satellite image taken by the MODIS instrument on August 18, 2013. The American wildfire began August 10, 2013 and the cause of the fire is still under investigation. To date over 13,000 acres have been affected. The growth potential for this fire is high due to terrain and weather patterns. Thunderstorms predicted over the next few days may bring additional complexity and increase the potential for new starts. The National Weather Service has ...

Spaces built to keep children safe after an emergency or conflict can also help them recover from trauma, new Columbia University and World Vision research launched today shows. The research, conducted with the support of UNICEF, measured the impact of Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) on Congolese children who have fled fighting and sought refuge in western Uganda. The publication reveals the spaces were widely used; 73 percent of children in the Rwamwanja camp attended them at some stage. "We use Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) to support and protect children, give them somewhere ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A pending component of health care reform would require restaurants and vending machines to list calorie information on menus to help fight obesity. But there's little evidence to date that it's an effective way to prevent overeating. A new Duke University study suggests a better approach might be for restaurants to expand and improve calorie listings on their websites and mobile apps, so customers can come better prepared to order a healthier menu item. "If consumers wait until they enter restaurants to make purchasing decisions, it might be too ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Children who have higher levels of Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical previously used in many products for kids, like baby bottle and plastic toys, had a higher odds of obesity and adverse levels of body fat, according to a new study from University of Michigan researchers. The U-M team studied the levels of BPA found in children's urine and then measured body fat, waist circumference, and cardiovascular and diabetes risk factors, in a study published today in Pediatrics. BPA was previously widely used in the manufacturing of polycarbonate and epoxy ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Six new Gesophere articles, posted online on 14 Aug. 2013, offer insight into a variety of geologic problems, from the minute to the massive. Authors investigate inclusion and porosity patterns in a 23-carat carbonado diamond; sea-level change offshore of New Jersey (USA); a new age for Sierra Nevada faulting; a reconstruction of the dimensions and shape of the Great Basin over the past 500 million years; and deep-water perspectives on Hawaiian volcano growth. Abstracts for these and other Geosphere papers are available at http://geosphere.gsapubs.org/. ...

Amsterdam, NL, August 19, 2013 – A new study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience demonstrates that Chinese herbal medicine Ji-Sui-Kang (JSK), given systemically for three weeks after injury in rats, improved locomotor function, reduced tissue damage, and preserved the structure of neural cells compared to control rats. The report also includes data showing that JSK may first act to reduce inflammation and cell apoptosis and death, and boost local oxygen supply while, later on, it appears to restore function and promote tissue regeneration. Although Chinese ...

Live in a large city like New York, London, Beijing or Mumbai, and you are likely exposed to more air pollution than people in smaller cities in surrounding areas. But exactly how a city's pollution relates to the size of its population has never been measured, until now. Using satellite observations, NASA scientists directly measured air pollution's dependence on population in four of the planet's major air pollution regions: the United States, Europe, China and India. The study shows that the pollution-population relationship varies by region. For example, a city ...

NASA has accepted ownership of its newest Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) from Boeing after successfully completing in orbit testing. TDRS-K, will be renamed TDRS-11 upon entry into service. "This is a major step in replenishing an aging TDRS fleet which is essential in providing communications to support space exploration," said Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator for Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters. "We look forward to the launch of two additional satellites in the next few years to complete the replenishment program." The ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Based on data from a multi-site imaging trial involving more than 2,600 women, researchers say breast lesions categorized as 'probably benign' on supplemental screening ultrasound could be re-evaluated with imaging in 12 months, reducing patient anxiety, follow-up exams and unnecessary biopsies. Results of the study are published online in the journal Radiology. In the study, a team of researchers analyzed data from the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN) trial 6666, in which both annual mammography and ultrasound screenings were performed ...

University of Iowa researchers have discovered what causes the lethal effects of staphylococcal infective endocarditis - a serious bacterial infection of heart valves that kills approximately 20,000 Americans each year. According to the UI study, the culprits are superantigens -- toxins produced in large quantities by Staphylococcus aureus (staph) bacteria - which disrupt the immune system, turning it from friend to foe. "The function of a superantigen is to 'mess' with the immune system," says Patrick Schlievert, Ph.D., UI professor and chair of microbiology at the ...

The bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa needs iron to establish and maintain a biofilm in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, and therapies have been proposed to deprive the bacteria of this necessary element. However, these techniques may not work, according to a new study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, because they only target one of the two types of iron that are available in the lung. Current therapies focus on removing ferric iron [Fe(III)] but leave plenty of ferrous iron [Fe(II)] behind for the bacteria ...

DURHAM, N.H. – People in end-stage kidney failure in need of a kidney transplant are much less likely to be placed on a waiting list for a new kidney or to actually receive a new kidney once on the list if they are unemployed or work part time, according to new collaborative research from the University of New Hampshire. "There is a strong negative association between a patient's unemployment and the likelihood of being placed on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, and once on the waiting list, the likelihood of receiving a transplant," says Robert Woodward, the Forrest ...

Small prey fish can grow a bigger 'eye' on their rear fins as a way of distracting predators and dramatically boosting their chances of survival, new scientific research has found. Researchers from Australia's ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) have made a world-first discovery that, when constantly threatened with being eaten, small damsel fish not only grow a larger false 'eye spot' near their tail – but also reduce the size of their real eyes. The result is a fish that looks like it is heading in the opposite direction – potentially confusing ...

In a discovery that could have major implications for the aerospace, automotive and electronics industries, scientists have found a way to dramatically reduce the corrosion rate of lightweight wonder metal magnesium: adding arsenic. Weighing in at two thirds less than aluminium, magnesium is the lightest structural metal. It has many potential industrial applications, but uptake is severely restricted by its poor resistance to corrosion. Identification of methods to restrict magnesium corrosion is the first step in engineering such technology into functional alloys. For ...

Patients with heart failure who see a physician in the first month after leaving hospital are more likely to survive than those who do not see a doctor, reports a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The effect is slightly more pronounced in patients who see their regular physician rather than an unfamiliar physician. In the United States and Canada, more than $20 billion is spent every year on patients who are readmitted to hospital within 30 days after discharge. Heart failure is one of the most common reasons for hospitalization and has a high ...

Manipulation is often thought of as morally repugnant, but it might be responsible for the evolutionary origins of some helpful or altruistic behavior, according to a new study. In evolutionary biology, manipulation occurs when an individual, the manipulator, alters the behavior of another individual in ways that is beneficial to the manipulator but may be detrimental to the manipulated individual. Manipulation not only occurs in humans and animals but also at the cellular level, such as among cells in a multicellular organism, or in parasites, which can alter the behavior ...

A new study shows that serious illness, struggling to hold down a regular job, and poor social relationships are just some of the adverse outcomes in adulthood faced by those exposed to bullying in childhood. It has long been acknowledged that bullying at a young age presents a problem for schools, parents and public policy makers alike. Although children spend more time with their peers than their parents, there is relatively little published research on understanding the impact of these interactions on their lives beyond school. The results of the new study, published ...

Seattle, WA – August 19, 2013 – A study published today found that Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR™) can be used as an accurate and precise method for quality control of next-generation sequencing (NGS) libraries. NGS library QC is essential to optimizing sequencing data yield, thereby increasing efficiency and throughput while lowering cost. The research was published in the in the August issue of Biotechniques. "While real-time PCR has traditionally been used to quantify libraries, we determined that the only truly accurate way to reproducibly quantify our NGS libraries ...

Bats orient themselves through echolocation, and they find their prey by emitting calls and then process the echoes reflected back to them from the prey. Small insects reflect small echo signals, and large insects reflect large signals - simply because they are bigger. This makes it easier for bats to discover the large insects. Large moths have to do something extra to avoid the bats, and their trick is to hear better. Their eardrums are larger and therefore more sensitive than ears of small moths, and this enables them to hear their enemies from at a greater distance. ...

Horses who develop a limp are one of the major sources of frustration for horse owners as well as vets. The same applies for Wobblers disease (ataxia) where growth abnormalities or articular process joint osteoarthritis put pressure on the spinal cord causing ataxic gait. At least one in a hundred horses develop Wobblers disease, which often leads to the horse having to be euthanased. Both lameness and Wobblers disease have an effect on a horses gait, and so far veterinarians have only been able to study horse movement in a gait-laboratory, which commonly only allows study ...

A study by a postgraduate researcher at the University of Southampton has found that Neanderthals were more culturally complex than previously acknowledged. Two cultural traditions existed among Neanderthals living in what is now northern Europe between 115,000 to 35,000 years ago. Dr Karen Ruebens from the Centre for the Archaeology of Human Origins (CAHO) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) examined the design of 1,300 stone tools originating from 80 Neanderthal sites in five European countries; France, Germany, Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands. Dr ...

SINGAPORE – Surprise! Your morning cup of tea or coffee may be doing more than just perking you up before work. An international team of researchers led by Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) and the Duke University School of Medicine suggest that increased caffeine intake may reduce fatty liver in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Worldwide, 70 percent of people diagnosed with diabetes and obesity have NAFLD, the major cause of fatty liver not due to excessive alcohol consumption. It is estimated that 30 percent of adults in the United ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A new population-based study has found that patients with glioblastoma who died in 2010, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of bevacizumab, had lived significantly longer than patients who died of the disease in 2008, prior to the conditional approval of the drug for the treatment of the deadly brain cancer. Bevacizumab is used to treat patients with certain cancers whose cancer has spread. The study appears in the journal Cancer. "There has been a great deal of debate about the effectiveness of bevacizumab in treating patients with ...

Since records began in 1776, the people of Youngstown, Ohio had never experienced an earthquake. However, from January 2011, 109 tremors were recorded and new research in Geophysical Research-Solid Earth reveals how this may be the result of shale fracking. In December 2010, Northstar 1, a well built to pump wastewater produced by fracking in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania, came online. In the year that followed seismometers in and around Youngstown recorded 109 earthquakes; the strongest being a magnitude 3.9 earthquake on December 31, 2011. The study authors ...

By determining the three-dimensional structure of proteins at the atomic level, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have discovered how some commonly used flame retardants, called brominated flame retardants (BFRs), can mimic estrogen hormones and possibly disrupt the body's endocrine system. BFRs are chemicals added or applied to materials to slow or prevent the start or growth of fire. "We're beginning to have a better understanding of flame retardants and their effect on human health. This particular study helps us literally see what brominated flame retardants ...