From Inciweb.org: Fire crews had their hands full with very active fire behavior today. Near Duckwall Ridge, the fire spotted across the line with crews working to control the spot. The fire also crossed the 3N01 road in Reynolds Creek, prompting an expansion of the evacuation advisory in the Highway 108 corridor. Fire crews also were working to contain a spot fire in the southeast portion of the fire as it crossed to the south of Highway 120 at Ackerson Flat. Firefighters were successful in completing dozer line below Pilot Ridge, effectively slowing the fires spread in ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Supervolcanoes, such as the one sitting dormant under Yellowstone National Park, are capable of producing eruptions thousands of times more powerful than normal volcanic eruptions. While they only happen every several thousand years, these eruptions have the potential to kill millions of people and animals due to the massive amount of heat and ash they release into the atmosphere. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have shown that the ash produced by supervolcanoes can be so hot that it has the ability to turn back into lava once it hits the ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – August 27, 2013 – Women undergoing treatment for breast cancer are widely prescribed calcium and vitamin D supplements to prevent and manage osteoporosis, an unwanted side effect of breast cancer therapies. However, new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center finds that the recommended daily doses of these supplements may not prevent loss of bone mineral density (BMD) in these women. Study author Gary G. Schwartz, Ph.D., a cancer epidemiologist at Wake Forest Baptist, said the purpose of the study was to examine whether a seemingly common ...

Widespread wildfires are lighting up Indonesia, but these fires were not started accidentally. These fires were set deliberately to clear land for palm oil companies. This type of "slash-and-burn" agricultural has been used for centuries to clear land for new planting, however, the setting of such fires is now illegal in Indonesia. That doesn't seem to be stopping plantation owners from continuing this practice. The Huffington Post reports that Laurel Sutherlin of the Rainforest Action Network, a San Francisco-based environmental organization sent the paper an email ...

BOWLING GREEN, O. -- Interval training is a well-known way to get the maximum benefits of exercise in the shortest amount of time. New research shows that when it comes to running, women may get more out of high intensity interval training (HIIT) than their male counterparts. "Sex-specific Responses to Interval Training" was conducted by Drs. Matt Laurent and Matt Kutz, Human Movement, Sport and Leisure Studies at Bowling Green State University; Lauren Vervaecke, Division of Applied Physiology, University of South Carolina; and Dr. Matt Green, Department of Health, Physical ...

This news release is available in Spanish. More than three-quarters of Hispanics patients in North Carolina aren't performing skin self-exams (SSE) to detect possible skin cancers, and physicians need to do a better job of educating their patients about this potentially life-saving practice, say researchers in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Study results were reported earlier this year in the Research Letters section of the Archives of Dermatology. "We know that the rates of melanoma, one of the deadliest skin cancers, ...

Young footballers on the verge of becoming professionals are now much more likely to be supportive of gay teammates than a decade ago, according to new research from sociologists at the universities of Kent and Winchester. Conducted via interviews with 22 Premier League academy footballers aged 16-18, the research found that all the participants would openly accept one of their colleagues coming out. The research, led by Dr Steven Roberts, of the University of Kent's School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, and Professor Eric Anderson, of the University ...

Washington, DC—Researchers from Children's National Medical Center have found that an alternate, "escape" replication process triggered by apoptosis—the process of cell death or "cell suicide"—appears to be common in human herpesviruses (HHV). The findings have implications for better understanding of viruses and of disease conditions and treatments, like chemotherapy, that stimulate apoptosis. The study was published online, ahead of print, in the Journal of Virology. HHV are linked to a range of childhood and adult diseases, including chickenpox, mononucleosis, roseola, ...

Tampa, FL (August 27, 2013) -- University of South Florida Distinguished Professor Benjamin Djulbegovic, MD, PhD, has studied the ethics of randomized clinical trials and their effectiveness in evaluating the outcomes of new treatments for decades. Now, in a paper published Aug. 22 in the top journal Nature, Dr. Djulbegovic and colleagues report that on average new treatments work better than existing ones just over half the time. On scientific and ethical grounds, they say, the randomized controlled trial (RCT) system's little more than 50-50 success rate over the past ...

Hamilton, ON (August 27, 2013) – Although up to 500,000 people world-wide die of severe influenza each year, there has been no clear evidence about who is susceptible for influenza complications and it may not be who people think, says a study from McMaster University. This is important because issues during past influenza seasons and pandemics have included vaccine shortage; the time needed to develop vaccines for specific influenza strains and which groups are first in line for vaccination. New mothers and obese people, two groups not typically regarded as risk groups, ...

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found a specific protein in nearly 100 percent of high-grade meningiomas -- the most common form of brain tumor -- suggesting a new target for therapies for a cancer that does not respond to current chemotherapy. Importantly, the investigators say, the protein -- NY-ESO-1 -- is already at the center of a clinical trial underway at the National Cancer Institute. That trial is designed to activate the immune systems of patients with other types of tumors that express the protein, training the body to attack the cancer and eradicate ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- In the Midwest, people have a fear of encountering snapping turtles while swimming in local ponds, lakes and rivers. Now in a new study, a University of Missouri researcher has found that snapping turtles are surviving in urban areas as their natural habitats are being polluted or developed for construction projects. One solution is for people to stop using so many chemicals that are eventually dumped into the waterways, the scientist said. "Snapping turtles are animals that can live in almost any aquatic habitat as long as their basic needs for survival ...

University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher. Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side of the UW campus, causing Stocco's finger to move on a keyboard. While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have ...

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S. states, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values. "This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic [the first was published in 2009, see below], and in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind turbines have had any measurable impact on home sales prices," says Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report. Hoen is a researcher ...

NASA satellite imagery on Aug. 27 showed that wind shear was having an effect on the thunderstorms in Tropical Storm Kong-Rey's northern quadrant. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kong-Rey on Aug. 27 at 0515 UTC/1:15 a.m. EDT and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer took a visible image of the storm. The imagery showed that the northern quadrant of the storm had the weakest area of thunderstorm development as a result of northeasterly wind shear, while the southern and western quadrants had strong thunderstorms. Wind shear is expected to relax ...

Tropical moisture continued to stream over eastern Mexico on Aug. 27, from the remnants of former Tropical Storm Fernand. NASA's TRMM satellite captured the moisture-laden Tropical Storm Fernand after it made landfall and was dropping rainfall at a rate of 2 inches/50 mm per hour. On Aug. 27 at 10:32 EDT, radar data from Mexico showed rainfall streaming in from near the city of Tampico on the Gulf of Mexico, to the west and northwest. Areas including Ebano and Panuco were experiencing heavy rainfall at the time. The center of Fernand's remnants were near 20.6 north latitude ...

The fact that taller people also tend to be slightly smarter is due in roughly equal parts to two phenomena—the same genes affect both traits and taller people are more likely than average to mate with smarter people and vice versa—according to a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The study did not find that environmental factors contributed to the connection between being taller and being smarter, both traits that people tend to find attractive. The modest correlation between height and IQ has been documented in multiple studies stretching back to the ...

A new type of defibrillator implanted under the skin can detect dangerously abnormal heart rhythms and deliver shocks to restore a normal heartbeat without wires touching the heart, according to research in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation. The subcutaneous implantable cardiac defibrillator (S-ICD®) includes a lead placed under the skin along the left side of the breast bone. Traditional implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) include electrical conducting wires inserted into blood vessels that touch the heart. ICDs can greatly reduce the risk of ...

Scientists studying the decline and recovery of seagrass beds in one of California's largest estuaries have found that recolonization of the estuary by sea otters was a crucial factor in the seagrass comeback. Led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of August 26. Seagrass meadows, which provide coastal protection and important habitat for fish, are declining worldwide, partly because of excessive nutrients entering coastal waters in runoff from farms and ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Programs aimed at helping obese black women lose weight have not had the same success as programs for black men and white men and women. But new research from Duke University has found that a successful alternative could be a "maintain, don't gain" approach. The study, which appears in the Aug. 26 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, compared changes in weight and risk for diabetes, heart disease or stroke among 194 premenopausal black women, aged 25-44. They were recruited from Piedmont Health's six nonprofit community health centers in a multi-county area ...

Berkeley — Knocking out a single enzyme dramatically cripples the ability of aggressive cancer cells to spread and grow tumors, offering a promising new target in the development of cancer treatments, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The paper, to be published Monday, Aug. 26, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sheds new light on the importance of lipids, a group of molecules that includes fatty acids and cholesterol, in the development of cancer. Researchers have long known that cancer ...

PHILADELPHIA – Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrate for the first time that the immune system influences the skin microbiome. A new study found that the skin microbiome – a collection of microorganisms inhabiting the human body – is governed, at least in part, by an ancient branch of the immune system called complement. In turn, it appears microbes on the skin tweak the complement system, as well as immune surveillance of the skin. They found that complement may, in part, be responsible for maintaining a diverse ...

PHILADELPHIA - Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania report the first biomarker results reported from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI), showing that a comprehensive test of protein biomarkers in spinal fluid have prognostic and diagnostic value in early stages of Parkinson's disease. The study is reported in JAMA Neurology. Compared to healthy adults, the study found that people with early Parkinson's had lower levels of amyloid beta, tau and alpha synuclein in their spinal fluid. In addition, those with lower ...

When ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS, a preinvasive malignancy of the breast) is described as a high-risk condition rather than cancer, more women report that they would opt for nonsurgical treatments, according to a research letter by Zehra B. Omer, B.A., of Massachusetts General Hospital—Institute for Technology Assessment, Boston, and colleagues. A total of 394 healthy women without a history of breast cancer participated in the study and were presented with three scenarios that described a diagnosis of DCIS as noninvasive breast cancer, breast lesion, or abnormal cells. ...

An intervention not focused on weight loss was effective for weight gain prevention among socioeconomically disadvantaged black women, according to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Promoting clinically meaningful weight loss among black women has been a challenge. Compared to white women, "black women have higher rates of body weight satisfaction, fewer social pressures to lose weight, and sociocultural norms that tolerate heavier body weights," according to the study background. "New weight management strategies are necessary ...