CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The human brain has 100 billion neurons, connected to each other in networks that allow us to interpret the world around us, plan for the future, and control our actions and movements. MIT neuroscientist Sebastian Seung wants to map those networks, creating a wiring diagram of the brain that could help scientists learn how we each become our unique selves. In a paper appearing in the Aug. 7 online edition of Nature, Seung and collaborators at MIT and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Germany have reported their first step toward this goal: ...

VIDEO: This 3-D image (looking toward the east) from TRMM PR data reveals that towering storms in the northeastern side of Henriette's eye were reaching height of almost 16.75km (~10.41 miles).... Click here for more information. NASA's TRMM satellite peered into the clouds of Hurricane Henriette as is continues moving through the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and found powerful thunderstorms that topped 10 miles high. The higher the thunderstorms are, the more powerful the uplift ...

Tropical Storm Mangkhut had some strong thunderstorms around its center as it began making landfall in northern Vietnam on Aug. 7. Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite showed very cold cloud top temperatures of those strong thunderstorms as it passed overhead. On Aug. 6 at 20:55 UTC (4:55 p.m. EDT) NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Mangkhut as it tracked west-northwest through the Gulf of Tonkin on its way to a landfall. Aqua's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured infrared data that showed that cloud top temperatures of some thunderstorms around ...

NEW YORK, NY (August 7, 2013) — Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, working with their collaborators at the Hospital for Special Surgery, have created a fleet of molecular "robots" that can home in on specific human cells and mark them for drug therapy or destruction. The nanorobots—a collection of DNA molecules, some attached to antibodies —were designed to seek a specific set of human blood cells and attach a fluorescent tag to the cell surfaces. Details of the system were published July 28, 2013, in the online edition of Nature Nanotechnology. "This ...

SAN FRANCISCO – August 7, 2013 – Researchers in Taiwan have discovered that people with sleep apnea are far more likely to develop glaucoma compared to those without the sleep condition. The results of this study, which is the first to calculate the risk of the disease among people with the sleep disorder following diagnosis, is published in this month's edition of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Conducted by researchers at Taipei Medical University, the retrospective study, "Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Increased Risk of Glaucoma," ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – If you forget where you put your car keys and you can't seem to remember things as well as you used to, the problem may well be with the GluN2B subunits in your NMDA receptors. And don't be surprised if by tomorrow you can't remember the name of those darned subunits. They help you remember things, but you've been losing them almost since the day you were born, and it's only going to get worse. An old adult may have only half as many of them as a younger person. Research on these biochemical processes in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State ...

As cloud tops fall, their temperature rises, and infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite saw that happening as Tropical Storm Gil weakened. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured an infrared picture of Tropical Storm Gil on Aug. 6 at 22:59 UTC (6:59 p.m. EDT). The AIRS data showed that cloud top temperatures had warmed since the day before, indicating that the thunderstorms that make up the tropical cyclone didn't have as much punch, or uplift to form more powerful storms. AIRS imagery is false-colored to show temperature and is created at NASA's ...

An experimental drug designed to block the advance of type 1 diabetes in its earliest stages has proven strikingly effective over two years in about half of the patients who participated in the phase 2 clinical trial. Patients who benefited most were those who still had relatively good control of their blood sugar levels and only a moderate need for insulin injections when the trial began. With the experimental drug, teplizumab, they were able to maintain their level of insulin production for the full two years -- longer than with most other drugs tested against ...

On July 26, 2013, thunderstorms passed over southern Oregon, and lightning ignited dozens of difficult-to-control wildfires. Persistently dry weather since the beginning of 2013 had primed forests to burn, and nearly all of southern Oregon was in a state of severe or moderate drought. In early August, forecasters were expecting the situation to worsen. On August 5, 2013, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Aqua captured the top image, which shows smoke rising from the Douglas Complex fire and the Big Windy Complex fire in southern Oregon. To the ...

RESTON, VIRGINIA – Research findings published today in PLOS ONE report that the setting in which a scientific peer review panel evaluates grant applications does not necessarily impact the outcome of the review process. However, the research found that the average amount of discussion panelists engage in during the review is reduced. The investigation examined more than 1,600 grant application reviews coordinated by the American Institute of Biological Sciences Scientific Peer Advisory and Review Services (AIBS SPARS) on behalf of a federal agency over a four-year period. ...

The summer of 2012 was the most severe wildfire season Russia had faced in a decade. 2013 might be headed in the same direction after an unusual heat wave brought a surge of fire activity in northern Siberia in July. A persistent high-pressure weather pattern in the Russian Arctic—a blocking high—contributed to the heat wave, which saw temperatures reach 32° Celsius (90° Fahrenheit) in the northern city of Norilsk. For comparison, daily July highs in Norilsk average 16° Celsius (61° Fahrenheit). Blocking highs are so named because they block the jet stream from moving ...

High pressures and temperatures cause materials to exhibit unusual properties, some of which can be special. Understanding such new properties is important for developing new materials for desired industrial uses and also for understanding the interior of Earth, where everything is hot and squeezed. A paper in Nature Geoscience highlights a new technique in which small amounts of a sample can be studied while being hot and squeezed within an electron microscope. Use of such a microscopy method permits determination of details down to the scale of a few atoms, including ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 7, 2013—Europa, the ice-covered moon of the planet Jupiter, may be able to support life. NASA has commissioned a team of expert scientists to consider the science goals for a landed spacecraft mission to the surface of Europa, and to investigate the composition and geology of its icy shell and the potential for life within its interior ocean. The NASA-appointed Science Definition Team outlines the main priorities of a future lander mission to Europa to study its potential habitability in an article in Astrobiology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary ...

The invasion of brain-tumor cells into surrounding tissue requires the same protein molecule that neurons need to migrate into position as they differentiate and mature, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and published August 7 in the online journal PLOS ONE. The researchers investigated similarities between the transition of neural stem cells into neurons and the process whereby cancer cells invade surrounding tissues. "Both processes involve the mobilization of cells," says Anjen Chenn, director of clinical pathology ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – The media have widely reported that retired NFL players are at risk for a neurodegenerative disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which causes symptoms such as aggression, depression, suicidality and progressive dementia. But a study of retired NFL players, led by Christopher Randolph, PhD, of Loyola University Medical Center, has found no evidence to support this theory. Randolph and colleagues report their findings in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. While there are no clearly defined diagnostic criteria ...

MADISON — In a world full of hungry predators, prey animals must be constantly vigilant to avoid getting eaten. But plants face a particular challenge when it comes to defending themselves. "One of the things that makes plants so ecologically interesting is that they can't run away," says John Orrock, a zoology professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "You can't run, you can't necessarily hide, so what can you do? Some plants make themselves less tasty." Some do this either by boosting their production of toxic or unpleasant-tasting chemicals (think cyanide, ...

VIDEO: Botswana's Okavango Delta and the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans are two ends of a 360-mile round trip zebra migration, the second longest on Earth. In this animation, shades of red show... Click here for more information. One of the world's longest migrations of zebras occurs in the African nation of Botswana, but predicting when and where zebras will move has not been possible until now. Using NASA rain and vegetation data, researchers can track when and where arid lands ...

SALT LAKE CITY—When a child is diagnosed with cancer, one of the first questions the parents ask is "Will my other children get cancer?" A new study from Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah suggests the answer to that question depends on whether a family history of cancer exists. The research results were published online in the International Journal of Cancer and will appear in the November 15 print issue. The study, led by Joshua Schiffman, M.D., medical director of HCI's High Risk Pediatric Cancer Clinic and a pediatric hematologist/oncologist ...

HOUSTON -- A program that pushes immature cells to grow up and fulfill their destiny as useful, dedicated cells is short-circuited in the most common and deadly form of brain tumor, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Stuck in what amounts to cellular adolescence, these precursor cells accumulate, contributing to the variability among glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cells that make it so difficult to treat, said first author Jian Hu, Ph.D., instructor ...

Every hourly increase in daily television watching at 29 months of age is associated with diminished vocabulary and math skills, classroom engagement (which is largely determined by attention skills), victimization by classmates, and physical prowess at kindergarten, according to Professor Linda Pagani of the University of Montreal and the CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital. "This is the first time ever that a stringently controlled associational birth cohort study has looked at and found a relationship between too much toddler screen time and kindergarten risks for ...

Cincinnati, OH, August 8, 2013 -- Concussions have become a major public health issue, with both short- and long-term side effects. In sports, cheerleading has the highest rate of catastrophic injury, with some studies reporting approximately 6% of total injuries as concussions. Return-to-play guidelines have relied on athletes' self-reports; however, this has led to concerns about the ability of athletes to truly recognize their own symptoms and recovery. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers evaluate the accuracy of neurocognitive ...

Results from a clinical trial of eteplirsen, a drug designed to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, suggest that the therapy allows participants to walk farther than people treated with placebo and dramatically increases production of a protein vital to muscle growth and health. The study, led by a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, is the first of its kind to show these results from an exon-skipping drug—a class of therapeutics that allows cells to skip over missing parts of the gene and produce protein naturally. "I've been doing this ...

A Penn State-led research team has found that changes to proteins called histones, which are associated with DNA, can control whether or not a gene is allowed to function. The changes may be important in maintaining the genes' "expression potential" so that future cells behave as their parent cells did. The discovery, which may have implications for the study of diseases such as cancer, will be published in a print edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was led by Lu Bai, an assistant professor of biochemistry, molecular biology, ...

Women living in large urban areas are at a significantly higher risk of postpartum depression after five to 14 months of giving birth compared to those living in rural areas, according to a new Canadian study led by Women's College Hospital's Dr. Simone Vigod. The study, published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, strongly links geographic location and postpartum depression. The researchers suggest differences in risk factors, including place of birth, social support and history of depression, in combination with geography, may contribute to postpartum ...

Forests have a limited capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study from Northern Arizona University. The study, available online in the journal New Phytologist, aimed to explore how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide could alter the carbon and nitrogen content of ecosystems. By performing tests on subtropical woodland plots over an 11-year period, the researchers found that ecosystem carbon uptake was not significantly increased by the high CO2 treatment—in contrast to expectations. While plants did contain more carbon when CO2 levels were ...