VIDEO: This video shows the three-dimensional scan of an albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) skull and brain endocast (shown in blue) taken with high-resolution X-ray computed tomography. The specimen is one of more... Click here for more information. New research provides evidence that dinosaurs evolved the brainpower necessary for flight well before they actually took to the air as birds. Based on high-resolution X-ray computed tomographic (CT) scans, the study, published ...

If some volcanoes operate on geologic timescales, Costa Rica's Irazú had something of a short fuse. In a new study in the journal Nature, scientists suggest that the 1960s eruption of Costa Rica's largest stratovolcano was triggered by magma rising from the mantle over a few short months, rather than thousands of years or more, as many scientists have thought. The study is the latest to suggest that deep, hot magma can set off an eruption fairly quickly, potentially providing an extra tool for detecting an oncoming volcanic disaster. "If we had had seismic instruments ...

In this month's edition of Physics World, a group of physicists describe how unique structures in the natural world are inspiring scientists to develop new types of materials with unprecedented properties. From adhesive tape inspired by the toes of geckoes to a potential flaw-resistant coating of aeroplanes inspired by mother of pearl, the attractiveness centres on one concept -- hierarchical design. When materials have a hierarchical design, the overall structure is made up of much smaller levels, or generations, of structures that when put together exhibit extraordinary ...

Antibiotic prescribing rates for acute respiratory tract infections could be significantly lowered using internet-based training for clinicians, new research has shown. In a study, led by the University of Southampton and published in The Lancet today (Wednesday 31 July), an internet-based training programme has shown to reduce antibiotics prescribing rates by as much as 62 per cent. Paul Little, Professor of Primary Care Research at the University of Southampton, comments: "The high volume of prescribing antibiotics in primary care is a major driver of antibiotic resistance, ...

Improving water quality and hygiene practices may improve the growth of children, according to a new report. The Cochrane review – authored by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and WaterAid – found evidence of small but significant improvements in growth of children under the age of five who have access to clean water and soap. Researchers identified 14 studies conducted in low and middle income countries (Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Chile, Guatemala, Pakistan, Nepal, South Africa, Kenya and Cambodia) that provided data on the effect of water, sanitation ...

JULY 31, 2013, Cleveland: Of the three most common treatment approaches for patients with severe carotid and coronary artery disease, patients who underwent stenting of the carotid artery followed by open heart surgery had the best outcomes, according to a retrospective study from Cleveland Clinic published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study compared carotid stenting followed by open heart surgery to both staged and combined carotid endarterectomy and open heart surgery. For patients with a severe blockage in the carotid artery ...

VIDEO: Professor Adriano Aguzzi explains how the flexible tail of the prion protein poisons brain cells. Click here for more information. Prion proteins are the infectious pathogens that cause Mad Cow Disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. They occur when a normal prion protein becomes deformed and clumped. The naturally occurring prion protein is harmless and can be found in most organisms. In humans, it is found in our brain cell membrane. By contrast, the abnormally deformed ...

The work of University of Alberta researchers and their teams has contributed to an important next step in finding a cure for deadly prion-folding diseases in humans and animals. Professor Michael James of the University of Alberta Department of Biochemistry, Professor Nat Kav of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science and their labs collaborated to produce mini-antibodies and antibody fragments used by the Institute of Neuropathology in Zurich to study interactions between the antibodies and the prion protein and how it results in cell death. The ...

New research shows that rubber slat mats could improve swine health. In a new study in the Journal of Animal Science, researchers in Europe studied how different types of flooring affects claw and limb lesions, locomotion and flooring cleanliness. According to the researchers, flooring is one of the main factors in production systems that cause locomotory problems in swine. Locomotory problems can be caused by joint injuries or by circulatory problems in the legs and feet. Julia Calderón-Díaz, a PhD candidate at University of College Dublin, said pregnant sows placed ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - Two new Geology articles this month are open access: "Steady rotation of the Cascade arc" and "Silica gel formation during fault slip: Evidence from the rock record." Other new articles cover everything from the discovery of fossilized whale "intestinal products" in central Italy to flooding as a result of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption to new findings via the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) to using microfossils to reconstruct massive earthquakes in Cascadia. Highlights are provided below. Geology articles ...

Cambridge-- MIT researchers have developed a new endoscopy technology that could make it easier for doctors to detect precancerous lesions in the colon. Early detection of such lesions has been shown to reduce death rates from colorectal cancer, which kills about 50,000 people per year in the United States. The new technique, known as photometric stereo endoscopy, can capture topographical images of the colon surface along with traditional two-dimensional images. Such images make it easier to see precancerous growths, including flatter lesions that traditional endoscopy ...

Medical researchers at the University of Alberta recently published findings showing that brain development is delayed throughout childhood and adolescence for people born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Christian Beaulieu and Carmen Rasmussen, the two primary investigators in the research study, recently published the results of their work in the peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Neuroscience. Their team scanned 17 people with FASD, and 27 people without the disorder, who were between 5 and 15 years old. Each participant underwent two to three scans, ...

In an editorial published online today in BMJ, Johns Hopkins bioethicist Jeremy Sugarman and other experts warn that action is urgently needed to deal with possible unintended consequences of India's new policy protecting research participants. Passed earlier this year, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act (First Amendment) Rules, was meant to mitigate ethical concerns with potential serious consequences for public health, as well as India's viability as a continued global leader in clinical research. However, Sugarman and his co-authors highlight specific concerns that could ...

Turbulence is all around us—in the patterns that natural gas makes as it swirls through a transcontinental pipeline or in the drag that occurs as a plane soars through the sky. Reducing such turbulence on say, an airplane wing, would cut down on the amount of power the plane has to put out just to get through the air, thereby saving fuel. But in order to reduce turbulence—a very complicated phenomenon—you need to understand it, a task that has proven to be quite a challenge. Since 2006, Beverley McKeon, professor of aeronautics and associate director of the Graduate ...

This news release is available in French. Recent technological developments in genomics have revealed a large number of genetic influences on common complex diseases, such as diabetes, asthma, cancer or schizophrenia. However, discovering a genetic variant predisposing to a disease is only a first step. To apply this knowledge towards prevention or cure, including tailoring treatment to the patient's genetic profile –also known as personalized medicine – we need to know how this genetic variant affects health. In a study published today in Nature Communications, ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Chanel, UC Santa Barbara's corpse flower, has finally spread her odiferous wings, broadcasting a stench that smells like a cross between rotting flesh and Limburger cheese. "It's disgusting," said UCSB junior Connor Way, who visited Wednesday morning. "It's pretty nasty." Other visitors said Chanel smelled like "French cheese" or "a dead rat in a wall." Alex Feldwinn, a computer technician in the Life Science Computing Group at UCSB said, "It really smells like a dead animal –– not just a dead animal, but a rotting one." Edith Ogella, a longtime ...

Administering the drug rituximab once weekly for one month provides the same benefits as 18 months of daily immunosuppressive therapy in people with severe forms of vasculitis, or inflammation of the blood vessels, a study has found. Researchers from the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), an international clinical trials group funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), found that rituximab is as effective as the standard therapy at inducing and maintaining disease remission. The findings appear ...

Women who gave birth following fertility treatment had no long-term increased risk of death or major cardiovascular events compared to women who gave birth without fertility therapy, according to new research by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) and Women's College Hospital. The findings, published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, are the first to show fertility medications, which can cause short-term pregnancy complications, are not associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. "The speculated ...

Principal Investigator George Ricker likes to call it the "Goldilocks orbit" — it's not too close to Earth and her Moon, and it's not too far. In fact, it's just right. And as a result of this never-before-used orbit — advanced and fine-tuned by NASA engineers and other members of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) team — the Explorer mission led by Ricker will be perfectly positioned to map the locations of more than 500 transiting exoplanets, extrasolar planets that periodically eclipse each one's host star. When the two-year mission begins in the 2017-2018 ...

Traveling to remote locations sometimes involves navigating through stop-and-go traffic, traversing long stretches of highway and maneuvering sharp turns and steep hills. The same can be said for guiding spacecraft to far-flung destinations in space. It isn't always a straight shot. A NASA technologist has developed a fully automated tool that gives mission planners a preliminary set of detailed directions for efficiently steering a spacecraft to hard-to-reach interplanetary destinations, such as Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, and most comets and asteroids. The tool, the ...

No sooner had Tropical Storm Flossie dissipated then another tropical cyclone called Tropical Depression 7E formed yesterday, July 30, in the eastern Pacific Ocean. NASA's TRMM satellite saw "hot towers" in the storm's center early on July 31, that indicated it would likely strengthen, and it became Tropical Storm Gil hours later. NASA and the Japan Space Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite traveled above intensifying tropical storm Gil on July 31, 2013 at 0455 UTC or 12:55 a.m. EDT. The TRMM satellite pass showed that Gil was already very well ...

Tropical Depression Flossie fizzled fast on July 30 in the Central Pacific Ocean. Satellite imagery on July 31 showed remnant clouds northwest of the Hawaiian Island chain. NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center issued the final advisory on the remnants of Tropical Depression Flossie on July 30 at 1500 UTC/11 a.m. EDT. At that time Flossie's remnant low pressure area was centered near 22.3 north latitude and 159.8 west longitude, about 140 miles west-northwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. The low pressure area was still moving to the west-northwest at 16 knots and the maximum ...

Probing the preformation of the α-particle in the α-decay process is a very attractive subject in studies of nuclear structure. Recently, this crucial α-preformation probability was empirically deduced and exhibits a new feature that had been inferred to some extent by Professor REN Zhongzhou and his group from Department of Physics, Nanjing University. This work, titled "Model-independent trend of α-preformation probability", was published in SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy 2013, Vol. 56(8). Dating back to the end of the 19th century, ...

Partners of new mothers often experience shifts in sexuality, and these shifts are often unrelated to biological or medical factors pertaining to childbirth. The findings, which are published in a recent issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, expand current understanding of postpartum sexuality, and may help health professionals as they counsel new parents. Research on postpartum sexuality has typically focused on female reproductive biology in birth mothers—for example, how hormonal changes that accompany pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding affect sexual desire, or ...

The American Thoracic Society has released new clinical practice guidelines on the classification, evaluation and management of childhood interstitial lung disease (chILD) in infants. Childhood ILD includes a diverse group of rare lung diseases found in infants, children and teens that involve the interstitial tissues of the lung, which surround the air sacs (alveoli) in the lung and airways (breathing tubes). It is not known how many children have these disorders. Some types of chILD are caused by other diseases, while the cause is unclear in others, and prognosis varies ...