Two University of Iowa researchers and their colleagues have advanced scientists' knowledge of the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts by answering a long-standing question about the belts. Craig Kletzing and William Kurth of the UI Department of Physics and Astronomy note that since 1958 when UI space physicist James Van Allen discovered the doughnut-shaped bands of intense radiation encircling the Earth, scientists have wondered just how and where electrons trapped within the belts get their ultra-high energies. In a paper published in the July 25 issue of the online ...

The path of the peanut from a snack staple to the object of bans at schools, day care centers and beyond offers important insights into how and why a rare, life-threatening food allergy can prompt far-reaching societal change, according to a Princeton University researcher. Before 1980, peanut allergies were rarely mentioned in medical literature or the media, said Miranda Waggoner, a postdoctoral researcher at the Office of Population Research in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Her article on the subject, "Parsing the peanut panic: The ...

For decades, doctors have understood that microbes in the human gut can influence how certain drugs work in the body – by either activating or inactivating specific compounds, but questions have long remained about exactly how the process works. Harvard scientists are now beginning to provide those answers. In a July 19th paper published in Science, Peter Turnbaugh, a Bauer Fellow at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Center for Systems Biology, and Henry Haiser, a postdoctoral fellow, identify a pair of genes which appear to be responsible for allowing ...

Approaching the sun, Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite backdrop of numerous galaxies and a handful of foreground stars. The icy visitor, with its long gossamer tail, appears to be swimming like a tadpole through a deep pond of celestial wonders. In reality, the comet is much, much closer. The nearest star to the sun is over 60,000 times farther away, and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way is over thirty billion times more distant. These vast dimensions are lost in this deep space Hubble exposure that visually combines our view of the universe from ...

Scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe called the Van Allen radiation belts. Scientists knew that something in space accelerated particles in the radiation belts to more than 99 percent the speed of light but they didn't know what that something was. New results from NASA's Van Allen Probes now show that the acceleration energy comes from within the belts themselves. Particles inside the belts are sped up by local kicks ...

The moment when a telescope first opens its doors represents the culmination of years of work and planning -- while simultaneously laying the groundwork for a wealth of research and answers yet to come. It is a moment of excitement and perhaps even a little uncertainty. On July 17, 2013, the international team of scientists and engineers who supported and built NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, all lived through that moment. As the spacecraft orbited around Earth, the door of the telescope opened to view the mysterious lowest layers of the sun's atmosphere ...

Princeton University researchers have created "souped up" versions of the calcium-sensitive proteins that for the past decade or so have given scientists an unparalleled view and understanding of brain-cell communication. Reported July 18 in the journal Nature Communications, the enhanced proteins developed at Princeton respond more quickly to changes in neuron activity, and can be customized to react to different, faster rates of neuron activity. Together, these characteristics would give scientists a more precise and comprehensive view of neuron activity. The researchers ...

MADISON, Wis., July 25, 2013 – U.S. Forest Service researchers have identified what may be a key to unraveling some of the mysteries of White Nose Syndrome: the closest known non-disease causing relatives of the fungus that causes WNS. These fungi, many of them still without formal Latin names, live in bat hibernation sites and even directly on bats, but they do not cause the devastating disease that has killed millions of bats in the eastern United States. Researchers hope to use these fungi to understand why one fungus can be deadly to bats while its close relatives are ...

Using data from a NASA satellite, a team of scientists led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and involving the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe known as the Van Allen radiation belts. The new results from NASA's Van Allen Probes mission show the acceleration energy is in the belts themselves. Local bumps of energy kick particles inside the belts to ever-faster speeds, much like ...

In a newly released study, education researchers report that personifying energy allowed students to grapple with difficult ideas about how energy works. Contrasted with more traditional lectures and graphs, this innovative instructional technique may be useful for teaching about other ideas in physical science, which commonly deals with things that change form over time. Energy is a very important concept across many fields of science, and is a key focus of the new national science standards. Energy is also a central player in several global issues, such as climate ...

Pesticides commonly used in California's Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions, have been found in remote frog species miles from farmland. Writing in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, researchers demonstrate the contamination of Pacific Tree Fogs in remote mountain areas, including national parks; supporting past research on the potential transport of pesticides by the elements. California's Central Valley is one of the most intensely farmed regions in North America, producing 8% of U.S agricultural output by value. While the use ...

WASHINGTON — Emergency physicians correctly identified nearly 100 percent of patients with Bell's palsy, the symptoms of which are nearly identical to potentially life-threatening diseases such as stroke and brain tumors. The results of a study of 6 years of California patient records were published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Potential Misdiagnoses of Bell's Palsy in the Emergency Department"). "Even lacking established guidelines for diagnosing Bell's palsy, which is the most common cause of paralysis of one side of the face, emergency physicians ...

Adenoviruses commonly infect humans, causing colds, flu-like symptoms and sometimes even death, but now UC San Francisco researchers have discovered that a new species of adenovirus can spread from primate to primate, and potentially from monkey to human. UCSF researchers previously identified a new adenovirus in New World titi monkeys that killed most of the monkeys infected during an outbreak in a closed monkey colony in California in 2009. At the time, a research scientist who worked closely with the monkeys and a family member, both of whom were found to ...

The author of a paper to be presented at the upcoming 2013 International Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting has described behavioral, cognitive, and perceptual attributes of e-mail users who are vulnerable to phishing attacks. Phishing is the use of fraudulent e-mail correspondence to obtain passwords and credit card information, or to send viruses. In "Keeping Up With the Joneses: Assessing Phishing Susceptibility in an E-mail Task," Kyung Wha Hong discovered that people who were overconfident, introverted, or women were less able to accurately distinguish ...

The surface characteristics of nanoscaffolds made by nanotechnology are more similar to the three-dimensional topological structure of the extracellular matrix and the effects on the biological behaviors of cells and tissue repair are more beneficial. Dr. Jihui Zhou and team from the Fifth Hospital Affiliated to Qiqihar Medical University prepared aligned and randomly oriented collagen nanofiber scaffolds using electronic spinning technology. The diameters and appearance of prepared scaffolds reached the standards of tissue-engineered nanometer scaffolds. The nanofiber ...

Synaptic remodeling is one of the most common pathological changes after epileptic seizures. Ectopic synaptic reconstruction in the hippocampus is considered to be closely related with temporal lobe epilepsy. Mossy fiber sprouting may trigger synaptic connections or synaptic remodeling in hippocampal CA3 pyramidal cells, which could lead to the formation of excitatory synaptic circuits, thereby increasing epileptic susceptibility. Exogenous neuropeptide Y has antiepileptic effects; however, the underlying mechanism and optimal administration method for neuropeptide Y are ...

A research team from the School of Basic Medical Sciences, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine reports that Radix Achyranthis Bidentatae can inhibit advanced glycation end product formation, reduce their levels in the frontal cortex, and improve learning and memory capabilities in ovariectomized rats. The Radix Achyranthis Bidentatae inhibitory effect on advanced glycation end product accumulation is associated with an antioxidative effect. These novel findings, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 18, 2013), provide insight into the mechanisms ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA – Impressive examples of new non-invasive optical techniques using lasers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and spectroscopic methods to probe and render images from beneath the surface of the skin are featured in a newly completed special section in the Journal of Biomedical Optics published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. The techniques may be used in a wide variety of medical and cosmetic applications such as treating burns, identifying cancer, or speeding the healing of wounds. "The skin is the biggest organ of ...

The coral-stromatoporoid reef disappearing from the planet earth was one of the most significant and representative phenomena for the Late Devonian F-F transitional mass extinction event. Professor GONG Yiming and his group (Wu Yibu, Feng Qi etc.) from State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology of China University of Geosciences are trying to tackle this problem. After several years of continuous research, they have discovered that blooming and invading of bacteria and algae played an important role for before 370 Ma (Late Devonian F-F transition) coral-stromatoporoid ...

The Kondo effect in 1982 earned the Nobel Prize in Physics to Kenneth Wilson – the American physicist who passed away this year – who had solved numerically such solid-state physics "problem". Now a group of scientists, including some researchers of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste have explored a lesser known variant, predicting theoretically that the phenomenon can be actually observed, and describing its behavior in detail. The Kondo effect, described for the first time in the last century by Japanese physicist Jun Kondo, is observed ...

Many people complain about poor sleep around the full moon, and now a report appearing in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on July 25 offers some of the first convincing scientific evidence to suggest that this really is true. The findings add to evidence that humans—despite the comforts of our civilized world—still respond to the geophysical rhythms of the moon, driven by a circalunar clock. "The lunar cycle seems to influence human sleep, even when one does not 'see' the moon and is not aware of the actual moon phase," says Christian Cajochen of the Psychiatric ...

The immunosuppressive drug rapamycin has been shown to increase longevity in mice even when treatment begins at an advanced age. It is unclear if the extension of life also correlates with prolonged health and vigor. In the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dan Ehninger and colleagues at the German Center for Neurodegenrative Diseases evaluated age-associated characteristics in mice treated with rapamycin. They found that rapamycin improved memory and spatial learning, reduced thyroid follicle size, and reduced body fat in older mice. However, many ...

An underlying cause of hearing loss is the death of sensory hair cells in the inner ear, which can be damaged in response to a variety of factors including the use of aminoglycoside antibiotics. Previous research has shown that sensory hair cell death in response to antibiotic treatment can be prevented by triggering the expression of HSP70, a member of the heat shock family of proteins that are induced by cellular stress. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Lisa Cunningham and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health investigate the mechanism ...

A lifespan-extending drug has limited effects on aging The immunosuppressive drug rapamycin has been shown to increase longevity in mice even when treatment begins at an advanced age. It is unclear if the extension of life also correlates with prolonged health and vigor. In the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dan Ehninger and colleagues at the German Center for Neurodegenrative Diseases evaluated age-associated characteristics in mice treated with rapamycin. They found that rapamycin improved memory and spatial learning, reduced thyroid follicle ...

Epilepsy is characterized by recurrent seizures that present in many different ways. In some cases epileptic patients exhibit a progressive increase in both frequency and severity of seizures. Epigenetic changes such as DNA methylation have recently been implied as an underlying cause of several neurologic disorders, including epilepsy. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Detlev Boison and colleagues at Legacy Research show an increase of DNA methylation in the hippocampi of epileptic animals. They found that increased methyation corresponded with ...