Wouldn't it be fun to do experiments while floating free inside an airplane? Scientists from NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland get to do just that using suborbital flights. These planes fly in roller-coaster arcs to create a few minutes of free fall, allowing for low-gravity research. These suborbital aircraft flight experiments are precursors for International Space Station investigations. So just why are they needed before experiments and equipment are sent to the space station? Researchers use this environment to test investigation and hardware concepts before ...

Countless e-cigarette websites have a unique V2 Cigs coupon code, but the new one from EcigaretteReviewed offers the biggest discount available online. It's good for 20% off any of V2 Cigs' products, and can be combined with any of the manufacturer's offers for an even bigger saving. V2 Cigs hold the coveted top spot on the review site, and the new discount makes it cheaper than ever to make the switch to e-cigarettes. The offer only runs until the 28th of February, so users need to act quickly. V2 Cigs is generally recognized as the world-leading e-cigarette manufacturer, ...

(Vancouver – February 20, 2013) – Doctors should not be discouraged from prescribing isotretinoin to adolescents for inflammatory acne, according to a new study by Canadian and U.S. scientists showing the drug does not increase the risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Led by Dr. Mahyar Etminan of the Child & Family Research Institute at BC Children's Hospital, the Provincial Health Services Authority and the University of British Columbia, the scientists addressed this important drug safety question because of a previous study linking the drug to IBD. In this new ...

NEW YORK (Feb. 20, 2013) -- Physicians at Weill Cornell Medical College and biomedical engineers at Cornell University have succeeded in building a facsimile of a living human ear that looks and acts like a natural ear. Researchers believe their bioengineering method will finally succeed in the long quest by scientists and physicians to provide normal looking "new" ears to thousands of children born with a congenital ear deformity. In their PLOS ONE study, the researchers demonstrate how 3D printing and new injectable gels made of living cells can be used to fashion ears ...

The drug scopolamine has been used to treat a variety of conditions, including nausea and motion sickness. A new study by UCLA life scientists suggests that it may also be useful in treating anxiety disorders. Researchers found that the drug can help boost the effectiveness of a common treatment for anxiety disorders known as exposure therapy. In exposure therapy, a subject with a phobia or anxiety is repeatedly exposed to the object or situation they fear, in a non-threatening setting. The goal of this treatment is to ultimately lessen and eliminate the fear — in essence, ...

RICHLAND, Wash. – A quick, accurate and highly sensitive process to reliably detect minute traces of explosives on luggage, cargo or travelling passengers has been demonstrated by scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The vapor detection technology accurately detects and identifies the vapors of even very low-volatility explosives in real time at ambient temperature and without sample pre-concentration. Details are outlined in a recent issue of Analytical Chemistry. Rather than searching for particle residue using a typical method ...

ALBANY, Calif.—A team of more than a dozen scientists from the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest (PSW) and Pacific Northwest research stations, universities and Region 5 Ecology Program recently released a synthesis of relevant science that will help inform forest managers as they revise plans for the national forests in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades of California. The three most southern national forests in the Sierra Nevada—Inyo, Sequoia and Sierra—will be among the first of the 155 national forests to update their management plans. The new planning rule ...

In the weeks, months and years after a severe head injury, patients often experience epileptic seizures that are difficult to control. A new study in rats suggests that gently cooling the brain after injury may prevent these seizures. "Traumatic head injury is the leading cause of acquired epilepsy in young adults, and in many cases the seizures can't be controlled with medication," says senior author Matthew Smyth, MD, associate professor of neurological surgery and of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "If we can confirm cooling's effectiveness ...

In many animals, the brain is located in a specific structure, the head, together with sensory organs and often together with the mouth. However, there are even more distantly related animals, which have a nervous system, but no brain, like sea anemones and corals. In this collaborative study between a research group led by Fabian Rentzsch (Sars Centre Bergen) and Ulrich Technau from the Dept. of Molecular Evolution and Development the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis was used to find out if one of the ends of the sea anemone corresponds to the head of higher animals. ...

Experts tout the health benefits of low-dose aspirin and omega-3 fatty acids found in foods like flax seeds and salmon, but the detailed mechanisms involved in their effects are not fully known. Now researchers reporting in the February 21 issue of the Cell Press journal Chemistry & Biology show that aspirin helps trigger the production of molecules called resolvins that are naturally made by the body from omega-3 fatty acids. These resolvins shut off, or "resolve," the inflammation that underlies destructive conditions such as inflammatory lung disease, heart disease, ...

Living against the clock—working late-night shifts or eating at inappropriate times, for example—can come with real health risks, metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes among them. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on February 21 have new evidence to explain why it matters not just what mice (or by extension, people) eat, but also when they eat it. Insulin action rises and falls according to a 24-hour, circadian rhythm, the researchers found. What's more, mice unable to keep the time for one reason or another get stuck in an insulin-resistant ...

Monarch butterflies are well known for their ability to fly 2,000 miles south from North America to Mexico each fall and back again in the spring. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on February 21 have evidence to show that the butterflies would just keep on heading south if it weren't for the chilly weather. The findings help to explain why the butterflies spend the winter on frosty mountaintops. They also imply that global climate change could profoundly influence the monarchs' migrations, the researchers say. "The monarchs need ...

PHILADELPHIA — Neuroblastoma, the most common malignant tumor of early childhood, is frequently associated with the presence of MYCN amplification, a genetic biomarker associated with poor prognosis. Researchers have determined that tumors containing MYCN amplification are sensitive to a new class of drugs, BET bromodomain inhibitors. The researchers made this discovery in a preclinical study, which was funded in part by a Stand Up To Cancer Innovative Research Grant and was published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "BET ...

If a genome is the blueprint for life, then the chief architects are tiny slices of genetic material that orchestrate how we are assembled and function, Yale School of Medicine researchers report Feb. 21 in the journal Developmental Cell. The study pinpoints the molecular regulators of epigenetics – the process by which unchanging genes along our DNA are switched on and off at precisely right time and place. "Our genome is like a landscape with lakes, mountains, and rivers, but it is not yet a community or a city full of buildings," said Haifan Lin, director of the ...

WORCESTER, MA – Each fall millions of monarch butterflies from across the eastern United States begin a southward migration in order to escape the frigid temperatures of their northern boundaries, traveling up to 2,000 miles to an overwintering site in a specific grove of fir trees in central Mexico. Surprisingly, a new study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School published in Current Biology, suggests that exposure to coldness found in the microenvironment of the monarch's overwintering site triggers their return north every spring. Without this ...

IRVINE, Calif. (February 20, 2013) – New analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) , a program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicates that consuming avocados may be associated with better diet quality and nutrient intake level, lower intake of added sugars, lower body weight, BMI and waist circumferences, higher "good cholesterol" levels and lower metabolic syndrome risk. These results were published in the January 2013 issue of Nutrition Journal. Specifically, the survey data (NHANES 2001-2008, ...

DENVER (Feb. 21, 2013) – A new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows that the earliest human burial practices in Eurasia varied widely, with some graves lavish and ornate while the vast majority were fairly plain. "We don't know why some of these burials were so ornate, but what's striking is that they postdate the arrival of modern humans in Eurasia by almost 10,000 years," said Julien Riel-Salvatore, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology at CU Denver and lead author of the study. "When they appear around 30,000 years ago some are lavish but many aren't ...

Disruption in the body's circadian rhythm can lead not only to obesity, but can also increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease. That is the conclusion of the first study to show definitively that insulin activity is controlled by the body's circadian biological clock. The study, which was published on Feb. 21 in the journal Current Biology, helps explain why not only what you eat, but when you eat, matters. The research was conducted by a team of Vanderbilt scientists directed by Professor of Biological Sciences Carl Johnson and Professors of Molecular Physiology ...

Flower colors that contrast with their background are more important to foraging bees than patterns of colored veins on pale flowers according to new research, by Heather Whitney from the University of Cambridge in the UK, and her colleagues. Their observation of how patterns of pigmentation on flower petals influence bumblebees' behavior suggests that color veins give clues to the location of the nectar. There is little to suggest, however, that bees have an innate preference for striped flowers. The work is published online in Springer's journal, Naturwissenschaften - ...

Scientists from the University of Southampton have identified the molecular system that contributes to the harmful inflammatory reaction in the brain during neurodegenerative diseases. An important aspect of chronic neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's or prion disease, is the generation of an innate inflammatory reaction within the brain. Results from the study open new avenues for the regulation of the inflammatory reaction and provide new insights into the understanding of the biology of microglial cells, which play a leading ...

A new study shows that children who are exposed to bullying during childhood are at increased risk of psychiatric disorders in adulthood, regardless of whether they are victims or perpetrators. Professor William E. Copeland of Duke University Medical Center and Professor Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick led a team in examining whether bullying in childhood predicts psychiatric problems and suicidality in young adulthood. While some still view bullying as a harmless rite of passage, research shows that being a victim of bullying increases the risk of adverse outcomes ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Early life stress like that experienced by ill newborns appears to take an early toll of the heart, affecting its ability to relax and refill with oxygen-rich blood, researchers report. Rat pups separated from their mothers a few hours each day, experienced a significant decrease in this basic heart function when – as life tends to do – an extra stressor was added to raise blood pressure, said Dr. Catalina Bazacliu, neonatologist at the Medical College of Georgia and Children's Hospital of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. Bazacliu worked under the ...

Kyoto, Japan – Working with a group from Nagasaki University, a research group at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Japan's Kyoto University has announced in the Feb. 21 online publication of Cell Stem Cell has successfully modeled Alzheimer's disease (AD) using both familial and sporadic patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and revealed stress phenotypes and differential drug responsiveness associated with intracellular amyloid beta oligomers in AD neurons and astrocytes. In a study published online in Cell Stem Cell, Associate ...

People who are at greater genetic risk of schizophrenia are more likely to see a fall in IQ as they age, even if they do not develop the condition. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh say the findings could lead to new research into how different genes for schizophrenia affect brain function over time. They also show that genes associated with schizophrenia influence people in other important ways besides causing the illness itself. The researchers used the latest genetic analysis techniques to reach their conclusion on how thinking skills change with age. They ...

Brussels and Geneva, 20th February 2013 --- Major progress has been made in the past 30 years in the knowledge and management of liver disease, yet approximately 29 million Europeans still suffer from a chronic liver condition. The European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) today unveiled its new publication The burden of liver disease in Europe: a review of available epidemiological data. Key findings in the report suggest that alcohol consumption, viral hepatitis B and C and metabolic syndromes related to overweight and obesity are the leading causes of ...