If you had to explain what causes the change in seasons, could you? Surprisingly, studies have shown that as many as 95 percent of people — including most college graduates — hold the incorrect belief that the seasons are the result of the Earth moving closer to or further from the sun. The real answer, scientists say, is that as Earth's axis is tilted with respect to its orbit, when on its journey it is angled inward, the sun rises higher in the sky, and that results in more direct sunlight, longer days, and warmer temperatures. Distance plays no role; we are actually ...

What do all Twitter users want? Followers – and lots of them. But unless you're a celebrity, it can be difficult to build your Twitter audience (and even some celebs have trouble). Looking at a half-million tweets over 15 months, a first-of-its-kind study from Georgia Tech has revealed a set of reliable predictors for building a Twitter following. The research was performed by Eric Gilbert, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing. Gilbert found that Twitter users can grow their followers by such tactics as: Don't talk about yourself: Informational ...

A multimillion dollar University of Colorado Boulder instrument package to study space weather has passed its pre-installation testing and is ready to be incorporated onto a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite for a 2015 launch. Designed and built by CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the instrument suite known as the Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors, or EXIS, is the first of four identical packages that will fly on four NOAA weather satellites slated for launch beginning in 2015. CU-Boulder's EXIS will measure energy ...

TORONTO: Prompt use of an automated external defibrillator, or AED, can greatly increase the survival rates of people who suffer a cardiac arrest. And MIE Professor Tim Chan, working with Dr. Laurie Morrison at St. Michael's Hospital, has developed a formula to determine where best to place these costly but life-saving devices. In a paper published in Circulation, Chan and Morrison note that publicly registered AEDs in Toronto are not in the best locations to help victims of cardiac arrest. In fact, less than one in four of all cardiac arrests had an AED close by (within ...

By bouncing eye-safe laser pulses off a mirror on a hillside, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have transferred ultraprecise time signals through open air with unprecedented precision equivalent to the "ticking" of the world's best next-generation atomic clocks. Described in Nature Photonics,* the demonstration shows how next-generation atomic clocks at different locations could be linked wirelessly to improve geodesy (altitude mapping), distribution of time and frequency information, satellite navigation, radar arrays and other ...

Three years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, crude oil toxicity continues to sicken a sentinel Gulf Coast fish species, according to new findings from a research team that includes a University of California, Davis, scientist. With researchers from Louisiana and South Carolina, the scientists found that Gulf killifish embryos exposed to sediments from oiled locations show developmental abnormalities, including heart defects, delayed hatching and reduced hatching success. The killifish is an environmental indicator species, or a "canary in the ...

Wide-eyed expressions that typically signal fear may enlarge our visual field and mutually enhance others' ability to locate threats, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research, conducted by psychology graduate student Daniel Lee of the University of Toronto with advisor Adam Anderson, suggests that wide-eyed expressions of fear are functional in ways that directly benefit both the person who makes the expression and the person who observes it. The findings show that widened eyes ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– By using light, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have manipulated the quantum state of a single atomic-sized defect in diamond –– the nitrogen-vacancy center –– in a method that not only allows for more unified control than conventional processes, but is more versatile, and opens up the possibility of exploring new solid-state quantum systems. Their results are published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. "In contrast to conventional electronics, we developed an all-optical scheme for controlling ...

According to the Cape Cod Times of April 30, 2013: "The Massachusetts Army National Guard's Natural Resource Program is conducting a prescribed burn at the Upper Cape base. The burn will be held in partnership with federal, state and non-profit agencies. The objective of the burn is to reduce the risk of wildfire by eliminating the heavy buildup of dead wood and debris that can act as fuel. Prescribed burns also manage the habitat for endangered and rare species on the 22,000 acre base. Local fire departments receive training during the prescribed burns. The fire, on a ...

An old, somewhat passé, trick used to purify protein samples based on their affinity for water has found new fans at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where materials scientists are using it to divvy up solutions of carbon nanotubes, separating the metallic nanotubes from semiconductors. They say it's a fast, easy and cheap way to produce high-purity samples of carbon nanotubes for use in nanoscale electronics and many other applications.* Carbon nanotubes are formed from rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern resembling ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — There's hope for patients with myotonic dystrophy. A new small molecule developed by researchers at the University of Illinois has been shown to break up the protein-RNA clusters that cause the disease in living human cells, an important first step toward developing a pharmaceutical treatment for the as-yet untreatable disease. Steven C. Zimmerman, the Roger Adams Professor of Chemistry at the U. of I., led the group in developing and demonstrating the compound. The National Institutes of Health supported the work published in the journal ACS Chemical ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Cyclone Zane headed toward the northern Cape York Peninsula of Queensland where it is expected to make landfall by May 2 and cross into the Gulf of Carpentaria. A cyclone Warning is in effect for coastal areas from Mapoon to Cape York to Cape Flattery. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Zane on May 1 at 04:05 UTC (12:05 a.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument captured a visible image of the cyclone. Zane's most powerful thunderstorms continue to be around the low-level circulation center, ...

As markets for miniature, hybrid machines known as MEMS grow and diversify, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has introduced a long-awaited measurement tool that will help growing numbers of device designers, manufacturers and customers to see eye to eye on eight dimensional and material property measurements that are key to device performance. The NIST-developed test chips (Reference Materials 8096 and 8097) are quality assurance tools that enable accurate, reliable comparisons of measurements on MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) devices made ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In Kenya, women face a cervical cancer mortality rate that is approximately 10 times as high as in the United States. A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill suggests that training women to self-collect genital samples to test for human papillomavirus (HPV), the causative agent of cervical cancer, can increase the coverage rates of cervical cancer screening. Higher screening coverage helps increase rates of detection of cervical lesions and ultimately treatment of the disease. "The high mortality rate in Kenya is ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – When a pedestrian hears the screech of a car's brakes, she has to decide whether, and if so, how, to move in response. Is the action taking place blocks away, or 20 feet to the left? One of the truly primal mechanisms that we depend on every day of our lives -- acting on the basis of information gathered by our sense of hearing -- is yielding its secrets to modern neuroscience. A team of researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today publishes experimental results in the journal Nature which they describe as surprising. The results ...

A growing number of college students are abusing the ADHD medication Adderall to give them an academic edge, and they're tweeting about it. Thanks to Twitter, tracking roughly when and where Adderall use happens is now possible. So a group of BYU health science and computer science researchers did just that. Their six-month study, appearing in the current issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, produced two major revelations about Adderall: It is mentioned most heavily among students in the northeast and south regions of the U.S. Tweets about Adderall ...

Normal vision is essentially a spatial sense that often relies upon touch and movement during and after development, there is often a correlation between how an object looks and how it feels. Moreover, as a child's senses develop, there is cross-referencing between the various senses. Indeed, where the links between the senses are not made, there may be developmental problems or delays. This should be taken into consideration when training new users of visual prosthetics, artificial retinas, or bionic eyes, suggest researchers in Australia. Writing in the International ...

CHICAGO (May 1, 2013) – Researchers at Lincoln Park Zoo and Northern Illinois University have discovered a new culprit contributing to amphibian decline and altered mammal distribution throughout the Midwest region – the invasive plant European buckthorn. This non-native shrub, which has invaded two-thirds of the United States, has long been known to negatively impact plant community composition and forest structure, but these two innovative studies slated to publish in upcoming editions of the Journal of Herpetology and Natural Areas Journal demonstrate how this shrub ...

Meteorologists have gained a better understanding of how storms like the one that battered Britain in 1987 develop, making them easier to predict. University of Manchester scientists, working with colleagues in Reading, Leeds and the US, have described how these types of cyclones can strengthen to become violent windstorms. The Great Storm of 1987, which famously caught out weatherman Michael Fish, left a trail of destruction when winds up to 120mph swept across southern England and northern France, killing 22 people. More recently, gusts of 100mph in January 2012 ...

Two studies from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program reveal details about the genomic landscapes of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and endometrial cancer. Both provide new insights into the molecular underpinnings of these cancers with the potential to improve treatment. These studies represent the sixth and seventh in a series of genomes of at least 20 major cancers. The first study is on endometrial cancer: Study establishes basis for genomic classification of endometrial cancers; proper categorization is important for choosing the best treatment A comprehensive ...

Reston, Va. (May 1, 2013) – Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, may be detected and monitored more effectively in the future with positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), according to research published in the May issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Typically assessed by endoscopic and histologic evaluations, investigators demonstrated the ability of PET/CT to identify lesions along the complete intestinal wall that could be missed with traditional imaging techniques. "Animal models of intestinal ...

An experimental drug has shown promise in treating influenza, preventing lung injury and death from the virus in preclinical studies, according to University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers publishing in the journal Nature on May 1. The scientists found that a drug called Eritoran can protect mice from death after they have been infected with a lethal dose of influenza virus. The potential value of this drug as single therapy or in combination with antivirals is further supported by previous research that found that it is safe for use in humans. The findings ...

Abuse during childhood is different. A study of adult civilians with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) has shown that individuals with a history of childhood abuse have distinct, profound changes in gene activity patterns, compared to adults with PTSD but without a history of child abuse. A team of researchers from Atlanta and Munich probed blood samples from 169 participants in the Grady Trauma Project, a study of more than 5000 Atlanta residents with high levels of exposure to violence, physical and sexual abuse and with high risk for civilian PTSD. The results ...

Scientists at Princeton University used off-the-shelf printing tools to create a functional ear that can "hear" radio frequencies far beyond the range of normal human capability. The researchers' primary purpose was to explore an efficient and versatile means to merge electronics with tissue. The scientists used 3D printing of cells and nanoparticles followed by cell culture to combine a small coil antenna with cartilage, creating what they term a bionic ear. "In general, there are mechanical and thermal challenges with interfacing electronic materials with biological ...

(Boston) – A Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study shows a mind-body class elective for medical students helps increase their self-compassion and ability to manage thoughts and tasks more effectively. The study, published in Medical Education Online, also discusses how this innovative course may help medical students better manage stress and feel more empowered to use mind-body skills with their patients. Allison Bond, MA, a third-year medical student at BUSM, served as the paper's first author. The course was designed and taught by co-author Heather Mason, ...