Transparensee Systems, Inc., a leading enterprise search software company, today announced that their flagship product, the Discovery Search Engine, is the winner of the 2013 SIIA CODiE Award for Best Search Technology Solution. CODiE Winners represent the information industry's best products, technologies, and services created by or for media, publishers, and information services providers. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, also announced Transparensee Systems, ...

Working with astronomical image processors at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., renowned astro-photographer Robert Gendler has taken science data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archive and combined it with his own ground-based observations to assemble a photo illustration of the magnificent spiral galaxy M106. Gendler retrieved archival Hubble images of M106 to assemble a mosaic of the center of the galaxy. He then used his own and fellow astro-photographer Jay GaBany's observations of M106 to combine with the Hubble data in areas where there ...

NASA-NOAA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) satellite captured a night-time image of extra-tropical cyclone Felleng as it was being battered by wind shear in the Southern Indian Ocean. The night-time satellite image was captured by the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite on Feb. 3 at 2120 UTC (11:20 p.m. local time, Indian/Antananarivo/1:40 p.m. EST, U.S.) when Felleng was located south of the Mozambique Channel. The VIIRS image was created at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and showed that ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – GSA Bulletin papers published online 11 Jan. 2013 include contributions from scientists in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Spain, the UK, and New Zealand. Multiple locations in the western U.S. are studied, along with locations in Canada, New Zealand, and Guatemala. Papers cover 1. Holocene record of strong earthquakes in the Lake Tahoe region, USA; 2. Tectonics, salt, and the fossil forests of Joggins Fossil Cliffs UNESCO World Heritage Site, Canada; 3. Tectonics, sediments, and the Hornbrook Formation of Oregon and California, USA; 4. A case study ...

Owing to the prevalence of multicore processors, more and more programs are written in a multi-threaded style to improve performance. However, associated concurrency errors have become an inconvenient cause of system faults. The research group from State Key Laboratory of Software Engineering, School of Computers, Wuhan University, focused on finding methods to improve the trustworthiness of concurrent programs. By analyzing shortcomings of existing methods, they developed a more efficient method for detecting concurrency errors in object-oriented programs. Exploiting a ...

Everyone needs to eat. But it's a dog-eat-dog world, and with the exception of the top predators, everyone also gets eaten. To cope with this vicious reality, a tiny insect that eats plants has learned to employ the plant's hairs for physical protection from its beetle predator. The pest is called the cycad aulacaspis scale, and its invasion into numerous countries in recent years has caused immeasurable loss of biodiversity. Cycads belong to an ancient lineage of plants that date to the dinosaur era, and the pest requires a cycad plant for food. The insect's recent ...

U.S. soldiers in combat often suffer constricted blood vessels and increased pressure in the brain — significant complications of traumatic brain injuries, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013. "Research shows that traumatic brain injury is a hallmark of recent military conflicts, affecting nearly a third of all wounded soldiers," said Alexander Razumovsky, Ph.D., lead researcher and director of Sentient NeuroCare Services in Hunt Valley, Md. Constricted blood vessels in the brain are cerebral vasospasm. ...

Marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug, may double stroke risk in young adults, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013. In a New Zealand study, ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA) patients were 2.3 times more likely to have cannabis, also known as marijuana, detected in urine tests as other age and sex matched patients, researchers said. "This is the first case-controlled study to show a possible link to the increased risk of stroke from cannabis," said P. Alan Barber, Ph.D., M.D., ...

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have more bleeding strokes at an earlier age than other people independent of methamphetamine abuse, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013. "Drug abuse is a huge problem here and it definitely is a cause of hemorrhagic stroke," said Kazuma Nakagawa, M.D., lead investigator and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Hawaii. "But Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are experiencing this form of stroke at a younger age even without methamphetamine use. ...

Tai Chi may reduce falls among adult stroke survivors, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013. Compared to survivors receiving usual care or participating in a national fitness program for Medicare-eligible adults called SilverSneakers®, those practicing Tai Chi had the fewest falls. Tai Chi is a martial art dating back to ancient China. It includes physical movements, mental concentration and relaxed breathing. "Learning how to find and maintain your balance after a stroke is a challenge," said Ruth ...

Differences in the physical connections of the brain are at the root of what make people think and behave differently from one another. Researchers reporting in the February 6 issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron shed new light on the details of this phenomenon, mapping the exact brain regions where individual differences occur. Their findings reveal that individuals' brain connectivity varies more in areas that relate to integrating information than in areas for initial perception of the world. "Understanding the normal range of individual variability in the human ...

Researchers at the Institute for Comprehensive Medical Science, Fujita Health University and the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, Japan, along with colleagues from 9 other institutions, have identified an exceptional mouse model of schizophrenia. After screening over 160 mutant mouse strains with a systematic battery of behavioral tests, they identified a mutant mouse lacking the Schnurri-2 protein (Shn-2 KO) that exhibits behavioral deficits and other brain features consistent with schizophrenia. Shn-2 is an NF-B site-binding protein that binds enhancers ...

Running along the border between the constellations of Canis Major (The Great Dog) and Monoceros (The Unicorn) in the southern sky, the Seagull Nebula is a huge cloud mostly made of hydrogen gas. It's an example of what astronomers refer to as an HII region. Hot new stars form within these clouds and their intense ultraviolet radiation causes the surrounding gas to glow brightly. The reddish hue in this image is a telltale sign of the presence of ionised hydrogen [1]. The Seagull Nebula, known more formally as IC 2177, is a complex object with a bird-like shape that is ...

New York, NY (February 6, 2013) — Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have identified a protein trafficking defect within brain cells that may underlie common non-familial forms of Parkinson's disease. The defect is at a point of convergence for the action of at least three different genes that had been implicated in prior studies of Parkinson's disease. Whereas most molecular studies focus on mutations associated with rare familial forms of the disease, these findings relate directly to the common non-familial form of Parkinson's. The study was published ...

Scientists have, for the first time, traced the nanoparticles taken up from the soil by crop plants and analysed the chemical states of their metallic elements. Zinc was shown to dissolve and accumulate throughout the plants, whereas the element cerium did not dissolve into plant tissue. The results contribute to the controversial debate on plant toxicity of nanoparticles and whether engineered nanoparticles can enter into the food chain. The study was published on 6 February 2013 in the journal ACS Nano. The international research team was led by Jorge Gardea-Torresdey ...

Using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have found that six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Since red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away. "We thought we would have to search vast distances to find an Earth-like planet. Now we realize another Earth is probably in our own backyard, waiting to be spotted," said Harvard astronomer and lead author Courtney Dressing (CfA). Dressing ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Ever wonder why CEOs at poorly performing companies continue to receive exorbitant pay packages? According to a study from a University of Illinois labor professor, firms that trumpet how much they value shareholders actually pay their CEOs more, regardless of the quality of their performance as executives. Using compensation data from 290 chief executives at large U.S. firms over an 11-year period, Taekjin Shin, a professor of labor and employment relations at Illinois, shows that CEOs at firms with the appearance of a "shareholder-value orientation" ...

Cichlid fish are more likely to accept immigrants into their group when they are under threat from predators and need reinforcements, new research shows. The researcher suggests that there are parallels between cooperatively breeding fish's and humans' regulation of immigrants. The research was published today, 6 February 2013, in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The Princess of Lake Tanganyika (Neolamprologus pulcher), a cichlid fish which is popular in home aquariums, are cooperatively breeding fish with a dominant breeding pair and several 'helper' ...

Have you ever wondered why, and how, shoals of fish are comprised of fish of the same size? According to new research by Ashley Ward, from the University of Sydney in Australia, and Suzanne Currie, from Mount Allison University in Canada, fish can use a variety of different sensory cues to locate shoal-mates, but they are able to use chemical cues to find other fish of the same size as themselves. Using these cues, they can form a group with strength in numbers. The work is published online in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Forming groups is ...

Dr Michael Pogue, a Research Entomologist in the ARS Systematic Entomology Laboratory, at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, was sent a series of moth specimens from Bahia, Brazil, for identification. The insects were under consideration as a possible biocontrol agent for the invasive Brazilian peppertree in Florida. 'The species was initially identified as a common species, but when comparisons were made, it became evident that there were multiple species involved' said Dr. Pogue. Using characters from the moths' male and female genitalia, Dr. Pogue determined ...

Two of the most widely used nanoparticles (NPs) accumulate in soybeans — second only to corn as a key food crop in the United States — in ways previously shown to have the potential to adversely affect the crop yields and nutritional quality, a new study has found. It appears in the journal ACS Nano. Jorge L. Gardea-Torresdey and colleagues cite rapid increases in commercial and industrial uses of NPs, the building blocks of a nanotechnology industry projected to put $1 trillion worth of products on the market by 2015. Zinc oxide and cerium dioxide are among today's most ...

University of Granada researchers have designed a guideline for physicians and patients on the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), a rare disease that makes the subject develop reverse sex, which occurs when a subject looks like a woman but has male genes. AIS has low prevalence (it only affects one in 2000 people), and it is characterized by the inability of tissues to respond to the action of male hormones. This prevents individuals with XY sex hormones (i.e. 46,XY) to develop male genitalia. This disorder is caused by a mutation in the gene that codifies the receptor ...

CHICAGO (Feb. 6, 2013)—Impacting approximately one-third of the U.S. population, obesity is a significant health concern for Americans. It's a risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain forms of cancer, and now, according to an article published in the January/February 2013 issue of General Dentistry, the peer-reviewed clinical journal of the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD), it also may be a risk factor for gum disease. "We know that being overweight can affect many aspects of a person's health," says Charlene Krejci, DDS, MSD, lead author ...

European Science Foundation's ESSC comments the decisions taken (or not) at ESA's council meeting at ministerial level. Strasbourg – 6, February, 2013 - The European Space Sciences Committee (ESSC) today released its position on the perspectives for the European Space Agency's (ESA) scientific programmes. The position statement provides recommendations on the outcomes of the ESA council meeting at ministerial level, which took place on 26-27 November 2012 in Naples. The statement comments on the impact for science-relevant ESA's programmes resulting from the decisions ...

Mature cells can be reprogrammed to pluripotency and thus regain the ability to divide and differentiate into specialized cell types. Although these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) represent a milestone in stem cell research, many of the biochemical processes that underlie reprogramming are still not understood. Scientists from the EMBL Hamburg and from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany now shed new light on this process. In a study published today in Nature Cell Biology, the scientists describe important details ...