MERCED, Calif. — California isn't going to face a superstorm like Hurricane Sandy because the Pacific Ocean is too cold to feed that kind of weather system. But that doesn't mean California won't see extreme weather, say researchers from the University of California, Merced. "We can see very big storms, and there are a couple of issues related to climate change to think about," said Roger Bales, director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. "Most of our biggest storms are snow storms, which builds up snowpack in the mountains. The snowpack is a reservoir, storing ...

PASADENA, Calif.—During the early developmental stages of vertebrates—animals that have a backbone and spinal column, including humans—cells undergo extensive rearrangements, and some cells migrate over large distances to populate particular areas and assume novel roles as differentiated cell types. Understanding how and when such cells switch their purpose in an embryo is an important and complex goal for developmental biologists. A recent study, led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), provides new clues about this process—at least in the ...

NEW YORK (Nov. 01, 2012) -- Weill Cornell Medical College announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Explorations winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Researchers at Weill Cornell have been awarded three research grants totaling more than $1.5 million. Weill Cornell's Dr. Juan R. Cubillos-Ruiz, a postdoctoral research associate in medicine in the laboratory of Dean Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project titled, "Tailored Nanodevices to Understand Resistance Against HIV," Dr. Carl ...

PHILADELPHIA – An international effort led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has resulted in positive phase 3 clinical trial results for a new medicine to treat patients suffering from a rare and deadly cholesterol disorder. Penn researchers report in The Lancet that lomitapide, a first-in-class microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP) inhibitor, substantially and stably reduced LDL cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol) in patients with the orphan disease homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH). Lomitapide ...

Belmont, MA— In a column appearing in the current issue of the journal Nature, McLean Hospital biostatistician Nicholas Lange, ScD, cautions against heralding the use of brain imaging scans to diagnose autism and urges greater focus on conducting large, long-term multicenter studies to identify the biological basis of the disorder. "Several studies in the past two years have claimed that brain scans can diagnose autism, but this assertion is deeply flawed," said Lange, an associate professor of Psychiatry and Biostatistics at Harvard Medical School. "To diagnose autism ...

Bariatric surgery, which significantly curtails the amount of food a person can eat, is the most effective treatment against obesity and is being recognized as a potentially valuable tool in the fight against diabetes related to obesity. It is being performed on increasing numbers of people worldwide, including teenagers. Unfortunately, some types of bariatric surgery may also cause bone loss, a cause for concern, particularly when carried out on young people who have not yet reached their peak bone mass, say endocrinologists from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical ...

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI CEC) and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have found through spectroscopic investigations on a hydrogen-producing enzyme that the environment of the catalytic site acts as an electron reservoir in the enzyme. Thus, it can very efficiently produce hydrogen, which has great potential as a renewable energy source. The research team describes their results in the journal "Angewandte Chemie". Producing hydrogen with enzymes The system analysed constitutes an enzyme that catalyses the formation and ...

Infant mortality has fallen by half, and the number of women who died from complications during pregnancy and childbirth by three-quarters. This is the result of a four-year health care project in one of India's poorest districts. "We're overjoyed that mortality could be reduced with relatively simple means like mobile health care centres. It was successful because pregnant women and new mothers got the opportunity to actively seek care." So says Siw Alehagen who, together with AnnaKarin Johansson, Orvar Finnström and Göran Hermansson – all of Linköping University ...

World-leading experts in Magnetic Resonance Imaging from The University of Nottingham's Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre have made a key discovery which could give the medical world a new tool for the improved diagnosis and monitoring of brain diseases like multiple sclerosis. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, reveals why images of the brain produced using the latest MRI techniques are so sensitive to the direction in which nerve fibres run. The white matter of the brain is made up of billions of microscopic ...

CINCINNATI—A University of Cincinnati (UC) cancer biology team reports breakthrough findings about specific cellular mechanisms that may help overcome endocrine (hormone) therapy-resistance in patients with estrogen-positive breast cancers, combating a widespread problem in effective medical management of the disease. Xiaoting Zhang, PhD, and his colleagues have identified a specific estrogen receptor co-activator—known as MED1—as playing a central role in mediating tamoxifen resistance in human breast cancer. The team reports its findings in the Nov. 1, 2012, issue of ...

With active surveillance many men with prostate cancer could dispense with radiation treatment and surgery, and thus avoid adverse effects such as incontinence and impotence. This is the outcome of a study of almost 1,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer conducted at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The introduction of PSA tests, which are used to screen for prostate cancer, offers early tumour detection, reducing mortality rates. At the same time, prostate cancer is in many cases a slow-growing form of cancer. Many men may never develop symptoms ...

Couples about to tie the knot shouldn't ignore nagging doubts about getting married, warns a University of Alberta researcher. "If you are having doubts about the relationship, just ignoring them may make a difference years down the road," said Matthew Johnson who co-authored the study while at Kansas State University. Johnson is now an assistant professor in the University of Alberta Department of Human Ecology. The study, published recently in the journal Family Process, found that couples who were more confident as they exchanged vows also spent more time together ...

Researchers at the University of Bergen in Norway have found new support for their theory that cannabis use causes a temporary cognitive breakdown in non-psychotic individuals, leading to long-term psychosis. In an fMRI study published this week in Frontiers in Psychiatry, researchers found a different brain activity pattern in schizophrenia patients with previous cannabis use than in schizophrenic patients without prior cannabis use. The results reinforce the researchers' model where cannabis users suffering from schizophrenia actually may have higher cognitive abilities ...

To this end, the researchers developed a new method for entangling single photons which gyrate in opposite directions. This result is a first step towards entangling and twisting even macroscopic, spatially separated objects in two different directions. The researchers at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ), situated at the University of Vienna, and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences have were able to get their pioneering results published in the current issue of the renowned scientific ...

During presidential campaigns, it's not unusual to hear candidates from both parties say they will focus on strengthening the nation's economy. But how well have presidents delivered on that promise once in the White House? On a newly-released report card that grades presidents on their economic performance, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding and Rutherford B. Hayes are at the top of the class, while Chester Arthur, Herbert Hoover and Martin Van Buren receive failing grades. The first-of-its-kind study by the Georgia Institute of Technology analyzed up to 220 ...

A person doesn't have to go far to find a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). These carcinogen precursors are inhaled through automobiles exhaust during the morning commute, are present in a drag of cigarette smoke, and are part of any barbequed meal. Once ingested or inhaled, these big, bulky multi-ringed molecules are converted into reactive carcinogenic compounds that can bind to DNA, sometimes literally bending the double helix out of its normal shape, to form areas of damage called lesions. The damaged DNA can create errors in the genetic code during replication, ...

WASHINGTON--With its strong dependence on gas-turbine engines for propulsion, the U.S. Navy is always looking for ways to improve the fuel consumption of these engines. At the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), scientists are studying the complex physics of Rotating Detonation Engines (RDEs) which offer the potential for high dollar savings by way of reduced fuel consumption in gas-turbine engines, explains Dr. Kazhikathra Kailasanath, who heads NRL's Laboratories for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics. Many Navy aircraft use gas-turbine engines for propulsion, with ...

Some 4.567 billion years ago, our solar system's planets spawned from an expansive disc of gas and dust rotating around the sun. While similar processes are witnessed in younger solar systems throughout the Milky Way, the formative stages of our own solar system were believed to have taken twice as long to occur. Now, new research lead by the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, suggests otherwise. Indeed, our solar system is not quite as special as once believed. Using improved methods of analysis of ...

Do costly seawalls provide a false sense of security in efforts to control nature? Would it be better to focus on far less expensive warning systems and improved evacuation procedures that can save many lives? Seth Stein, a Northwestern University geologist, has teamed up with his father, Jerome Stein, an economist at Brown University, to develop new strategies to defend society against natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy as well as the effects of climate change. The approach, which considers costs and benefits while looking for the best solution, is based on a ...

Boulder, CO, USA – In the evolutionary long run, small critters tend to evolve into bigger beasts -- at least according to the idea attributed to paleontologist Edward Cope, now known as Cope's Rule. Using the latest advanced statistical modeling methods, a new test of this rule as it applies dinosaurs shows that Cope was right -- sometimes. "For a long time, dinosaurs were thought to be the example of Cope's Rule," says Gene Hunt, curator in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. Other groups, particularly ...

WASHINGTON – Compared to a survey conducted nearly 20 years ago, about twice the proportion of addiction counselors now find it acceptable for at least some of their patients to have a drink occasionally – either as an intermediate goal or as their final treatment goal, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. The researchers surveyed 913 members of the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Addiction Counselors from across the United States. About 50 percent of the respondents said it would be acceptable if some of their clients ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — Liberals and conservatives who are polarized on certain politically charged subjects become more moderate when reading political arguments in a difficult-to-read font, researchers report in a new study. Likewise, people with induced bias for or against a defendant in a mock trial are less likely to act on that bias if they have to struggle to read the evidence against him. The new research, reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, is one of two studies to show that subtle manipulations that affect how people take in information can ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — Partisans beware! Some of your most cherished political attitudes may be malleable! Researchers report that simply answering three "why" questions on an innocuous topic leads people to be more moderate in their views on an otherwise polarizing political issue. The research, described in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, explored attitudes toward what some people refer to as the ground zero mosque, an Islamic community center and mosque built two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center in New York City. When the Islamic ...

NEW YORK (Nov. 1, 2012) -- Weill Cornell Medical College researchers report that mass spectrometry, a tool currently used to detect and measure proteins and lipids, can also now allow biologists to "see" for the first time exactly how drugs work inside living cells to kill infectious microbes. As a result, scientists may be able to improve existing antibiotics and design new, smarter ones to fight deadly infections, such as tuberculosis. The new study was published in today's early online edition of Science. "The development of antibiotics has been stalled for several ...

Boulder, CO, USA – Sea levels are rising faster than expected from global warming, and University of Colorado geologist Bill Hay has a good idea why. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 meters by the year 2100. But current sea-level rise measurements meet or exceed the high end of that range and suggest a rise of one meter or more by the end of the century. "What's missing from the models used to forecast sea-level rise are critical feedbacks that speed everything up," says Hay. He will be presenting some of these ...