Researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a model which explains how the spin of a pulsar slows down as the star gets older. A pulsar is a highly magnetised rotating neutron star which was formed from the remains of a supernova – an explosion which happens after a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel. A pulsar emits a rotating beam of electromagnetic radiation, rather like that of a lighthouse. This beam can be detected by powerful telescopes when it points towards and sweeps past the Earth. Pulsars rotate at very stable speeds, but slow down as ...

The National Center for Educational Statistics reported that only 73% of high school freshmen graduate within four years. For those students who continue their education at the collegiate level, slightly more than half (57%) earn a bachelor's degree and over 18% will leave college altogether. Although many factors can contribute to students' academic risk, negative emotions associated with learning—such as a lack of interest and engagement in their courses—could be a vital reason for students' disengagement, withdrawal, and failure in school. Joseph Mazer's article, published ...

Businesses and consumers may soon have a simple, cheaper way to store large amounts of digital data. Case Western Reserve University researchers have developed technology aimed at making an optical disc that holds 1 to 2 terabytes of data – the equivalent of 1,000 to 2,000 copies of Encyclopedia Britannica. The entire print collection of the Library of Congress could fit on five to 10 discs. The discs would provide small- and medium-sized businesses an alternative to storing data on energy-wasting magnetic disks or cumbersome magnetic tapes, the researchers say. To ...

This press release is available in German. Using demographic methods, ecologist Roberto Salguero-Gómez investigates desert plants to find out how vulnerable they are to climate change. The results of his newest study are surprising: Climate change may have a positive impact on some plants. Climate models used by scientists to forecast the effect of climate change on the various ecosystems predict a bleak future for these regions: temperatures will rise, there will be less rain, and it will rain more erratically – all conditions seemingly unfavorable to plants. To ...

Boston, Mass.—Using tiny spheres filled with an anesthetic derived from a shellfish toxin, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a way to delay the rise of neuropathic pain, a chronic form of pain that arises from flawed signals transmitted by damaged nerves. The method could potentially allow doctors to stop the cascade of events by which tissue or nerve injuries evolve into neuropathic pain, which affects 3.75 million children and adults in the United States alone. The researchers, led by Daniel Kohane, ...

In the face of mounting evidence, doctors' leaders and government should take a stand and set clear guidelines on an activity that has so far eluded the scrutiny that other health issues attract, argues Dr Aric Sigman. Children of all ages are watching more screen media than ever before, he says, and what is more, they are starting earlier and earlier. Britain's children have regular access to an average of five different screens at home by the time they are 10 years old, in the form of TVs, games consoles, smart phones, laptops and tablets. By the age of 7, a child ...

Up to 90 per cent of MS patients endure painful muscle stiffness at some point during the course of their disease, which reduces their mobility and interferes with daily routine activities and sleep quality. But current treatments often fail to resolve symptoms fully, and can be harmful, as a result of which many MS patients have experimented with alternative therapies, including cannabis. Adult MS patients with stable disease, from 22 different specialist centres across the UK, were either randomly assigned to cannabis extract (tetrahydrocannabinol) daily (144) or a ...

Engineering faculty and students at the University of Colorado Boulder have produced the first experimental results showing that atomically thin graphene membranes with tiny pores can effectively and efficiently separate gas molecules through size-selective sieving. The findings are a significant step toward the realization of more energy-efficient membranes for natural gas production and for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plant exhaust pipes. Mechanical engineering professors Scott Bunch and John Pellegrino co-authored a paper in Nature Nanotechnology ...

The findings indicate that it is the intensity, rather than the duration, of exercise that counts in combating the impact of metabolic syndrome - a combination of factors, including midriff bulge, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, higher than normal levels of blood glucose and abnormal blood fat levels - say the authors. Genes, diet, and lack of exercise are thought to be implicated in the development of the syndrome, which is conducive to inflammation and blood thickening. The authors base their findings on more than 10,000 Danish adults, between the ages of ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - In two separate studies, researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have discovered a new class of treatment against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) as well as evidence of a growing need to quickly genotype individual strains of the organism most commonly referred to as the "superbug." "The public is most familiar with the dramatic progression of skin infections caused by MRSA, but MRSA is responsible for a range of difficult to treat illnesses," noted Dr. Kurt B. Stevenson, an infectious disease expert at Ohio ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – As the economy and job market continue to recover, many young adults have moved in with their parents to save money. For teens and 20-somethings who grew up in foster care, saving money is especially difficult because they have aged out of a system that provided support in earlier years and lack important family ties they can depend upon, particularly as they enter adulthood and embark on their own. Now, a University of Missouri child welfare expert says youths in foster care need financial education and support to build assets so they can become financially ...

Synthetic biology is the latest and most advanced phase of genetic engineering, holding great promise for helping to solve some of the world's most intractable problems, including the sustainable production of energy fuels and critical medical drugs, and the safe removal of toxic and radioactive waste from the environment. However, for synthetic biology to reach its promise, the design and construction of biological systems must be as predictable as the assembly of computer hardware. An important step towards attaining a higher degree of predictability in synthetic biology ...

Whether it's a wedding, birthday party or other celebration, these days the chances are you'll have your camcorder with you to record the great occasion. But we often forget to bring the data cable along with us, so despite promising the hosts to transfer the images to their computer the morning after, we hardly ever do. "No problem," we say, "I'll burn you a CD when I get home." It would be so much easier, though, to transfer the data wirelessly. This thought also occurred to Frank Deicke, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS in Dresden. ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) — Cyber-crime is expanding to the fertile grounds of social networks and University of California, Riverside engineers are fighting it. A recent four-month experiment conducted by several UC Riverside engineering professors and graduate students found that the application they created to detect spam and malware posts on Facebook users' walls was highly accurate, fast and efficient. The researchers also introduced the new term "socware" to describe a combination of "social malware," encompassing all criminal and parasitic behavior on online ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers have found what they say is the only fossil ever discovered of a spider attack on prey caught in its web – a 100 million-year-old snapshot of an engagement frozen in time. The extraordinarily rare fossils are in a piece of amber that preserved this event in remarkable detail, an action that took place in the Hukawng Valley of Myanmar in the Early Cretaceous between 97-110 million years ago, almost certainly with dinosaurs wandering nearby. Aside from showing the first and only fossil evidence of a spider attacking prey in its web, the piece ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Keeping the lungs healthy could be an important way to retain thinking functions that relate to problem-solving and processing speed in one's later years, new research suggests. While these two types of "fluid" cognitive functions were influenced by reduced pulmonary function, a drop in lung health did not appear to impair memory or lead to any significant loss of stored knowledge, the study showed. Researchers used data from a Swedish study of aging that tracked participants' health measures for almost two decades. An analysis of the data with statistical ...

UPTON, NY - Using a computational model they designed to incorporate detailed information about plants' interconnected metabolic processes, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified key pathways that appear to "favor" the production of either oils or proteins. The research, now published online in Plant Physiology, may point the way to new strategies to tip the balance and increase plant oil production. The study focused on the metabolism of rapeseed, a crop grown primarily in temperate climates for the oil that accumulates ...

This spring, a Swedish scientist sparked international concern with a journal article saying that radioactive particles detected in 2010 showed North Korea had set off at least two small nuclear blasts--possibly in experiments designed to boost the yields of much larger bombs. Shortly after, the pot was stirred with separate claims that some intelligence agencies suspected the detonations were done in cooperation with Iran. Now, a new paper says the tests likely never took place—or that if they did, they were too tiny to have any military significance. The new report, ...

WASHINGTON, October 8, 2012 — Smart phones almost as thin and flexible as paper and virtually unbreakable. Solar panels molded to cover the surface of an electric or hybrid car. Possible treatments for damaged spinal cords. It's not science fiction. Those all are possible applications of a material known as graphene. This so-called "wonder material," the world's strongest (100 times stronger than steel) and thinnest (one ounce would cover 28 football fields), is the focus of a new episode of the ChemMatters video series. The video is at www.BytesizeScience.com. The video, ...

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil- Amyloidosis is a group of clinical syndromes characterized by deposits of amyloid fibrils throughout the body. These fibrils are formed by aggregates of proteins that have not been properly folded. Deposits of amyloid fibrils are found in a number of diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and type-2 diabetes. The amyloid deposits can be localized, as in the brain of Alzheimer's patients, or found spread through the body, as in amyloidosis related to mutations in the transthyretin gene. The clinical meaning of amyloid deposits ...

Women who choose to be permanently childfree perceive more social pressures to become mothers than other women, but feel less distress about not having kids than women who are childless from infertility or other reasons, a new national study shows. The study, from a national survey of nearly 1,200 American women of reproductive age with no children, identified various reasons why women have no children, from medical and situational barriers to delaying pregnancy to choosing to be childfree. It sought to determine if those reasons contributed to different types of concerns ...

URBANA – Recent studies have linked caffeine consumption to a reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease, and a new University of Illinois study may be able to explain how this happens. "We have discovered a novel signal that activates the brain-based inflammation associated with neurodegenerative diseases, and caffeine appears to block its activity. This discovery may eventually lead to drugs that could reverse or inhibit mild cognitive impairment," said Gregory Freund, a professor in the U of I's College of Medicine and a member of the U of I's Division of Nutritional Sciences. Freund's ...

New York, NY (October 8, 2012) — Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have found that a diet high in saturated fat raises levels of endothelial lipase (EL), an enzyme associated with the development of atherosclerosis, and, conversely, that a diet high in omega-3 polyunsaturated fat lowers levels of this enzyme. The findings establish a "new" link between diet and atherosclerosis and suggest a novel way to prevent cardiovascular heart disease. In addition, the research may help to explain why the type 2 diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) has been linked ...

TEMPE, Ariz. - Just because a lizard can grow back its tail, doesn't mean it will be exactly the same. A multidisciplinary team of scientists from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona examined the anatomical and microscopic make-up of regenerated lizard tails and discovered that the new tails are quite different from the original ones. The findings are published in a pair of articles featured in a special October edition of the journal, The Anatomical Record. "The regenerated lizard tail is not perfect replica," said Rebecca Fisher, an associate professor ...

Hospital readmission rates and early death rates are used to rank hospital performance but there can be significant variation in their values, depending on how they are calculated, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "Hospital-specific readmission rates have been reported as a quality of care indicator but no consensus exists on how these should be calculated. Our results highlight that caution is required when comparing hospital performance based on 30-day or urgent readmissions given their notable variation when methods used in their ...