Astronomers have put forward a new theory about why black holes become so hugely massive – claiming some of them have no 'table manners', and tip their 'food' directly into their mouths, eating more than one course simultaneously. Researchers from the UK and Australia investigated how some black holes grow so fast that they are billions of times heavier than the sun. The team from the University of Leicester (UK) and Monash University in Australia sought to establish how black holes got so big so fast. Their research is due to published in the Monthly Notices of ...

The orange-colored vehicle begins moving with a quiet whirr. Soon afterwards the next shuttles begin to move, and before long there are dozens of mini-transporters rolling around in the hall. As if by magic, they head for the high-rack storage shelves or spin around their own axis. But the Multishuttle Moves® – is the name given to these driverless transport vehicles – are not performing some robots' ballet. They are moving around in the service of science. At the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML in Dortmund, Germany, researchers are working to harness ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Research on kidney stones in fruit flies may hold the key to developing a treatment that could someday stop the formation of kidney stones in humans, a team from Mayo Clinic and the University of Glasgow found. They recently presented their findings at the Genetics Society of America annual meeting. "The kidney tubule of a fruit fly is easy to study because it is transparent and accessible," says physiologist Michael F. Romero, Ph.D., of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He said researchers are now able to see new stones at the moment of formation. "More ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Fatigue and unrealistic expectations of parenthood may help contribute to post-adoption depression in women, according to a Purdue University study. "Feeling tired was by far the largest predictor of depression in mothers who adopted," said Karen J. Foli, an assistant professor of nursing who studied factors that could predict depression in adoptive mothers. "We didn't expect to see this, and we aren't sure if the fatigue is a symptom of the depression or if it is the parenting experience that is the source of the fatigue. It also may be reflective ...

PHILADELPHIA – Insulin resistance in the brain precedes and contributes to cognitive decline above and beyond other known causes of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Insulin is an important hormone in many bodily functions, including the health of brain cells. The team identified extensive abnormalities in the activity of two major signaling pathways for insulin and insulin-like growth factor in non-diabetic people with Alzheimer's disease. These pathways could be targeted ...

A major research trial to test whether extra support for smokers calling an NHS quitline - on top of what is already offered by the service - has found the additional help does not improve success rates for quitting the habit. The pilot scheme offered smokers additional help in the form of free nicotine patches and extra telephone counselling from the English National Quitline. The Department of Health and UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies (UKCTCS)-funded study led by The University of Nottingham's UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies has just been published in the ...

MAYWOOD, Il. -- Patients who have undergone sinus surgery can safely take an alternative pain medication that does not cause the side effects of narcotics such as fentanyl and Vicodin, a Loyola University Health System study has found. The alternative medication is ketorolac (brand name, Toradol). It is in the same class of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs as Advil and Aleve. Ketorolac does not cause the side effects that narcotic drugs cause, such as itching, nausea, vomiting, constipation and drowsiness, said Kevin Welch, MD, corresponding author of the study, published ...

TAMPA, Fla. – An international group of researchers, including those from Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., have published a paper in the March 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reviewing the results of a study that analyzed mutations in 18 genes of 398 patients who had acute myeloid leukemia (AML). They found that several mutated genes predicted improved outcomes when patients with certain gene mutations were given high-dose induction chemotherapy. Their findings suggest that mutational profiling could potentially be used for both risk stratification ...

Brooklyn, NY -- On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, marine forensics expert Richard Woytowich will present a paper re-interpreting the statements made by survivors at the 1912 official inquiries into the disaster. Woytowich, a professor of computer engineering technology at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), will take into account what engineers and other technologists now know about how the ill-fated passenger liner broke apart on April 15, 1912. He will be presenting his research on April 4, 8 a.m., at the International Marine ...

An international team of researchers have developed a new method for measurement of aggregated beta-amyloid – a protein complex believed to cause major nerve cell damage and dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease. The new method might facilitate diagnosis and detection as well as development of drugs directed against aggregated beta-amyloid. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of memory decline and dementia. According to the Alzheimer World Report 2011, today around 36 million people suffer from Dementia (around 20 - 25 million are Alzheimer's patients). These ...

A new method to make better use of vast amounts of data related to global geography, population and climate may help determine the relative importance of population increases vs. climate change. While several recent studies suggest that much of the world is likely to experience freshwater shortages as the population increases and temperatures rise, determining the relative impact of each has been difficult. An Oak Ridge National Laboratory paper published in Computers & Geosciences outlines a process that might help. "Our work establishes a new method to couple geographic ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- One in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer. Of those, many will undergo surgery to remove the tumor and will require some kind of breast reconstruction afterward, often involving implants. Cancer is an elusive target, though, and malignant cells return for as many as one-fifth of women originally diagnosed, according to the American Cancer Society. Would it be possible to engineer implant materials that might drive down that rate of relapse? Brown University biomedical scientists report some promising advances. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- From miniature elephants to monster mice, and even Hobbit-sized humans, size changes in island animals are well-known to science. Biologists have long believed that large animals evolving on islands tend to get smaller, while small animals tend to get bigger, a generalization they call "the island rule." A new study by researchers at Duke University and the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC puts that old idea to the test in island and mainland rodents. "Some of the size changes observed in island animals are pretty dramatic," said ...

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech have created an undersea vehicle inspired by the common jellyfish that runs on renewable energy and could be used in ocean rescue and surveillance missions. In a study published this week in Smart Materials and Structures, scientists created a robotic jellyfish, dubbed Robojelly, that feeds off hydrogen and oxygen gases found in water. "We've created an underwater robot that doesn't need batteries or electricity," said Dr. Yonas Tadesse, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UT Dallas and ...

Criteria for a broadened syndrome of acute onset obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have been proposed by a National Institutes of Health scientist and her colleagues. The syndrome, Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS), includes children and teens that suddenly develop on-again/off-again OCD symptoms or abnormal eating behaviors, along with other psychiatric symptoms – without any known cause. PANS expands on Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Streptococcus (PANDAS), which is limited to a subset of cases traceable to ...

Recent widespread news coverage heralded the success of a United Nations' goal of greatly improving access to safe drinking water around the world. But while major progress has been made, a new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill indicates that far greater challenges persist than headline statistics suggested. Earlier this month (March 6), UNICEF and the World Health Organization issued a report stating that the world had met the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goal target of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, ...

Pasadena, CA--Astronomers have begun to blast 3 million cubic feet of rock from a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes to make room for what will be the world's largest telescope when completed near the end of the decade. The telescope will be located at the Carnegie Institution's Las Campanas Observatory—one of the world's premier astronomical sites, known for its pristine conditions and clear, dark skies. Over the next few months, more than 70 controlled blasts will break up the rock while leaving a solid bedrock foundation for the telescope and its precision scientific instruments. The ...

Nodding off in class may not be such a bad idea after all. New research from the University of Notre Dame shows that going to sleep shortly after learning new material is most beneficial for recall, Titled "Memory for Semantically Related and Unrelated Declarative Information: The Benefit of Sleep, the Cost of Wake," the study was published March 22 in PLOS One. Notre Dame Psychologist Jessica Payne and colleagues studied 207 students who habitually slept for at least six hours per night. Participants were randomly assigned to study declarative, semantically ...

WASHINGTON—Most of us walk and carry items in our hands every day. These are seemingly simple activities that the majority of us don't question. But an international team of researchers, including Brian Richmond at the George Washington University, have discovered that human bipedalism, or walking upright, may have originated millions of years ago as an adaptation to carrying scarce, high-quality resources. This latest research was published in this month's "Current Biology." The team of researchers from the U.S., England, Japan and Portugal investigated the behavior ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- By analyzing vegetation information collected by satellites over time instead of for just one day, scientists in the Michigan State University Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS) have developed a novel procedure to assess the composition of plant species in an area. Researchers long have used multi-spectral images (which include radiation outside human perception, such as infrared) and other remotely sensed data to create maps of vegetation around the globe. But seasonal changes in vegetation can limit the usefulness of these ...

Shortly after a mouse embryo starts to form, some of its stem cells undergo a dramatic metabolic shift to enter the next stage of development, Seattle researchers report today. These stem cells start using and producing energy like cancer cells. This discovery is published today in EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization journal. "These findings not only have implications for stem cell research and the study of how embryos grow and take shape, but also for cancer therapy," said the senior author of the study, Dr. Hannele Ruohola-Baker, University of Washington ...

At the heart of the immune system that protects our bodies from disease and foreign invaders is a vast and complex communications network involving millions of cells, sending and receiving chemical signals that can mean life or death. At the heart of this vast cellular signaling network are interactions between billions of proteins and other biomolecules. These interactions, in turn, are greatly influenced by the spatial patterning of signaling and receptor molecules. The ability to observe signaling spatial patterns in the immune and other cellular systems as they evolve, ...

West Orange, NJ. March 23, 2012. In 2011, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) convened the Stroke Progress Review Group (SPRG) to conduct a final 10-year review of the state of stroke research. The goal is to set priorities and shape future NINDS programs and policies. While SPRG found much available data for maximizing stroke rehabilitation outcomes, translation to clinical practice is inadequate. To realize the enormous potential for improving rehabilitation and recovery, more resources should be applied to implementing and directly supporting ...

TAMPA, Fla. (March 23, 2012) – Studying the role of social stigma in depression for lung cancer patients, researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., have found that depression can be heightened by a lung cancer patient's sense of social rejection, internalized shame and social isolation. These factors may contribute to depression at rates higher than experienced by patients with other kinds of cancer. Their study was published in a recent issue of Psycho-Oncology (21:2012). "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship ...

SAN DIEGO, March 23, 2012 — More than a dozen symposia and other events at the American Chemical Society (ACS) 243rd National Meeting & Exposition are being sponsored or recommended by noted science communicator and ACS President Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D. They range from a science outreach event for children at PETCO Park to news from an emerging field of chemistry that promises to produce medicines inside patients' bodies, as well as a symposium on communicating science to the public. Communicating science is a major part of Shakhashiri's presidential theme for the ...