The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, helping astronomers better explain the mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up 96 percent of the universe. According to SDSS-III scientific spokesperson and University of Pittsburgh assistant professor of physics and astronomy Michael Wood-Vasey, scientists using the map—titled Data Release 9 (DR9)— can retrace the Universe's history over the last seven billion years. Wood-Vasey cowrote the DR9 summary paper featured ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Chronic exposure to even small amounts of staph bacteria could be a risk factor for the chronic inflammatory disease lupus, Mayo Clinic research shows. Staph, short for Staphylococcus aureus, is a germ commonly found on the skin or in the nose, sometimes causing infections. In the Mayo study, mice were exposed to low doses of a protein found in staph and developed a lupus-like disease, with kidney disease and autoantibodies like those found in the blood of lupus patients. The findings are published online this month in The Journal of Immunology. ...

VIDEO: This is an animated flight through the universe as seen by SDSS. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, which places zoomed-in images of nearby galaxies at the... Click here for more information. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes ever created. The new map pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. It covers a total volume equivalent ...

Do corporate wikis work? Two University of Alberta researchers say they can, providing they fit the corporation's culture and provide for the needs and interests of their users and editors. PhD candidate Lisa Yeo and Ofer Arazy, an assistant professor in the Alberta School of Business, say that using wikis as a form of corporate knowledge management can be beneficial. However, some concessions need to be made in terms of how wiki "knowledge" is posted to support people's needs for recognition with their company. If companies want their wiki to work, it cannot be held ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The brain has billions of neurons, arranged in complex circuits that allow us to perceive the world, control our movements and make decisions. Deciphering those circuits is critical to understanding how the brain works and what goes wrong in neurological disorders. MIT neuroscientists have now taken a major step toward that goal. In a new paper appearing in the Aug. 9 issue of Nature, they report that two major classes of brain cells repress neural activity in specific mathematical ways: One type subtracts from overall activation, while the other divides ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Innovative problem solving requires trying many different solutions. That's true for humans, and now Michigan State University researchers show that it's true for hyenas, too. The study, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, presented steel puzzle boxes with raw meat inside to wild spotted hyenas in Kenya. To get the meat, the hyenas had to slide open a bolt latch. Even though most of the animals had many opportunities to open the box, only nine out of 62 hyenas succeeded. The successful hyenas tried more solutions, ...

For more than 45 years, the poor in this country have been identified by the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure — a tool that determines America's poverty rate based on pretax money income, which does not reflect all the resources at a family's disposal. That method of calculating who is poor and who is not has been under fire by researchers for years because it doesn't calculate the benefits of anti-poverty programs — such as food stamps and housing subsidies — into its formula. In response to the criticism, the Census Bureau released in fall 2011 the Supplemental ...

Bethesda, Md. (Aug. 8, 2012)—Adolescence is an important time not only for growing but for acquiring healthy habits that will last a lifetime, such as choosing foods rich in vitamins and minerals, and adopting a regular exercise regimen. Unfortunately, several studies have shown that adolescents' intake of important nutrients, as well as their performance on standard physical fitness tests, has fallen in recent years. Because nutrition and fitness are intertwined—for example, iron forms part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to muscles, and antioxidants such as vitamin ...

AURORA, Colo. – (Aug. 8. 2012) - A recent study by University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers shows that it is very common for adolescents in substance abuse treatment to use medical marijuana recommended to someone else (also known as "diverted" medical marijuana). Stacy Salomonsen-Sautel, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the CU School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology and her colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry looked at two adolescent substance abuse treatment programs in the Denver metropolitan area. The study participants were asked questions ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — DNA holds the genetic code for all sorts of biological molecules and traits. But University of Illinois researchers have found that DNA's code can similarly shape metallic structures. The team found that DNA segments can direct the shape of gold nanoparticles – tiny gold crystals that have many applications in medicine, electronics and catalysis. Led by Yi Lu, the Schenck Professor of Chemistry at the U. of I., the team published its surprising findings in the journal Angewandte Chemie. "DNA-encoded nanoparticle synthesis can provide us a facile but ...

A bonus payment to teachers can improve student academic performance — but only when it is given upfront, on the condition that part of the money must be returned if student performance fails to improve, research at the University of Chicago shows. The study showed that students gained as much as a 10 percentile increase in their scores compared to students with similar backgrounds — if their teacher received a bonus at the beginning of the year, with conditions attached. There was no gain for students when teachers were offered the bonus at the end of the school year, ...

Typhoon Haikui weakened to a tropical storm just before landfall in China. Eight hours after landfall, NASA's Aqua satellite still showed a strong and organized tropical storm moving inland. China's National Meteorological Center (NMC) said that Tropical Storm Haikui, made landfall in Zhejiang province on August 8 at 3:20 a.m. local time (19:20 UTC or 3:20 p.m. EDT/U.S., August 7), about 140 miles (225 km) south of Shanghai. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center's last official warning on Haikui was issued on August 8 at 0300 UTC (11 a.m. local time/Shanghai). At that time ...

NASA's TRMM satellite has been measuring the heavy rainfall in Ernesto, and some of the rainfall totals may reach one foot in Central America. NASA's Aqua satellite spotted a large area of the strong thunderstorms generating that heavy rainfall, wrapped around the storm's center. Ernesto made landfall in the Yucatan and is currently tracking west over land. At 11:15 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, August 7, Belize radar indicated Ernesto made landfall along the southern Yucatan coast near Mahahual, Mexico as a category one hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 85 mph (140 ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A new University of Florida study shows the turkey, one of the most widely consumed birds worldwide, was domesticated more than 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. Researchers say discovery of the bones from an ancient Mayan archaeological site in Guatemala provides evidence of domestication, usually a significant mark of civilization, and the earliest evidence of the Mexican turkey in the Maya world. The study appears online in PLoS ONE today. The discovery of the turkey bones is significant because the Maya did not use a lot of domesticated ...

Geckos are remarkable little creatures, clinging to almost any dry surface, and Alyssa Stark, from the University of Akron, USA, explains that they appear to be equally happy scampering through tropical rainforest canopies as they are in urban settings. 'A lot of work is done on geckos that looks at the very small adhesive structures on their toes to really understand how the system works at the most basic level', says Stark. She adds that the animals grip surfaces with microscopic hairs on the soles of their feet that make close enough contact to be attracted to the surface ...

NEW YORK (August 9, 2012) -- Researchers have successfully developed and tested a new prostate cancer screening method that uses the combined power of a novel drug therapy and changes in PSA levels over time to identify men with a high PSA who are more likely to have aggressive prostate cancer despite negative biopsies. The new study by researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, published in the Journal of Urology, shows that PSA can be a much more effective marker for prostate cancer when an additional drug therapy is used than it can ...

Winston-Salem, N.C. – Manipulating a group of hormone-producing cells in the brain can control blood sugar levels in the body – a discovery that has dramatic potential for research into weight-loss drugs and diabetes treatment. In a paper published in the October issue of Genetics and available online now, neurobiologists at Wake Forest University examine how fruit flies (Drosophila) react when confronted with a decreased diet. Reduced diet or starvation normally leads to hyperactivity in fruit flies – a hungry fly buzzes around feverishly, looking for more food. That ...

Jamie Cawley, small business owner and author of over 39 books since 1999, has now set her cap at making self-publishers lives easier with her upcoming work "The Self Publishers Guide to Book Marketing: Step By Step Guide for Fiction and Non-Fiction Authors". "Like many self-published authors I found that promoting my books was far more difficult than actually writing them! After reading a colossal number of books and blogs over the years trying to cobble together a marketing plan I was disappointed to find that most guides were either not focused ...

Central Florida native son Famous Kid Brick has got to be one of the brightest rays of independent hip hop to glimmer and gleam from the Sunshine State today. With more than 2,500 BDS-registered radio spins of his runaway hit single "Im On It," 15,000 iTunes downloads and sold out shows throughout the Southeast, Hussch Boy Productions flagship artist Famous Kid Brick has been continually holding Florida captive. And he is set to give the rest of the world a dose of the radiant rays that our backyards have been soaking up for months with the release of his ...

According to Artist Revenue Streams, a research project examining how and why musicians' revenue streams are changing, 64 percent of musicians said it's more competitive than ever. The League Of Starz, a West Coast Team of Producers with Platinum Record Production Credits decided to collaborate with Creativity Ainta Side Hustle, a Los Angeles based website design studio to brand their company in the digital sphere and strengthen their market position. Tavon "Pun" Alexander, League Of Starz CEO, "Technology has leveled the playing field for musicians so it's ...

Today at the website http://www.OriginalRoyalty.com, a branch of Israel United in Christ Inc. is allowing their customers to download the first chapter of the book "Understandest Thou What Thou Readest?" You may claim your download once you subscribe to our website's newsletter. You can find the purple subscription box to the left of the webpage. "In the last days the United States of America is the most powerful super power on Earth; however there is no scriptural mention of them according to the world's Christian leaders. Why? Society as a whole has ...

Novel Fashion Organizers Will be Unveiled to the Retail Gift Trade at Stand #5238 at the Javits Center Whittier, CA Lori Leigh Designs Inc. President and Founder Lori Torline announced today that her Fashion Accessory firm will introduce the novel Earring Chalets at the upcoming New York Gift Show at the Javits Center in New York City. This is one of the largest premiere gift industry trade shows in the world. "The Earring Chalets were first introduced at trade shows in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and the retail buyer's response was overwhelming", said Mrs.Torline. ...

Graphite Design, maker of some of the most widely played premium golf shafts on the PGA TOUR, announced today that the winner of the Web.com Cox Classic presented by Lexus of Omaha played a Graphite Design Tour AD DI shafts in his driver. This win marks the 17th professional tour victory in 2012 by players who have used Graphite Design shafts. "This player is making a name for himself on the Web.com Tour by becoming the first player in Tour history to make his first two professional starts victories" said Tak Yamada, President, Graphite Design, "We are ...

Rapid protect (http://www.rapidprotect.com ) updated its "Driver safety and No Texting apps" to support the life safety of a driver. These no texting driver safety apps are provided under the names of "Road Safe Driver", "Driving Control", Speed App", and "Speed Control App",. The apps are available on Android and Blackberry platforms. The use of a cell phone can be a major distraction while driving. Research has shown that countless accidents could have been avoided if the driver was not distracted while driving. There is ...

Reducing the Stress of Divorce on Children: Strategies in Co-Parenting Children cope with their parents' separation or divorce in different ways, and they work through their related thoughts and emotions differently as they age and mature. According to a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics from the Baylor College of Medicine, children of divorce go through a grieving process that may repeat itself as they continue to adapt and develop towards adulthood. Though there is worry that children of divorce face long-term difficulties in academics, employment, relationships ...