The Third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) has issued Data Release 9 (DR9), the first public release of data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). In this release BOSS, the largest of SDSS-III's four surveys, provides spectra for 535,995 newly observed galaxies, 102,100 quasars, and 116,474 stars, plus new information about objects in previous Sloan surveys (SDSS-I and II). "This is just the first of three data releases from BOSS," says David Schlegel of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), an astrophysicist ...

Alexandria, VA – A team of researchers may have discovered a way to hear earthquakes. Not the noises of rattling windows and crumbling buildings, but the real sounds an earthquake makes deep underground as rock grinds and fails catastrophically. Typical seismic waves have frequencies below the audible range for humans, but the August issue of EARTH shows you where to find the voice of one seismic monster: the March 11, 2011, magnitude-9.0 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. Beyond the novelty of simply hearing an earthquake, the team found that the new technology could possibly ...

Large hotel chains are quick to adopt and adapt innovations developed in other industries, while smaller hotels make almost continual incremental changes in response to customers' needs. The UK hotel industry is alive with innovation and new ways of improving service for customers, research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has found. The findings of a project led by Professor Gareth Shaw of Exeter University and Professor Allan Williams of Surrey University run counter to the traditional image of the hotel sector as slow to change. Official measures ...

Research has revealed that the extremely hot, dry and windy conditions on Black Saturday combined with structures in the atmosphere called 'horizontal convective rolls' -similar to streamers of wind flowing through the air - which likely affected fire behaviour. The study is the first of its kind to produce such detailed, high-resolution simulations of weather patterns on the day and provides insights for future fire management and warning systems. The work was led by Dr Todd Lane and Ms Chermelle Engel from The University of Melbourne with Prof Michael Reeder (Monash ...

Due to the lack of studies, there is currently no proof that patients with ovarian cancer can benefit from positron emission tomography (PET) alone or in combination with computed tomography (CT). As regards diagnostic accuracy, in certain cases, recurrences can be detected earlier and more accurately with PET or PET/CT than with conventional imaging techniques. This is the conclusion of the final report by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) in Cologne that was published on 23 May 2012. More reliable diagnosis is supposed to improve ...

A major breakthrough by scientists at Queen's University Belfast could lead to more effective treatments for throat and cervical cancer. The discovery could see the development of new therapies, which would target the non-cancerous cells surrounding a tumour, as well as treating the tumour itself. Researchers at Queen's Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology have found that the non-cancerous tissue, or 'stroma', surrounding cancers of the throat and cervix, plays an important role in regulating the spread of cancer cells. The discovery opens the door for the development ...

Trusting research over their guts, scientists in New Zealand and Canada examined the phenomenon Stephen Colbert, comedian and news satirist, calls "truthiness"—the feeling that something is true. In four different experiments they discovered that people believe claims are true, regardless of whether they actually are true, when a decorative photograph appears alongside the claim. The work is published online in the Springer journal, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. "We wanted to examine how the kinds of photos people see every day—the ones that decorate newspaper or TV ...

Mini-courses designed to increase creative stimulation and variety in physicians' daily routines can sharpen critical thinking skills, improve job satisfaction and encourage innovative thinking, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers who piloted a series of such courses. "For decades, career development theory has identified a stage that occurs at midlife, characterized by a desire to escape the status quo and pursue new ventures," said Kimberly Myers, Ph.D., associate professor of humanities. "It is increasingly clear that these mid-career professionals ...

New research from the University of Warwick suggests that Berlin has the best democratic space in the world, topping a list that includes London, Washington and Tokyo. The list appears in a new book, 'Democracy and Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic Performance' written by Dr John Parkinson, from the University of Warwick's Politics and International Studies department. Dr Parkinson carefully selected 11 capital cities and assessed how well they provide space for all kinds of democratic action. He visited Berlin, Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, Wellington, ...

"Sound vibrations are transmitted to the inner ear via anterior extensions of the swim bladder or via bony ossicles", the biologist Tanja Schulz-Mirbach explains how swim bladders may serve for hearing. The hearing sensitivity improves considerably in this way. The anterior part of the swim bladder functions in specialized fish species similar to an ear drum. Up to now the effects of the different swim bladder morphologies have not been investigated in detail in cichlid fishes. The behavioural biologists of the University of Vienna Tanja Schulz-Mirbach and Friedrich Ladich ...

Astronomers have constructed the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, which will help the investigation of the mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up 96 percent of the universe. The map was produced by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III). Early last year, the SDSS-III released the largest-ever image of the sky, which covered one-third of the night sky. The new data, "Data Release 9" (DR9), which publically releases the data from the first two years of this six-year project, begins expansion of this ...

They're everywhere -- in magazines, on the Internet, on television—people with super-thin bodies who are presented as having the ideal body form. But despite the increasing pressure to be thin, more and more of us are overweight. Now, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have found that normal weight teens who perceive themselves as fat are more likely to grow up to be fat. "Perceiving themselves as fat even though they are not may actually cause normal weight children to become obese as adults," says Koenraad Cuypers, a researcher ...

Research at Bangor University has identified a switch in cells that may help to kill tumors with heat. Prostate cancer and other localized tumors can be effectively treated by a combination of heat and an anti-cancer drug that damages the genes. Behind this novel therapy is the enigmatic ability of heat to switch off essential survival mechanisms in human cells. Although thermotherapy is now more widely used, the underlying principles are still unclear. In a recent publication in the Journal of Cell Science (http://jcs.biologists.org/content/early/2012/07/10/jcs.104075.abstract) ...

Active video games, also known as "exergames," are not the perfect solution to the nation's sedentary ways, but they can play a role in getting some people to be more active. Michigan State University's Wei Peng reviewed published research of studies of these games and says that most of the AVGs provide only "light-to-moderate" intensity physical activity. And that, she says, is not nearly as good as what she calls "real-life exercise." "For those not engaging in real-life exercise, this may be a good step toward this," said Peng, an assistant professor of telecommunication, ...

Stressed and non-stressed persons use different brain regions and different strategies when learning. This has been reported by the cognitive psychologists PD Dr. Lars Schwabe and Professor Oliver Wolf from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in the Journal of Neuroscience. Non-stressed individuals applied a deliberate learning strategy, while stressed subjects relied more on their gut feeling. "These results demonstrate for the first time that stress has an influence on which of the different memory systems the brain turns on," said Lars Schwabe. The experiment: Stress due to ...

VIDEO: With the aid of tiny silicon tubes and one of Europe's most sophisticated centres for microscopy, scientists from University of Copenhagen have been able for the first time to observe... Click here for more information. Chronic infections are a large and growing problem throughout the developed world, and intensive research is being conducted in ways to combat the recalcitrant bacteria. When bacteria aggregate into so-called biofilm, they become resistant to antibiotics. ...

Contrary to popular belief, purified drinking water from home faucets contains millions to hundreds of millions of widely differing bacteria per gallon, and scientists have discovered a plausible way to manipulate those populations of mostly beneficial microbes to potentially benefit consumers. Their study appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. Lutgarde Raskin and colleagues Ameet Pinto and Chuanwu Xi explain that municipal water treatment plants typically try to minimize the growth of microbes in the huge filters that remove small particles and substances ...

With the best explosive detectors often unable to sniff out the tiny amounts of TNT released from terrorist bombs in airports and other public places, scientists are reporting a potential solution. Their research in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry describes development of a device that concentrates TNT vapors in the air so that they become more detectable. Yushan Yan and colleagues point out that TNT and other conventional explosives are the mainstays of terrorist bombs and the anti-personnel mines that kill or injure more than 15,000 people annually in war-torn countries. ...

Green lacewings are delicate green insects with large, lace-like wings that live in a wide variety of habitats, especially tropical forests. Adults mostly feed on flowers, but the larvae are ferocious predators of other insects, frequently carrying the dead carcasses of their prey on their backs after killing them using their enormous, sucking tube-like jaws. In this study, a beautiful new species of green lacewing in the genus Semachrysa is described from the Malaysian rainforest. The wing pattern is its most distinctive feature. Yet, this discovery could have been ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new study from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Medicine examines the relationship between family members who make decisions for hospitalized older adults with impaired cognition and the doctors, nurses and other clinicians who care for these patients. The researchers report that in this era of fragmented care, families rarely get to know even the names of the many clinicians who care for their family members. Even a physician or nurse who was especially supportive or helpful to the family might see the family member only once ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — It's no secret that pregnancy hormones can dampen moods, but for some expectant moms, it's much worse: 1 in 5 experience major depression. Now, new research shows that an age-old recommended stress-buster may actually work for this group of women: yoga. Pregnant women who were identified as psychiatrically high risk and who participated in a 10-week mindfulness yoga intervention saw significant reductions in depressive symptoms, according to a University of Michigan Health System pilot feasibility study. Mothers-to-be also reported stronger attachment ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA. -- A protein that slows aging in mice and other animals also protects against the ravages of a high-fat diet, including diabetes, according to a new MIT study. MIT biology professor Leonard Guarente discovered SIRT1's longevity-boosting properties more than a decade ago and has since explored its role in many different body tissues. In his latest study, appearing in the Aug. 8 print edition of the journal Cell Metabolism, he looked at what happens when the SIRT1 protein is missing from adipose cells, which make up body fat. When put on a high-fat diet, ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- For much of the year drought has been plaguing American grasslands. But a recent study found that grasses do not appear to be losing the turf war against climate when it comes to surviving with little precipitation. The Kansas State University-led study looked at the drought tolerance of 426 species of grass from around the world. The goal was to better understand how grasslands in different parts of the world may respond to the changes in frequency and severity of drought in the future. Grasslands have several important ecological functions, according ...

Reintroduced European beavers could have an overall positive impact on wild salmon populations in Scotland, according to a study by the University of Southampton. Representatives of recreational fisheries interests north and south of the border are concerned that beavers can harm economically important fish stocks due to their dam building activities and potential to block migratory life phases. However, results of a study conducted by scientists at the University of Southampton, funded by Scottish Natural Heritage, indicate that beavers can also have substantial beneficial ...

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) develops in individuals who experience highly traumatizing situations such as terrorist attacks and car accidents, but symptoms can also come about after normal life events — including childbirth. A Tel Aviv University researcher has found that approximately one third of all post-partum women exhibit some symptoms of PTSD, and a smaller percentage develop full-blown PTSD following the ordeal of labor. This surprising finding indicates a relatively high prevalence of the disorder, says Prof. Rael Strous of TAU's Sackler Faculty of ...