PITTSBURGH—The origin of an important type of exploding stars—Type Ia supernovae—have been discovered, thanks to a research team at the University of Pittsburgh.Studying supernovae of this type helps researchers measure galaxy distances and can lead to important astronomical discoveries. A paper detailing this research has been accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Principal investigator Carlos Badenes, assistant professor of physics and astronomy in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, detailed the ways in which his team used ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Freshwater ecosystems in northern regions are home to significantly more species of water fleas than traditionally thought, adding to evidence that regions with vanishing waters contain unique animal life. The new information on water fleas -- which are actually tiny crustaceans -- comes from a multi-year, international study that was published Feb. 24 in the journal Zootaxa. The researchers scoured the globe seeking the creatures and found them inhabiting northern lakes and ponds in locations from Alaska to Russia to Scandinavia. After analyzing ...

FitzDrake Search (FDS) has crafted a unique hiring solution for small to medium firms poised for growth. Managing Partner Bill Fitzgerald notes "It is clear that growth in the economy will be from small and medium sized businesses. They become incubators for new ideas and innovations that lead to job creation." However, many of these firms do not always have the internal recruiting infrastructure to find top candidates quickly and at a reasonable cost. The FDS approach helps clients manage risk and preserve cash flow. Unlike traditional retained or contingent ...

The University of Notre Dame's annual Bengal Bouts student boxing tournament's longtime mantra is "Strong Bodies Fight that Weak Bodies May Be Nourished." The unusual mantra is fitting for an unusual competition whose ticket sales proceeds benefit Holy Cross Missions in Bangladesh, part of the ministry of the Congregation for the Holy Cross, Notre Dame's founding religious community. However, this year a large number of Bengal Bouts boxers are going even further to do good by volunteering to participate in post-bout concussion testing. James Moriarty, the University's ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new power scheme for cardiac pacemakers turns to an unlikely source: vibrations from heartbeats themselves. Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan designed a device that harvests energy from the reverberation of heartbeats through the chest and converts it to electricity to run a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator. These mini-medical machines send electrical signals to the heart to keep it beating in a healthy rhythm. By taking the place of the batteries that power them today, the new energy harvester could save patients from repeated ...

VIDEO: This movie was created using GOES-13 visible and infrared satellite imagery. The 25 second movie runs from Feb. 29 at 1718 UTC (12:18 pm EST) through March 2 at 1740... Click here for more information. Another powerful weather system is moving through the central and eastern U.S., generating more severe weather. NASA created an animation of data from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite that shows the frontal system pushing east as it generated severe weather in Ohio, Kentucky, ...

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Telescope have observed what appears to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The result could challenge current theories about dark matter that predict galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance even during the shock of a collision. Abell 520 is a gigantic merger of galaxy clusters located 2.4 billion light-years away. Dark matter is not visible, although its presence and distribution is found indirectly through its effects. Dark matter can act like a magnifying glass, ...

Hollywood Sportsbook (www.hollywoodsportsbook.eu) a leading online entertainment gaming site since 1997, today announced it will offer a month long promotion allowing players to pick the winners of certain NBA and college basketball games all month long. Robert Evans, Hollywood's Director of Operations says, "Well here we are... the most exciting month for basketball. In addition to all the cool stuff we will have going on this month for the NCAA tournament, we hope this contest will float our players' boats as well..." For each coming weekend in March, ...

The AIRS instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite provided forecasters with an infrared look at what was happening "under the hood" of Tropical Storm Irina's clouds and saw two reasons why it temporarily weakened before moving into the Mozambique Channel and heading for landfall in Mozambique in a couple of days. WHY DID IT WEAKEN? NASA's Aqua satellite's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of Tropical Cyclone Irina over the Mozambique Channel on March 1, 2012 at 0130 UTC (8:30 p.m. EST, Feb. 29). At that time, the strongest thunderstorms ...

Tropical Cyclone 15S has had a difficult "childhood." It was born on March 1 and immediately dealt with a harsh environment. The cyclone weakened within 24 hours to a remnant low pressure area, and NASA's TRMM satellite revealed there was still some strength remaining in the storm. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over the remnants of Tropical Cyclone 15S in the South Indian Ocean on March 2, 2012 at 0140 UTC (8:40 p.m. EST, March 1). A rainfall analysis from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments showed very ...

Washington, D.C. -- Plant science is key to addressing the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century, according to Carnegie's David Ehrhardt and Wolf Frommer. In a Perspective published in The Plant Cell, the two researchers argue that the development of new technology is key to transforming plant biology in order to meet human needs. Plants serve as the conduit of energy into the biosphere, provide food and materials used by humans, and they shape our environment. According to Ehrhardt and Frommer, the three major challenges facing humanity in our time are ...

Every day, thousands of cargo containers from around the world pass through our nation's sea ports carrying items we need, and possibly some that are not so welcome: drugs, explosives, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons – even human cargo. The possible concealment of such items in containers led lawmakers to call for the screening of all ocean cargo containers—thousands per port per day. The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is charged with the critical task of securing the country from terrorists and their ...

The optimum design of bicycle parameters has been explored by many scholars and institutes since bicycles were first invented. Professor Xin-Jun Liu and his group at Tsinghua University established a new way to design bicycle parameters according to the dimensions of the rider's body. They introduced a new perspective of the rider–bicycle system by considering the complete system as a mechanism. The group then established a new method for the optimum design of bicycle parameters from a completely theoretical basis, which may result in a new field of optimum design of bicycle ...

WASHINGTON, DC, March 3, 2012 – The people we trust to take us or our loved ones from place to place struggle with sleep, according to the National Sleep Foundation's (NSF) 2012 Sleep in America® poll. It is the first poll to ask transportation professionals, including pilots, train operators,* truck, bus, taxi and limo drivers about their sleep habits and work performance. Pilots and train operators are most likely to report sleep-related job performance and safety problems. The results of the poll are striking. About one-fourth of train operators (26%) and pilots (23%) ...

The future of Canadian outdoor ice hockey – a sport synonymous with the country's culture – is being threatened by anthropogenic climate change, new research suggests. As warmer winter temperatures restrict ice from freezing over, researchers believe the ice hockey stars of the future will have limited access to the frozen lakes and backyard rinks that have helped shape the careers of some of the greatest professional players, such as Wayne Gretzky; the Canadian considered to be the greatest of all time who started skating as a child on a rink in his backyard. Evidence ...

Berkeley – Opening the door to the development of thought-controlled prosthetic devices to help people with spinal cord injuries, amputations and other impairments, neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal have demonstrated that the brain is more flexible and trainable than previously thought. Their new study, to be published Sunday, March 4, in the advanced online publication of the journal Nature, shows that through a process called plasticity, parts of the brain can be trained to do something ...

Scientists have shed light on how the liver repairs itself with research that could help develop drugs to treat liver disease. Researchers at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh have discovered how to enhance the production of key cells needed to repair damaged liver tissue. The study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, could help heal livers affected by diseases such as cirrhosis or chronic hepatitis. Scientists were able to unpick the process of how different cells in the liver are formed. When ...

Receding gums often result in tooth sensitivity and can lead to decay of the root and persistent inflammation of the gum. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Head & Face Medicine demonstrates that a novel method using bovine collagen is able to enhance gum healing. This resulted in thicker margins around the tooth and, in over half the cases, complete coverage of exposed roots. Researchers across Germany and Switzerland led by Dr Shahram Ghanaati and the dentist Dr Markus Schlee investigated the possibility of using collagen, extracted from ...

In the absence of eyes, the fresh water polyp, Hydra magnipapillata, nevertheless reacts to light. They are diurnal, hunting during the day, and are known to move, looping end over end, or contract, in response to light. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biology shows that stinging cells (cnidocytes) in hydra tentacles, which the animals use for self protection and to catch prey, are linked via a simple nervous system to primitive light responsive cells that co-ordinate the animals' feeding behavior. Hydra are members of a family of radially ...

Do your parents know where you are at night? According to 36 per cent of 15 year old boys and nearly a quarter of 15 year old girls the answer to that question, at least once a month, is no. This is the finding from Understanding Society, a long term study of 40,000 UK households, which asked more than 2,000 10-15 year olds how frequently they stayed out past 9.00pm without their parents knowing where they were. The study, which is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), also found that staying out late without telling your parents is unrelated to ...

In nature, how do host species survive parasite attacks? This has not been well understood, until now. A new mathematical model shows that when a host and its parasite each have multiple traits governing their interaction, the host has a unique evolutionary advantage that helps it survive. The results are important because they might help explain how humans as well as plants and animals evolve to withstand parasite onslaught. The research, reported in the March 4 online edition of Nature, was supported by the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis ...

Researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used powerful X-rays to help decipher how certain natural antibiotics defy a longstanding set of chemical rules – a mechanism that has baffled organic chemists for decades. Their result, reported today in Nature, details how five carbon atoms and one oxygen atom in the structure of lasalocid, a natural antibiotic produced by bacteria in soil, can link into a six-membered ring through an energetically unfavorable chemical reaction. Unlocking this chemical pathway could ...

SALT LAKE CITY – University of Utah engineers designed a new kind of video game controller that not only vibrates like existing devices, but pulls and stretches the thumb tips in different directions to simulate the tug of a fishing line, the recoil of a gun or the feeling of ocean waves. "I'm hoping we can get this into production when the next game consoles come out in a couple of years," says William Provancher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who is in Vancouver, British Columbia, demonstrating the new game controller with his students March 5-7. They ...

Details about Michigan "Cash for Clunkers" payout program have been announced. Under the NEW "Cash for Clunkers Michigan" or "Michigan Clunkers" program, consumers will be guaranteed a minimum of $2,500 trade-in towards any nicer, newer vehicle from a participating new car dealer when they trade in their old vehicle and purchase a qualifying vehicle. In order to be eligible for the program, the trade-in passenger vehicle must be in drivable condition and be continuously insured and registered to the same owner for the full year before the ...

VIDEO: Karen Bonuck, Ph.D., discusses her new research showing that young children with sleep-disordered breathing are prone to developing behavioral difficulties such as hyperactivity and aggressiveness, as well as emotional symptoms... Click here for more information. March 5, 2012 — (BRONX, NY) — A study of more than 11,000 children followed for over six years has found that young children with sleep-disordered breathing are prone to developing behavioral difficulties such ...