An unexpected discovery by astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is forcing scientists to rethink their understanding of the environment in globular star clusters, tight-knit collections containing hundreds of thousands of stars. The astronomers used the VLA to study a globular cluster called Messier 22 (M22), a group of stars more than 10,000 light-years from Earth. They hoped to find evidence for a rare type of black hole in the cluster's center. They wanted to find what scientists call an intermediate-mass black hole, ...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – OCTOBER 3, 2012 – Today investigators at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City reported the first use of whole genome information for diagnosing critically ill infants. As reported in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes STAT-Seq, a whole genome sequencing approach - from blood sample to returning results to a physician - in about 50 hours. Currently, testing even a single gene takes six weeks or more. Speed of diagnosis is most critical in acute care situations, as in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where medical ...

Manta rays are more likely to gather together under either a new or a full moon, according to new research published Oct 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Fabrice Jaine and colleagues at the University of Queensland. The research identifies environmental factors that predict the abundance and behavior of manta rays at Lady Elliott Island in the Great Barrier Reef. The authors comment that knowing these factors is important for conservation efforts, "especially in the context of a changing climate and with targeted fisheries increasingly threatening manta ray populations ...

A fragment of a child's skull discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania shows the oldest known evidence of anemia caused by a nutritional deficiency, reports a new paper published Oct. 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE. The discovery, made by a global team of researchers led by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo from Complutense University, Madrid, suggests that early human ancestors began eating meat much earlier in history than previously believed. The skull fragment identified is thought to belong to a child somewhat younger than two and shows bone lesions that commonly result ...

Researchers have discovered a panel of 13 blood proteins that may be effective biomarkers to detect malignant mesothelioma, according to a study published Oct. 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Rachel Ostroff from the company SomaLogic, which developed the new test, and colleagues at other institutions. Malignant mesothelioma is a rare, aggressive form of lung cancer that can develop after prolonged exposure to asbestos. Because early diagnosis is difficult, most patients face a poor prognosis and have few options for treatment. In the study, authors compared proteins ...

When making decisions about the value of an assortment of different objects, people approximate an average overall value, which though frequently useful can lead to apparently irrational decision-making. A new study published Oct 3 in PLOS ONE by Jerald Kralik and colleagues at Dartmouth College shows for the first time that non-human primates also make similar 'irrational' choices based on approximation. In the study, researchers found that rhesus monkeys preferred a highly-valued food item (a fruit) alone to the identical item paired with a food of positive but lower ...

Scientists have discovered a rare fossil called Kulindroplax, the missing link between two mollusc groups, which is revealed in a 3D computer model, in research published today in the journal Nature. The researchers have unearthed the worm-like partly shelled Kulindroplax, which they have modelled in a 3D computer animation. Kulindroplax lived in the sea during the Silurian Period, approximately 425 million years ago, when most life lived in the oceans and the first plants were beginning to grow on land. The team found the Kulindroplax fossil, the only one of its kind ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report the discovery of microbial–dependent mechanisms through which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels their development and growth. The findings are published in the October 3, 2012 Advanced Online Edition of Nature. The association between chronic inflammation and tumor development has long been known from the early work of German pathologist Rudolph Virchow. Harvard University pathologist Harold Dvorak later compared tumors with "wounds that never heal," noting the similarities ...

Healthcare professionals are as bad as patients when it comes to knowing how to use inhalers prescribed for asthma and other respiratory conditions correctly, says an editorial in Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB). They therefore can't be relied on to teach patients how to use these devices correctly, says DTB. But as 45 million prescriptions for respiratory inhalers were dispensed in 2011 in England alone—at a cost of £900 million to the NHS—everyone needs to be more clued up on correct inhaler technique to make sure these drugs work well for patients and offer ...

Daily low dose aspirin could slow the decline in brain power among elderly women at high risk of heart disease, indicates observational research published in the online journal BMJ Open. The researchers base their findings on 681 women between the ages of 70 and 92, 601 of whom were at high risk of heart disease and stroke, defined as a 10% or greater risk on a validated risk scale (Framingham). All the women were subjected to a battery of tests to measure their physical health and intellectual capacity, including verbal fluency and memory speed, and dementia (mini ...

New Haven, Conn. — A fossil unearthed in Great Britain may end a long-running debate about the mollusks, one of life's most diverse invertebrate groups: Which evolved first, shelled forms like clams and snails, or their shell-less, worm-like relatives? The small new fossil, found in marine rocks along the English-Welsh border, provides the best fossil evidence yet that the simpler worm-like mollusks evolved from their more anatomically complex shelled brethren, rather than the other way around. The discovery reinforces previous findings from molecular sequencing studies ...

A decline in April-May rainfall over south-east Australia is associated with a southward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone according to research published today in Scientific Reports, a primary research journal from the publishers of Nature. CSIRO scientists Wenju Cai, Tim Cowan and Marcus Thatcher explored why autumn rainfall has been in decline across south-eastern Australia since the 1970s, a period that included the devastating Millennium drought from 1997-2009. Previous research into what has been driving the decline in autumn rainfall across regions like southern ...

Astronomers have made the unexpected discovery of two black holes inside an ancient cluster of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The research, published today in the prestigious journal Nature, describes the detection of two black holes that are about 10 to 20 times heavier than our Sun in the globular cluster named M22. Black holes, so dense that even light can't escape them, are what is left when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses in on itself. Co-author Dr James Miller-Jones, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for ...

New York, NY (October 3, 2012) — Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have identified dozens of new spontaneous genetic mutations that play a significant role in the development of schizophrenia, adding to the growing list of genetic variants that can contribute to the disease. The study, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind, was published today in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics. Although schizophrenia typically onsets during adolescence and early adulthood, many of the mutations were found to affect genes with higher expression ...

Engineers at The University of Texas at Dallas have used advanced techniques to make the material graphene small enough to read DNA. Shrinking the size of a graphene pore to less than one nanometer – small enough to thread a DNA strand – opens the possibility of using graphene as a low-cost tool to sequence DNA. "Sequencing DNA at a very cheap cost would enable scientists and doctors to better predict and diagnose disease, and also tailor a drug to an individual's genetic code," said Dr. Moon Kim, professor of materials science and engineering. He was senior author ...

Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the tomb of Lady K'abel, a seventh-century Maya Holy Snake Lord considered one of the great queens of Classic Maya civilization. The tomb was discovered during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Perú-Waka' in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, by a team of archaeologists led by Washington University in St. Louis' David Freidel, co-director of the expedition. Along with David Freidel, professor of anthropology at WUSTL, the project is co-directed by Juan Carlos Pérez, former vice minister of culture for cultural heritage of ...

Athletics have always been a part of Jade Dismore's life. The 27-year-old native of South Africa grew up playing tennis and swimming; as an adult she became an avid runner and recreational volleyball player. For several years she felt soreness in her shoulder, but assumed it was nothing serious. As she began training for her first triathlon, the pain became increasingly severe. After trying to manage the pain on her own for years, Dismore decided it was time to seek medical attention. "I started feeling dull pain in my shoulder about four or five years ago and tried ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – As flu season approaches, people who get sick may not realize they can pass the flu not only to other humans, but possibly to other animals, including pets such as cats, dogs and ferrets. This concept, called "reverse zoonosis," is still poorly understood but has raised concern among some scientists and veterinarians, who want to raise awareness and prevent further flu transmission to pets. About 80-100 million households in the United States have a cat or dog. It's well known that new strains of influenza can evolve from animal populations such as ...

Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers, led by Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Observatories, have used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the most accurate and precise measurement yet of the Hubble constant, a fundamental quantity that measures the current rate at which our universe is expanding. These results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and are available online. The Hubble constant is named after 20th Century Carnegie astronomer Edwin P.Hubble, who astonished the world by discovering that our universe is expanding now and has been growing ...

CHICAGO, Oct. 3, 2012 – Yesterday U.S. Army surgeons exhibited new research findings in two poster presentations at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress. The poster presentation titled, "Assessment of Disease Features and Immune Response in Breast Cancer Patients with Recurrence after Receiving AE37, a HER2 Peptide Vaccine," outlined outcomes of injecting AE37, a HER-2 derived vaccine, in breast cancer survivors following completion of standard therapy. Those who received injections of AE37 were more likely to survive disease-free than the control group. ...

Scientists at USC have discovered a new type of drug for the treatment of ovarian cancer that works in a way that should not only decrease the number of doses that patients need to take, but also may make it effective for patients whose cancer has become drug-resistant. The drug, which so far has been tested in the lab on ovarian cancer cells and on mice tumors, was unveiled last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "We need a new generation of drugs," said Shili Xu, a USC graduate student and lead author of the PNAS paper. "We need to ...

New research proves the validity of one of the most promising approaches for combating Alzheimer's disease (AD) with medicines that treat not just some of the symptoms, but actually stop or prevent the disease itself, scientists are reporting. The study, in the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, also identifies a potential new oral drug that the scientists say could lead the way. Wenhui Hu and colleagues point out that existing drugs for AD provide only "minimal" relief of memory loss and other symptoms, creating an urgent need for new medicines that actually combat ...

If applied to the $5-billion-per-year dietary supplement industry, "quality by design" (QbD) — a mindset that helped revolutionize the manufacture of cars and hundreds of other products — could ease concerns about the safety and integrity of the herbal products used by 80 percent of the world's population. That's the conclusion of an article in ACS' Journal of Natural Products. Ikhlas Khan and Troy Smillie explain that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates dietary supplements as a category of foods, rather than drugs. Manufacturers are responsible for ...

Scientists are describing what may be a "complete solution" to cleaning up oil spills — a superabsorbent material that sops up 40 times its own weight in oil and then can be shipped to an oil refinery and processed to recover the oil. Their article on the material appears in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels. T. C. Mike Chung and Xuepei Yuan point out that current methods for coping with oil spills like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster are low-tech, decades-old and have many disadvantages. Corncobs, straw and other absorbents, for instance, can hold only about 5 times their ...

Billions of people around the world today will unknowingly perform a chemical reaction first reported 100 years ago. And the centennial of the Maillard reaction — which gives delightful flavor to foods ranging from grilled meat to baked bread to coffee — is the topic of a fascinating article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Sarah Everts, C&EN senior editor, explains in the article that French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard took a first stab ...