CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Much has been made of graphene's exceptional qualities, from its ability to conduct heat and electricity better than any other material to its unparalleled strength: Worked into a composite material, graphene can repel bullets better than Kevlar. Previous research has also shown that pristine graphene — a microscopic sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern — is among the most impermeable materials ever discovered, making the substance ideal as a barrier film. But the material may not be as impenetrable as scientists have thought. By engineering ...

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), a category that includes autism, Asperger Syndrome, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder, are characterized by difficulty with social interaction and communication, or repetitive behaviors. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Management says that one in 88 children in the US is somewhere on the Autism spectrum — an alarming ten-fold increase in the last four decades. New research by Dr. Mark Weiser of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Sheba Medical Center has revealed that ASD appears share a root cause with ...

VIDEO: Video of the Oct. 22, 2012, solar flare as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 131 and 304 Angstrom wavelengths. LINK TO HIGHEST RESOLUTION VIDEO: ...

Hubble astronomers have looked at one of the most distant and brightest quasars in the universe and are surprised by what they did not see: the underlying host galaxy of stars feeding the quasar. The best explanation is that the galaxy is shrouded in so much dust that the stars are completely hidden everywhere. Astronomers believe that the James Webb Space Telescope will reveal the galaxy. All but the very first galaxies contain some dust—the early universe was dust-free until the first generation of stars started making dust through nuclear fusion. As these stars aged ...

A new report by the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute shows that the length of the average hospital stay in the United States has increased at the same time as use of medical imaging scans has declined. It is unclear if the trends are related, but potentially important, as hospital admissions are among the largest, and fastest growing, health care costs. More research is needed to assess the potential negative impact of government and private insurer imaging reductions on overall medical costs and patient safety. "Lawmakers, regulators and medical professionals ...

A new report by a panel of international experts highlights policies to improve air quality road safety and congestion, supporting African development. Transport is playing a big role in delivering economic development to Africa. But as the demand for transport grows and cities expand, policy makers need to tackle transport challenges to make sure that all parts of society can benefit from this central driver of jobs and growth. "Transport policies in Africa are of critical importance to the delivery of sustainable cities, healthy citizens and poverty eradication," ...

Teaching a robot a new trick is a challenge. You can't reward it with treats and it doesn't respond to approval or disappointment in your voice. For researchers in the biological sciences, however, the future training of robots has been made much easier thanks to a new program called "PaR-PaR." Nathan Hillson, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led the development of PaR-PaR, which stands for Programming a Robot. PaR-PaR is a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows researchers to ...

HOUSTON -- (Oct. 23, 2012) -- A new Rice University-led study finds that a deep connection about 50 miles underground can explain the enigmatic behavior of two of Earth's most notable volcanoes, Hawaii's Mauna Loa and Kilauea. The study, the first to model paired volcano interactions, explains how a link in Earth's upper mantle could account for Kilauea and Mauna Loa's competition for the same deep magma supply and their simultaneous "inflation," or bulging upward, during the past decade. The study appears in the November issue of Nature Geoscience. The research offers ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Most researchers imagine the initial oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere to have been something like a staircase, but with steps only going up. The first step, so the story goes, occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, and this, the so-called Great Oxidation Event, has obvious implications for the origins and evolution of the first forms of eukaryotic life. The second big step in this assumed irreversible rise occurred almost two billion years later, coinciding with the first appearances and earliest diversification of animals. Now a team led ...

Just like humans, domestic cats are often judged by their color, and the media and folklore help perpetuate these stereotypes. Take the snobbish, aloof, white kitty who promotes "Fancy Feast," and spooky images of black cats, which can be associated with bad luck and witches, especially around Halloween. Interested in the link between how cat color influences adoption rates, a University of California, Berkeley, researcher surveyed 189 people with experience of cats as pets and found that they were more likely to assign positive personality traits to orange cats and less ...

We've all heard of the "glass ceiling" but the recent economic crisis has illuminated another workplace phenomenon: the "glass cliff." Women seem to be overrepresented in precarious leadership positions at organizations going through crisis. Evidence is growing that more feminine leadership traits, such as being understanding and tactful, are believed to be desirable under such circumstances, causing people to make a "think crisis – think female" association. But is it that women are always passively selected into these jobs or do they sometimes also actively seek them ...

In a landmark study, University of Otago researchers have achieved the feat of sequencing complete mitochondrial genomes for members of what was likely to be one of the first groups of Polynesians to settle New Zealand and have revealed a surprising degree of genetic variation among these pioneering voyagers. The Otago researchers' breakthrough means that similar DNA detective work with samples from various modern and ancient Polynesian populations might now be able to clear up competing theories about the pathways of their great migration across the Pacific to New Zealand. Results ...

Systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (SJIA) is currently classified as a subtype of juvenile idiopathic arthritis but with the addition of systemic inflammation often resulting in fever, rash and serositis. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine shows that the arthritic and systemic components of SJIA are related, but that the inflammatory pathways involved in SJIA are different from those in the more common polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis (POLY). Of particular interest, distinct pathways involved in the arthritis of early ...

The tobacco industry is now using smarphone apps - a medium that has global reach, including to children - to promote its products, warn researchers in Tobacco Control. The availability of pro-smoking content in app stores seems to be violating Article 13 of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which bans the advertising and promotion of tobacco products in all media, say the authors. In February 2012, they searched two of the largest smartphone app stores (Apple and Android Market) for the availability of English language ...

Treating chronic hepatitis C infection with antiviral drugs could halve the risk of developing the most common form of liver cancer, in some cases, indicates an analysis of the published research in one of the new BMJ Open Editions.* Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common form of liver cancer worldwide, accounting for 90 per cent of all primary cases of the disease. Cirrhosis of the liver and hepatitis C infection are among the most important risk factors. The authors reviewed the published evidence on the use of antiviral therapy—interferon or pegylated interferon, ...

A study led by The University of Manchester has demonstrated that new technology that can analyse millions of gene sequences in a matter of seconds is an effective way to quickly and accurately identify diseases in skeletons. Professor Terry Brown, working in partnership with Professor Charlotte Roberts from Durham University, used a next generation sequencing approach, including hybridization capture technology, to identify tuberculosis genes in a 19th century female skeleton found in a crypt in Leeds. Their study is part of wider research into the identification ...

People who exercise later in life may better protect their brain from age-related changes than those who do not, a study suggests. Researchers found that people over 70 who took regular exercise showed less brain shrinkage over a three-year period than those who did little exercise. Psychologists and Neuroimaging experts, based at the University of Edinburgh, did not find there to be any benefit to brain health for older people from participation in social or mentally stimulating activities. Greater brain shrinkage is linked to problems with memory and thinking ...

BETHESDA, Md. (October 22, 2012)— A new study shows that both length of time and percentage of overall sleep spent in different sleep stages are associated with decreased metabolic rate, increased hunger, and increased intake of calories (specifically from fat and carbohydrates). The findings suggest an explanation for the association between sleep problems and obesity. Researchers from St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University investigated the effects of sleep architecture on hunger to determine whether specific stages of sleep, rather than simple duration, ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Wouldn't it be amazing if our bodies prepared us for future events that could be very important to us, even if there's no clue about what those events will be? Presentiment without any external clues may, in fact, exist, according to new Northwestern University research that analyzes the results of 26 studies published between 1978 and 2010. Researchers already know that our subconscious minds sometimes know more than our conscious minds. Physiological measures of subconscious arousal, for instance, tend to show up before conscious awareness that ...

Most liver transplant candidates who died or were removed from the transplant list actually received one or more liver donation offers, according to a recent UCSF study. "What we found challenges the simplistic view that transplant dynamics are driven simply by organ availability," said lead author, Jennifer Lai, MD, assistant clinical professor in the UCSF Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. "Efforts to reduce wait-list mortality must target all aspects of mismatch between supply and demand." The research team analyzed data from 33,389 candidates listed ...

(Edmonton) Children who bask in the nighttime glow of a TV or computer don't get enough rest and suffer from poor lifestyle habits, new research from the University of Alberta has shown. A provincewide survey of Grade 5 students in Alberta showed that as little as one hour of additional sleep decreased the odds of being overweight or obese by 28 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively. Children with one or more electronic devices in the bedroom—TVs, computers, video games and cellphones—were also far more likely to be overweight or obese. "If you want your kids to sleep ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Nearly 40 percent of breast cancer survivors suffer from lymphedema, a chronic condition that causes body limbs to swell from fluid buildup, as a result of lymph node removal and radiation therapy. A cure for lymphedema does not exist, so individuals with the condition must find ways to manage the symptoms throughout their lifetimes. Now, a team of researchers and clinicians working with a University of Missouri lymphedema expert has found that full-body exercise and complete decongestive therapy (CDT) are the best ways for patients to minimize their symptoms ...

While a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder shows the risk of human conflict in East Africa increases somewhat with hotter temperatures and drops a bit with higher precipitation, it concludes that socioeconomic, political and geographic factors play a much more substantial role than climate change. According to CU-Boulder geography Professor John O'Loughlin, the new CU-Boulder study undertaken with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder is an attempt to clarify the often-contradictory debate on whether climate change is affecting armed ...

Like job-seekers searching for a new position, living things sometimes have to pick up a new skill if they are going to succeed. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and Uppsala University, Sweden, have shown for the first time how living organisms do this. The observation, published Oct. 19 in the journal Science, closes an important gap in the theory of natural selection. Scientists have long wondered how living things evolve new functions from a limited set of genes. One popular explanation is that genes duplicate by accident; the duplicate undergoes ...

Annual to decadal changes in the earth's magnetic field in a region that stretches from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean have a close relationship with variations of gravity in this area. From this it can be concluded that outer core processes are reflected in gravity data. This is the result presented by a German-French group of geophysicists in the latest issue of PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States). The main field of the Earth's magnetic field is generated by flows of liquid iron in the outer core. The Earth's magnetic field protects ...