TEMPE, Ariz. – Earthquakes are among the most destructive and common of geologic phenomena. Several million earthquakes are estimated to occur worldwide each year (the vast majority are too small to feel, but their motions can be measured by arrays of seismometers). Historically, most of Arizona has experienced low levels of recorded seismicity, with infrequent moderate and large earthquakes in the state. Comprehensive analyses of seismicity within Arizona have not been previously possible due to a lack of seismic stations in most regions, contributing to the perception ...

Experts agree that, more than ever before, modern wars will be fought in the cyber zone, targeting an enemy's communications technology to cause untold damage. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is suggesting that the same tactics should be employed in the battle against one of the body's deadliest enemies — cancer. In an article published in Trends in Microbiology, Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of TAU's School of Physics and Astronomy and Prof. Herbert Levine of Rice University, long-time bacteria researchers, and Prof. Donald Coffey of Johns Hopkins University, a renowned ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Connecting the dots between two molecules whose levels are decreased in depression and increased by current antidepressants could yield new therapies, researchers say. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that enables brain cells to communicate and brain-derived neurotropic factor, or BDNF, is a brain-nourishing molecule that also aids connectivity. Popular antidepressants such as Prozac, developed to increase levels of serotonin, have recently been found to also increase BDNF levels, said Dr. Anilkumar Pillai, neuroscientist at the Medical College of Georgia ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 14, 2012—Community pharmacies with specially trained staff to provide HIV services can help HIV-infected individuals be more compliant with their essential antiviral drug regimens and hence improve patient outcomes. Users of HIV-specialized Walgreen pharmacies across the U.S. had significantly greater adherence to and persistence with their therapeutic drug regimens according to a study published in AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the AIDS Patient Care ...

UPTON, NY - Scientists taking advantage of the versatility and new capabilities of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an atom smasher at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, have observed first glimpses of a possible boundary separating ordinary nuclear matter, composed of protons and neutrons, from the seething soup of their constituent quarks and gluons that permeated the early universe some 14 billion years ago. Though RHIC physicists have been creating and studying this primordial quark-gluon plasma (QGP) for some time, the latest ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Soil microbes are impulsive. So much so that they help plants face the challenges of a rapidly changing climate. Jen Lau and Jay Lennon, Michigan State University biologists studied how plants and microbes work together to help plants survive the effects of global changes, such as increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations, warmer temperatures and altered precipitation patterns. The results, appearing in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that microbes in the ground not only interact with plants, but they ...

Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center are reporting promising results from laboratory and animal experiments involving a new combination therapy for multiple myeloma, the second most common form of blood cancer. The study published online in the journal Cancer Research details a dramatic increase in multiple myeloma cell death caused by a combination of the drugs obatoclax and flavopiridol. The researchers, led by Steven Grant, M.D., Shirley Carter Olsson and Sture Gordon Olsson Chair in Oncology Research, associate director for translational ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Tissue implants made of cells grown on a sponge-like scaffold have been shown in clinical trials to help heal arteries scarred by atherosclerosis and other vascular diseases. However, it has been unclear why some implants work better than others. MIT researchers led by Elazer Edelman, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, have now shown that implanted cells' therapeutic properties depend on their shape, which is determined by the type of scaffold on which they are grown. The work could allow scientists to ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14, 2012-- To warn of chemical attacks and help save lives, it's vital to quickly determine if even trace levels of potentially deadly chemicals—such as the nerve gas sarin and other odorless, colorless agents—are present. U.S. Army researchers have developed a new chemical sensor that can simultaneously identify a potentially limitless numbers of agents, in real time. A paper describing the system has been published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) journal, Optics Letters. The new system is based on a phenomenon known as the photoacoustic effect, ...

URBANA – A new discovery should make the alternative fuel butanol more attractive to the biofuel industry. University of Illinois scientist Hao Feng has found a way around the bottleneck that has frustrated producers in the past and could significantly reduce the cost of the energy involved in making it as well. "The first challenge in butanol production is that at a certain concentration the fuel being created becomes toxic to the organism used to make it (Clostridium pasteurianum and other strains), and that toxicity limits the amount of fuel that can be made in one ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. – A female moth sitting on a goal post could attract a male moth on the other end of a football field. And even if she switched her scent over time, the male could still find her because of a mutation to a single gene in his antenna. A team of researchers led by Montana State University entomologist Kevin Wanner identified that gene after seeing how it adapted to even the slightest change in the chemicals female moths emit to attract males. The scientists explained their findings in the Aug. 13 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of ...

Facing looming policy uncertainty beyond 2012, the U.S. remained one of the fastest-growing wind power markets in the world in 2011—second only to China—according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Energy and prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Roughly 6.8 gigawatts (GW) of new wind power capacity were connected to the U.S. grid in 2011—more than the 5.2 GW built in 2010, but below the 10 GW added in 2009. Driven by the threat of expiring federal incentives, new wind power installations are widely expected to be substantially ...

Pioneering mass spectrometry methods developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory are helping plant biologists get their first glimpses of never-before-seen plant tissue structures. The new method opens up new realms of study, ones that might have long-ranging implications for biofuels research and crop genetics. "The data we're seeing are unprecedented," said Basil Nikolau, the Ames Laboratory faculty scientist heading up the project, funded by DOE's Office of Science. The laboratory's team of researchers has developed a new more highly sensitive ...

Screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) is cost-effective and saves lives by early detection. The ability to screen large numbers of individuals is especially important for states with tight health insurance budgets dealing with aging populations. However, in 2010 only 65 percent of US adults between ages 50 and 75 got the recommended screening. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the American Journal of Managed Care demonstrates a systematic approach to improve screening rates. "With an introductory phone call and then mailed testing kits, ...

Scientists working with Professor Dr. Dr. Perikles Simon, head of the Sports Medicine division of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany, suggest in the light of recent analyses that German children gain weight soon after entering elementary school. From birth up to the age of five years, today's children's weight development is nearly identical to those from twenty years ago. Then as now there are about 10 percent of the children in this age range who are classified as being overweight. There is even a slight tendency that in the first five years of their ...

1. Task Force Finds Insufficient Evidence to Weigh the Benefits and Harms of Routine Screening for Age-related Hearing Loss Age-related hearing loss is a common health problem that can affect independence, emotional well-being, and quality of life. Several screening methods have proven accurate for identifying hearing impairment, including simple clinical tools and questionnaires. In 1996, the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended that primary care physicians periodically question older adults about their hearing, counsel them about hearing aids, and ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- An analysis of a decade's worth of tropical cyclones shows that when hurricanes blow over ocean regions swamped by fresh water, the conditions can unexpectedly intensify the storm. Although the probability that hurricanes will hit such conditions is small, ranging from 10 to 23 percent, the effect is potentially large: Hurricanes can become 50 percent more intense, researchers report in a study appearing this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. These results might help improve predictions of a hurricane's power in ...

With new national anti-bullying ads urging parents to teach their kids to speak up if they witness bullying, one researcher has found that in humans' evolutionary past at least, helping the victim of a bully hastened our species' movement toward a more egalitarian society. Humans have evolved a genetically-controlled drive to help weaker individuals fight back against a bully. The drive to help the weaker group members led to a dramatic reduction in group inequality and eventually enabled humans to develop widespread cooperation, empathy, compassion and egalitarian moral ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A common enzyme that is easily detected in blood may predict how well patients with advanced kidney cancer will respond to a specific treatment, according to doctors at Duke Cancer Institute. The finding, published online Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, could lead to the first blood test to determine the best treatment for late-stage kidney cancer. "Being able to direct these patients to a treatment we know will help them would be a major advancement in their care," said Andrew Armstrong, M.D., ScM, associate professor of medicine ...

Triclosan, an antibacterial chemical widely used in hand soaps and other personal-care products, hinders muscle contractions at a cellular level, slows swimming in fish and reduces muscular strength in mice, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Colorado. The findings appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. "Triclosan is found in virtually everyone's home and is pervasive in the environment," said Isaac Pessah, professor and chair of the Department of Molecular ...

MADISON -- When conflict breaks out in social groups, individuals make strategic decisions about how to behave based on their understanding of alliances and feuds in the group. But it's been challenging to quantify the underlying trends that dictate how individuals make predictions, given they may only have seen a small number of fights or have limited memory. In a new study, scientists at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison develop a computational approach to determine whether individuals behave predictably. With data ...

CHICAGO – A strategy using an algorithm that incorporates high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs-cTnT) values appears to be associated with ruling-out or ruling-in myocardial infarction (heart attack) within one hour in 77 percent of patients with acute chest pain who presented to an emergency department, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Patients with symptoms that suggest an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) account for about 10 percent of all emergency department consultations. Along with clinical ...

Middle-aged adults who regularly engage in leisure-time physical activity for more than a decade may enhance their heart health, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation. In a new study, more than 4,200 participants (average age 49) reported the duration and frequency of their leisure-time physical activities such as brisk walking, vigorous gardening, cycling, sports, housework and home maintenance. "It's not just vigorous exercise and sports that are important," said Mark Hamer, Ph.D., study lead author and associate professor ...

Eating cocoa flavanols daily may improve mild cognitive impairment, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension. Each year, more than six percent of people aged 70 years or older develop mild cognitive impairment, a condition involving memory loss that can progress to dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Flavanols can be found in tea, grapes, red wine, apples and cocoa products and have been associated with a decreased risk of dementia. They may act on the brain structure and function directly by protecting neurons from injury, improving ...

CHICAGO – Pay for performance appears to be associated with improved implementation of an adolescent substance use treatment program, although no significant differences were found in remission status between the pay-for-performance and implementation-as-usual groups, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Pay for performance (P4P, when financial incentives are given for achieving predefined criteria) is a strategy recommended by the Institute of Medicine to help improve the delivery of ...