Genetic investigation of a Malaysian tribe may tell scientists why East Asians have light skin but lower skin cancer rates than Europeans, according to a team of international researchers. Understanding the differences could lead to a better way to protect people from skin cancer. While the genetics of skin color is largely unknown, past research using zebrafish by Penn State College of Medicine's Keith Cheng, M.D., Ph.D., identified the gene in Europeans that differs from West Africans and contributes to a lighter skin color. Mutations in the genes SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 ...

Saranac Lake, N.Y. – August 28, 2012 — New research from the laboratory of Dr. Andrea Cooper at the Trudeau Institute, just published in the European Journal of Immunology, holds promise for the improved prevention and treatment of bacterial infections and the life-threatening complications of chronic inflammation that can result from them. The publication title is "Nitric oxide inhibits the accumulation of CD4+CD44hiTbet+CD69lo T cells in mycobacterial infection". Following a typical bacterial infection, the immune response is manifested by the accumulation of immune ...

VIDEO: An animation of satellite observations from August 26-28, 2012 shows Tropical Storm Isaac moving past the Florida Keys and into the Gulf of Mexico, nearing landfall in the U.S. Gulf... Click here for more information. NASA satellites have been providing valuable data to forecasters at the National Hurricane Center watching the development and progression of powerful Tropical Storm Isaac as it heads for landfall. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ...

NEW YORK, August 28, 2012 – Researchers at Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) have created an ultra-sensitive biosensor capable of identifying the smallest single virus particles in solution, an advance that may revolutionize early disease detection in a point-of-care setting and shrink test result wait times from weeks to minutes. Stephen Arnold, university professor of applied physics and member of the Othmer-Jacobs Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and researchers of NYU-Poly's MicroParticle PhotoPhysics Laboratory for BioPhotonics ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — In the past two decades, the Chinese economy has undergone many drastic reforms in an effort to compete more effectively on the international market. These reforms included allowing foreign banks to offer credit cards to Chinese citizens. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found about 30 percent of Chinese urban households now own at least one credit card and the growth rate of credit card adoption has been an average of 40 percent per year between 2004 and 2009. Rui Yao, an assistant professor of personal financial planning in the College ...

Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientist Dr. Michael Stevens is leading an international consortium of scientists in tracking the rapid transport of the exhaust plume from the final launch of the space shuttle in July 2011. The team has found that the plume moved quickly to the Arctic, forming unusually bright polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) there a day after launch. Understanding the rapid transport of high altitude exhaust plumes near 105 km is providing new insight into the effects of winds at the bottom edge of the space weather regime towards improved forecasts ...

Jo Hamilton took almost three decades to put her brother's tragic story on paper. In less than ten months, tens of thousands of readers have purchase her paperback book or downloaded the electronic version of For the Love of Scott!. People from the USA, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia bought or downloaded the book. Scott Hamilton was a smart, talented and handsome Iowa farm boy awaiting a shot at a minor league baseball pitching career with the White Sox. His life was right on track. In an instant, Scott's dreams faded into his family's worst nightmare. His parents ...

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When Rodney Aquino started featuring Kizomba workshops in July 2009 at the 1st San Francisco Bachata Festival, a good amount of people were curious. This followed by 2nd Reno Bachata Festival where not only kizomba was featured and also Zouk Lambada. The Kizomba dance craze started to spread slowly but surely. A kizomba class every Tuesday soon followed at the Glas Kat in San Francisco taught by Rodney Rodchata. There were like 10 to 12 participants. Today, in the year 2012, the kizomba community in the Bay Area has grown and the buzz is stronger than before! Every ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Aug. 27, 2012) -- Refrigerating coal-plant emissions would reduce levels of dangerous chemicals that pour into the air -- including carbon dioxide by more than 90 percent -- at a cost of 25 percent efficiency, according to a simple math-driven formula designed by a team of University of Oregon physicists. The computations for such a system, prepared on an electronic spreadsheet, appeared in Physical Review E, a journal of the American Physical Society. In a separate, unpublished and preliminary economic analysis, the scientists argue that the "energy ...

With the help of beneficial bacteria, plants can slam the door when disease pathogens come knocking, University of Delaware researchers have discovered. A scientific team under the leadership of Harsh Bais, assistant professor of plant and soil sciences in UD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, found that when pathogens attempt to invade a plant through the tiny open pores in its leaves, a surprising ally comes to the rescue. Soil bacteria at the plant's roots signal the leaf pores to close, thwarting infection. The fascinating defense response is documented ...

Given the well-documented relationship between low birth weight and the increased risk of health problems throughout one's lifespan, it is vital to reduce any potential contributors to low birth weight. A new study by Valerie Earnshaw and her colleagues from Yale University sheds light on one possible causal factor. Their findings, published online in Springer's journal, the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, suggest that chronic, everyday instances of discrimination against pregnant, urban women of color may play a significant role in contributing to low birth weight babies. Twice ...

A new report by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy examines the risk factors for injuries to U.S. military personnel from crashes involving highly mobile multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs), more commonly known as Humvees. According to the study, involvement in combat and serving as the vehicle's operator or gunner posed the greatest risk for injury. It is the first published analysis of factors associated with Humvee injury risk in a deployed setting, and is in the August issue of the journal Military Medicine. According to the ...

Each year as many as 40,500 critically ill U.S. hospital patients die with an unknown medical condition that may have caused or contributed to their death, Johns Hopkins patient safety experts report in a recent study. In a discussion of their findings, described online in BMJ Quality & Safety, researchers say that although diagnostic errors in the intensive care unit (ICU) may claim as many lives each year as breast cancer, they remain an underappreciated cause of preventable patient harm. "Our study shows that misdiagnosis is alarmingly common in the acute care ...

All dietary fats are not created equal. Some types of fats have been linked to ailments like heart disease and diabetes, while others, like those often found in plants and fish, have well documented health benefits. So why do our bodies respond so destructively to some fats but not others? A new hypothesis described in latest issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology suggests the answer may lie in how different fats interact with the microbes in our guts. According to researchers from the University of New Mexico and Northwestern University, some fats may encourage ...

A coral species that is found in abundance from Indonesia eastward to Fiji, Samoa, and the Line Islands rarely crosses the Eastern Pacific Barrier toward the coast of the Americas, according to a team of researchers led by Iliana Baums, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University. Darwin hypothesized in 1880 that most species could not disperse across the marine barrier, and Baums's study is the first comprehensive test of that hypothesis using coral. The results of the scientific paper, which will be published in the journal Molecular Ecology, has important ...

NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument is an infrared "eye" that flies onboard NASA's Aqua satellite. AIRS has been providing the National Hurricane Center with valuable temperature data on Isaac's clouds and the surrounding sea surface temperatures, and a time series of data shows that Isaac is consolidating. The AIRS instrument has been monitoring Tropical Storm Isaac for several days. AIRS data from Aug. 24, 25, 26 and 27 showed Isaac's movements through the eastern and central Caribbean Sea, across eastern Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico. On Aug. ...

Munich, Germany – August 27 2012: The Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011, which hit the north-east coast of Japan with a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, was one of the largest ocean-trench earthquakes ever recorded in Japan. The tsunami caused huge damage, including 15,861 dead and 3018 missing persons, and, as of 6 June 2012, 388,783 destroyed homes. Following an investigation of the ambulance records made by doctors in the Miyagi prefecture, close to the epicentre of the earthquake and where the damage was greatest, cardiologist Dr Hiroaki Shimokawa ...

As solitary animals, giant pandas have developed a number of ways to communicate those times when they are ready to come into close contact. One means of this communication occurs through scent marking. A recent study by San Diego Zoo Global researchers, collaborating with researchers at the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Science, indicates that pandas make clear and specific choices about what trees are used for scent marking. "Variables affecting the selection of scent-marking sites included bark roughnesss, presence of moss on the tree trunk, tree diameter ...

The extent of the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean has shrunk. According to scientists from NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., the amount is the smallest size ever observed in the three decades since consistent satellite observations of the polar cap began. The extent of Arctic sea ice on Aug. 26, as measured by the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager on the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft and analyzed by NASA and NSIDC scientists, was 1.58 million square miles (4.10 million square kilometers), ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—More than 40 plant-based compounds can turn on genes that slow the spread of cancer, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Washington State University researcher. Gary Meadows, WSU professor and associate dean for graduate education and scholarship in the College of Pharmacy, says he is encouraged by his findings because the spread of cancer is most often what makes the disease fatal. Moreover, says Meadows, diet, nutrients and plant-based chemicals appear to be opening many avenues of attack. "We're always looking for a magic bullet," he says. "Well, ...

This press release is available in Spanish. A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist has found a "green" alternative to a type of fertilizer additive that is believed to contribute to the accumulation of heavy metals in waterways. Ornamental nursery and floral crops require micronutrients like iron, manganese, copper and zinc. But fertilizers that provide these micronutrients often include synthetically produced compounds that bind with the micronutrients so they are available in the root zone. The most commonly used compounds, known as chelating agents, ...

WASHINGTON — The origin of Cerataspis monstrosa has been a mystery as deep as the ocean waters it hails from for more than 180 years. For nearly two centuries, researchers have tried to track down the larva that has shown up in the guts of other fish over time but found no adult counterpart. Until now. George Washington University Biology Professor Keith Crandall cracked the code to the elusive crustacean's DNA this summer. His findings were recently published in the journal "Ecology and Evolution," and his research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the ...

NASA satellites are providing imagery and data on Typhoon Tembin southwest of Taiwan, and Typhoon Bolaven is it barrels northwest through the Yellow Sea. In a stunning image from NASA's Aqua satellite, Bolaven appears twice as large as Tembin. NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies onboard the Terra satellite captured a remarkable image of Typhoon Tembin being dwarfed by giant Typhoon Bolaven at 0240 UTC on Aug. 27, 2012. The visible image shows that the island of Taiwan appears to be squeezed between the two typhoons, while ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Mechanisms that protect plants from freezing are placed in storage during the summer and wisely unpacked when days get shorter. In the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michael Thomashow, University Distinguished Professor of molecular genetics, demonstrates how the CBF (C-repeat binding factor) cold response pathway is inactive during warmer months when days are long, and how it's triggered by waning sunlight to prepare plants for freezing temperatures. The CBF cold response pathway was discovered by Thomashow's ...