In August of 2016, when NASA's Juno Mission begins sending back information about the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, research done by Georgia Institute of Technology engineers using a 2,400-pound pressure vessel will help scientists understand what the data means. The Juno probe is scheduled to be launched August 5 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Because Jupiter has been largely unchanged since its formation at the birth of our solar system, scientists hope Juno will resolve unanswered questions not only about the massive planet, but also about how ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A signaling system in the brain previously shown to regulate sleep is also responsible for inducing lethargy during illness, according to research conducted at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital. This research is particularly meaningful because it implies that a new class of drugs developed to treat sleep disorders can reverse the inactivity and exhaustion brought on by acute illness. Although the sleep drugs were initially designed to treat narcolepsy, they have the potential to restore energy and motivation in patients ...

A new customised IT business management system developed by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researchers and capable of improving the scheduling of resources and workflow in surgical theatres has been successfully demonstrated in a German hospital. Dr Chun Ouyang, from QUT's Business Process Management (BPM) group, said the system was built based on an automated workflow system known as YAWL, and allowed hospitals to more efficiently manage the co-ordination of expensive surgery-related resources. The project is being undertaken in partnership with German ...

WASHINGTON – The American Psychological Association plans to feature three public demonstrations of psychological science applications, including one that enables "seeing" with one's ears rather than eyes, at the organization's 119th Annual Convention here this week. The Science Showcase will be open to the public Aug. 5 and 6, near the entrance to the convention exhibits and registration area at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. "The science of psychology affects everyone's daily life in ways that most people don't realize," said Steven J. Breckler, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new survey reveals that many people in the U.S. – in some cases a substantial majority – think that memory is more powerful, objective and reliable than it actually is. Their ideas are at odds with decades of scientific research. The results of the survey and a comparison to expert opinion appear in a paper in the journal PLoS ONE. (Before reading further, test your own ideas about memory.) "This is the first large-scale, nationally representative survey of the U.S. population to measure intuitive beliefs about how memory works," said University ...

VIDEO: People who live to 95 or older are no more virtuous than the rest of us in terms of their diet, exercise routine or smoking and drinking habits, according to... Click here for more information. August 3, 2011 — (Bronx, NY) — People who live to 95 or older are no more virtuous than the rest of us in terms of their diet, exercise routine or smoking and drinking habits, according to researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Their findings, ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A new tick-borne bacterium infecting humans with ehrlichiosis has been discovered in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It was identified as a new strain of bacteria through DNA testing conducted at Mayo Clinic. The findings appear in the Aug. 4 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors at Mayo Clinic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin, and state and local health departments say the new species from the Ehrlichia genus can cause a feverish illness in humans. The new bacterium, ...

A comparison clinical study of two aplastic anemia treatments found that ATGAM, currently the only licensed aplastic anemia drug in the United States, improved blood cell counts and survival significantly more than did Thymoglobulin, a similar but reportedly more potent treatment. The research was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a part of the National Institutes of Health; the study participants were treated and then followed at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The study will appear in the August 4 New England Journal of ...

BC Children's Hospital and University of British Columbia (UBC) researchers have found that two existing screening tests are accurate in diagnosing development delays in children and could be incorporated in a busy family practice setting with relative ease. Parents can complete the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) or the Parents' Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS) at home or in the family physician's office, with the physician scoring the tests and providing results in a matter of minutes. "Only 30 per cent of children with developmental delays are identified ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new urine test can help aid early detection of and treatment decisions about prostate cancer, a study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology finds. The test supplements an elevated prostate specific antigen, or PSA, screening result, and could help some men delay or avoid a needle biopsy while pointing out men at highest risk for clinically significant prostate cancer. The test looks for a genetic anomaly that occurs in about half of all prostate cancers, an instance of two ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 3, 2011 – University of Utah scientists used chemical isotopes in ancient soil to measure prehistoric tree cover – in effect, shade – and found that grassy, tree-dotted savannas prevailed at most East African sites where human ancestors and their ape relatives evolved during the past 6 million years. "We've been able to quantify how much shade was available in the geological past," says geochemist Thure Cerling, senior author of a study of the new method in the Thursday, Aug. 4, 2011 issue of the journal Nature. "And it shows there have been open ...

Scientists have known for years that when vampire bats tear through an animal's skin with their razor-sharp teeth, their noses guide them to the best spots – where a precise bite will strike a vein and spill forth nourishing blood. But nobody knew exactly how bats knew where to bite. By investigating wild vampire bats in South America, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas in Caracas, Venezuela have discovered their secret: a sensitive, heat-detecting molecule covering nerve endings on their ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and five other institutions have used an unconventional approach to cancer drug discovery to identify a new potential treatment for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As reported in Nature online on August 3, the scientists have pinpointed a protein called Brd4 as a novel drug target for AML, an aggressive blood cancer that is currently incurable in 70% of patients. Using a drug compound that inhibits the activity of Brd4, the scientists were able to suppress the disease in experimental models. "The ...

A new study shows for the first time that natural killer (NK) cells, which are part of the body's first-line defence against infection, can contribute to the immune response against HIV. In an article in the August 4 issue of Nature, a research team based at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard reports that the HIV strains infecting individuals with particular receptor molecules on their NK cells had variant forms of key viral proteins, implying that the virus had mutated to avoid NK cell activity. "This study suggests for the first time that NK cells can impose ...

This result comes just one year after the start of the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea programme (VVV) [1], one of the six public surveys on the new telescope. The results will appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. "This discovery highlights the potential of VISTA and the VVV survey for finding star clusters, especially those hiding in dusty star-forming regions in the Milky Way's disc. VVV goes much deeper than other surveys," says Jura Borissova, lead author of the study. The majority of stars with more than half of the mass of our Sun form in groups, ...

Bremerhaven, 1 August 2011. For the first time researchers have examined on a global scale how calcified algae in their natural habitat react to increasing acidification due to higher marine uptake of carbon dioxide. In the current issue of the magazine Nature they explain that Coccolithophores, a certain group of algae, form thinner calcite skeletons when the pH value in the ocean drops. In marine ecosystems, changes in the degree of calcification are much more pronounced than presumed to date based on laboratory tests. These changes have an impact on the global carbon ...

SANTA CRUZ, CA--The mountainous region on the far side of the moon, known as the lunar farside highlands, may be the solid remains of a collision with a smaller companion moon, according to a new study by planetary scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The striking differences between the near and far sides of the moon have been a longstanding puzzle. The near side is relatively low and flat, while the topography of the far side is high and mountainous, with a much thicker crust. The new study, published in the August 4 issue of Nature, builds on the ...

Carbon dioxide remains the undisputed king of recent climate change, but other greenhouse gases measurably contribute to the problem. A new study, conducted by NOAA scientists and published online today in Nature, shows that cutting emissions of those other gases could slow changes in climate that are expected in the future. Discussions with colleagues around the time of the 2009 United Nations' climate conference in Copenhagen inspired three NOAA scientists – Stephen Montzka, Ed Dlugokencky and James Butler of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. ...

Unusually high clustering of last names within Italian academic institutions and disciplines indicates widespread nepotism in the country's schools, according to a new computational analysis. By comparing the frequency of last names among more than 61,000 professors in medicine, engineering, law, and other fields, University of Chicago researcher Stefano Allesina found the pattern to be incompatible with unbiased, equal opportunity hiring. The analysis, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, refutes the notion that recently publicized cases of academic nepotism in ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have identified a compound that attacks the Achilles' heel of certain cancer cells by depriving them of their energy source, the sugar glucose. Cancer chemotherapy can be a rough ride, in part because most of these drugs don't distinguish between what's cancerous and what's not. The chemicals attack all rapidly dividing cells, from cancer cells, to blood cells and the cells that make hair. However, drugs that target a biological phenomenon only found in cancer cells, such as the compound recently discovered ...

Deerfield, IL (Aug. 3, 2011) – An examination of the world's largest river basins found nutrient-rich and powerful river discharges led to spikes in the blooms of plankton associated with cholera outbreaks. These increased discharges often occur at times of increased temperature in coastal water, suggesting that predicting global warming's potential temperature effect on cholera will be more complicated than first thought, according to a new study published today in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The findings by the authors will help give public ...

A combination of several well-known safety procedures could greatly reduce patient-harming errors in the use of radiation to treat cancer, according to a new study led by Johns Hopkins researchers. Radiation oncologists use more than a dozen quality assurance (QA) checks to prevent radiotherapy errors, but until now, the Hopkins researchers say, no one has systematically evaluated their effectiveness. Working with researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, the Hopkins team gathered data on about 4,000 "near miss" events that occurred during 2008-2010 at the two ...

For Immediate Release – August 3, 2011 – (Toronto) – Twenty-five percent of people who were hospitalized for depression were readmitted or visited an emergency room again for depression within 30 days of discharge, according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The results are published in this month's edition of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. A team led by Dr. Elizabeth Lin, Scientist in CAMH's Social and Epidemiological Research Department, tracked hospitalizations for depression across Ontario and found that one-third of patients ...

MIAMI – August 3, 2011 -- Scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science have discovered a technique to track urban atmospheric plumes thanks to a unique isotopic signature found in vehicle emissions. Brian Giebel, a Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry graduate student working with Drs. Daniel Riemer and Peter Swart discovered that ethanol mixed in vehicle fuel is not completely burned, and that ethanol released in the engine's exhaust has a higher 13C to 12C ratio when compared to natural emissions from most living plants. In other ...

A University of Washington computer scientist is calling on the international academic community and engineers working in industry to take a bolder approach when designing how people find information online. In a two-page commentary titled "Search needs a shake-up," published in the Aug. 4 issue of the journal Nature, UW professor of computer science and engineering Oren Etzioni calls on experts to, literally, think outside the search box. The piece is being published on the 20-year anniversary of Tim Berners Lee unveiling his World Wide Web project. Etzioni doesn't ...