CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers from a team funded by the National Science Foundation have examined some of last spring's massive tornado damage and conclude in a new report that more intensive engineering design and more rigorous, localized construction and inspection standards are needed to reduce property damage and loss of life. As one of the nation's most destructive tornado seasons in history begins to wane, and hurricane season approaches its peak, experts are working to determine if old, tried-and-true approaches to residential and small building construction are ...

Tropical Storm Muifa is filling up the Yellow Sea on NASA satellite imagery as it continues moving north today to a landfall in East China's Shandong province. NASA's Aqua satellite captured visible and infrared imagery that shows Muifa's cloud cover stretches across the Yellow Sea, from China to the west to South and North Korea to the east. At 18:25 UTC 2:25 p.m. EDT, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Muifa moving through the Yellow Sea on August 6 at10:50 p.m. EDT. ...

ITHACA, N.Y. — Researchers have found a potential new source for sexual problems among middle-aged and older men: The relationships between their female partners and the men's closest friends. Cornell University and University of Chicago researchers have found a connection between erectile dysfunction and the social networks shared by heterosexual men and their partners. The researchers describe the situation as "partner betweenness." In such cases, a man's female partner has stronger relationships with his confidants than the man does — in effect, the romantic partner ...

DETROIT – Prenatal pet exposure, a mother's delivery mode and race are influential factors in a child's risk of developing allergies by age 2, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. In a study believed to be the first of its kind, Henry Ford researchers found that babies who have indoor prenatal pet exposure have a pattern of lower levels of the antibody Immunoglobulin E, or IgE, between birth and age 2. IgE is linked to the development of allergies and asthma. Key findings: IgE levels were 28 percent lower during infancy in babies who had indoor prenatal pet ...

Rosemont, Ill. – Patients receiving treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) prefer to play a more collaborative role when it comes to making decisions about their medical or surgical care, according to the findings of an August 3rd issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS). "While other studies have shown patients with potentially life-threatening conditions such as cancer tend to prefer a more passive role when it comes to decision-making, this study demonstrates that in carpal tunnel syndrome, which raises issues of quality of life rather than those ...

GREENBELT, Md. -- A NASA scientist and her colleagues were able to observe for the first time the power of an earthquake and tsunami to break off large icebergs a hemisphere away. Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues were able to link the calving of icebergs from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica following the Tohoku Tsunami, which originated with an earthquake off the coast of Japan in March 2011. The finding, detailed in a paper published online today in the Journal of Glaciology, marks the first direct ...

An antibody that mimics features of the influenza virus's entry point into human cells could help researchers understand how to fine-tune the flu vaccine to protect against a broad range of virus strains. Such protection could potentially reduce the need to develop, produce, and distribute a new vaccine for each flu season. A multi-institutional team led by Stephen C. Harrison, PhD, chief of the Division of Molecular Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, report their work and its implications for improving influenza vaccination this week in the Early Edition of the ...

PITTSBURGH—Traditional motion capture techniques use cameras to meticulously record the movements of actors inside studios, enabling those movements to be translated into digital models. But by turning the cameras around — mounting almost two dozen, outward-facing cameras on the actors themselves — scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have shown that motion capture can occur almost anywhere — in natural environments, over large areas and outdoors. Motion capture makes possible scenes such as those in "Pirates of the Caribbean: ...

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 8 – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have identified a molecular pathway that helps explain how an enzyme elevated in asthma patients can lead to increased mucus production and inflammation that is characteristic of the lung condition. Their findings, reported online in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal unique interactions between biological molecules that could be targeted to develop new asthma treatments. An enzyme called epithelial 15-lipoxygenase 1 (15LO1) metabolizes fatty acids to produce ...

Athens, Ga. – Increased seawater temperatures are known to be a leading cause of the decline of coral reefs all over the world. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have found that extreme low temperatures affect certain corals in much the same way that high temperatures do, with potentially catastrophic consequences for coral ecosystems. Their findings appear in the early online edition of the journal Global Change Biology. Lead author Dustin Kemp, a postdoctoral associate in the UGA Odum School of Ecology, said the study was prompted by an abnormal episode ...

Boulder, CO, USA - Highlights from the September issue of GEOLOGY, which is now online, include debris flow hazard assessment; dune migration in the "greatest desert on Earth": Antarctica; Luizi, the first confirmed meteorite impact structure in Central Africa; a determination of the likelihood that fungal disease had accelerated latest Permian woodland deterioration; the first comprehensive compilation of sedimentary and historical records of ash-fall events in northern Europe; and high-speed video of ash fall from the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption. Keywords: Mariana ...

Boulder, CO, USA - An international team of researchers has found the strongest evidence yet that parts of North America and Antarctica were connected 1.1 billion years ago, long before the supercontinent Pangaea formed. "I can go to the Franklin Mountains in West Texas and stand next to what was once part of Coats Land in Antarctica," said Staci Loewy, a geochemist at California State University, Bakersfield, who led the study. "That's so amazing." Loewy and her colleagues discovered that rocks collected from both locations have the exact same composition of lead isotopes. ...

By 2012, an estimated 14 million people will serve as distance caregivers to family members who live across the state, across the region, even across the country. "No longer are families living just around the corner from each other," says Polly Mazanec, an assistant professor at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and an advance practice oncology nurse at University Hospitals Case Medical Center's Seidman Cancer Center. The distance presents a challenge as family members work to gain information about their loved ones and participate in their cancer care. But ...

Social class is more than just how much money you have. It's also the clothes you wear, the music you like, the school you go to—and has a strong influence on how you interact with others, according to the authors of a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People from lower classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world than people in upper classes—a fact that should figure into debates on public policy, according to the authors. "Americans, although this is shifting a ...

Will graphic cigarette package warning labels significantly reduce demand? A new study suggests it will. Current US policy requires that tobacco companies cover 50 percent of one side of a cigarette pack with a text warning. But the FDA recently unveiled nine new cigarette warning labels, which include graphic images of lung and mouth cancer, to be unveiled in September 2012. A sample of 404 adult smokers from four states participated in an experimental auction on cigarette packs with four different kinds of warning labels. All packs carried the same message: smoking ...

The use of GPS technology to monitor sex offenders should be viewed as a tool rather than a control mechanism, a team of researchers at Sam Houston State University found in a recent study. In "Examining GPS Monitoring Alerts Triggered by Sex Offenders: The Divergence of Legislative Goals and Practical Applications in Community Corrections," Dr. Gaylene Armstrong and Beth Freeman examined the affects of a state law in Arizona that required the lifelong GPS monitoring of adult sex offenders convicted of dangerous crimes against children and placed on community supervision. ...

PITTSBURGH—A new tactile technology developed at Disney Research, Pittsburgh (DRP), called Surround Haptics, makes it possible for video game players and film viewers to feel a wide variety of sensations, from the smoothness of a finger being drawn against skin to the jolt of a collision. The technology is based on rigorous psychophysical experiments and new models of tactile perception. Disney will demonstrate Surround Haptics Aug. 7-11 at the Emerging Technology Exhibition at SIGGRAPH 2011, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques ...

CHICAGO (August 8, 2011) – The use of Acute Care Emergency Surgical Service (ACCESS) in emergency departments (EDs) can lead to significant reductions in key patient measures, such as length of stay, surgical decision-making time and "time-to-stretcher" (one measure of overall ED overcrowding), according to a study published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Emergency departments are a crucial point of access to the health care system for patients with a broad spectrum of injuries and illnesses, and overcrowding has been identified ...

CHICAGO (August 8, 2011) – According to a study published in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, there was an increase in the number of laparoscopic bariatric procedures, an increase in the number of bariatric surgeons and a decrease of inhospital mortality rates between 2003 and 2008. During the past decade, the field of bariatric surgery has changed dramatically and the authors concluded that these trends are due, in part, to an increase in the use of laparoscopic techniques and a greater acceptance of bariatric surgery by patients. "We've ...

We accept that some people are born with a talent for music or art or athletics. But what about mathematics? Do some of us just arrive in the world with better math skills than others? It seems we do, at least according to the results of a study by a team of Johns Hopkins University psychologists. Led by Melissa Libertus, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the study -- published online in a recent issue of Developmental Science -- indicates that math ability in preschool children is ...

Physicists at UC San Diego have developed a new kind of X-ray microscope that can penetrate deep within materials like Superman's fabled X-ray vision and see minute details at the scale of a single nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. But that's not all. What's unusual about this new, nanoscale, X-ray microscope is that the images are not produced by a lens, but by means of a powerful computer program. The scientists report in a paper published in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that this computer program, or ...

In what represents an important step toward curing HIV, a USC scientist has created a virus that hunts down HIV-infected cells. Dr. Pin Wang's lentiviral vector latches onto HIV-infected cells, flagging them with what is called "suicide gene therapy" — allowing drugs to later target and destroy them. "If you deplete all of the HIV-infected cells, you can at least partially solve the problem," said Wang, chemical engineering professor with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The process is analogous to the military practice of "buddy lasing" — that is, having a ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 8, 2011)—Peak petroleum—the point at which the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached, after which the rate of production begins to decline—is a hot topic in scientific and energy circles. When will it occur? What will the impact be? While geologists and economists debate the specifics, American University School of Communication professor Matthew Nisbet believes peak petroleum and the associated risks to public health may provide an opportunity to bring conservatives and liberals together in the move toward alternative forms of energy. "Somewhat ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — There may be a few atheists in foxholes, but a new study suggests that in societies under stress, those who are religious outnumber – and are happier than – their nonreligious counterparts. Where peace and plenty are the norm, however, religious participation is lower and people are happier whether or not they are religious, the researchers found. A paper describing the research appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study analyzed data from the 2005-2009 Gallup World Poll, a survey of people in more than 150 countries that ...

DALLAS – Aug. 8, 2011 – A person's ability to battle viruses at the cellular level remarkably resembles the way deadly infectious agents called prions misfold and cluster native proteins to cause disease, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report. This study marks the first discovery of so-called "good" prion-like proteins in human cells and the first to find such proteins involved in innate immunity: the way the body recognizes and responds to threats from viruses or other external agents, said Dr. Zhijian "James" Chen, professor of molecular biology and senior ...