"We used a trick called earthshine observation to look at the Earth as if it were an exoplanet," says Michael Sterzik (ESO), lead author of the paper [1]. "The Sun shines on the Earth and this light is reflected back to the surface of the Moon. The lunar surface acts as a giant mirror and reflects the Earth's light back to us — and this is what we have observed with the VLT." The astronomers analyse the faint earthshine light to look for indicators, such as certain combinations of gases in the Earth's atmosphere [2], that are the telltale signs of organic life. This method ...

A repression of gene activity in the brain appears to be an early event affecting people with Alzheimer's disease, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found. In mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, this epigenetic blockade and its effects on memory were treatable. "These findings provide a glimpse of the brain shutting down the ability to form new memories gene by gene in Alzheimer's disease, and offer hope that we may be able to counteract this process," said Roderick Corriveau, Ph.D., a program director at NIH's National Institute of Neurological ...

Some women considering breast augmentation worry that, after having this procedure, styles will change and they will, of a sudden, be out of fashion. It is important to remember that fashions do change. Every year there are new clothing options, often in flattering shapes and colors. What is more likely is that smaller, undefined breasts actually inhibit you form wearing the latest fashions and may completely eliminate many clothing options. Style and fashion are not the same thing. Breast augmentation isn't about fashion, it's about style; your style to be specific. ...

In a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease, memory problems stem from an overactive enzyme that shuts off genes related to neuron communication, a new study says. When researchers genetically blocked the enzyme, called HDAC2, they 'reawakened' some of the neurons and restored the animals' cognitive function. The results, published February 29, 2012, in the journal Nature, suggest that drugs that inhibit this particular enzyme would make good treatments for some of the most devastating effects of the incurable neurodegenerative disease. "It's going to be very important ...

One year on from the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami and caused a partial meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, this month's special issue of Physics World, on the theme of "Physics and the Earth", includes an investigation by journalist Edwin Cartlidge into the latest advances in earthquake forecasting. In addition to the special issue, physicsworld.com hosts an exclusive video documentary reviewing the fundamental science behind earthquakes and assessing the current efforts that are being made around the world to forecast these ...

Victims of truck accidents often find themselves mired in a frustrating and complex legal process when trying to seek compensation. Part of this has to do with the number of parties that may be held accountable in a truck accident. The driver, the trucking company, the personnel who loaded the trailer, and even truck part manufacturers can be held responsible for damages in a truck accident depending on the circumstances. When you hire a truck accident attorney, one of the first things he or she will look for is potential violations of federal trucking laws. The Federal ...

Urgent action is needed to reduce the high concentrations of dangerous air pollutants in Europe, according to experts writing in the European Respiratory Journal today (1 March 2012). The European Respiratory Society's Environment and Health Committee are urging policymakers in Europe to introduce changes that will ensure the air that we breathe is safe and clean. The call to action comes ahead of the upcoming review of air quality legislation in the European Union (EU) before the 2013 Year of Air. In the editorial, the ERS committee argues that any new legislation ...

BOSTON, MA—Very recently, researchers discovered an important population of immune cells called memory T cells living in parts of the body that are in contact with the environment (e.g., skin, lung, GI tract). How these "resident" memory T cells are generated was unknown, and their importance with regard to how our immune system remembers infection and how it prevents against re-infection is being studied intensively. Now, a study by a Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) research team led by Xiaodong Jiang, PhD, research scientist and Thomas S. Kupper, MD, Chair of ...

(Cambridge, Mass.) -- More than 60 years ago, scientists discovered the underlying cause of sickle cell disease: People with the disorder produce crescent-shaped red blood cells that clog capillaries instead of flowing smoothly, like ordinary, disc-shaped red blood cells do. This can cause severe pain, major organ damage and a significantly shortened lifespan. Researchers later found that the disease results from a single mutation in the hemoglobin protein, and realized that the sickle shape — seen more often in people from tropical climates — is actually an evolutionary ...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 29, 2012 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast series describes how the seeds of the "miracle tree" can be used to produce clean drinking water. The new water-treatment process requiring only tree seeds and sand could purify and clarify water inexpensively and sustainably in the developing world, where more than 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water, scientists report. Removing the disease-causing microbes and sediment from drinking water requires technology ...

Plugging major "leaks" of students exiting formal education prematurely is a top priority in all countries -- developed and developing alike -- to successfully address a suite of problems confronting humanity in decades to come, says a leading American educator. Addressing a Malaysian forum on entrepreneurial education, Nancy L. Zimpher, Chancellor of the State University of New York, noted the rate of kids completing education in her US state was little better than in the developing nation she was visiting. For every 100 New York kids entering high school, just 57 ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. --- Fifty million years ago, India slammed into Eurasia, a collision that gave rise to the tallest landforms on the planet, the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. India and Eurasia continue to converge today, though at an ever-slowing pace. University of Michigan geomorphologist and geophysicist Marin Clark wanted to know when this motion will end and why. She conducted a study that led to surprising findings that could add a new wrinkle to the well-established theory of plate tectonics – the dominant, unifying theory of geology. "The exciting ...

Women of all ages decide they want to undergo breast surgery to improve their profile or figure. Understanding that there are different kinds of breast surgery procedures that have their own unique benefits is important. Some women want to know how they can benefit from a breast lift versus breast augmentation. Knowing that a breast lift may benefit you more than breast augmentation can help you decide which procedure is best. Breast Lift Also known as mastopexy, a breast lift is better for women who are more concerned about sagging or drooping breasts than breast ...

Today, the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods of Case Western Reserve University release new health data from Cleveland neighborhood groups on three of the most pressing public health concerns: obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. The three data briefs – statistical public health publications – group Cleveland neighborhoods and provide prevalence estimates for diabetes, hypertension awareness and obesity using five years of local survey data. Previously, these measures were only available for the city of Cleveland. "This data allow the local public ...

The number of people living in China's cities, which last year for the first time surpassed 50 percent of the national population, is considered a boon for the consumer goods market. That is based on the assumption that there will be more families with more disposable income when poor farmers from China's countryside move to cities and become middle-class industrial and office workers. But the assumption overlooks a policy from the era of Chinese leader Mao Zedong that restricts the upward mobility of its rural citizens, says a University of Washington geographer. This ...

The so-called signal transducers and activators of transcription (STATs) are involved in the regulation of cell division but details of their functions remain a matter of conjecture. In the development of breast cancer, the role of STAT1 is particularly interesting as high levels of STAT1 activity are known to be correlated with a better prognosis for breast cancer patients. There is a considerable body of evidence that STAT1 can act to suppress tumour growth in breast cancer but how does it function? Important clues are provided by the latest results of Christine Schneckenleithner ...

The domestication of chickens has given rise to rapid and extensive changes in genome function. A research team at Linköping University in Sweden has established that the changes are heritable, although they do not affect the DNA structure. Humans kept Red Junglefowl as livestock about 8000 years ago. Evolutionarily speaking, the sudden emergence of an enormous variety of domestic fowl of different colours, shapes and sizes has occurred in record time. The traditional Darwinian explanation is that over thousands of years, people have bred properties that have arisen through ...

Child custody agreements are useful in helping parents define their roles as caretakers and reach compromises about raising their children, ensuring that children's needs are met and that they are consistently cared for to the satisfaction of both parents. When issues arise, child custody agreements can help parents resolve them. Virginia child custody and/or visitation agreements are tools in the parenting process and they do have limitations. Even with clearly defined agreements, parents can face challenges with co-parents as they balance their roles in their children's ...

A business executive is passed over for an important assignment after she announces her pregnancy. A single mother is verbally harassed by co-workers about her pregnancy. A waitress is denied extra rest breaks medically needed to help keep her pregnancy-induced high blood pressure under control. An office worker is hired, but the employer changes its mind after finding out she is expecting. All of these situations constitute potentially illegal pregnancy discrimination under federal employment law, and under the discrimination laws of most states. Unfortunately, these ...

The latest official unemployment figures show that unemployment among young people has soared to 22.3 per cent, higher than the recession of the 1990s, while the overall unemployment rate is nine per cent. New research from Understanding Society, a study of more than 40,000 UK households, has examined what is driving this uneven employment pattern and finds that young people suffer from a 'double-penalty' in their attempts to find and keep a job. The rise in youth unemployment figures is due to young people being more likely than older workers to be laid off, thus swelling ...

In 1996, following a graduation party in Massachusetts, an 18-year old boy was involved in a fatal car accident after the car he was driving slammed into a telephone pole. At the time of the accident, the boy's blood alcohol content (BAC) was twice the legal limit for adults of .08. An adult hosted the graduation party, though the adult did not provide the alcohol directly to the minor. And because he did not directly provide the alcohol, the host was acquitted of any wrongdoing. While it was a tragedy, the teenager's death and the subsequent acquittal of the party ...

Scientists at University College Dublin have discovered a new way of measuring the potential success rate of an embryo before it is transferred back into the womb during in vitro fertilisation (IVF). According to the findings published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility, the fluid within a woman's ovaries that surrounds the egg or oocyte holds metabolic information that can improve predictions on which embryo is more likely to lead to pregnancy. "We analysed samples of the follicular fluid surrounding the immature ovum or egg before it was retrieved for IVF," ...

By means of cloud computing, enterprises can access scalable computing power and storage capacity. A people cloud, by contrast, supplies a scalable number of workers via the internet. It is used when non-automated tasks are executed, such as allocating images, searching information, or writing texts. The challenge is to maintain the quality of the work results on a constant high level. Now, this is achieved by a quality management system developed by KIT. Also in times of constantly increasing computing power, people are indispensable for executing certain tasks. Such ...

Children involved in bullying – as both a victim and a bully – are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts by the time they reach 11 years old, according to research from the University of Warwick. In a paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the researchers found children who are both victims and bullies ('bully-victims'), are at highly increased risk of considering suicide, or have planned and engaged in suicidal or self-harming behaviour by 11-12 years of age. These increased odds were ...

Three of the world's subspecies of tigers are now extinct. A new study found that the Sumatran tiger subspecies is nearing extinction as a result of human activities, particularly the conversion of natural forests into forestry and agricultural plantations, leading to habitat loss. The study, conducted by Virginia Tech and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is the first of its kind to systematically investigate the use of different land cover types — not just forests but also plantation areas — for tiger habitat. Published in the Public Library of Science's online journal PLoS ...