CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- In recent years, many airplane manufacturers have started building their planes from advanced composite materials, which consist of high-strength fibers, such as carbon or glass, embedded in a plastic or metal matrix. Such materials are stronger and more lightweight than aluminum, but they are also more difficult to inspect for damage, because their surfaces usually don't reveal underlying problems. "With aluminum, if you hit it, there's a dent there. With a composite, oftentimes if you hit it, there's no surface damage, even though there may be internal ...

PITTSBURGH—There are billions of neurons in the brain and at any given time tens of thousands of these neurons might be trying to send signals to one another. Much like a person trying to be heard by his friend across a crowded room, neurons must figure out the best way to get their message heard above the din. Researchers from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, a joint program between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, have found two ways that neurons accomplish this, establishing a fundamental mechanism by which neurons communicate. ...

Someone slips and falls in a store or a restaurant. They are injured. The injured sues and the business loses the case or settles. One would think the first thing the business would do would be to fix the problem that caused the injury to avoid another injury, and in turn, another personal injury lawsuit. But one would be wrong. A story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune tells the story of a woman injured in a slippery parking lot of a Denny's. The downspouts on the restaurant run under a sidewalk and into the parking lot. During the winter, the drain ices over. It was ...

Children who are born with disabilities, or who become disabled during their childhood years, may be eligible to receive payments through the government's Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. The requirements for children to receive SSI are strict and are based on the nature of the disability and the family's total income. However, if eligible, the payments can be a helpful supplement to other household income and contribute to the care and well-being of disabled children, which can be medically intensive and costly. Income Requirements One goal of SSI payments ...

Contrary to popular belief, the biodiversity of a tropical forest may be conserved while its resources are used to support local household livelihoods, according to a new study published in the March 25 issue of Science. But biodiversity and resource use are most likely to successfully co-exist in forests that are managed under systems that receive inputs from local forest users or local communities. These study results imply that one important way for governments to simultaneously promote biodiversity and forest-based livelihoods is to formalize the rights of local people ...

Child pornography laws are aimed at protecting children; by criminalizing the possession and distribution of child pornography, lawmakers aim to eliminate the harm to children when such materials are created. The penalties are steep--under Texas laws, possessing images of those under the age of 18 engaging in sexual conduct is a felony. Federal convictions result in long sentences. A child pornography conviction in any court will result in lifetime sex offender registration. However, the phenomenon of teen 'sexting' has put legislators in a difficult position. The practice ...

Baylor University geology researchers, along with scientists from Texas A&M University and around the country, have found the oldest archaeological evidence of human occupation in the Americas at a Central Texas archaeological site located about 40 miles northwest of Austin. "This find really rewrites history, so to speak, and changes our collective thought on the early colonization of North, Central and South America," said Dr. Lee Nordt, professor of geology at Baylor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who is an author on the study. "What sets this study ...

Kudzu, the plant scourge of the U.S. Southeast. The long tendrils of this woody vine, or liana, are on the move north with a warming climate. But kudzu may be no match for the lianas of the tropics, scientists have found. Data from sites in eight studies show that lianas are overgrowing trees in every instance. If the trend continues, these "stranglers-of-the-tropics" may suffocate equatorial forest ecosystems. Tropical forests contain more than half of Earth's terrestrial species, and contribute more than a third of global terrestrial carbon and a third of terrestrial ...

A recent news story in the Modesto Bee highlights the horror of dog bite attacks. A woman was attacked at a party by a pit bull that had never exhibited any signs of aggressiveness. As the story relates, "It lunged at [the woman's] face, biting down so hard that nearly half of her nose was ripped away." The dog had been acting playfully moments before, so she had no warning of the attack and apparently had done nothing to provoke the pit bull. After two reconstructive surgeries, and the prospect of an unknown number of additional surgeries, the victim of the attack described ...

Debenhams, the high street store, has announced that deliberately mismatched crockery, where no two plates or cups are the same, is the latest craze to hit the UK. A fad which started in trendy restaurants has spread to homes all over Britain, latest sales show. It's a rebellion against the rigid, formal, starched table cloth rules which have governed dinner parties in Britain for the last century.   Debenhams' spokesman Ed Watson said: "It's a Mad Hatter's approach to formal dining: "Young people are turning their backs on one of the last surviving forms of ...

Large-scale assessment of the Arctic Ocean: significant increase in freshwater content since 1990s The freshwater content of the upper Arctic Ocean has increased by about 20 percent since the 1990s. This corresponds to a rise of approx. 8,400 cubic kilometres and has the same magnitude as the volume of freshwater annually exported on average from this marine region in liquid or frozen form. This result is published by researchers of the Alfred Wegener Institute in the journal Deep-Sea Research. The freshwater content in the layer of the Arctic Ocean near the surface ...

Many of the mapping and monitoring efforts associated with REDD focus on the big picture of carbon stock and of deforestation trends throughout the tropics. A research expedition just underway, led by scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center, is focusing on the third piece necessary to inform a global REDD mechanism – namely, how do people use the land? Through a series of participatory mapping workshops with indigenous peoples in the Congo Basin, scientists and participants are discussing land tenure, forest inventory techniques, and baselines that could help secure ...

WARHEADS (www.warheads.com), the authentic, edgy and kid favorite sour candy, has partnered for the second year in a row with the leading organization committed to funding the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers and give survivors long and healthy lives - the St. Baldrick's Foundation. The St. Baldrick's Foundation (www.stbaldricks.org), started in 2000, hosts an annual event around St. Patrick's Day, in which volunteers shave their heads in solidarity of children that have cancer. Over $95 million in donations in 24 countries and all 50 states ...

A drug used to treat asthma has been shown to help reduce the formation of amyloid beta, a peptide in the brain that is implicated in the development of Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers at Temple University's School of Medicine. The researchers published their findings, "Pharmacologic Blockade of 5-Lipoxygenase Improves the Amyloidotic Phenotype of an AD Transgenic Mouse Model," in the American Journal of Pathology. In previous studies, the Temple researchers discovered that 5-lipoxygenase, an enzyme long known to exist in the brain, controls the activation ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 25, 2011) – Researchers seeking to unravel the most ancient yet least understood of the five senses – smell – have discovered a previously unknown step in how odors are detected and processed by the brain. The four year study, focusing on how mice respond to odors, showed that smells are picked up by the olfactory bulb – the first stop on the way to the brain – then sent to the olfactory cortex for further analysis. But scientists discovered something else – a dialogue between the bulb and the cortex conducted by rapidly firing nerve cells. "It ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 25, 2011) – In one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in partnership with the Harvard School of Global Health have found that people living at higher altitudes have a lower chance of dying from ischemic heart disease and tend to live longer than others. "If living in a lower oxygen environment such as in our Colorado mountains helps reduce the risk of dying from heart disease it could help us develop new clinical treatments for those conditions," said Benjamin Honigman, MD, ...

In some cases, less fit organisms may out-survive their in-shape counterparts, according to a study reported in the March 18 issue of Science. The finding surprised researchers who assumed less fit organisms would be the eventual losers in evolution's fight for survival. Microbial Ecology professor Richard Lenski of Michigan State University conducted the study with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Using easy-to-understand terms in a revealing video accompanying this release, Lenski describes his results and explains why his study is so unique. "This ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The effects of climate change and population growth on agricultural land area vary from region to region, according to a new study by University of Illinois researchers. Regions with relative high latitudes – China, Russia and the U.S. – could see a significant increase in arable land in coming years, but Africa, Europe and India and South America could lose land area. Civil and environmental engineering professor Ximing Cai and graduate student Xiao Zhang published their findings in the journal Environmental Research Letters. While most other studies ...

A two-year energy audit of Hamilton schools has identified energy conservation measures that could reduce their energy costs by almost $2.4 million annually. The audit was conducted by engineering faculty and students at McMaster University The measures, presented today to officials from the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board and the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, range from recaulking windows, adding insulation and using more efficient lighting to new investments in advanced heat recovery systems and boilers, and solar and wind generating systems. "We ...

March 25, 2011 – Approximately five percent of prescriptions submitted by CVS Caremark Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) members in a 30-day period during 2009 included a "dispense as written" (DAW) designation. This practice – whereby doctors or patients demand the dispensing of a specific brand-name drug and not a generic alternative – costs the health care system up to $7.7 billion annually, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard University, Brigham and Women's Hospital and CVS Caremark. Moreover, these requests reduce the likelihood that patients actually ...

Despite decades of doctors' reluctance to recommend weight training to pregnant women, a new University of Georgia study has found that a supervised, low-to-moderate intensity program is safe and beneficial. The research, published in the current edition of the Journal of Physical Activity and Health, measured progression in the amount of weight used, changes in resting blood pressure and potential adverse side effects in 32 pregnant women over a 12-week period. After a total of 618 exercise sessions, none of the pregnant women in the study experienced a musculoskeletal ...

Studies done by Mark Lusk and colleagues at the Colorado School of Mines could significantly improve the efficiency of solar cells. Their latest work describes how the size of light-absorbing particles--quantum dots--affects the particles' ability to transfer energy to electrons to generate electricity. The results are published in the April issue of the journal ACS Nano. The advance provides evidence to support a controversial idea, called multiple-exciton generation (MEG), which theorizes that it is possible for an electron that has absorbed light energy, called an ...

How does your best friend feel when people act needy? Or, about people being dishonest? What do they think when others seem uncomfortable in social situations? According to an upcoming study in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, if you don't know – your relationship may pay a price. There are lots of ways to know someone's personality. You can say "she's an extrovert" or "she's usually happy." You may also know how he or she reacts to different situations and other people's behavior. "It's a more detailed way of understanding ...

Shaver Automotive Group is pleased to announce that it now offers sales and service of the new 2012 Fiat 500 at its new FIAT Studio in the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall. Shaver Automotive Group invites FIAT customers in Southern California to test drive the Fiat 500, the first FIAT vehicle to be sold in the United States since 1984. Shaver's FIAT Studio is located in the heart of the Thousand Oaks Auto Mall. The 2012 Fiat 500 is a four-passenger city car that offers Italian styling, modern technology, excellent fuel efficiency and a great value to attract a new generation ...

Aurora, Colo. (March 24, 2011)—A research team at the University of Colorado Cancer Center has identified an enzyme that could be used to diagnose colon cancer earlier. It is possible that this enzyme also could be a key to stopping the cancer. Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in Americans, with a one in 20 chance of developing it, according to the American Cancer Society. This enzyme biomarker could help physicians identify more colon cancers and do so at earlier stages when the cancer is more successfully treated. The research was led by Cancer Center ...