Stardust NExT must love comets. On Valentine's Day the spacecraft will get up close and personal with its second. It's been seven years since the original Stardust danced with Wild 2 out beyond the orbit of Mars, capturing a thimbleful of comet dust in its collector. It's been five years since the craft jettisoned its sample-return capsule and its precious cargo for a landing in the Utah desert. Next Monday the probe will make history again in a 125-mile embrace with comet Tempel 1. It will be the first time two different comets have been surveyed with the same set ...

Washington, D.C.—Chemical compounds called manganites have been studied for many years since the discovery of colossal magnetoresistance, a property that promises important applications in the fields of magnetic sensors, magnetic random access memories and spintronic devices. However, understanding—and ultimately controlling—this effect remains a challenge, because much about manganite physics is still not known. A research team lead by Maria Baldini from Stanford University and Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory scientists Viktor Struzhkin and Alexander Goncharov has made ...

A joint research project between the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education and the Department of Computing Science has found that, for high-school girls, the fun is in making video games, not just playing them. Computing science professor Duane Szafron and fellow U of A researchers Mike Carbonaro, Jonathan Schaeffer and Maria Cutumisu say that women in computing science are rare, but their study shows that if you want to get more females interested in computing science, you have to rewrite the program, so to speak. "There's been a huge push throughout North America ...

Research by the American Academy of Family Physicians demonstrates that vulvar cancer occurs most frequently in women age 65 to 75 years of age. Thirty percent of patients with vulvar cancer are age 70 or older, and the rate increases with age, reaching a peak of 20 per 100,000 women by 75 years of age. A team of researchers headed by Ashley Stuckey, MD, and Don Dizon, MD, of the Program in Women's Oncology at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, recently presented research to the International Gynecologic Cancer Society at a meeting in the Czech Republic, which concluded ...

The United States has the highest adolescent pregnancy and birth rate among developed countries in the world. Many mistakenly believe that teens who become pregnant do not have aspirations of going to college or finding a good job. A study recently released by researchers at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island shows that pregnant teens have aspirations and dreams to go to college and get a good job. Whether or not the pregnancy was intended did not influence these aspirations. Maureen G. Phipps, MD, MPH, interim chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Women & Infants, ...

Being a mother is one of life's most difficult jobs. Getting through medical training and then juggling clinical practice, teaching, and research at the local university make the rigors of motherhood infinitely more challenging. A group of physician-mothers - led by Amy S. Gottlieb, MD, director of primary care curricula and consultation at the Women's Primary Care Center at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, and Lynn E. Taylor, MD, an HIV/AIDS specialist at The Miriam Hospital – has found that there is strength, and sanity, in numbers. The support group MomDocFamily ...

ST. LOUIS -- A stockpiled vaccine designed to fight a strain of avian flu that circulated in 2004 can be combined with a vaccine that matches the current strain of bird flu to protect against a potential pandemic, researchers from Saint Louis University's Center for Vaccine Development have found. The findings suggest public health officials can get a jump on fighting a pandemic caused by avian flu virus because they won't have to wait for a vaccine that exactly matches the current strain of bird flu to be manufactured. They can begin immunizing against the bird flu by ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Under our feet and ubiquitous, lowly soil can be easily overlooked when it comes to addressing climate change and population growth. But in the January-February issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, a team of scientists say soil is an essential piece of the biosphere and more attention should be paid to protecting it. Strategies for doing so include refocusing and boosting research, and communicating its importance to the public. "The article is a call to better engage with each other and with those concerned about the coming stresses ...

Microsponges derived from seaweed may help diagnose heart disease, cancers, HIV and other diseases quickly and at far lower cost than current clinical methods. The microsponges are an essential component of Rice University's Programmable Bio-Nano-Chip (PBNC) and the focus of a new paper in the journal Small. The paper by John McDevitt, the Brown-Wiess Professor in Bioengineering and Chemistry, and his colleagues at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative views the inner workings of PBNCs, which McDevitt envisions as a mainstream medical diagnostic tool. PBNCs to diagnose ...

Houston - In an international Phase III randomized study, everolimus, an inhibitor of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), has shown to dramatically improve progression-free survival for patients with advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNET), according to researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The findings were published in the latest New England Journal of Medicine. James C. Yao, M.D., associate professor in MD Anderson's Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, first presented the at the 2010 European Society for Medical ...

New Rochelle, NY, February 9, 2011—Nicotine addiction usually begins during the critical teenage years, and pediatric healthcare professionals can play a prominent role in promoting a tobacco-free lifestyle among children and adolescents, as described in an article published online ahead of print in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, & Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online. Denormalization is a strategy for changing social norms and reinforcing a public perception of tobacco use as a health-compromising, ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (2/9/2011) – Coating a lattice of tiny wires called Nanonets with iron oxide – known more commonly as rust – creates an economical and efficient platform for the process of water splitting, an emerging clean fuel science that harvests hydrogen from water, Boston College researchers report in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Assistant Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang and his clean energy lab pioneered the development of Nanonets in 2008 and have since shown them to be a viable new platform for a number of energy applications ...

The payoff for investing in public parks and recreation sites may be healthier, more physically fit residents and a less strained healthcare system, according to Penn State researchers. Investments in parks and recreational services have a dramatic effect on health and fitness, say Geof Godbey, professor emeritus of leisure studies, and Andrew Mowen, associate professor of recreation and parks management. "There is a strong relationship between how much money is spent to provide such services and the amount of physical activity that people take part in," said Godbey. ...

Heart disease is a silent killer, but new microchip technology from Rice University is expected to advance the art of diagnosis. During National Heart Health Month, Rice Professor John McDevitt will discuss the potential of this technology to detect cardiac disease early at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C., Feb. 17-21. Cardiac disease is the focus of one of six ongoing major clinical trials of Rice's programmable bio-nano-chips (PBNCs). PBNCs combine microfluidics, nanotechnology, advanced optics ...

"Man is but a worm" was the title of a famous caricature of Darwin's ideas in Victorian England. Now, 120 years later, a molecular analysis of mysterious marine creatures unexpectedly reveals our cousins as worms, indeed. An international team of researchers, including a neuroscientist from the University of Florida, has produced more evidence that people have a close evolutionary connection with tiny, flatworm-like organisms scientifically known as "Acoelomorphs." The research in the Thursday (Feb. 10) issue of Nature offers insights into brain development and human ...

In communities all across the US, travelers that went to the moon and back with the Apollo 14 mission are living out their quiet lives. The voyagers in question are not astronauts. They're "moon trees." The seeds that later became moon trees orbited the moon 34 times in the Apollo 14 command module. In this classic Apollo 14 image, taken just before the lunar module landed at Fra Mauro, Earth peeks over the edge of the moon. In communities all across the U.S., travelers that went to the moon and back with the Apollo 14 mission are living out their quiet lives. ...

Nairobi, Kenya (9 February 2011) Trees growing on farms will be essential to future development. As the number of trees in forests is declining every year, the number of trees on farms is increasing. Marking the launch of the International Year of Forest by the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF9) in New York on 29 January, Dennis Garrity, the Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre, highlighted the importance of mixing trees with agriculture, the practice known as agroforestry. "Over a billion hectares of agricultural land, almost half of the world's farmland, ...

SAN FRANCISCO, FEB. 10, 2011 -- Research presented today at the 31st Annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) ― The Pregnancy Meeting™ has found that three proteins known as XIAP, BID, and Bcl-2 are responsible in part for the success of progesterone treatments in the prevention of preterm labor. They may also play an important role in triggering normal labor. The proteins prevent preterm birth by hindering apoptosis – the normal, orderly death of cells -- in the fetal membranes. Stronger, thicker fetal membranes are less likely to rupture ...

SAN FRANCISCO (February 10, 2011) — In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting ™, in San Francisco, researchers will present findings that show that the use of the hormone 17-Hydroxyprogesterone does not reduce the rate of preterm delivery or neonatal complications in twins. The hormone 17-Hydroxyprogesterone is sometimes used to reduce the risk of preterm labor. In 2008, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine issued an opinion ...

SAN FRANCISCO (February 10, 2011) — In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting ™, in San Francisco, researchers will present findings that show that folate intake before and during pregnancy does not protect Norwegian women against spontaneous preterm delivery. "Sufficient folate intake has been studied as a possible protecting factor against spontaneous preterm delivery with conflicting results," said Verena Senpiel, M.D., one of the study's authors. "Preterm delivery is the major cause ...

SAN FRANCISCO (February 10, 2011) — In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting ™, in San Francisco, researchers will present findings that showed that in rats, the use of magnesium sulfate (Mg) significantly reduced the neonatal brain injury associated with maternal inflammation or maternal infection. Magnesium sulfate is sometimes used during preterm labor to reduce the risk of neonatal brain injury. In 2010 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal ...

If you thought that we know everything about how the flea jumps, think again. In 1967, Henry Bennet-Clark discovered that fleas store the energy needed to catapult themselves into the air in an elastic pad made of resilin. However, in the intervening years debate raged about exactly how fleas harness this explosive energy. Bennet-Clark and Miriam Rothschild came up with competing hypotheses, but neither had access to the high speed recording equipment that could resolve the problem. Turn the clock forward to Malcolm Burrows' Cambridge lab in 2010. 'We were always very puzzled ...

SAN FRANCISCO, FEB. 10, 2011 -- Research presented today at the 31st Annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) -- The Pregnancy Meeting™ has found that three proteins known as XIAP, BID, and Bcl-2 are responsible in part for the success of progesterone treatments in the prevention of preterm labor. They may also play an important role in triggering normal labor. The proteins prevent preterm birth by hindering apoptosis – the normal, orderly death of cells -- in the fetal membranes. Stronger, thicker fetal membranes are less likely to rupture ...

SAN FRANCISCO (February 10, 2011) — In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting ™, in San Francisco, researchers will present findings that show that when women administer their own patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) instead of getting a continuous epidural infusion (CEI) they used less analgesic, but reported similar levels of satisfaction. Women often receive a continuous epidural infusion of analgesic during labor. This can lead to prolonged labor and an increase in assisted vaginal ...

SAN FRANCISCO (February 10, 2011) — In a study to be presented today at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine's (SMFM) annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting ™, in San Francisco, researchers will present findings that show that by performing an amniotomy on first time mothers in situations when labor has to be induced, that delivery time can be shortened by more than 10 percent. There are many reasons that labor may need to be induced after a woman's due date. Today's study looked at whether or not performing an amniotomy early on in the labor process would shorten ...