Alexandria, VA – In the back alleys of the world's capitals and the ballrooms of presidential palaces exists a black market that preys on the imagination of some and the greed of others. These black-market items are not of this world: They are moon rocks, collected decades ago by six Apollo missions and three unmanned Soviet missions to the moon. For the past decade, former NASA investigator Joseph Gutheinz Jr. has been tracking this lunar larceny - with a good bit of success. In the March feature "A Memoir: A Decade-Plus of Tracking Lunar Larceny," Gutheinz recalls some ...

Wildlife conservation strategies may better protect mammals from human activities by treating animals' ranges as multiple interacting small populations, a study finds. Charles Yackulic and colleagues analyzed historical range maps for 47 mammal species to find patterns that might help conservationists assess threats to animal populations from human encroachment. According to the authors, an animal's habitable range contains different ecological niches that can provide valuable clues about the species resiliency. Local environmental factors such as temperature and precipitation ...

TORONTO, Ont., Feb, 23, 2011—Women who take commonly prescribed drugs for osteoporosis known as bisphosphonates for five years or more may be at higher risk of certain kinds of fractures of their thigh bone, a new study has found. However, the drugs do prevent hip fractures. And, since the overall risk of thigh bone fractures caused by the drugs is low, women at high risk for hip and other osteoporosis-related fractures should not stop taking bisphosphonates, according to researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. The study ...

Madison, WI FEBRUARY 10, 2011 – Finding employment can be a daunting task. Millions of college graduates, new to the professional work force, face this challenge every year after receiving their degrees. Many have sacrificed and toiled for perfect grades, worked at internships to prepare for careers, and filled their schedules with university affiliated clubs and activities. The belief that these attributes will enhance a resume and impress an employer is widespread, but does it really reflect what employers seek in a new hire? To answer this question, researchers at ...

CHICAGO --- Paid caregivers make it possible for seniors to remain living in their homes. The problem, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study, is that more than one-third of caregivers had difficulty reading and understanding health-related information and directions. Sixty percent made errors when sorting medications into pillboxes. The study will be published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. It has been published online. In a first-of-its-kind study, nearly 100 paid, non-family caregivers were recruited in the Chicago area and their health literacy ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have discovered a signaling mechanism in the bacterial ribosome that detects proteins that activate genes for antibiotic resistance. "The ribosome is one of the most complex molecular machines in the cell," said Alexander Mankin, UIC professor and director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology. It is responsible for the production of all proteins in the cell, and in bacteria it is one of the major antibiotic targets. Understanding how signals are generated and transmitted within the ribosome, Mankin said, ...

Rates of unintended pregnancies and abortions decrease significantly when women receive a one-year supply of oral contraceptives, instead of being prescribed one- or three-month supplies, a UCSF study shows. Researchers observed a 30 percent reduction in the odds of pregnancy and a 46 percent decrease in the odds of an abortion in women given a one-year supply of birth control pills at a clinic versus women who received the standard prescriptions for one – or three-month supplies. The researchers speculate that a larger supply of oral contraceptive pills may allow ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Recent data for gas rich galaxies precisely match predictions of a modified theory of gravity know as MOND according to a new analysis by University of Maryland Astronomy Professor Stacy McGaugh. This -- the latest of several successful MOND predictions -- raises new questions about accuracy of the reigning cosmological model of the universe, writes McGaugh in a paper to be published in March in Physical Review Letters. Modern cosmology says that for the universe to behave as it does, the mass-energy of the universe must be dominated by dark matter ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – New research shows that Alzheimer's disease and other dementing illnesses may be easily misdiagnosed in the elderly, according to early results of a study of people in Hawaii who had their brains autopsied after death. The research is being released today and will be presented as part of a plenary session at the American Academy of Neurology's 63rd Annual Meeting in Honolulu April 9 to April 16, 2011. "Diagnosing specific dementias in people who are very old is complex, but with the large increase in dementia cases expected within the next 10 years ...

Addiction is a brain disease that destroys lives, devastates families and tears at the very fabric of society. Effective prevention and treatment of addiction requires a clear understanding of the complex brain mechanisms that underlie addictive behaviors, and research has provided a fascinating view of how substance abuse hijacks neuronal circuits involved in reward and motivation and causes profound and persistent changes in behavior. Now, a special issue of the journal Neuron, published on February 24th by Cell Press, provides new insight into to the most recent advances ...

February 24, 2011 – T-cell receptor diversity in blood samples from healthy individuals has been extensively cataloged for the first time in a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), setting the stage for a better understanding of infectious disease, cancer, and immune system disorders. Adaptive immunity is mediated by T-cells, a white blood cell that identifies and attacks cells that may be infected with viruses or contain cancer-causing mutations. To recognize a wide array of potentially infectious agents or cancer-causing mutations, gene ...

Patients who suffer from Neurologic Post Treatment Lyme disease (nPTLS) and those with the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome report similar symptoms. However unique proteins discovered in spinal fluid can distinguish those two groups from one another and also from people in normal health, according to new research conducted by a team led by Steven E. Schutzer, MD, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey – New Jersey Medical School, and Richard D. Smith, Ph.D., of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. This finding, published in the journal PLoS ONE (February ...

Following others' gaze direction is an important source of information that helps to detect prey or predators, to notice important social events within one's social group and to predict the next actions of others. As such, it is considered a key step towards an understanding of mental states, such as attention and intention. Many animals will follow the gaze of others into distant space. Following a gaze around a barrier, which is considered to be a more cognitively advanced task, is much less common. Friederike Range and Zsofi Viranyi at the University of Vienna ...

How we experience our own bodies is a classical question in psychology and neuroscience. It has long been believed that our body image is limited by our innate body plan – in other words that we cannot experience having more than one head, two arms and two legs. However, brain scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now shown that it is possible to make healthy volunteers experience having three arms at the same time. In a novel paper published in the online scientific journal PLoS ONE they describe how it is possible to create an illusion ...

DURHAM, N.C. – High-resolution images from a laser-based tool developed at Duke University could help doctors better diagnose melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, while potentially saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars in unnecessary healthcare costs each year. The tool probes skin cells using two lasers to pump small amounts of energy, less than that of a laser pointer, into a suspicious mole. Scientists analyze the way the energy redistributes in the skin cells to pinpoint the microscopic locations of different skin pigments. For the first time, ...

UPTON, NY - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have identified hyperactive cells in a tiny brain structure that may play an important role in depression. The study, conducted in rats and appearing in the February 24, 2011, issue of Nature, is helping to reveal a cellular mechanism for depressive disorders that could lead to new, effective treatments. The research provides evidence that inhibition of this particular brain region ...

VIDEO: Salk scientist Dr. Belmonte discusses the research. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA, CA—The current pace of population aging is without parallel in human history but surprisingly little is known about the human aging process, because lifespans of eight decades or more make it difficult to study. Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have replicated premature aging in the lab, allowing them to study aging-related disease in a dish. In ...

High blood levels of a hormone produced in response to stress are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder in women but not men, a study from researchers at Emory University and the University of Vermont has found. The results are scheduled for publication in the Feb. 24 issue of Nature. The hormone, called PACAP (pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide), is known to act throughout the body and the brain, modulating central nervous system activity, metabolism, blood pressure, pain sensitivity and immune function. The identification of PACAP as an indicator ...

LONDON – A new dinosaur named Brontomerus mcintoshi, or "thunder-thighs" after its enormously powerful thigh muscles, has been discovered in Utah, USA. The new species is described in a paper recently published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica by an international team of scientists from the U.K. and the U.S. A member of the long-necked sauropod group of dinosaurs which includes Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus, Brontomerus may have used its powerful thighs as a weapon to kick predators, or to help travel over rough, hilly terrain. Brontomerus lived about 110 ...

BOULDER, Colo.—Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time coaxed two atoms in separate locations to take turns jiggling back and forth while swapping the smallest measurable units of energy. By directly linking the motions of two physically separated atoms, the technique has the potential to simplify information processing in future quantum computers and simulations. Described in a paper published Feb. 23 by Nature,* the NIST experiments enticed two beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) to take turns ...

Vaccine scientists say their “Holy Grail” is to stimulate immunity that lasts for a lifetime. Live viral vaccines such as the smallpox or yellow fever vaccines provide immune protection that lasts several decades, but despite their success, scientists have remained in the dark as to how they induce such long lasting immunity. Scientists at the Emory Vaccine Center have designed tiny nanoparticles that resemble viruses in size and immunological composition and that induce lifelong immunity in mice. They designed the particles to mimic the immune‑stimulating effects ...

The Austrian research group led by physicist Rainer Blatt suggests a fundamentally novel architecture for quantum computation. They have experimentally demonstrated quantum antennae, which enable the exchange of quantum information between two separate memory cells located on a computer chip. This offers new opportunities to build practical quantum computers. The researchers have published their work in the scientific journal Nature. Six years ago scientists at the University of Innsbruck realized the first quantum byte – a quantum computer with eight entangled quantum ...

The incidence of asthma among children in Europe continues to rise. But not all children are equally at risk. Several studies published over the past few years have shown that children living on farms are significantly less likely to develop asthma than others. An international team of researchers including Dr. Markus Ege and Professor Erika von Mutius of Children's Surgical Clinic in the Dr. von Hauner Children's Hospital (Medical Center of the University of Munich) has just published an epidemiological study that confirms this finding. It shows that the lower susceptibility ...

Experimental physicists have put a lot of effort in isolating sensitive measurements from the disruptive influences of the environment. In an international first, Austrian quantum physicists have realized a toolbox of elementary building blocks for an open-system quantum simulator, where a controlled coupling to an environment is used in a beneficial way. This offers novel prospects for studying the behavior of highly complex quantum systems. The researchers have published their work in the scientific journal Nature. Many phenomena in our world are based on the nature ...

New Haven, Ct. - No matter their size or shape, explosive volcanoes produce tremors at similar frequencies for minutes, days or weeks before they erupt. In the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Nature, researchers at Yale University and the University of British Columbia (UBC) describe a model that explains this strange phenomenon – and may help forecast deadly eruptions. When such volcanoes erupt they can shoot hot ash up to 40 kilometers into the atmosphere and cause devastating destruction when the ash column collapses and spreads as "pyroclastic flows." Prior to most ...