Cambridge, Mass, June 8, 2011 - In the tomb of King Tutankhamen, the elaborately painted walls are covered with dark brown spots that mar the face of the goddess Hathor, the silvery-coated baboons—in fact, almost every surface. Despite almost a century of scientific investigation, the precise identity of these spots remains a mystery, but Harvard microbiologist Ralph Mitchell thinks they have a tale to tell. Nobody knows why Tutankhamen, the famed "boy king" of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, died in his late teens. Various investigations have attributed his early demise ...

Trees are often viewed as individuals that compete with one another for access to limited resources. But could trees in stressed environments actually benefit from positive, facultative interactions? The authors of a new paper suggest that might be the case for certain tree species—and that it may take the form of root grafting. Natural root grafting between individuals has been observed in over 150 species of plants around the world. However, while much is known about benefits of merging stem tissues (primarily from horticultural practices), little is known about ...

They say that history is written by the victors. But the combatants, fundamental to the outcome of war, rarely appear in this history – whether victors or vanquished. University of the Basque Country anthropologists Pío Pérez and Ignazio Aiestaran have rebelled against this injustice, "uncovering" the memory of those who fought in the trenches in the 1936 war in Spain. They studied ten autobiographical accounts to produce Oroimen iheskorrak: gerra zibileko sufrimenduaren inguruko hausnarketak, euskaraz idatzitako testigantzen ikerketaren bitartez (Elusive memories: thoughts ...

Los Angeles, CA (June 8, 2011) Regrets—we've all had a few. Although too many regrets can interfere with life and mental health, a healthy amount of regret can motivate us to improve our lives, say researchers Mike Morrison of the University of Illinois and Neal Roese of Northwestern University in the current issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE). The researchers telephoned a representative sample of nearly 400 Americans to ask them about what they regret. The most frequent regrets of Americans are about love, education, and work. ...

Jellyfish can be a nuisance to bathers and boaters in the Chesapeake Bay on the United States' East Coast and many other places along the world's coasts. A new study by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) shows that jellyfish also have a more significant impact, drastically altering marine food webs by shunting food energy toward bacteria. An apparent increase in the size and frequency of jellyfish blooms in coastal and estuarine waters around the world during the last few decades means that jellies' impact on marine food webs is likely to ...

PHILADELPHIA — Electrical engineers have long been toying with the idea of designing biological molecules that can be directly integrated into electronic circuits. University of Pennsylvania researchers have developed a way to form these structures so they can operate in open-air environments, and, more important, have developed a new microscope technique that can measure the electrical properties of these and similar devices. The research was conducted by Dawn Bonnell, Trustee Chair Professor and director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center, graduate students Kendra Kathan-Galipeau ...

College Park, Md. (June 08, 2011) – A team of scientists has developed a way to coax tumor cells in the lab to grow into 3-D spheres. Their discovery takes advantage of an earlier technique of producing spherical cavities in a common polymer and promises more accurate tests of new cancer therapies. As team leader Michael R. King, Ph.D., of Cornell University explains, "Sometimes engineering research tends to be a case of a hammer looking for a nail. We knew our previous discovery was new and it was cool. And now we know it's useful." Three years ago, the team -- in ...

The recent field of invasion biology faces a new challenge as 19 eminent ecologists issue a call to "end the bias against non-native species" in the journal Nature. Often called aliens, hitchhikers or invasives, some scientists say that non-native species could just as easily be coined "abductees" whose transport links to activities by humans. The authors of the Nature comments section note that assumptions that "introduced species" offer only deleterious impacts are misguided and "that human-induced impacts, such as climate change, nitrogen eutrophication, urbanization ...

Wildlife face many threats with spreading urbanization, including habitat loss and inbreeding when populations become fragmented and isolated. It doesn't help that there is a billion-dollar international industry dedicated to the illegal trafficking of wild animals or wild animal parts. The Conservation Genetics Lab at the University of Arizona is working to conserve and protect wild animals around the world. "Our work here deals with using genetics for wildlife conservation," said Ashwin Naidu, a doctoral candidate in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment. One ...

RICHMOND, Va. (June 8, 2011) – A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of 'superatoms' – a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table – with unusual magnetic characteristics. The superatom contains magnetized magnesium atoms, an element traditionally considered as non-magnetic. The metallic character of magnesium along with infused magnetism may one day be used to create molecular electronic devices for the next generation of faster processors, larger memory storage and quantum computers. In ...

"We can't buy our way out of ageing," says Nancy Ross, a McGill geography professor. "As we get older we start to have vision problems, maybe some hearing loss, maybe lose some mobility – ageing is a kind of a social equalizer." Ross is the lead author of a new study about how socio-economic and educational status affects Canadians' health-related quality of life over the course of a lifetime. "My research looks at how poverty and social disadvantage affect your health status. Our work was about using social circumstances as a lens to look at how people's quality ...

AMES, Iowa - Bone is one of nature's surprising "building materials." Pound-for-pound it's stronger than steel, tough yet resilient. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have identified the composition that gives bone its outstanding properties and the important role citrate plays, work that may help science better understand and treat or prevent bone diseases such as osteoporosis. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, Ames Laboratory scientist and Iowa State University chemistry professor Klaus Schmidt-Rohr and his colleagues ...

A new crop of college graduates have just landed on the job market. Right now they're probably just hoping to get any job, if at all. However, for psychology majors, the salary outlook in both the short and long term is particularly poor, according to a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. It's generally known that psychology majors don't make a ton of money when they're starting out; they're not like engineering students, many of whom go straight into a ...

Body cells detect signals that control their behavior through tiny hairs on the cell surface called cilia. Serious diseases and disorders can result when these cilia do not work properly. New research from UC Davis published this week in the journal Nature Cell Biology provides new insights into how these cilia are assembled. "It's a basic discovery, but with implications for understanding disease," said Jonathan Scholey, professor of molecular and cellular biology at UC Davis and senior author of the study. Understanding how cilia are assembled and function can help ...

Although adding gravel to a river to replace lost sediments won't likely cool the whole river channel, it can create cool water refuges that protect fish from thermal pollution, according to a U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station study. The research—featured in the June 2011 issue of Science Findings, a monthly publication of the station—is among the first to explore the interplay between sub-surface water flow and temperature in large rivers and is helping to guide river restoration strategies in the Pacific Northwest. In the study, which began ...

Obesity among people who eat a high-fat diet may involve injury to neurons, or nerve cells, in a key part of the brain that controls body weight, according to the authors of a new animal study. The results will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston. "The possibility that brain injury may be a consequence of the overconsumption of a typical American diet offers a new explanation for why sustained weight loss is so difficult for most obese individuals to achieve," said presenting author Joshua Thaler, MD, PhD, a faculty member with ...

Animals and plants may not be able to evolve their way out of the threat posed by climate change, according to a UC Davis study of a tiny seashore animal. The work was published today (June 8) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The tide pool copepod Tigriopus californicus is found from Alaska to Baja California — but in a unique lab study, the animals showed little ability to evolve heat tolerance. "This is a question a lot of scientists have been talking about," said study co-author Eric Sanford, an associate professor of evolution and ecology at UC ...

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The University of Alabama at Birmingham has taken a significant step toward making sophisticated cell therapy a part of patient care with its acquisition of the first cell-processing workstation (CPWS) from SANYO North America Corporation (SANYO) in the United States. Richard Marchase, Ph.D., vice president for Research and Economic Development at UAB, says "UAB has a rich history of breaking ground in the cell-therapy arena. We are thrilled that we were able to be the first in the United States to use SANYO's CPWS. This will add to our world-class ...

The first tropical depression in the Eastern Pacific Ocean is now the first tropical storm, and two satellites are providing NASA insights into its thunderstorms, rainfall, and intensity. NASA satellite data on newly born Tropical Storm Adrian shows high cloud tops and moderate rainfall, indications that the storm is getting stronger, triggering a tropical storm watch in Mexico. Tropical Depression 1E is the first tropical depression of 2011 and formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean early on June 7. By the morning of June 8 it had strengthened into Tropical Storm Adrian, ...

System 98A has been bringing rains, gusty winds and churning up the surf along the Arabian Seacoast of west-central India for days, and NASA satellite imagery confirms that it is getting organized now that it has moved into open waters. NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image on June 8 at 08:47 UTC (4:47 a.m. EDT) of the hundreds of thunderstorms that make up the low pressure area called System 98A. The low pressure area has now moved to the west-southwest and away from Mumbai, India. In fact, today it is located ...

Durham, NC — We often think of rainforests and coral reefs as hotspots for biodiversity, but mountains are treasure troves for species too —especially in the tropics, scientists say. But what drives montane biodiversity? The diversity of plants and animals in tropical mountain ranges may have something to do with the stable seasonal temperatures found in the tropics relative to higher latitudes, says a new study by scientists working at the US National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. The study, based on nearly 200 species of bats, birds, frogs, lizards and snakes, also ...

Gazing into the depths of a pond, it's hard to miss the insects that whirl and zip beneath the surface. However, only one species of spider has joined them: the diving bell spider, Argyroneta aquatica. 'It is an iconic animal; I had read about the spider as a small boy in popular literature about ponds,' says Roger Seymour from the University of Adelaide. According to Seymour, each spider constructs a net of silk in vegetation beneath the surface and fills it with air carried down on its abdomen. The spiders spend their entire lives submerged and even lay their eggs in ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In a new study, researchers tested the claims of a Boston police officer who said he ran past a brutal police beating without seeing it. After re-creating some of the conditions of the original incident and testing the perceptions of college students who ran past a staged fight, the researchers found the officer's story plausible. The study appears in the peer-reviewed open access journal i-Perception. Psychology professors Christopher Chabris (Union College) and Daniel Simons (University of Illinois) often explore the limits of visual attention – ...

Bethesda, MD – Vaccinating children around the world against infectious diseases has saved the lives of millions over the past several decades. Now new opportunities exist to overcome remaining challenges—and save another 6.4 million lives over the current decade, according articles in the June 2011 edition of Health Affairs. The issue was produced under the journal's grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Last year, the Gates Foundation committed an additional $10 billion over the current decade to make life-saving vaccines available to millions of children. ...

Massachusetts' innovative use of "pay-for-performance" bonuses to try to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the case of Medicaid patients has turned up no evidence of the problem at any of the state's 66 acute-care hospitals, according to a new study that raises questions about the effectiveness of the state's novel approach. While the study, published in the June edition of Health Affairs (June 9, 2011), found that racial and ethnic inequities for disadvantaged patients may well exist, it also determined that the hospital "pay-for-performance" approach – typically ...