Jal was a tropical storm when it made landfall this weekend on the east coast of India and tracked across the country while weakening into a remnant low pressure area. NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Jal's center as it was entering eastern India and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image as it was departing the country. This weekend, Tropical Cyclone Jal made landfall in east central India and crossed the northern coast of Tamil Nadu and southern coast of Andhra Pradesh, north of Chennai. It dropped heavy rainfall and created some flooding. Gusty ...

CHICAGO --- Northwestern Medicine researchers at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University have found that a new, nontoxic drug made from a chemical in soy could prevent the movement of cancer cells from the prostate to the rest of the body. These findings will be presented at the Ninth Annual American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference. Genistein, a natural chemical found in soy, is being used in the lab of Raymond Bergan, M.D., the director of experimental therapeutics at the Lurie Cancer ...

Saying goodbye to summer can be difficult for everybody. In some people the onset of winter triggers Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, a mood disorder in which sufferers experience symptoms of depression. Happily, a special kind of gerbil exhibits remarkably similar reactions to SAD treatments as humans, opening a promising new channel for study and treatment of the common complaint. With her work on the Israeli desert inhabitant gerbil called the Fat Sand Rat (Psammomys obesus), Prof. Noga Kronfeld-Schor of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology and her fellow ...

New techniques now being used at UCLA allow doctors to more precisely target certain areas of the heart to stop ventricular arrhythmias — serious abnormal rhythms in the heart's lower chambers — in high-risk patients. Generally, arrhythmias can be controlled by medications, and sometimes defibrillators. But a potentially life-threatening, recurrent arrhythmia known as a ventricular tachycardia, which originates in one of the heart's two ventricles, can produce a fast heart beat that requires other interventions, such as catheter ablation, in which the precise focus ...

Children with learning difficulties can benefit from being encouraged to find their own way to solve arithmetic problems, according to new research from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. A study by Dr Lio Moscardini, in Strathclyde's Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, found that children deal better with arithmetical problems if they can use their own intuitive strategies such as using number blocks, drawings or breaking an equation up into smaller, simpler parts- rather than being instructed in arithmetical facts and procedures. All the teachers ...

Irvine, Calif., Nov. 8, 2010 — A small amount of bleeding in the brain seems to be common among older individuals, according to a UC Irvine study. Neurologist Dr. Mark Fisher and neuropathologist Dr. Ronald Kim found that cerebral microbleeds are highly prevalent in the aging brain – and not primarily products of stroke-related injury, hypertension or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, as had been thought. "Prior work relied on brain imaging to show cerebral microbleeds," Fisher said. "But in this study, deep regions of the brain were closely examined under ...

AUDIO: New research that reveals the activity of nerve cells in a songbird's brain as the bird sings a specific song is helping scientists to understand how birds string together sets... Click here for more information. A team of scientists has observed the activity of nerve cells in a songbird's brain as it is singing a particular song. Dezhe Jin, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Penn State University and one of the study's authors, explained that ...

Hoboken, NJ – Stevens Institute of Technology and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) have recently conducted joint experiments in the Dutch Navy Harbor of Den Helder, where passive acoustic systems from both parties were combined. Initial experimental results are presented at the Waterside Security (WSS) 2010 conference. This important experimental campaign was financed by the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. The collaboration between Stevens and TNO was initiated in early 2010 after recognizing a strategic opportunity to form a long-term ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Leeds have linked hundreds of federally approved drugs to more than 1,000 proteins in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), opening new avenues to repurpose these drugs to treat TB. The study was published Nov. 4 in PLoS Computational Biology. "Tuberculosis is currently one of the most widely spread infectious diseases, with an estimated one-third of the world's population infected and between one and two million people dying each year from ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 8, 2010 — A study published in the November edition of Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association suggests that taking docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) may improve memory and learning in older adults with mild cognitive impairments. This is promising news for many aging Americans who are searching for options to maintain memory and support overall cognitive health. The "Memory Improvement with Docosahexaenoic Acid Study" (MIDAS) was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the effects of DHA—the principle ...

VIDEO: In the laboratory of Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Tech, a blinking LCD signals the success of a five-year effort to power conventional electronic devices using nanoscale generators that harvest... Click here for more information. Blinking numbers on a liquid-crystal display (LCD) often indicate that a device's clock needs resetting. But in the laboratory of Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Tech, the blinking number on a small LCD signals the success of a five-year effort ...

Durham, NC —Many plants can pollinate themselves and reproduce without the aid of a mate, thanks to having both male and female parts. But the short-term perks of being able to go it alone come with long-term costs, says a new study in the journal Science. The reason is because plants that can pollinate themselves are more prone to extinction, scientists say. Flowering plants are incredibly creative when it comes to sex, said co-author Boris Igic, a biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Plants just can't walk over to potential mates like we do. Many species ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Common foot disorders such as flat feet, corns and bunions are more prevalent among African Americans than in whites, a new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers has found. African Americans in the study age 45 or older were three times more likely than whites of the same age to have corns or flat feet (medical name: pes planus). In people who were not obese, African Americans were twice as likely to have bunions (hallux valgus) and hammer toes than whites, said Yvonne M. Golightly, PT, PhD, lead author of the study, titled ...

One drug's startling ability to restore retinal health in the eyes of diabetic mice has researchers wanting to learn more about how it works and whether it might do the same for people. "We want to know if this drug has the potential to block the visual devastation that can occur with diabetes," said Dr. Sylvia Smith, retinal cell biologist and co-director of the Vision Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia. "That means we need to know more about how and when it is effective." Diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in working-age Americans, ...

SANTA CRUZ, CA--A team of marine scientists has found that toxin-producing algae once thought to be limited to coastal waters are also common in the open ocean, where the addition of iron from natural or artificial sources can stimulate rapid growth of the harmful algae. The new findings, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to concerns about proposals to use iron fertilization of the oceans as a way to combat global warming. Blooms of diatoms in the genus Pseudo-nitschia, which produce a neurotoxin called domoic acid, are a regular ...

TORONTO, ON – Psychologists at the University of Toronto have shown that the nature of a social interaction has the ability to influence an individual's sensitivity to physical pain. The discovery could have significant clinical implications for doctor-patient relationships and the general well-being of an individual on a daily basis. "Dozens of studies over the past several decades have demonstrated the impact of inadequate social connectedness on numerous health outcomes, including cardiovascular health, immune function, post-surgical recovery, and lifespan," says ...

Toronto, Canada – A Canadian science team has found more dramatic evidence that speaking two languages can help delay the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms by as much as five years. The latest study, led by Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute, examined the clinical records of more than 200 patients diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's disease and found that those who have spoken two or more languages consistently over many years experienced a delay in the onset of their symptoms by as much as five years. The study is published in the Nov. 9th issue of Neurology. The science ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Kids who are deficient in vitamin D accumulated fat around the waist and gained weight more rapidly than kids who got enough vitamin D, a new University of Michigan study suggests. Vitamin D, which is primarily provided to the body by the sun, has been a hot topic in the U.S. lately. The federal standards for vitamin D intake have come under fire by public health professionals as being much too low, and disagreement continues over the proper amount of vitamin D necessary for optimal health. Accumulation of abdominal fat, or central fat, may lead ...

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers Jeremy Busby, De-en Jiang and Sergei Kalinin are among 13 Department of Energy scientists to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, or PECASE. The PECASE, one of the nation's top honors for young scientists, was designed to recognize some of the finest researchers who show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge. "Science and technology have long been at the core of America's economic strength and global leadership," President Obama said. "I am confident ...

Alexandria, Va., USA – It is well known that oral infection progressively destroys periodontal tissues and is the leading cause of tooth loss in adults. A major goal of periodontal treatment is regeneration of the tissues lost to periodontitis. Unfortunately, most current therapies cannot predictably promote repair of tooth-supporting defects. A variety of regenerative approaches have been used clinically using bone grafts and guiding tissue membranes with limited success. In an article titled "FGF-2 Stimulates Periodontal Regeneration: Results of a Multicenter Randomized ...

A fundamental principle of medicine is: "first, do no harm." However, for doctors who treat breast cancer, this is easier said than done. Every year, almost 22,000 Canadian women are diagnosed with breast cancer — their treatment usually involves surgery to remove a tumour and then chemotherapy to reduce the risk of cancer returning. But studies show that for most patients with early stage breast cancer, chemotherapy following surgery is totally unnecessary and therefore does more harm than good. Identifying whether a patient's cancer is at low or high risk of recurring ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – By combining optical and x-ray imaging, radiologists may be better able to distinguish cancer from benign lesions in the breast, according to a new study published in the online edition and January issue of Radiology. Researchers at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston helped develop a combined optical/x-ray imaging system capable of obtaining both structural and functional information of the breast. The two technologies used were digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), a three-dimensional application of digital ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Multidetector computed tomography (CT) helps pinpoint the causes of ischemic strokes, the most common type of stroke, potentially speeding the delivery of life-saving treatments, according to a study published online and in the January issue of Radiology. "Our results suggest that multidetector CT could become the first-line imaging tool for identifying the cause of acute ischemic stroke," said the study's lead author, Loic Boussel, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiology at Louis Pradel Hospital in Bron, France. An ischemic stroke occurs when blockage ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — When it comes to public perception about health disparities in the United States, political ideology plays a surprisingly large role – more so even than party affiliation, according to new research by a Michigan State University sociologist. "As far as our beliefs about unequal access to health care, whether we are conservative or liberal seems to be much more important than whether we are Republican or Democrat," said Harry Perlstadt, professor of sociology. Perlstadt's study is the first to scientifically examine political and ideological beliefs ...

Built with flexibility and ease of use in mind, the next generation of Lanner Group's flagship software contains further advances in virtual representation, combined with a wide range of new features which enhance the breadth and depth of the solution's capabilities. Says Mandy Tague, Lanner Group director of business development, Americas, "WITNESS software makes the complex simple with new features that allow users to build simulations faster, get the results they need, and make the right decisions, first time." The solution builds on the core strength of WITNESS ...