A powerful solar flare has ushered in the largest space weather storm in atleast four years and has already disrupted some ground communications on Earth, said University of Colorado Boulder Professor Daniel Baker, an internationally known space weather expert. Classified as a Class X flare, the Feb. 15 event also spewed billions of tons of charged particles toward Earth in what are called coronal mass ejections and ignited a geomagnetic storm in Earth's magnetic field, said Baker, director of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Such powerful ejections ...

When studying relationships, psychological scientists have often focused on how couples fight. But how they recover from a fight is important, too. According to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, couples' abilities to bounce back from conflict may depend on what both partners were like as infants. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been following a cohort of people since before they were born, in the mid-1970s. When the subjects were about 20 years old, they visited the lab with their romantic ...

LOS ANGELES (February 18, 2011) – Scientists at the Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases and The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles today announced a breakthrough discovery in understanding how the body fights leukemia. They have identified a protein called CD19-ligand (CD19-L) located on the surface of certain white blood cells that facilitates the recognition and destruction of leukemia cells by the immune system. This work represents the first report of a bioengineered version of CD19-L, a recombinant human biotherapeutic agent, ...

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 18 – Only one out of more than 1,900 people evaluated met the American Heart Association (AHA) definition of ideal cardiovascular health, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings were recently published online in Circulation. Ideal cardiovascular health is the combination of these seven factors: nonsmoking, a body mass index less than 25, goal-level physical activity and healthy diet, untreated cholesterol below 200, blood pressure below 120/80 and fasting blood sugar below 100, explained ...

DALLAS – Feb. 17, 2011 – Low levels of the anti-aging hormone Klotho may serve as an early warning sign of the presence of kidney disease and its deadly cardiovascular complications, according to findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers. Using mice, investigators found that soft-tissue calcification, a common and serious side effect of chronic kidney disease (CKD), improves when Klotho hormone levels are restored. The study is available online in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. The essential Klotho protein, which is produced by the kidneys, ...

One bad apple is all it takes to spoil the barrel. And one misfolded protein may be all that's necessary to corrupt other proteins, forming large aggregations linked to several incurable neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Stanford biology Professor Ron Kopito has shown that the mutant, misfolded protein responsible for Huntington's disease can move from cell to cell, recruiting normal proteins and forming aggregations in each cell it visits. Knowing that this protein spends part of its time outside cells "opens up the possibility ...

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a new sampling device that could prevent thousands of people worldwide from dying of pneumonia each year. Called PneumoniaCheck, the device created at Georgia Tech is a solution to the problem of diagnosing pneumonia, which is a major initiative of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Pneumonia, an inflammation of the lungs, kills about 2.4 million people each year. The problem is particularly devastating in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, where a child dies ...

The most widely prescribed antidepressants – medicines such as Prozac, Lexapro and Paxil – work by blocking the serotonin transporter, a brain protein that normally clears away the mood-regulating chemical serotonin. Or so the current thinking goes. That theory about how selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) work can now be put to the test with a new mouse model developed by neuroscientists at Vanderbilt University. These mice, described in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), express a serotonin transporter that ...

While a world free of nuclear weapons remains a goal for governments around the world, nuclear security constitutes a major challenge for the 21st century, as recognised at the 2010 nuclear security summit in Washington. Citizens are generally aware of international efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but they are often unaware of nuclear security research and the important role science in this field. A new European nuclear security training centre and enhanced international collaboration are good examples. A recent survey on the EU´s radiological ...

To build the next generation of sensors – with applications ranging from medical devices to robotics to new consumer goods – Chang Liu looks to biology. Liu, professor of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, is using insights from nature as inspiration for both touch and flow sensors — areas that currently lack good sensors for recording and communicating the senses. Liu will discuss his research in a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association ...

The arrival of affordable, high throughput DNA sequencing, coupled with improved bioinformatics and statistical analyses is bringing about major advances in the field of molecular plant breeding. Multidisciplinary breeding programs on the world's major crop plants are able to investigate genome-wide variations in DNA sequences and link them to the inheritance of highly complex traits controlled by many genes, such as hybrid vigor. Furthermore, there has been a step-change in speed and cost-effectiveness. What previously took six generations to achieve can now be done in ...

NEW YORK, February 4, 2011 –– A defining feature of a scientific discovery is replication by others. In today's age of computational science, this means higher standards of communication of discoveries — making available the data that generated the results along with the published research paper. Doing this makes the technology behind the finding widely accessible, facilitating re-use and verification of results. Tools and approaches to facilitate such knowledge transfer will be discussed at a symposium titled The Digitization of Science: Reproducibility and Interdisciplinary ...

SAN DIEGO, CA – Knee pain related to osteoarthritis (OA) is a common complaint among obese individuals and retired professional athletes, especially former NFL players, but researchers presenting their work at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Specialty Day program (February 19th) say they have a simple solution: lose weight. "Our research on patients who were obese with early-onset knee osteoarthritis showed that those individuals who underwent isolated weight loss via bariatric surgery and lost an average of 57 pounds within the first six months ...

SAN DIEGO, CA – Despite known risks and outcomes of the common elbow procedure known as Tommy John surgery, parents, coaches and players still have incorrect assumptions regarding player performance, say researchers presenting their study at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Specialty Day in San Diego, CA (February 19th). "Despite the recognized risk of pitch type and amount of pitches, nearly a third of those we surveyed did not believe pitch counts were a risk factor for injury. Even more disturbing was that fact that a quarter of players and coaches ...

SAN DIEGO, CA - Patients receiving anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee reconstruction with a hamstring tendon graft rather than a knee tendon graft were less likely to suffer from pain and mobility issues15 years after surgery, say researchers presenting a study today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Specialty Day in San Diego, California (February 19). "While we have seen excellent results in terms of knee symptoms and function with both graft types, comparing the two definitely showed differences, "said Leo Pinczewski, MD, lead researcher ...

SAN DIEGO, CA - Surgical treatment using microfracture for pediatric knee injury repair may improve activity outcomes, according to research presented at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Specialty Day in San Diego (February 19). The study shows patients are able to regain function and return to a normal activity level following surgery and rehabilitation. "Our study focused on patients with articular cartilage injuries to the knee, which can be a debilitating source of pain and a strong limitation to function in pediatric patients," said lead researcher, ...

SAN DIEGO, CA – Improving healing after a rotator cuff tendon repair is an ongoing problem for orthopaedic surgeons world-wide. Researchers, presenting a study at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Specialty Day in San Diego (February 19th) found that one of the latest tools for healing injuries, platelet-rich plasma (PRP), does not make a big difference. "Our study on 79 patients who received platelet-rich plasma with a fibrin matrix (PRFM) demonstrated no real differences in healing in a tendon-to-bone rotator cuff repair. In fact, this preliminary ...

Inexpensive hydrogen for automotive or jet fuel may be possible by mimicking photosynthesis, according to a Penn State materials chemist, but a number of problems need to be solved first. "We are focused on the hardest way to make fuel," said Thomas Mallouk, Evan Pugh Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics. "We are creating an artificial system that mimics photosynthesis, but it will be practical only when it is as cheap as gasoline or jet fuel." Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen can be done in a variety of ways, but most are heavily energy intensive. The ...

University of Rochester optics professor Jannick Rolland has developed an optical technology that provides unprecedented images under the skin's surface. The aim of the technology is to detect and examine skin lesions to determine whether they are benign or cancerous without having to cut the suspected tumor out of the skin and analyze it in the lab. Instead, the tip of a roughly one-foot-long cylindrical probe is placed in contact with the tissue, and within seconds a clear, high-resolution, 3D image of what lies below the surface emerges. Rolland will be presenting ...

The global scientific community is capable of policing its own behavior and should resist creation of a central oversight body to enforce 'universal standards' that may have unintended consequences, a renowned physicist and director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin said Saturday. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Without Borders meeting in Washington, D.C., Raymond L Orbach, Ph.D., singled out several elements contained in the "Singapore Statement of Research Integrity" (www.singaporestatement.org) ...

Washington (Thursday, February 17) — According to University of Toronto speech-language pathologist Luc De Nil, the beat could be revealing such things as how children master one of the most complex tasks of all – speech. "The rapid and precise muscle movements of speech must be the most intricate, yet poorly understood, of all the sensory-motor skills," says De Nil. De Nil's interest in finger-tapping came out of his group's previous work on adults who stutter. His team discovered that they have problems in acquiring new and unusual tapping sequences and not just speech. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The Mimosa plant, which folds its leaves when they're touched, is inspiring a new class of adaptive structures designed to twist, bend, stiffen and even heal themselves. University of Michigan researchers are leading their development. Mechanical engineering professor Kon-Well Wang will present the team's latest work Feb. 19 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2011 Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. He will also speak at a news briefing earlier that day. Wang is the Stephan P. Timoshenko Collegiate Professor of Mechanical Engineering ...

Using the super-sharp radio "vision" of astronomy's most precise telescope, scientists have extended a directly-measured "yardstick" three times farther into the cosmos than ever before, an achievement with important implications for numerous areas of astrophysics, including determining the nature of Dark Energy, which constitutes 70 percent of the Universe. The continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) also is redrawing the map of our home Galaxy and is poised to yield tantalizing new information about extrasolar planets, among many other cutting-edge research projects. The ...

At this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Washington, D.C., February 17 to 21, Caltech researchers will present topics ranging from solar and renewable energy solutions to the latest advancements in bioengineering. Caltech's Alice S. Huang, AAAS president, will deliver the President's Address at the opening ceremony, highlighting this year's AAAS theme, "Science Without Borders." Friday, February 18 Session: Portraits of the California Energy System in 2050: Cutting Emissions by 80 Percent Title: The Future of Game-Changing ...

Arthroscopic rotator cuff repair is highly effective and provides durable results five years after surgery, according to a large, prospective study by Hospital for Special Surgery investigators. The study also surprisingly revealed that the rotator cuff has the ability to heal even when early imaging studies have found a defect at the site of repair. The research will be presented at the upcoming American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (ASES) 2011 Specialty Day meeting, to be held Feb. 19 in San Diego, Calif., following the annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic ...