Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach...
Earth & Climate
Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton's classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They've built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium. In a new paper...
Physics & Chemistry
When it comes to conserving the world's orchids, not all forests are equal. In a paper to be published Jan. 25 in the journal Molecular Ecology, Smithsonian ecologists revealed that an orchid's fate hinges on two factors: a forest's age and its...
Biology & Nature
Evidence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk is present in the blood of adolescents who consume a lot of fructose, a scenario that worsens in the face of excess belly fat, researchers report. An analysis of 559 adolescents age 14-18...
Health & Medicine
While it may appear that infants are helpless creatures that only blink, eat, cry and sleep, one University of Missouri researcher says that studies indicate infant brains come equipped with knowledge of "intuitive physics." "In the...
Psychology & Sociology
Quantifying how sore a person is after a long workout is a challenge for doctors and researchers, but scientists from Loma Linda and Asuza Pacific Universities think they may have figured it out. Their research article describing a new technique to...
Health & Medicine
A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, provides even more reason for people to read a book or do a puzzle, and to make such activities a lifetime habit. Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of...
Health & Medicine
New research at Harvard explains how bacterial biofilms expand to form slimy mats on teeth, pipes, surgical instruments, and crops. Through experiment and mathematical analysis, researchers have shown that the extracellular matrix (ECM), a mesh of...
Biology & Nature
A healthy genome is characterized by 23 pairs of chromosomes, and even a small change in this structure -- such as an extra copy of a single chromosome -- can lead to severe physical impairment. So it's no surprise that when it comes to cancer,...
Biology & Nature
Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have identified a finely tuned mechanism by which fetal heart muscle develops into a healthy and fully formed beating heart -- offering new insight into the genetic causes of congenital heart disease and...
Health & Medicine
On July 6, 2011, a comet was caught doing something never seen before: die a scorching death as it flew too close to the sun. That the comet met its fate this way was no surprise -- but the chance to watch it first-hand amazed even the most seasoned...
Astronomy & Space
Extraordinarily cold temperatures in the winter of 2010/2011 caused the most massive destruction of the ozone layer above the Arctic so far: The mechanisms leading to the first ozone hole above the North Pole were studied by scientists of the KIT...
Earth & Climate
Over many generations, people living in the high-altitude regions of the Andes or on the Tibetan Plateau have adapted to life in low-oxygen conditions. Living with such a distinct and powerful selective pressure has made these populations a textbook...
Biology & Nature
UCSF scientists have discovered the unexpected way in which a key cell of the immune system prepares for battle. The finding, they said, offers insight into the processes that take place within these cells and could lead to strategies for treating...
Biology & Nature
The global average surface temperature in 2011 was the ninth warmest since 1880, according to NASA scientists. The finding continues a trend in which nine of the 10 warmest years in the modern meteorological record have occurred since the year 2000...
Earth & Climate
Meteorologists can see a busy hurricane season brewing months ahead, but until now there has been no such crystal ball for tornadoes, which are much smaller and more volatile. This information gap took on new urgency after tornadoes in 2011 killed...
Earth & Climate
A receptor found on blood platelets whose importance as a potential pharmaceutical target has long been questioned may in fact be fruitful in drug testing, according to new research from Michigan State University chemists. A team led by Dana Spence...
Health & Medicine
Designing an all-terrain robot for search-and-rescue missions is an arduous task for scientists. The machine must be flexible enough to move over uneven surfaces, yet not so big that it's restricted from tight spaces. It might also be required to...
Mathematics & Economics
An international team of microbiologists led by Indiana University researchers has identified a new bacterial growth process -- one that occurs at a single end or pole of the cell instead of uniform, dispersed growth along the long axis of the cell...
Biology & Nature
A novel technique has been developed and demonstrated at Penn State to map the proteins that read and regulate chromosomes -- the string-like structures inside cells that carry genes. The specific order in which these proteins attach DNA-containing...
Biology & Nature
The Wildlife Conservation Society, in conjunction with the Cambodian Fisheries Administration and Wildlife Reserves Singapore, just announced the successful release of a Southern River terrapin (Batagur affinis) -- one of the most endangered turtles...
Biology & Nature
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a compound that can help repair a specific type of defect in RNA, a type of genetic material. The methods in the new study could accelerate the development of...
Biology & Nature
A University of Missouri researcher and his colleague have conducted a review that casts doubt on the accuracy of a popular theory that attempted to explain why there are more men than women in top levels of mathematic fields. The researchers found...
Psychology & Sociology
Geoscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Minnesota this week published the first evidence that warm-cold climate oscillations well known in the Northern Hemisphere over the most recent glacial period also appear...
Earth & Climate
Scientists from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and from UCSF, US, have exposed a cell pathway that breast tumor cells use to destruct local tissue neighborhood. Cancer cells may use this pathway to free themselves from mammary epithelial...
Health & Medicine
Why are the faces of primates so dramatically different from one another? UCLA biologists working as "evolutionary detectives" studied the faces of 129 adult male primates from Central and South America, and they offer some answers in...
Biology & Nature
A special group of proteins, the so-called chaperones, helps other proteins to obtain their correct conformation. Until now scientists supposed that hydrolyzing ATP provides the energy for the large conformational changes of chaperone Hsp90. Now a...
Physics & Chemistry
Preserving diverse plant life will be crucial to buffer the negative effects of climate change and desertification in in the world's drylands, according to a new landmark study. The findings of the multi-author study, published January 13 in the...
Earth & Climate
Investigators in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology have discovered a previously unknown type of immune cell, a B cell that can produce the important growth factor GM-CSF, which stimulates many other immune cells....
Health & Medicine
For the first time, a superconducting current limiter based on YBCO strip conductors has now been installed at a power plant. At the Boxberg power plant of Vattenfall, the current limiter protects the grid for own consumption that is designed for 12...
Physics & Chemistry
An international team of scientists led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Professor Ralf I. Kaiser, Alexander M. Mebel of Florida International University, and Alexander Tielens of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered a novel...
Physics & Chemistry
University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates. Jennifer Lewis, the Hans Thurnauer...
Physics & Chemistry
In a breakthrough paper recently published in the journal Science, researchers from Sandia's Combustion Research Facility, the University of Manchester and Bristol University report direct measurements of reactions of a gas-phase Criegee...
Earth & Climate
Polymer nano-films and nano-composites are used in a wide variety of applications from food packaging to sports equipment to automotive and aerospace applications. Thermal analysis is routinely used to analyze materials for these applications, but...
Physics & Chemistry
University of Illinois researchers have shown that by tuning the properties of laser light illuminating arrays of metal nanoantennas, these nano-scale structures allow for dexterous optical tweezing as well as size-sorting of particles. "...
Physics & Chemistry
Scientists have long seen evidence of social behavior among many species of animals, both on the earth and in the sea. Dolphins frolic together, lions live in packs, and hornets construct nests that can house a large number of the insects. And,...
Biology & Nature
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a gene that tells cells to develop multiple cilia, tiny hair-like structures that move fluids through the lungs and brain. The finding may help scientists generate new therapies...
Biology & Nature
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has looked deep into the distant universe and detected the feeble glow of a star that exploded more than 9 billion years ago. The sighting is the first finding of an ambitious survey that will help astronomers place...
Astronomy & Space
The discovery of the three smallest planets yet orbiting a distant star, which was announced January 11 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, has an unusual connection to Barnard's star, one of the Sun's nearest neighbors. The...
Astronomy & Space
Peering deep inside the hub of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a large, rare population of hot, bright stars. Blue is typically an indicator of hot, young stars. In this case, however, the stellar...
Astronomy & Space
A scientist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an anthropologist from the University at Albany teamed up to use ultra-modern chemical analysis technology at Rensselaer to analyze ancient Mayan pottery for proof of tobacco use in the ancient...
Health & Medicine
Sandia National Laboratories computer scientist Casey Deccio has developed a visualization tool known as DNSViz to help network administrators within the federal government and global IT community better understand Domain Name System Security (...
Mathematics & Economics
The stars we see today weren't always as serene as they appear, floating alone in the dark of night. Most stars, likely including our sun, grew up in cosmic turmoil -- as illustrated in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The image...
Astronomy & Space
Scientists at the University of Leicester have opened up a whole new approach to the therapeutic intervention for a family of anti-cancer drug targets, thanks to a completely new and unexpected finding. Professor Schwabe and his colleagues, Drs...
Biology & Nature
A turning point in the history of life occurred 2 billion to 3 billion years ago with the unprecedented appearance and dramatic rise of molecular oxygen. Now researchers report they have identified an enzyme that was the first -- or among the first...
Biology & Nature
Fusion plasma researchers at the University of Warwick have teamed up with Cambridge neuroscientists to apply their expertise developed to study inaccessible fusion plasmas in order to significantly improve the understanding of the data obtained...
Psychology & Sociology
The James Webb Space Telescope marked a year of significant progress in 2011 as it continues to come together as NASA's next generation space telescope. The year brought forth a pathfinder backplane to support the large primary mirror structure,...
Astronomy & Space
As an embryo develops, different genes are turned on in different cells, to form muscles, neurons and other bodily parts. Inside each cell's nucleus, genetic sequences known as enhancers act like remote controls, switching genes on and off....
Biology & Nature
A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones. No one has yet made a...
Physics & Chemistry
If they didn't have enough to worry about from dodging poachers, snow leopards, and landslides in Central Asia's rugged mountains, a population of endangered markhor -- a majestic wild goat species -- has contracted pneumonia, detected for the first...
Biology & Nature
