Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, with colleagues at the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), conducted a randomized trial of informative letters aimed at suspected inappropriate prescribers of addictive substances like opioids and amphetamines. Top prescribers of these substances were identified and sent a letter informing them of their high prescribing rate. The investigators were unable to detect a statistically significant effect of the intervention on prescribing practices. Findings are published in the March issue of the journal Health Affairs.

Washington, D.C.--Scientists have long been puzzled about what makes Mercury's surface so dark. The innermost planet reflects much less sunlight than the Moon, a body on which surface darkness is controlled by the abundance of iron-rich minerals. These are known to be rare at Mercury's surface, so what is the "darkening agent" there?

Many viral diseases tend to become chronic - including infections with the HI virus. In persons affected, the immune response is not sufficient to eliminate the virus permanently. Scientists at the University of Bonn have now identified an immune factor which is partially responsible for this. Their results give rise to hopes for new therapeutic approaches. The work, which included researchers from the University of Cologne and the Technical University of Munich, is being published in the renowned journal "Nature Immunology."

A new study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found a dramatic increase in the number of adolescents undergoing "Tommy John" surgery to repair a pitching-related elbow injury in recent years, outstripping growth among major league pitchers. 

If you live in one of four major U.S. cities chances are you're letting the benefits of a ubiquitous natural resource go right down the drain instead of using it to cut down your water bill.

Toilet flushing is the biggest use of water in households in the United States and the United Kingdom, accounting for nearly one-third of potable water use. But there is no reason that clean, treated, municipal water needs to be used to flush a toilet -- rainwater could do the job just as well.

A new paper indicates it rains enough in Philadelphia, New York, Seattle and Chicago that if homeowners had a way to collect and store even just the rain falling on their roofs, they could flush their toilets often without having to use a drop of municipal water. 

A BLOOD test may be able to sound early warning bells that patients with advanced melanoma skin cancer are relapsing, according to a study* published in the journal Cancer Discovery today (Monday).

Scientists from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute studied the DNA shed by tumours into the bloodstream - called circulating tumour DNA - in blood samples from seven advanced melanoma patients at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.

In this early work they found they could see whether a patient was relapsing by tracking levels of circulating tumour DNA. And they found that new mutations in genes like NRAS and PI3K appeared, possibly causing the relapse by allowing the tumour to become resistant to treatment.

PULLMAN, Wash.--Washington State University researcher Joyce Ehrlinger has found that a person's tendency to be overconfident increases if he or she thinks intelligence is fixed and unchangeable.

Such people tend to maintain their overconfidence by concentrating on the easy parts of tasks while spending as little time as possible on the hard parts of tasks, said Ehrlinger, a WSU assistant professor of psychology. But people who hold a growth mindset--meaning they think intelligence is a changeable quality--spend more time on the challenging parts of tasks, she said. Consequently, their levels of confidence are more in line with their abilities.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Supervolcanoes capable of unleashing hundreds of times the amount of magma that was expelled during the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 are found in populated areas around the world, including the western United States.

A new study is providing insight into what may happen when one of these colossal entities explodes.

The research focuses on the Silver Creek caldera, which sits at the intersection of California, Nevada and Arizona. When this supervolcano erupted 18.8 million years ago, it flooded parts of all three states with river-like currents of hot ash and gas called pyroclastic flows. These tides of volcanic material traveled for huge distances -- more than 100 miles.

This is a talk I gave last summer to a small conference "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life - Europa&Enceladus" in Oxford, summer 2015. It's about the idea that when searching for life in our solar system, we could find something that's a "super positive" outcome of overwhelming value for us and future generations. And that if so we need to take great care we don't lose the opportunity or destroy it by introducing Earth life by mistake.

On March 3rd and 4th the AMVA4NewPhysics network met in Venice, in the beautiful venue of Ca' Sagredo. Ca' Sagredo is a 500-year-old palace on the Canal Grande, home of the Sagredo family and in the 600s of Giambattista Sagredo, who hosted many times Galileo Galilei there. As for the AMVA4NewPhysics network, it is a "Innovative Training Network" of 16 research institutes, universities and industries that have joined forces to train young scientists in particle physics and the development of advanced multivariate-analysis tools.