News Articles

Miscarriage is commonly believed to be rare and its causes are misunderstood. This can lead to a guilt-ridden experience for women who have one, according to a new national survey presented 
at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) in Boston. 
This national population-based survey included 1,083 men and women over 18 in the U.S. Researchers analyzed a questionnaire that contained 23 questions about personal experiences and beliefs about miscarriage, possible causes and frequencies of miscarriages, as well as the emotional impact of a miscarriage. Factors impacting survey responses included gender, race, religious beliefs, education level and socioeconomic status.

Worrisome news for retired American football players.  Though former players in a new preliminary study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers - profound abnormalities, the authors note.

When most people think of the Antarctic, they think of snow, ice and glaciers - but the continent and surrounding waters are littered with fiery volcanoes.
The Marie Byrd Seamounts in the Amundsen Sea are not active, like many volcanoes there are. Their summit plateaus are today at depths of 2400-1600 meters but, because they are very difficult to reach with conventional research vessels, they have hardly been explored.
What is intriguing is that they do not fit any of the usual models for the formation of volcanoes. Now geologists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel were able to find a possible explanation for the existence of these seamounts on the basis of rare specimens. 

A new analysis of data on over 3,000 elderly Americans strongly suggests that people over the age of 75 with normal cognition who used diuretics, angiotensin-1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors showed a reduced risk of AD dementia by at least 50 percent. In addition, diuretics were associated with 50 percent reduced risk in those in the group with mild cognitive impairment.

Beta blockers and calcium channel blockers did not show a link to reduced risk, the researchers reported.
Alzheimer's disease is a public health issue in aging population and the most common cause of intellectual and social decline.

You wouldn't think the brightest exploding stars ever discovered in the universe could need some light shed on them, but they got it anyway.
A new paper proposes that the most luminous supernovae – exploding stars – are powered by small and incredibly dense neutron stars, with gigantic magnetic fields that spin hundreds of times a second.
Scientists observed two super-luminous supernovae for more than a year. Contrary to existing theories, which suggested that the brightest supernovae are caused by super-massive stars exploding, the findings suggest that their origins may be better explained by a type of explosion within the star's core which creates a smaller but extremely dense and rapidly spinning magnetic star.

Schizophrenia patients often suffer from a breakdown of organized thought, accompanied by delusions or hallucinations - neuroscientists have observed the neural activity that appears to produce this disordered thinking and found that mice lacking the brain protein calcineurin have hyperactive brain-wave oscillations in the hippocampus while resting, and are unable to mentally replay a route they have just run, as normal mice do.

A new paper says that babies can tell when something is wrong — as early as 18 months.

The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) was developed to help scientists learn more about the complex nature of celestial objects in the universe and began searching the skies for certain types of stars and related phenomena in February.

A new study has revealed that the ancestors of chelicerates (spiders, scorpions, etc.) branched off from the family tree of other arthropods, such as including insects, crustaceans and millipedes, more than half a billion years ago.

Emissions standards are easy for politicians. They just consult some people whose opinion they happen to like and pick a number. 
Then it is up for science and engineering to make it possible, whatever the cost. 
In 2012, California approved standards to reduce emissions from passenger cars to 3 milligrams, or a millionth of an ounce, per mile over the 2017-2021 automobile model years. Part of the justification politicians used was a gross miscalculation by the California Air Resources Board, which overstated some emissions by 340% to make the problem look urgent.

Researchers have found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona.
The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun's corona – known as the coronal heating problem.
The team analyzed data from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer onboard the Japanese satellite Hinode. They used observations of a polar coronal hole, a region of the Sun where the magnetic fields lines stretch from the solar surface far into interplanetary space.  

We've become a nation of defensive medicine. Health care is expensive not because of drug companies or overpaid doctors or malpractice premiums, but rather the largest cost for health care is administering tests to check off boxes and prevent legal problems in a future lawsuit that may never come.
No medical organization recommends the prostate-specific antigen test for older men, but many primary care doctors continue to administer it even to those over age 75.