Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
If you have ever been trading a flurry of text messages with someone and there was an awkward pause, don't assume they are doing some work or have a life, you probably should be suspicious.
An analysis has determined that when people lie in digital messages – texting, social media or instant messaging – they take longer to respond, make more edits and they write shorter responses than usual.
The University of Florida's Blueberry Breeding Program has been developing successful blueberry lines for more than 60 years and those lines are credited with helping to create a Florida blueberry industry that was valued at $48 million in 2010 and for allowing rapid expansion of blueberry production in other subtropical areas of the world.
In the past, blueberry flavor selection in the program was based on two standards: subjective ratings from breeders, and a berry's sugar-to-acid ratio. Recently, scientists have determined that the "eating quality" of blueberries has a much higher correlation to consumer acceptance and indication of "blueberry-like flavor intensity" than the traditional measures of sweetness, acidity, or sugar/acid ratios.
What happens when you tell a lie? Ethical concerns aside, what goes on in your brain when you willfully deceive someone? And what happens later, when you attempt to access the memory of your deceit?
How you remember a lie may be impacted profoundly by how you lie, according to a paper by Kathleen M. Vieira and Sean Lane. They examines two kinds of lies – false descriptions and false denials – and the different cognitive machinery that we use to record and retrieve them.
The Sun is a magnetically active star. Its activity manifests itself as dark sunspots and bright faculae - granular structures that are slightly hotter or cooler than the surrounding photosphere - on its visible surface, as well as violent mass ejections and the acceleration of high-energy particles resulting from the release of magnetic energy in its outer atmosphere.
The frequency with which these phenomena occur varies in a somewhat irregular activity cycle of about 11 years, during which the global magnetic field of the Sun reverses. The solar magnetic field and the activity cycle originate in a self-excited dynamo mechanism based upon convective flows and rotation in the outer third of the solar radius.
Government and academic analysts say that cheaper labor in China is not the reason for Asian dominance in solar panels, but rather larger-scale manufacturing and resulting supply-chain benefits.
Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs are the only primates that hibernate - and their sleep patterns during hibernation are different from other animals that hibernate, like ground squirrels, which also hibernate at similar temperatures.
During hibernation, dwarf lemurs experience periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at relatively high ambient temperatures, but no non-REM sleep. Ground squirrels, by contrast, experience only periods of non-REM sleep at high temperatures.
The sleep patterns observed confirm a link between ambient temperature while sleeping and metabolic rate.
Researchers have discovered a protein that is the missing link in the complicated chain of events that lead to Alzheimer's disease. They also found that blocking the protein with an existing drug can restore memory in mice with brain damage that mimics the disease.
"What is very exciting is that of all the links in this molecular chain, this is the protein that may be most easily targeted by drugs," said Stephen Strittmatter, a Yale University School of Medicine Professor of Neurology and senior author of the study. "This gives us strong hope that we can find a drug that will work to lessen the burden of Alzheimer's."
The evolution of similar traits in different species, a process known as convergent evolution, is widespread not only at the physical level, but also at the genetic level, and scientists who investigated the genomic basis for echolocation, one of the most well-known examples of convergent evolution, sought to examine the frequency of the process at a genomic level.
Echolocation is a complex physical trait that involves the production, reception and auditory processing of ultrasonic pulses for detecting unseen obstacles or tracking down prey, and has evolved separately in different groups of bats and cetaceans (including dolphins).
The ice sheet on West Antarctica just got a little older - 20 million years or so.
The findings indicate that ice sheets first grew on the West Antarctic subcontinent at the start of a global transition from warm greenhouse conditions to a cool icehouse climate 34 million years ago. Previous computer simulations were unable to produce the amount of ice that geological records suggest existed at that time because neighboring East Antarctica alone could not support it.
The universe may be constructed in a completely different way than models of today predict. The most widely used model today cannot explain everything in the universe, and therefore there is a need to explore the parts of nature which the model cannot explain.
This research field, new physics, is out to turn our understanding of the universe upside down and the authors of a new paper say they have succeeded in creating a new method that can make it easier to search for new physics in the universe. The method is a scalesetting procedure and it fills out some empty, but very important, holes in the theories, models and simulations, which form the basis for particle physics today.
Zoological methods of studying behavior patterns in animals have led to insights on people with serious mental disorders.
Prof. David Eilam of
Tel Aviv University
's Zoology Department recorded patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and "schizo-OCD", which combines symptoms of schizophrenia and OCD, as they performed basic tasks. By analyzing the patients' movements, they were able to identify similarities and differences between two frequently confused disorders.
The research represents a step toward resolving a longstanding question about the nature of schizo-OCD: Is it a combination of OCD and schizophrenia, or a variation of just one of the disorders?
Astronomers have explored more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy and found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a surprising result given their different histories and varied properties.
The final stages of life for a star like our Sun result in the star puffing its outer layers out into the surrounding space, forming objects known as planetary nebulae in a wide range of beautiful and striking shapes. One type of such nebulae, known as bipolar planetary nebulae, create ghostly hourglass or butterfly shapes around their parent stars.
