News Articles

Researchers can argue about the accuracy of old thermometers and how to pick the datapoints of numerical models, but radio waves can help clear some things up.
The ionosphere, one of the regions of the upper atmosphere ionized by solar radiation, is used for the transmission of long-wave communications, like radio waves. And it turns out that radio waves reflecting back to Earth from the ionosphere offer valuable news on climate change.

Satellite observations made from 1982 to 2010 found that warm, arid regions are getting greener. 

Breast reduction surgery has been linked to measurable improvements in several important areas of both physical health and quality of life, according to a new paper.
The study used the BREAST-Q© questionnaire, a well-validated survey instrument, to document the physical and psychosocial health benefits of breast reduction surgery. "The improvement in physical well-being is important for justification of insurance coverage," according to Dr. Michelle Coriddi and colleagues of Wexner Medical Center at the Ohio State University.

Taxes reduce consumption and usage of the products being targeted, it is just often the case that it isn't reducing consumption among the people being targeted.
As a way to spur consumption of 'healthier' eating, societal food advocates have sought to tax sugary drinks. A paper by RTI International, Duke University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture instead finds that heavier taxes on sodas and juices is simply creating a government subsidy for other unhealthy foods - the reduction in sugary beverages due to a soda tax would likely lead consumers to substitute those calories by increasing their calorie, salt and fat intake from untaxed foods and beverages. 

A Toronto patient has become the second known person to have acquired synesthesia as a result of a brain injury, in this case a stroke. 
Synesthesia is a neurological condition in which people experience more than one sense at the same time. They may "see" words or numbers as colors, hear sounds in response to smells or feel something in response to sight. Most synesthetes are born with the condition. Famous authors and artists include composer Franz Liszt, painter Vasily Kandinsky, singer-songwriter Billy Joel and author Vladimir Nabakov.

Psychotherapy done over the Internet work is just as effective as face-to-face psychotherapy according to a new paper.
The authors from the University of Zurich assumed that the two forms of therapy were on a par but found that the results for online therapy even exceeded their expectations.

A study of mortality and fertility patterns using seven species of wild primates (apes, monkeys etc.) compared with similar data from hunter-gatherer humans found that menopause sets humans apart from other primates.

Positive psychology is so powerful it can change gene expression, according to a paper in PNAS.
A good state of mind, your happiness levels, affect your genes, say academics in psychoneuroimmunology, psychology and psychiatry at UCLA and the University of North Carolina. Different types of happiness have different effects on the human genome, they have determined.  
People who have high levels of what is known as eudaimonic well-being - the kind of happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life, like Mother Teresa -  showed very favorable gene-expression profiles in their immune cells. They had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes.  

Exoplanets - planets around stars other than the sun - were discovered almost 20 years ago,but for the first time, X-ray observations have detected an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star.
An advantageous alignment of a planet and its parent star in the system HD 189733, 63 light-years from Earth, has enabled NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM Newton Observatory to observe a dip in X-ray intensity as the planet transited the star.
The planet, known as HD 189733b, is a hot Jupiter, meaning it is similar in size to Jupiter in our solar system but in very close orbit around its star. HD 189733b is more than 30 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. It orbits the star once every 2.2 days.

In what the authors are calling perhaps the most comprehensive and definitive effort to date, zoologists say they have explained the processes that drove male mammals to adopt social monogamy as a breeding strategy. 
Because male mammals have a much higher potential to produce offspring in a single breeding season than do their female counterparts (who must endure long gestation periods), it would seem that mating with one female per cycle would be limiting. Yet a percentage of mammalian males do this -- and researchers have debated why, seeking to identify selective advantages social monogamy offers, for decades.

There's still no free lunch. Finite budgets based on taxes that give equal treatment to everyone aren't really resulting in equal quality. Instead, most ward nurses in NHS hospitals say they are forced to ration care, or not complete certain aspects of it — including adequate monitoring of patients — because they don't have enough time, indicates a new paper.

New biological insecticides, which make use of “entomopathogenic” viruses that are harmful to insects, have emerged in recent years. The big advantage versus regular pesticides is that they are innocuous to man, vertebrae and plants, and environmental activists have not heard of them yet. Each viral strain attacks a very limited number of insect species.The baculovirus is frequently studied and to identify the virus in this family that will most effectively control the Guatemalan potato moth, a French-Ecuadorian research team from Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) has analyzed the pathogens among moths from all over the world.