News Articles

Newly forming stars feed on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth and a team of astronomers reported observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be a binary star. 
The young object is called LRLL 54361, is about 100,000 years old and located about 950 light years away toward the Perseus constellation. Years of monitoring its infrared with the Spitzer instrument reveal that it becomes 10 times brighter every 25.34 days. This periodicity suggests that a companion to the central forming star is likely inhibiting the infall of gas and dust until its closest orbital approach, when matter eventually comes crashing down onto the protostellar "twins." 

Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to a new paper.
Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories, Royal Holloway and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe have found evidence which rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth's climate and terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.
Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent. It is named after the town in New Mexico, where distinct stone tools were found in the 1920s and 1930s.

With greater wealth comes lesser need to worry about costs like diapers, it seems. Or Western parents don't know how to whistle.
In the western world, babies now need diapers until an average of three years of age, nearly twice as long as 40 years ago. The situation in Vietnam is just the opposite. A study by scholars at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, followed 47 infants and their mothers in Vietnam, where potty training starts at birth and the need for diapers is usually eliminated by nine months of age. 
The secret? Learning to be sensitive to when the baby needs to urinate.

The British Department of Health's marketing campaign to school girls and their parents for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination program has so far proven to be one of the most successful in the world - except in London. 
 A Healthcare Protection Agency report shows an average uptake rate for three HPV doses in Year 8 schoolgirls aged 12-13 years across London of 76%, compared with the national (England) average of 84%. While many London boroughs achieve high uptake rates, those in Barnet, Kingston, City&Hackney, Camden, and Kensington&Chelsea fall 20-30% below the national average for uptake of all three HPV vaccine doses amongst 12 to 13 year old girls in the 2010/2011 school year. 

Pharmaceuticals are in decline as an industry due to over-regulation, lawsuits and cultural distrust. A new initiative from the European Medicines Agency, to commit to releasing all of the information from clinical trials once the marketing authorization process has ended, is being cheered by proponents of access to data but the pharmaceutical industry is less pleased. 
Writing in an editorial, PLoS Medicine writes, "As 2013 begins, it is clear that critical times lie ahead for the publishing of clinical trials, which may define the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and the public for many years to come.

Ridges spidering through impact craters on Mars appear to be the fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed, according to a new analysis in Geophysical Research Letters.
The finding lends credence to the idea that the subsurface environment on Mars once had an active hydrology. Since this is about another planet, it is also required in 2013 that all science articles imply the discovery could have important ramifications for finding life on other planets.  

The upcoming century could see trees in the continental US producing spring leaves an average of 17 days earlier than in the past century, according to a new study by Princeton University researchers.
The good news: These changes could lead to changes in the composition of northeastern forests and give a boost to their ability to take up carbon dioxide. 
Trees play an important role in taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so researchers wanted to evaluate predictions of spring budburst — when deciduous trees push out new growth after months of winter dormancy — from models that predict how carbon emissions will impact global temperatures.

Researchers employing a century-old observational technique have determined the precise configuration of humulones, substances derived from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor.
 That might not sound like a big deal but the findings overturn results reported in scientific literature for the last 40 years and could lead to new pharmaceuticals to treat diabetes, some types of cancer and other maladies.
 "Now that we have the right results, what happens to the bitter hops in the beer-brewing process makes a lot more sense," said Werner Kaminsky, a University of Washington research associate professor of chemistry.

A new study in mice found that it might be possible to fine-tune mitochondria, tweaking one aspect to increase insulin sensitivity, reduce body and fat mass, and even extend life.
The researchers say exploiting this target could one day lead to novel treatments for type 2 diabetes, an endocrine system disease that affects 8 percent of the U.S. population. The research also points to promising new avenues of investigation in the biology of aging.
The studyfound that diminished activity of a protein complex involved in mitochondrial function was associated with healthy changes in the mice. The median life span of this strain of mice is 20 percent longer. 

No one thinks much about morality these days, besides it being a personal metric. Once postmodernists and moral relativists took over philosophy, it became overrun with amateur ponderings. Now it has social psychologists seeking to bring back some objectivity.
Getting people to think about morality as objective facts rather than subjective preferences may lead to improved moral behavior, Boston College academics write in a new paper.

It's winter in the northern hemisphere and that means flu season. 
As influenza spreads through the northern hemisphere winter, researchers in the laboratory of Professor Jose Villadangos at the University of Melbourne believe they have a new clue to why some people fight infections better than others.
The lab has been investigating the 'defensive devices' contained within the T- cells that are located on exposed body surfaces such as skin and mucosal surfaces to ward off infection. T-cells detect cells infected with viruses and kill them before the virus can reproduce within the infected cell and spread to other cells.

You may not ever carve out time to go to the gym but a new review by social psychologists suggests the health benefits of small amounts of activity in two-minute increments that add up to 30 minutes per day can be just as beneficial as longer bouts of physical exercise achieved by a trip to the gym.
Even cutting your own vegetables rather than buying them pre-cut counts.
The analysis of over 6,000 American adults found that an active lifestyle approach seemed to be as beneficial as structured exercise in improving health outcomes, including preventing metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.