News Articles

In January of 2012, a new X-ray source flared and rapidly brightened in the Andromeda galaxy (M31), l2.5 million light-years from earth. The event was classified as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX), the second ever seen in M31 and efforts with X-ray telescopes and radio observatories resulted in the first detection of radio-emitting jets from a stellar-mass black hole outside our own galaxy.
A ULX is thought to be a binary system containing a black hole that is rapidly accreting gas from its stellar companion. To account for the high-energy output, gas must be flowing into the black hole at a rate very near a theoretical maximum - which astronomers do not yet fully understand.

Retinoblastoma tumor suppressor proteins is, shall we say, untraditional.  But it could mean new ways to treat cancer.
As an organism grows, proteins essential for fueling its prosperity typically toe a tight line, performing their jobs at the right place and time. If these proteins go rogue, disasters such as cancer can result.

It's a good idea to know a second language for lots of reasons but English has long been the business standard. 

How do cities ranks? A new list of 25 global cities has the answer.

The average premiums paid by employer-sponsored family health insurance plans rose  from $9,249 to $15,022 per year between 2003 and 2011 - a 62 percent increase, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. The new report by the advocacy group tracks state trends in employer health insurance coverage and shows that health insurance costs rose faster than incomes in all states. 
Workers are also paying more out-of-pocket costs; as employer costs rose, employee payments for their share of health insurance premiums also rose, by 74 percent on average, and deductibles more than doubled, up 117 percent between 2003 and 2011, they say.

Vega is a summer star in the Northern Hemisphere, visible toward the west at sunset. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra and, at only 25 light years away, quite close, cosmically speaking. 
Due to its brightness, Vega has been used by astronomers as a touchstone to measure other stars' brightness for thousands of years - new findings say it may be more than 200 million years older than previously thought. The new estimation of Vega's age was made by more precisely measuring its spin speed with a tool called the Michigan Infrared Combiner, developed by John Monnier, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan. 

The oncoming train wreck of climate change has an upside if you live in the Northeast part of America: fewer Snowmageddons brought on by cold weather.
A new high-resolution climate projection applied regional climate models to examine likely near-term changes in temperature and precipitation across the Northeast United States and says temperatures are going to be significantly warmer winter in the next 30 years, especially in winter. Winters will also be wetter. 
The climate scientists say they have created the highest resolution climate projections to-date for the Northeast from Pennsylvania to Maine for the period 2041 to 2070. The study used data from multiple climate model simulations run at greatly improved resolution. 

Some 3,300 years ago a tsunami must have hit the the island of Bonaire in the Caribbean, though no historical records of tsunamis exist.
Sediments don't lie and the sediments studied by scientists writing in Naturwissenschaften – The Science of Nature showed that this tsunami entirely changed the coastal ecosystem and sedimentation patterns in the area.
The Caribbean is no stranger to coastal hazards, including tropical cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis, but historical records for the island of Bonaire only go back 500 years. It has not experienced a tsunami during that time but overwash deposits from a coastal lagoon provide evidence for a real doozy of a tsunami in prehistory.

University of Warwick economists say they can calculate the true value of  political lobbyists in American politics - quantifying the 'it is not what you know, but who you know' adage.

Clinical trials are obviously important.  The results influence what drugs are approved by regulatory bodies, which can have a billion-dollar impact on companies.
Clinical trials have always been sponsored by industry - there has never been a meaningful  government-controlled research effort toward drug creation - but they have increasingly come under fire, due to claims that an industry sponsor can influence results and how they are reported to present their company and products in a better light.

Researchers have announced discovery of a species of animal related to crabs, lobsters and shrimps that is new to science.

It's not disputed that long necked sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth, but why they got so large is a debate.
Was it the nature of the food they ate?  While that was considered, skepticism remained.  But a group of researchers now argues that the plant ecologists from South Africa who suggested a plant food cause for big dinosaurs were onto something; but scientists confused two different issues in thinking about this problem; namely how much energy is in the plant with how much nitrogen is in the plant – the South African ideas were based on nitrogen content not the total energy in the plant food. 
Drs. David Wilkinson and Graeme Ruxton of  
Liverpool John Moores University

Why do people think that a $25 flu shot is more likely to still have them getting the flu than a $125 flu shot?
It isn't that they think a $25 flu shot is less effective, it's that they worried they had a greater need for it because the cost is low.  Yes, the flu is perceived as more of a threat from an illness because the vaccine is cheap and not that some company is just charging a lot more when they can.