News Articles

Roller coasters are a lot of fun, but conditions experienced during the rides may cause damage to your ears. Physicians at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit say they have found a link between the force of acceleration in roller coasters and a common ear injury – ear barotrauma – that occurs when there is a relatively quick change in pressure between the external environment, the ear drum and the pressure in the middle ear space.Results from their study will be presented today at the Triologocial Society's 113th Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.

Molecules called microRNA can silence genes that protect the genome from cancer-causing mutations, say Ohio State researchers writing in PNAS. Their study shows that microRNA-155 (miR-155) can inhibit the activity of genes that normally correct the damage when the wrong bases are paired in DNA.The loss or silencing of these genes, which are called mismatch repair genes, causes inherited cancer-susceptibility syndromes and contributes to the progression of colorectal, uterine, ovarian and other cancers."Our findings suggest that miR-155 expression might be an important stratification factor in the prognosis and treatment of cancer patients," says Dr. Carlo M. Croce, from Ohio State's Human Cancer Genetics program.

Mountains that rise from the seafloor, called seamounts, represent one of the most common ecosystems on earth, say scientists from the NOAA and Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. Their findings reverse previous beliefs about the prevalence of seamounts, which they say are "treasure troves" of marine biodiversity. The results are published in Oceanography.Although researchers have thoroughly explored some 200 seamounts and mapped and sampled a hundred others, this study is the first to estimate that more than 45,000 seamounts dot the ocean floor worldwide — a total of roughly 28.8 million square kilometers or an area larger than the continent of South America.

Plants are getting too much blame for global warming, according to a study by scientists at the University of Ediburgh and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The research, published in New Phytologist, suggests that plant leaves account for less than one per cent of the Earth's emissions of methane, considered to be about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The results contrast with a previous scientific study which suggested that plants were responsible for producing large amounts of the greenhouse gas.

Despite significant declines in the cinematic depiction of smoking over the past 20 years, researchers writing in Thorax complain that tobacco imagery is still relatively common in UK films rated suitable for children and young teens. The findings suggest that movie ratings should take depictions of smoking into account, the authors say. Researchers analyzed the occurrence of depictions of tobacco use, including brand appearances and smoking paraphernalia, for periods of at least five minutes (tobacco intervals) in the 15 most commercially successful films screened in the UK between 1989 and 2008.

China's cyberculture may be growing rapidly,  but experts say it is unlikely to usher in an age of social and political freedom in the communist state, and may even facilitate government control free of expression.According to a new study in Telematics and Informatics, claims that widespread use of blogs threatens government control over democratic discourse and free speech in China are not realistic.

There is no single advanced area of the human brain that gives it language capabilities above and beyond those of any other animal species, according to a new study in the latest edition of PNASInstead, humans rely on several regions of the brain, each designed to accomplish different primitive tasks, in order to make sense of a sentence, the study suggests. Depending on the type of grammar used, the brain will activate a certain set of regions to process it.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an equal opportunity destroyer. It attacks the central nervous system and eventually renders most patients disabled. Among its high-profile victims are celebrated cellist Jacqueline du Pre, whose career was ended by MS, and Joan Didion, one of America's greatest writers — but they are far from alone.The National MS Society estimates that there are currently about 400,000 cases in the U.S. and more that 2 million suffer from the disease over the world. Although there is currently no cure, a breakthrough finding from a Tel Aviv University scientist and physician may lead to earlier diagnosis, more effective intervention, and perhaps even a cure for the autoimmune disease.

Astronomers have found signatures in X-ray data suggesting that two mid-sized black holes exist close to the center of the nearby starburst galaxy M82, located 12 million light years from Earth. These "survivor" black holes avoided falling into the center of the galaxy and could be examples of the seeds required for the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies, including the one in the Milky Way.For several decades, scientists have had strong evidence for two distinct classes of black hole: the stellar-mass variety with masses about ten times that of the Sun, and the supermassive ones, located at the center of galaxies, that range from hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses.

A new study of embryonic stem cells shows that mammalian genes may all have a layer of control that acts like the pause button on your DVR, previously thought to be a peculiarity of particular genes. The research demonstrates that the infamous cancer gene c-Myc plays a major role in the pause release of many genes throughout the genome and may have practical application in the treatment of some of the nastiest cancers.The findings were reported this week in Cell.

An international team of astrophysicists has just unveiled the most complete atlas of nuclear rings, enormous star-forming ring-shaped regions that circle certain galactic nuclei. The catalog, just published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, covers 113 nuclear rings in 107 different galaxies. Six are dust rings in elliptical galaxies; the rest are star-forming rings in disc galaxies.

Despite present-day conditions, Antarctica was not always covered with ice. Approximately 53 million years ago, the continent was a warm, sub-tropical environment and atmospheric CO2 levels exceeded today's by ten times.But in just 400,000 years – a mere blink of an eye in geologic time –  Antarctica's lush environment transitioned into its modern icy realm. Concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreased, global temperatures dropped, ice sheets developed and Antarctica became ice-bound.How did this change happen so abruptly and how stable can we expect ice sheets to be in the future? New ice core data retrieved from the Wilkes Land region of Antarctica may help answer those questions.