News Articles

Reports by scientists of meteorites striking Earth in the past have resembled police reports of so many muggings — the offenders came out of nowhere and then disappeared into the crowd, making it difficult to get more than very basic facts. Now an international research team has been able to identify an asteroid in space before it entered Earth's atmosphere, enabling computers to determine its area of origin in the solar system as well as predict the arrival time and location on Earth of its shattered surviving parts.

A new study appearing in Clinical Cardiology examines the average fitness level of the morbidly obese (body mass indexes between 40.0 and 49.9). The findings show that the tested population was sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day and, on average, walked less than 2,500 steps per day – far below healthy living guidelines of 10,000 steps per day. The results provide important links between obesity, poor fitness and cardiovascular disease.The study used a precise body sensor to continually measure physical activity, caloric expenditure and movement minute-by-minute over a 72-hour period within their home environments. Following collection of the data, structured cardiorespiratory fitness testing was performed on each subject. 

Norma Wooley checked into Loyola University Hospital on a recent Monday morning for brain surgery to repair a life-threatening aneurism (also: aneurysm).  She went home on Tuesday, cured of the slurred speech, drooping face and worst headache of her life.Wooley had a cerebral aneurism, a weak spot in a blood vessel that balloons out and fills with blood. About six million Americans -- 1 in 50 people -- have brain aneurisms that could rupture. Each year, aneurisms burst in about 25,000 people, and most die or suffer permanent disabilities, according to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation.

You may soon be able to say goodbye to batteries for your Blackberry or cell phone.  Instead, they will get power from just a wave of your hand.In research presented at the ACS meeting in Salt Lake City, scientists describe technology that converts mechanical energy from body movements or even the flow of blood in the body into electric energy that can be used to power a broad range of electronic devices without using batteries.

Research by Michigan State University scientists is helping shed light on neutron stars, city-sized globs of ultra-dense matter that occasionally collapse into black holes.A team led by Betty Tsang, a professor at MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, has had some success in measuring a key nuclear quality that may make it easier to describe the outer crusts of such stars. 

If physicists lived in Flatland—the fictional two-dimensional world invented by Edwin Abbott in his 1884 novel—some of their quantum physics experiments would turn out differently (not just thinner) than those in our world.The distinction has taken another step from speculative fiction to real-world puzzle with a paper from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) reporting on a Flatland arrangement of ultracold gas atoms. The new results, which don’t quite jibe with earlier Flatland experiments in Paris, might help clarify a strange property: “superfluidity.”

Dale Deutsch, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Stony Brook University and colleagues discovered a new molecular mechanism for the processing of endocannabinoids, brain compounds similar to THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and essential in physiological processes such as pain, appetite, and memory.   Reported online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the finding could pave the way for new medicines for pain, addiction, appetite control and other disorders.

Researchers have discovered coral beds off the coast of Hawaii that are more than 4,200 years old, making them among the oldest living creatures on Earth.The team was directed by Brendan Roark of Texas A&M's College of Geosciences and included colleagues from the University of California-Santa Cruz and Australian National University in Canberra.Two different species of coral beds were documented using carbon dating methods, Roark says, with both being much older than previously believed. One species – Leiopathes – is now confirmed to be about 4,265 years old, while the other species, Gerardia, is believed to be about 2,742 years old.

The safety of early applications of synthetic biology may be adequately addressed by the existing regulatory framework for biotechnology, especially in contained laboratories and manufacturing facilities. But further advances in this emerging field are likely to create significant challenges for U.S. government oversight, according to a new report authored by Michael Rodemeyer of the University of Virginia. Synthetic biology promises major advances in areas such as biofuels, specialty chemicals, and agriculture and drug products. 

Two new greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, according to an international research team led by scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the US and CSIRO scientist, Dr Paul Fraser, from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) and sulfuryl fluoride (SO2F2) are powerful greenhouse gases that have recently been discovered to be growing quickly in the global background atmosphere. These gases are used in industrial processes, partly as alternatives to other harmful greenhouse and ozone depleting gases.

Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a new energy-making biochemical twist in determining the lifespan of yeast cells, one so valuable to longevity that it is likely to also functions in humans. Their findings, published in the March 20 issue of Cell, reveal that making glucose is highly influenced by a large enzyme complex already known to fix damaged DNA, and which apparently affects yeast life span through a common chemical process—acetylation. In a series of experiments, the Hopkins team showed that when continuously acetylated, the so-called NuA4 enzyme complex causes yeast cells to live longer than they would under normal conditions. 

There was once a theory in manufacturing and business; 'planned obsolescence.'  If you didn't make products with limitations, no one would ever buy new ones.Then along came a bunch of Asian companies who made better products and American manufacturing took a dive.    Made In America became a political point of pride rather than a mark of quality.But quality is making a comeback because warranty costs are the next big cost items, write researchers in the International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage - so manufacturers need to design for reliability.