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A new picture of the early Earth is emerging, including the surprising finding that plate tectonics may have started more than 4 billion years ago — much earlier than scientists had believed, according to new research by UCLA geochemists. "We are proposing that there was plate-tectonic activity in the first 500 million years of Earth's history," said geochemistry professor Mark Harrison, director of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and co-author of the Nature paper. "We are reporting the first evidence of this phenomenon." 

SARS – severe acute respiratory syndrome – alarmed the world five years ago as the first global pandemic of the 21st century. The coronavirus (SARS-CoV) that sickened more than 8,000 people – and killed nearly 800 of them – may have originated in bats, but the actual animal source is not known.

Children whose eyes are misaligned and point outward are at significantly increased risk of developing mental illness by early adulthood, according to findings of a Mayo Clinic study published this month in Pediatrics (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/122/5/1033), the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Hormone therapy could accentuate certain pre-existing heart disease risk factors and a heart health evaluation should become the norm when considering estrogen replacement, new research suggests. The research also showed that in women without existing atherosclerosis, hormone therapy use included some positive effects on lipids but also some negative effects related to heart health, said MaryFran Sowers, lead researcher and professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. 

Registration is open for NASA's 16th annual Great Moonbuggy Race, taking place April 3-4, 2009, in Huntsville, Ala.   The race was founded at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville in 1994. The U.S. Space and Rocket Center hosts the two-day event. The nationally renowned space museum and tourist attraction constructs a punishing course - a half-mile of hills and craters simulating the lunar surface - on the looping sidewalks and paths around its grounds. 

While the stock market has been on a roller coaster ride, economists and business columnists have spilled a lot of ink assigning responsibility for the ongoing financial calamity. As always, hindsight is 20/20 vision but researchers at Argonne National Laboratory are trying to create new economic models that will provide policymakers with more realistic pictures of different types of markets so they can better avert future economic catastrophes.

Research into the development of invisibility devices has spurred two physicists’ thought on the behaviour of light to overcome the seemingly intractable problem of optical singularities which could soon lead to the manufacturing of a perfect cat’s eye.A research paper published in a New Journal of Physics’ focus issue ‘Cloaking and Transformation Optics’ called ‘The Transmutation of Singularities in Optical Instruments’, written by Thomas Tyc, Masaryk University, and Ulf Leonhardt, the University of St. Andrews and Singapore National University, shows that it is possible to reflect light from all directions.

By manipulating the appearance of a chronically achy hand, researchers have found they could increase or decrease the pain and swelling in patients moving their symptomatic limbs. The findings in Current Biology reveal a profound top-down effect of body image on body tissues, according to the researchers.

Defective calcium metabolism in nerve cells may play a major role in a fatal genetic neurological disorder that resembles Huntington’s disease, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in a mouse study.

Each year, coal-burning power plants, steel factories and similar facilities in the United States produce more than 125 million tons of waste, much of it fly ash and bottom ash left over from combustion. Mulalo Doyoyo has plans for that material.An assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Doyoyo has developed a new structural material based on these leftovers from coal burning. Known as Cenocell™, the material offers attributes that include high strength and light weight – without the use of cement, an essential ingredient of conventional concrete. 

Older people who spent at least 14 hours a week taking care of a disabled spouse lived longer than others. That is the unexpected finding of a University of Michigan study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.The study supports earlier research showing that in terms of health and longevity, it really is better to give than to receive.

When a pregnant woman goes into early labor, her obstetrician may give her drugs to quiet the woman's uterus and prevent premature birth.New research shows, however, that one popular drug works no better than a placebo at maintaining pregnancy after the initial bout of preterm labor is halted, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. The new trial is the first-ever placebo-controlled test of nifedipine, a muscle relaxant originally developed to lower blood pressure, and its effect on premature delivery with prolonged treatment.