News Articles

Unlike many astronomical phenomena, meteors are best seen with the unaided eye rather than through a telescope or binoculars and are perfectly safe to watch, so be prepared to sleep outside on August 12th, the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower.
In doing so, you will be joining your ancestors, who have viewed what are also called "The Tears of St. Lawrence"(1) for some 2,000 years.
Meteors are the result of small particles entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speed and in the case of the Perseid shower these come from the tail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which was last in the vicinity of the Earth in 1992. To the eye, the meteors appear to originate from a ‘radiant’ in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name Perseid.

As people age, their cells become less efficient at getting rid of damaged protein, resulting in a buildup of toxic material that is especially pronounced in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have prevented this age-related decline in an entire organ — the liver — and shown that, as a result, the livers of older animals functioned as well as they did when the animals were much younger.
These findings suggest that therapies for boosting protein clearance might help stave off some of the declines in function that accompany old age.

Did you find a new bacterium and want recognition for it? For it to be recognized its name must be recorded in IJSEM, which is the single official international forum for the publication of new bacterial species names. The journal publishes research papers describing and naming almost all newly discovered bacteria. The names of newly discovered bacteria published in other journals are not valid until they have been checked and published in IJSEM.
The journal has officially validated the names of 9,263 species and genera since 1980. The list includes some important and ground-breaking discoveries. Earlier this year, scientists announced that they had made the first synthetic genome of a bacterium, dubbed Mycoplasma genitalium JCVI-1.0 but this would have been impossible without the work of earlier microbiologists.
Now they've decided to make researching the work of earlier microbiologists a lot easier by putting their archive up - for free. All issues of the journal dating back to volume 1, 1951 totalling over 25,000 pages have been scanned and made available online, providing an important resource for scientists, historians and the public.

Computing pundits claim that we are moving into a world of ubiquitous computing, a brave new world where your refrigerator and cupboards will be connected to your internet shopping accounts so that you never run out of milk or sugar again. Sensors around your home and workplace will respond to workloads, weather and even your mood by adjusting heating, lighting, and sound levels. Diagnostic devices built into door handles or the bathroom might alert your doctor or the emergency services to changes in your health.
But doing that means getting rid of your iPhone and anything else you learned how to use. Instead, this this emerging technology will only be woven into the fabric of society and our everyday living spaces when people, rather than computer screens and keyboards, are projected into the foreground.

In chemistry, just as in life, threesomes do not break up neatly.
Open-minded thinkers may disagree and say that theoretically clean three-way splits can happen, but no one had actually witnessed one – until now.
A paper in the Aug. 8 issue of Science provides the first hard evidence for the simultaneous break-up of a molecule into three equal parts, called "concerted break-ups."

Do volunteers who take part in conservation efforts do it for the wildlife they are trying to protect or just to impress their friends and because they like the way wildlife looks on their property? A University of Alberta case study says it is not altruism that drives them.
A study of purple martin landlords, those who keep and monitor special birdhouses on their land, revealed that they were more motivated to take part in the conservation project for egoistic rather than altruistic reasons.
"Though there were areas of overlap, we found that common motivations for self-benefit included interaction with the birds, a sense of achievement, social interaction, personal stimulation and enjoyment," said Glen Hvenegaard, a co-author on the qualitative study and a professor of geography and environmental studies at the University of Alberta's Augustana campus in Canada.

"Big things come in small packages," the saying goes, and it couldn't be more true when discussing the mouse. This little creature has become a crucial part of human history through its contributions in understanding human genetics and disease.
In a review published in Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM), genetics researchers from Yale University School of Medicine and Fudan University School of Life Sciences discuss the history and future of mice as a model organism.
They predict that the next frontiers in mouse genetics – such as creating mice expressing human genes to create "humanized" mice – will continue to provide scientists with new tools to not only decipher clinical mysteries, but also to test novel therapies and cures.

Controlling body weight is a complicated process but scientists investigating the brain's intricate neurocircuitry and its role in maintaining energy balance are forming a clearer picture of the myriad events that lead to weight gain ... and weight loss.
Writing in Nature Neuroscience, a study led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) identifies another piece of this complex puzzle, demonstrating that the neurotransmitter GABA --one of the master communicators among neurons – plays a role in controlling energy balance.

Anyone who has ever tried smoking probably remembers that first cigarette vividly - it likely brought either a nasty coughing fit or a rush of pleasure - a "buzz."
A new study links those first experiences with smoking, and the likelihood that a person is currently a smoker, to a particular genetic variation.
The new finding also adds to growing suspicion surrounding the role of a particular nicotine-receptor gene in smoking-related behaviors and in lung cancer. Other researchers have already linked variations in the same genetic region to smokers' level of dependence on nicotine, to the number of cigarettes smoked per day and to a far higher risk of lung cancer — the ultimate outcome of a lifetime of smoking.

Fingerprints don't get a lot of respect on television shows like CSI these days - but they are about to make a comeback.
A new technology developed at Purdue University can detect trace amounts of explosives, drugs or other materials left behind in fingerprints and can even distinguish between overlapping fingerprints left by different individuals - a difficult task for current optical forensic methods.
A team led by R. Graham Cooks, Purdue's Henry Bohn Hass Distinguished Professor of Analytical Chemistry, has created a tool that reads and provides an image of a fingerprint's chemical signature. The technology can be used to determine what a person recently handled.

A newly discovered function for a hormone in melons suggests it plays a role in how sexual systems evolve in plants.
Scientists from several French institutions, led by Abdel Bendahmane of the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), isolated the melon sex determination gene and determined its function. As part of this collaborative effort, New York University biologists Jonathan Flowers and Michael Purugganan, who are part of NYU's Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, conducted the evolutionary analysis of the study.
Because plants' sexual systems are varied—species may possess various combinations of male, female, or hermaphrodite systems—their evolution has long been of interest to scientists. This is especially the case in melons, whose sexual system—andromonoecy—carries both male and bisexual flowers and appears to have evolved recently. In this study, the researchers sought to understand what determines the recent formation of melons' new sexual system.

People like ideological commitment more than moderation and 'across the aisle' thinking in times of uncertainty, says University of Southern California economist Juan Carrillo, so extreme positions build trust among an electorate during rough periods.
In defiance of oddsmakers, he seems to think this is an advantage for Republicans, who have been predicting a 1964-era loss for John McCain.
"The current political advantage of the Republican Party stems from the ability of its candidates to develop 'signature ideas.' This strategy is rewarded even when the electorate has ideological reservations," he says.