Brain Circuit Linked To Pregnancy Food Cravings Identified
Pregnant women have experienced exotic food cravings since recorded history began. This may be why.
Bacteria That Kills Males And Makes Females Horny ( Butterflies, Anyway )
A study at UCL (University College London) finds that a high-prevalence of male-killing bacteria active in many species of insect including the butterfly, actually increases female promiscuity and male fatigue.
The study was carried out on Hypolimnas bolina butterflies in Pacific Island and South-East Asian populations. The islands provide an ideal location because every island is differently affected by the male-killling bacteria so that each has a different ratio of males to females. (Photo Credit: Sylvain Charlat, UCL)
Largest North America Climate Change In 65 Million Years, Study Shows
The largest climate change in central North America since the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a temperature drop of nearly 15 degrees Fahrenheit, is documented within the fossilized teeth of horses and other plant-eating mammals, a new study reveals.
The overwhelming majority of previous climate-change studies on the 400,000-year transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene epochs, about 33.5 million years ago, focus on marine environments, but University of Florida vertebrate paleontologist Bruce MacFadden and his colleagues turned their attention to fossils from the Great Plains.
University of Florida vertebrate paleontologist Bruce MacFadden examines a fossil oreodont jaw from Nebraska in the Florida Museu
New Data Shakes Accepted Models Of Collisions Of Earth's Crust
New research findings may help refine the accepted models used by earth scientists over the past 30 years to describe the ways in which continents clash to form the Earth's landscape.
Eric Calais, an associate professor of geophysics at Purdue University, in collaboration with Ming Wang and Zenghang Shen from the Institute for Geology and Earthquake Science in China, used global positioning systems to record the precise movements of hundreds of points on the continent of Asia over a 10-year period.
Storing Carbon Dioxide Below Ground May Prevent Polluting Above
A new analysis led by an MIT scientist describes a mechanism for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant and injecting the gas into the ground, where it would be trapped naturally as tiny bubbles and safely stored in briny porous rock.
This means that it may be possible for a power plant to be built in an appropriate location and have all its carbon dioxide emissions captured and injected underground throughout the life of the power plant, and then safely stored over centuries and even millennia.
Nanotechnology meets biology and DNA finds its groove
Pity the molecular biologist.
The object of fascination for most is the DNA molecule. But in solution, DNA, the genetic material that hold the detailed instructions for virtually all life, is a twisted knot, looking more like a battered ball of yarn than the famous double helix.
Poggio Lab Mimics How The Brain Recognizes Street Scenes
At last, neuroscience is having an impact on computer science and artificial intelligence (AI). For the first time, scientists in Tomaso Poggio’s laboratory at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT applied a computational model of how the brain processes visual information to a complex, real world task: recognizing the objects in a busy street scene. The researchers were pleasantly surprised at the power of this new approach.
“People have been talking about computers imitating the brain for a long time,” said Poggio, who is also the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the co-director of the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT. “That was Alan Turing’s original motivation in the 1940s.
Surgeons use specially designed instruments to remove baseball-sized tumors through the nose in children
A first-of-its-kind study published in the February issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Pediatrics suggests endoscopic brain surgery, pioneered by surgeons at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, has the potential to be safer and often more effective than conventional surgery in children with life-threatening conditions.
This minimally invasive approach -- known as the Expanded Endonasal Approach (EEA) -- was pioneered and refined in adults over the last decade by surgeons at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and is now a viable option for tumors in children and in many instances for tumors that were once deemed to be inoperable.
Collaborating with colleagues at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, surgeons have recently expanded its use to in
Risk of extinction accelerated due to interacting human threats
The simultaneous effect of habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, and climate warming could accelerate the decline of populations and substantially increase their risk of extinction, a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B has warned.
The viability of many marine and terrestrial species could be impaired due to interacting human activities that cause the loss of species' habitats, overexploitation of their populations and warming of their environments. Credit: Top left: John Veron from Corals of the World. Top right: Wolcott Henry/Marine Photobank, Bottom left: Steve Spring/Marine Photobank, Bottom right: NASA-GSFC/Marine Photobank
Machine Learning Could Speed Up Radiation Therapy For Cancer Patients
A new computer-based technique could eliminate hours of manual adjustment associated with a popular cancer treatment. In a paper published in the Feb. 7 issue of Physics in Medicine and Biology, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center describe an approach that has the potential to automatically determine acceptable radiation plans in a matter of minutes, without compromising the quality of treatment.
Prostate CT: The automatic radiation planning algorithm results in beamlet intensities that produce equal-dose contours. The prostate (center) receives a high dose, while nearby tissue receives a low dose. (Credit: Rensselaer/Richard Radke)
The Ancient Greeks Were In Better Shape Than Us And Didn't Have Gold's Gym
We may not be as fit as the people of ancient Athens, despite all that modern diet and training can provide, according to research by University of Leeds exercise physiologist, Dr Harry Rossiter.
Dr Rossiter measured the metabolic rates of modern athletes rowing a reconstruction of an Athenian trireme, a 37m long warship powered by 170 rowers seated in three tiers. Using portable metabolic analysers, he measured the energy consumption of a sample of the athletes powering the ship over a range of different speeds to estimate the efficiency of the human engine of the warship. The research is published in New Scientist today (February 8).
Trireme in a harbour. (Image courtesy of University of Leeds)
Enceladus - “Cosmic Graffiti Artist”
Astronomers from the University of Virginia and other institutions have found that Enceladus, the sixth-largest moon of Saturn, is a “cosmic graffiti artist,” pelting the surfaces of at least 11 other moons of Saturn with ice particles sprayed from its spewing surface geysers. This ice sandblasts the other moons, creating a reflective surface that makes them among the brightest bodies in the solar system (Enceladus, itself a ball of mostly ice, is the single most reflective body in our solar system).
“Enceladus’ art is a work-in-progress, constantly altering the surfaces of other moons orbiting within this moon’s beautiful swirl of ice particles,” said Anne Verbiscer, a research scientist in the astronomy department at the University of Virginia and the study’s lead investigator.
Frequency Comb' Technique Reveals Colors And Intensity Of All Lightwaves Simultaneously
Physicists at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have taken the first ever two-dimensional pictures of a "frequency comb," providing extra information that enhances the comb's usefulness in optical atomic clocks, secure high-bandwidth communications, real-time chemical analysis, remote sensing, and the ultimate in precision control of atoms and molecules.
False-color images of the "fingerprints" of molecular iodine, each taken under different experimental conditions using a NIST frequency brush created with an ultrafast visible laser. The squares within each frame reveal the frequency and intensity of light from individual "bristles" of the brush.
