After decades of public safety campaigns focused on drinking and driving, it may be time to focus on the seventh leading cause of injury-related death, according to Bureau of Occupational Health and Injury Prevention at New York State Department of Health and Columbia University scholars looking at New York State.
Citizen science, where the public pitches in to make large-scale analyses of data possible, has successfully predicted the path of a deadly plant disease, Sudden Oak Death, over a six-year period.
The disease has killed millions of oak and tanoak trees in California and Oregon and can infect more than 100 susceptible host plants and can spread from nursery stock to residential landscapes. Starting in 2008, 1,000 volunteers collected leaf samples from trees in metropolitan and urban-wildland areas.
Scientists have discovered a way to prevent the development of multiple sclerosis in mice. Using a drug that blocks the production of a certain type of immune cell linked to inflammation and autoimmunity, the researchers successfully protected against the onset of MS in an animal model of the disease.
In the immune system, two kinds of T cells strike a delicate balance--T helper cells (Th17) activate the immune system, protecting against infections and cancers, while regulatory T cells (Tregs) suppress the system, keeping it in check. A disparity between these cell types, where there are too many Th17 and not enough Tregs, can lead to a hyperactive immune system, resulting in inflammation, tissue damage, and autoimmune disease.
Global incomes continue to rise, more people are living more comfortably, globalization has been a huge win for many developing nations and that means more people than ever can afford air conditioning.
While some policy makers live in an idealized developed world where more wind and solar power at ever higher costs will solve the emissions problem, that lacks fairness for people who are only now able to afford to live well. More people are going to need electricity and that means we need to embrace true green energy and not fudge numbers to where political winners look like viable solutions for the future. Without viable clean energy the stress on energy prices and infrastructure will mean poorer people stay shackled to the past.
The famous sunspots on the surface of the Earth's star result from strong magnetic fields. Their numbers are an important indicator of the state of activity on the Sun. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, Poland, researchers have been conducting multifractal analysis into the changes in the numbers of sunspots and found that the graphs were asymmetrical in shape, suggesting that sunspots may be involved in unknown physical processes.
The original NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the famous Pillars of Creation - in the Eagle Nebula, Messier 16 - was taken two decades ago and immediately became its most famous picture. Since then, these billowing clouds, which extend over a few light-years, have awed the public.
One of the concerns about the switch from incandescent to fluorescent lighting was that while the ballasts are higher frequency now - humans do not have to hear that annoying hum - they were right in the range that pets still hear.
Interventional treatments such as surgery provide good functional outcomes and a high cure rate for patients with lower-grade arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) of the brain, according to a new study. These findings contrast with a recent trial reporting better outcomes without surgery or other interventions for AVMs.
A study in Science has tied the aging process to the deterioration of tightly packaged bundles of cellular DNA known as heterochromatinand say that the genetic mutations underlying Werner syndrome, a disorder that leads to premature aging and death, results in the deterioration of these bundles.
The discovery used stem cell and gene-editing technologies and could lead to ways of countering age-related physiological declines by preventing or reversing damage to heterochromatin.
Researchers have shown that, like humans, mustached bats use the left and right sides of their brains to process different aspects of sounds.
No other animal, not even monkeys or apes, has proved to use such hemispheric specialization for sound processing - meaning that the left brain is better at processing fast sounds, and the right processing slow ones.
"These findings upset the notion that only humans use different sides of their brains to distinguish different aspects of sound," says the study's senior author, Stuart Washington, PhD, a neuroscientist at Georgetown.
Washington says the findings of asymmetrical sound processing in both human and bat brains make evolutionary sense.
Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes have difficulty regulating their glucose - blood sugar - levels, particularly after meals but a new study has found that Type 2 diabetics can eat more protein at breakfast to help reduce glucose spikes at both breakfast and lunch.
Researchers monitored Type 2 diabetics' levels of glucose, insulin and several gut hormones -- which help regulate the insulin response -- after breakfast and lunch. The participants ate either high-protein or high-carbohydrate breakfasts, and the lunch included a standard amount of protein and carbohydrates.
A new study forecasting how life expectancy will change in England and Wales has predicted people will live longer than current estimates - and that means they could have an oncoming economic train wreck because of the need for additional investments in health and social services and pensions for the elderly.
Antarctica's Dry Valleys may not be so dry. A helicopter-borne sensor that penetrates below the surface of large swathes of terrain has found compelling evidence that ice-free McMurdo Dry Valleys may be hiding a salty aquifer.
Brines, or salty water, form extensive aquifers below glaciers, lakes and within permanently frozen soils. If they are present, it might provide answers about the biological adaptations of previously unknown ecosystems that persist in the extreme cold and dark of the Antarctic winter.
