Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
Though the continental United States hasn't had a major hurricane in almost 10 years, the rest of the world hasn't been so lucky. Japan just had a typhoon, India a cyclone, and, with Gonzalo, Bermuda is about to have its first major Atlantic hurricane in three years.
Hurricane Gonzalo has made the jump to major hurricane status and on
October
15th was a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. NOAA's GOES-East satellite provided imagery of the storm. According to the National Hurricane Center, Gonzalo is the first category 4 hurricane in the Atlantic basin since Ophelia in 2011.
Having children young and a dysfunctional romantic relationship are the two most frequently cited reasons when low-income mothers are asked about why they find themselves in poverty, say sociology scholars Kristin Mickelson of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University, and Emily Hazlett of Kent State University in Sex Roles.
They believe that how a woman answers the question of "why me?" when thinking about her own impoverished state influences her mental health and that such answers can also provide clues to whether the woman believes she will ever rise out of poverty.
They concluded this after analysis of a set of close-ended questions that were put to a community sample of 66 low-income mothers.
The Miocene climatic optimum, was a period from about 15 to 17 million years ago and it had wild swings in temperature, the amount of continental ice on the planet and CO2 levels.
Historically, CO2 had inconsistent relationships to temperature. When levels were 10X higher than they are now, the temperature was 2 degrees higher. What has been lacking is a solid relationship between them outside the last few decades and a new paper in Paleoceanography finds that during the
Miocene climatic optimum has found that these changes in temperature and ice volume were matched by equally dramatic shifts in atmospheric CO2.
During the 1930s, North America endured what came to be called the Dust Bowl, a prolonged era of dryness - the worst drought in America of the last 1,000 years - that withered crops and dramatically altered where the population settled.
80 years ago, in 1934, is when things really got crazy; giant dust storms and drought covered more than 75 percent of the country and affected 27 states severely.
Do you believe in science?
Most people do. Some even say they 'accept' science, since that sounds less faith-oriented than 'believe', but ask most science-accepting atheists and fundamentalist Imams about adaptive radiation in evolution and there answers will be about the same in accuracy.
Nutritionists and their followers also claim to have a lot of faith in science - but they really have a kind of confirmation bias which makes them more likely to trust information that appears scientific yet really doesn't tell them much, according to a new paper in Public Understanding of Science.
Natural gas finally fulfilled its environmental promise this century. Long touted by environmentalists for being much cleaner than coal, hydraulic fracturing - fracking - made it economically viable as well.
The resulting boom also offset the lingering economic malaise in America for states, like Pennsylvania, that embraced it. Poor people could still afford energy but CO2 emissions went back to early 1990s levels, while coal, which had skyrocketed in use when nuclear energy was banned in America, was suddenly back at 1980s levels.
We can blame man for the altered composition of Eastern forests, but not climate change, according to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
Forests in the Eastern United States remain in a state of "disequilibrium" stemming from the clear-cutting and large-scale burning that occurred in the late 1800s, contends Marc Abrams, a professor of forest ecology and physiology. And since about 1930, the Smokey Bear era, aggressive forest-fire suppression has had a far greater influence on shifts in dominant tree species than minor fluctuations in temperature.
Many teens skips breakfast and many teens are obese. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) don't think that is a coincidence, they believe skipping breakfast increases the likelihood of overeating and eventual weight gain. Statistics show that the number of adolescents struggling with obesity, which elevates the risk for chronic health problems, has quadrupled in the past three decades.
A study has found that eating breakfast, particularly meals rich in protein, increases young adults' levels of a brain chemical associated with feelings of reward, which may reduce food cravings and overeating later in the day. Understanding the brain chemical and its role in food cravings could lead to improvements in obesity prevention and treatment.
Females are naturally more resistant to respiratory infections than males
and now researchers have linked that increased resistance to bacterial pneumonia in female mice to an enzyme called enzyme nitric oxide synthase 3 (NOS3), which is activated by the female sex hormone estrogen.
COLUMBUS, Ohio—Our view of other solar systems just got a little more familiar, with the discovery of a planet 25,000 light-years away that resembles our own Uranus.
Astronomers have discovered hundreds of planets around the Milky Way, including rocky planets similar to Earth and gas planets similar to Jupiter, but there is a third type of planet in our solar system — part gas, part ice, like Uranus and Neptune — called an "ice giant" and researchers have spotted one outside Sol's orbit for the first time.
But let's not build a cute robot and send it there just yet; it's 25,000 light years away.
The Ebola crisis in Africa is getting a lot of attention but coverage of a regional problem is displacing concern over a more pressing problem worldwide; influenza.
The pandemic risk from strains of influenza virus is far more worrisome than Ebola. Influenza pandemics arise when a new virus strain – against which humans have yet to develop widespread immunity – spreads in the human population.
French growers have to endure a lot of strange restrictions - they can't use seeds with neonicotinoids on them, for example, because of a manufactured controversy about colony collapse disorder, but they can spray neonics on the plants themselves, which is actually worse for the environment. They can't use GMOs but they can use products created using mutagenesis, even though it is far less rigorous and precise.
Now the European Commission has gone too far; they are putting warning labels on products made with lavender oil, which reportedly can cause allergic reactions for some people. According to an article in Chemical&Engineering News, the French are getting ready to fight anti-science regulations for the first time this century.
