News Articles

Hydrogen as a fuel source sounds wonderful - its byproduct is water and it releases no CO2. The problem is that compressed hydrogen is scary while uncompressed hydrogen means hauling a container the size of a bus behind your car.Some people are okay with long charging times and short driving distances for electric cars so if the charging times are eliminated, distance may not be a problem. But adoption is tough - people don't want to buy something before it is viable but it won't become viable until a lot of people buy it. It's the technology variation on the chicken-egg problem.

For some cigarette smokers, quitting is relatively easy. Some people never even really get addicted while for some, strategies to aid quitting like e-cigarettes or nicotine patches or even hypnosis work while for others nothing does. 
Do they just not want to quit? Are they weak? Or do they need a better motivation. Psychologists using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) say they have identified an aspect of brain activity that helps to predict the effectiveness of a reward-based strategy as motivation to quit smoking.
The researchers observed the brains of nicotine-deprived smokers with fMRI and found that those who exhibited the weakest response to rewards were also the least willing to refrain from smoking, even when offered money to do so.

The first cases of Mad Cow disease in humans - properly known as variant Creutzfeld Jakob Disease, or vCJD, though no one recognizes that name - occurred in the late 1990s and were thought to be the consequence of eating contaminated beef products.
Since then, several cases of secondary infections caused by transfusions with blood from donors who subsequently developed vCJD have been reported, raising concerns about the safety of blood and blood products. A new paper describes an assay that can detect prions in blood samples from humans with vCJD and in animals at early stages of the (asymptomatic) incubation phase.

Phone dating apps used by gay men to find a sexual partner lead to a higher risk of getting common sexually transmitted infections than meeting online or in bars and clubs, suggests a new paper in Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Previous research has suggested that gay and bi-curious men who meet online are more likely to indulge in unprotected sex and to have more partners than men meeting potential partners in other ways. Smartphone apps such as Grindr, Scruff, and Recon have become an increasingly popular way to hook up with potential sexual partners. They allow registered users to use their smartphone's GPS (global positioning system) to locate and network with other users in the vicinity. 

Selecting graduate students in the fields of science and engineering based on an assessment of "character", whatever that means, is better than relying almost entirely on their scores on a standardized test like the GRE.
The goal in that would be to boost participation by women. Underrepresented even more in academia are Republicans and handicapped people, but the authors aren't worried about all minorities, just the correct ones. 

After analyzing core samples from the seabed off the coast of Spain and Portugal, near the Strait of Gibraltar, scientists say they have proof of shifts of climate change over the past six million years.  
The team also discovered new evidence of a deep-earth tectonic pulse in the region, as well as thick layers of sand within mountains of mud in a vast sheet, spreading out nearly 100km into the Atlantic from the Gibraltar gateway.
The quantity of sand is far more than was expected and has been caused by the strength, speed and long duration of bottom currents flowing through the Strait of Gibraltar from the Mediterranean.

In humans, no therapy for  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease,  has ever been discovered that could extend lifespan more than a few additional months.

ALS was first identified as a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease in the late 1800s but only gained international recognition in 1939 when it was diagnosed in American baseball legend Lou Gehrig. It's known to be caused by motor neurons in the spinal cord deteriorating and dying, and has been traced to mutations in copper, zinc superoxide dismutase, or SOD1. Ordinarily, superoxide dismutase is an antioxidant whose proper function is essential to life.

In the most comprehensive genetic study of the Mexican population to date, researchers from  Mexico's National Institute of Genomic Medicine (INMEGEN), UC San Francisco and Stanford University, have identified tremendous genetic diversity.
So much diversity there basically are no Mexicans.  But it explains some confounding aspects of Latino health, like why there is such a variety of health factors among Latinos of Mexican descent, including differing rates of breast cancer and asthma, as well as therapeutic response.  

White sharks
(Carcharodon carcharias)
are among the largest, most widespread apex predators in the ocean so there have been concerns about their vulnerability. The most comprehensive study undertaken on seasonal distribution patterns and historic trends in abundance of white sharks in the western North Atlantic Ocean used records compiled over more than 200 years finds that white sharks are a conservation win.
Scientists from NOAA Fisheries and colleagues added recent grey literature - unpublished, non-peer reviewed data - to previously published data to create a broader picture of 649 confirmed white shark records obtained between 1800 and 2010, the largest white shark dataset ever compiled for the region.  

MINNEAPOLIS – People with diets higher in protein, especially from fish, may be less likely to have a stroke than those with diets lower in protein, according to a meta-analysis published in the June 11, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
"The amount of protein that led to the reduced risk was moderate—equal to 20 grams per day," said study author Xinfeng Liu, MD, PhD, of Nanjing University School of Medicine in Nanjing, China. "Additional, larger studies are needed before definitive recommendations can be made, but the evidence is compelling."

Oxford University researchers funded by Parkinson's UK have developed a simple and quick MRI technique that offers promise for early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.
The team demonstrated that their new MRI approach can detect people who have early-stage Parkinson's disease with 85% accuracy, according to research published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
'At the moment we have no way to predict who is at risk of Parkinson's disease in the vast majority of cases,' says Dr Clare Mackay of the Department of Psychiatry at Oxford University, one of the joint lead researchers. 'We are excited that this MRI technique might prove to be a good marker for the earliest signs of Parkinson's. The results are very promising.'

One of the hazards of summer is picking up an itchy poison ivy rash but researchers say they have found a natural and effective way to kill it - a fungus named
olletotrichum fioriniae
that grows on the fleshy tissue surrounding the plant's seed. 
For being so annoying, poison ivy has had surprisingly little research done on it. John Jelesko, an associate professor of plant pathology at Virgina Tech, began studying the plant after experiencing a nasty poison ivy rash himself while doing some yard work. He found that most of the work was focused on urushiol, the rash-causing chemical found in the plant's oils. Urushiol is extremely potent. Only one nanogram is needed to cause a rash, and the oil can remain active on dead plants up to five years.