News Articles

There once was a time when pilots had to do everything with a plane - they had to be able to repair it and fly it and that meant knowing everything about it.
Today, much of flying is automated, freeing pilots' attention from mundane flight tasks and allowing them to focus on the big picture. Many regard humans as something of a safety net for machines, there in case something goes wrong - but a paper in Human Factors says it doesn't really work that way. 

Orlando, Fla. — Scientists have developed the first reversible glue that could be used on the battlefield to treat eye injuries, potentially saving soldiers' vision. The research is being presented at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) this week in Orlando, Fla.
When applied to a wounded eye, the adhesive warms up and becomes sticky, sealing the wound and minimizing further damage while the soldier is transported for treatment. Upon arriving at a hospital, doctors can simply apply cool saline solution to the glue, causing it to revert to its non-adhesive form and be removed with minimal discomfort.

Astronomers have made a measurement of a distant neutron star that is one million times more precise than the previous world's best - and they did it by using...nothing.
The interstellar medium is the 'empty' space between stars and galaxies. It's not really empty, it is made up of sparsely spread charged particles and those can be used as a giant lens. The astronomers did just that, to magnify and look closely at the radio wave emission from a small rotating neutron star.
Result: the highest resolution measurement ever achieved, equivalent to being able to see the double-helix structure of our genes from the Moon.

New cancer therapies, particularly agents that block vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) signaling, have been successful and are now used as a first line therapy for some tumors, but almost 100% of patients who take VEGF inhibitors (VEGFIs) develop high blood pressure, and a subset develops severe hypertension.
The mechanisms underlying VEGF inhibitor-induced hypertension need to be better understood and there is a need for clear guidelines and improved management, say investigators behind the review in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

A new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council has found that changes EPA has proposed and implemented into its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) process are "substantial improvements"  over its old system.
IRIS is used to assess the hazards posed by environmental contaminants but has been rather sporadically followed in the past. A court had to order the EPA to stop blaming fracking for problems without doing a study and the agency has had to defend itself against charges of 'secret' science in determining greenhouse gas policy.
While acknowledging the progress made to date, the report offers further guidance and recommendations to improve the overall scientific and technical validity of the program.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Coffee drinkers, rejoice! Aside from java's energy jolt, food scientists say you may reap another health benefit from a daily cup of joe: prevention of deteriorating eyesight and possible blindness from retinal degeneration due to glaucoma, aging and diabetes.
Raw coffee is, on average, just 1 percent caffeine, but it contains 7 to 9 percent chlorogenic acid, a strong antioxidant that prevents retinal degeneration in mice, according to a Cornell study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

You can't open a newspaper without reading about how many people are on welfare in America now. The government is even on a recruitment drive to get more people on benefits, and looking for ways to get them buying organic food too.
That shows a whole lot more money is helping better-off families rather than the very poorest.
Robert A. Moffitt, Professor of Economics at the Johns Hopkins University, notes that the United States is spending 74 percent more in inflation-adjusted dollars on welfare programs in 2007 than in 1975 but the 2.5 million single parent families with the absolute lowest levels of earnings, aid dropped 35 percent between 1983 and 2004. During that same period, aid rose 74 percent for those earning slightly more.

We know some glaciers are growing and we know some glaciers are receding. What we did not know until recently is how many glaciers there are, where they are, and what their extents and volumes are.That has changed - for the first time reliable calculations of the future development of glaciers and their contributions to regional hydrology and global sea-level rise can be derived from an accurate measurement.The international team mapped all of the world’s glaciers so all glaciologists can study the impacts of a changing climate on glaciers worldwide, and determine their total extent and volume on a glacier-by-glacier basis. Overall, glaciers cover an area of about 730,000 km2 and have a volume of about 170,000 km3.

Why do we yawn? It's unclear. One hypothesis is that yawning helps to increase the oxygen supply but there no association between yawning and blood oxygen levels has been found.
Psychologists now have a different notion - that yawning cools the brain.

It isn't just U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insulting Jewish people, the whole world harassed, threatened and used abusive language toward Jews on an individual basis more in 2013.
But there was a silver lining; a 20% decline in violent incidents against Jews.
The annual report by Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Moshe Kantor Database for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, highlighted the "severe escalation in anti-Jewish atmosphere," borne out by daily attacks on individuals who reported feeling that their personal safety and communal well-being were jeopardized.

U.S. mothers who have unintended pregnancies return to work sooner than mothers who had planned pregnancies, and that is a reason to mandate contraception at every institution, says Dr. Rada K. Dagher, assistant professor of health services administration in the University of Maryland School of Public Health. 
"We know that it's better for women to take time off after childbirth to take care of their physical and mental health," says Dagher, who has also written that taking six months of maternity leave is optimal for reducing a woman's risk of postpartum depression. "Returning to work soon after childbirth may not be good for these women or for their children." 

The pioneering health insurance exchange in Massachusetts -
the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law
- is headed for the scrap heap. The state wants to merge it with the federal HealthCare.gov enrollment site because it is so dysfunctional.
With terrible timing, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) scholars say it is working really well and credit it with 2.9% decreased mortality compared to other states. They estimate that the Massachusetts' health reform law has prevented approximately 320 deaths per year—one life saved for each 830 people gaining insurance - and use it as evidence that government health care expansion will save lives.