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.
Scholars at Indiana University say that lower citation rates for women are due to bias.
In the past, fewer women worked outside the home and as that gradually shifted, there was hiring bias, which means historically women have had fewer science citations than men. That's simple numbers, just like fewer handicapped people and conservatives get citations in modern academia. But is that bias?
The authors say it is, and speculate it might be the trickle-down effects of having fewer female deans in science.
There is culture cold war in America over education. One side says American kids are under-performing because teachers are not using agreed upon criteria and so students don't do as well as some other countries on international standardized tests. The other side says American kids are under-performing because the government wants to 'teach to the test' so students do better on international standardized tests.
Both sides are manned by teachers, educational institutions and unions.
Do tests adequately predict academic success? Not really. When American students took the first international standardized test in the early 1960s, they came in next-to-last. But since then, those same students have dominated worldwide science output and Nobel prizes.
As you know, when heat in soup is increased, it will eventually boil.
When time and space are heated, an expanding universe can emerge, without requiring anything like a "Big Bang", according to a new math paper.
The math behind this phase transition between a boring empty space and an expanding universe containing mass is a connection between quantum field theory and Einstein's theory of relativity. Everybody knows of the transitions between liquid, solid and gaseous phases. But also time and space can undergo a phase transition, as the physicists Steven Hawking and Don Page pointed out in 1983. They calculated that empty space can turn into a black hole at a specific temperature.
The Promised Land means different things to different people. To geologists, the site of some of the largest volcanic eruptions in earth's history might fit the bill, and that means Utah is a pretty good place to be.
30 million years ago, more than 5,500 cubic kilometers of magma erupted during a one-week period near a place called Wah Wah Springs. By comparison, this eruption was about 5,000 times larger than the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.
Fortunately they are no longer active.
Dinosaurs were already extinct during this time period, but less well known is that 25-30 million years ago, North America was home to rhinos, camels, tortoises and even palm trees. Evidence of the ancient flora and fauna was preserved by volcanic deposits.
Mothers get all the blame these days but a new paper led suggests that the father's diet before conception may play an equally important role in the health of their offspring. It also raises concerns about the long-term effects of current Western diets and of food insecurity.
A new review outlines the health effects of silica, and calls for action to reduce illness and death from silica exposure at work.
The home team holds the advantage over visitors, at least in the plant world, but a handful of genetic adaptations could even the playing field, according to a new paper.
Genetic tradeoffs, in part, explain the rich diversity of species on earth. If all plants could perform well in all climates, the world would have similar flora from the poles to the Equator. Trade-offs, however, such as protection from freezing temperatures in exchange for growing larger, must be made by plants, limiting the regions where they can flourish.
Blood clots may be a good thing - at least in protecting the body from the deadly effects of bacteria by absorbing bacterial toxins, according to a new paper in PLoS ONE.Even with modern antibiotics, septic shock from bacterial infections afflicts about 300,000 people a year in the U.S., with a mortality rate of 30 to 50 percent. Septic shock is caused by Gram-negative bacteria, which release a toxin called lipopolysaccharide or endotoxin. In small amounts, lipopolysaccharide triggers inflammation. When infections with these bacteria get out of hand, lipopolysaccharide courses through the bloodstream, causing catastrophic damage to organs and tissues.
Some papers say that meditation can have beneficial health effects, and that makes sense, but a new paper claiming evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of mindfulness meditation is likely the first of its kind.
The scholars investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.
Red Mountain, an abandoned California magnesite mine, is providing geoscientists new insights on how to permanently entomb greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth.
Peer-reviewed articles are taking off on Twitter - whether or not people have read them is another story.
But someone read them during peer review so more exposure is good even if, in the case of legacy journals, people can only read the abstract.
Visit a museum these days and you'll see people using their smartphones and cameras to take pictures of works of art, archeological finds, historical artifacts, and every other object and most of them will never be looked at again. Even worse, while taking a picture might seem like a good way to preserve the moment, new research suggests the opposite actually happens.
In a new paper, psychologist Linda Henkel of Fairfield University presents data showing that participants had worse memory for objects, and for specific object details, when they took photos of them.
