One of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang contain so much dust. The leading hypothesis is that supernovae, stars that explode at the end of their lives, contain large amounts of metal-enriched material that, in turn, harbors key ingredients of dust, like silicon, iron and carbon.
Trousers have to be tried on – the variation between size labeling and actual clothing size is huge. This is shown by the report "Large? Clothing sizes and size labeling", which looks at the relationship between clothing sizes and the actual clothing measurements as well as consumers' views on and experiences of this.
The study of epigenetics in psychiatry promises several key advances, as noted by Eric J. Nestler, M.D., Ph.D., a Deputy Editor for Biological Psychiatry and an expert in this field.
First, it enables, for the first time, direct study of mechanisms controlling transcription, the process of expressing the genetic information coded within DNA, in the brains of behaving animals as well as in brain tissue from humans studied at autopsy.
Second, some epigenetic changes in the brain are likely to be extremely long-lived, and thereby represent potential mechanisms by which life events, or psychotropic drugs or even psychotherapy, can produce stable, long-lasting changes in behavior.
Originating from Africa, India, and the Middle East, frankincense oil has been found to have many medicinal benefits. Now, an enriched extract of the Somalian Frankincense herb Boswellia carteri has been shown to kill off bladder cancer cells. Research presented in the open access journal, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, demonstrates that this herb has the potential for an alternative therapy for bladder cancer.
Bladder cancer is twice as common in males as it is in females. In the US, bladder cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer in men, whilst in the UK it is the seventh most common cause of death amongst males.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A rising tide is said to lift all boats. Rising global temperatures, however, may lead to increased disparities between rich and poor countries, according to a recent MIT economic analysis of the impact of climate change on growth.
After examining worldwide climate and economic data from 1950 to 2003, Benjamin A. Olken, associate professor in the Department of Economics, concludes that a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature in a given year reduces economic growth by an average of 1.1 percentage points in the world's poor countries but has no measurable effect in rich countries.
Olken says his research suggests higher temperatures will be disproportionately bad for the economic growth of poor countries compared to rich countries.
(PHILADELPHIA) A novel signaling pathway plays a significant role in the production of aldosterone, a hormone that promotes heart failure after a myocardial infarction, according to a study conducted by Thomas Jefferson University researchers.
The findings, which will be published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that aldosterone production is mediated by a protein called beta-arrestin-1. Beta-arrestin-1 binds to angiotensin II receptors when they are activated by angiotensin II.
One of the small regulatory molecules, named microRNA-125b, is a novel regulator of p53, an important protein that safeguards cells against cancers, Singapore and U.S. scientists report in the March 17, 2009 issue of the journal Genes & Development.
The scientists found that during embryonic development, this microRNA keeps the level of p53 low to avoid excessive cell death.
But, if the DNA is damaged, the microRNA level is reduced to allow an increase in p53, which eliminates damaged cells and thus prevents tumor formation.
The research was conducted with zebrafish.
Obese women may be putting themselves at greater risk of breast cancer by not undergoing regular screening. According to new research by Dr. Nisa Maruthur and her team from The John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, USA, seriously obese women are significantly less likely to say they have undergone a recent mammography than normal weight women, especially if they are white. Maruthur's findings are published online this week in Springer's Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The first U.S. charter school opened in 1992. Since then the number of charters has grown to more than 4,000 in 40 states, serving 1.2 million students, according to RAND, a nonprofit research organization based in Santa Monica, California.
Students at charter schools graduate and attend college at significantly higher rates than students at traditional public schools, according to a Rand Corp. study led by a Michigan State University scholar.The study, which offers mixed overall results for charter school advocates, comes amid a national debate over President Obama's endorsement of charter schools, which are experimental public schools that operate independently of the local school board.
'Adaptation to exercise' is a familiar phenomenon, even if the phrase is not: A sedentary person takes up jogging and can barely make it around the block. After jogging regularly for a few weeks, the person can jog a mile, then two, then three. With regular exercise, the body adapts, becoming fitter and more efficient. The heart can pump more blood, delivering more oxygen to the muscles. The muscles get stronger, and so on.
A lack of Vitamin D, due to reduced sunlight, has been linked to depression and the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), but research by the University of Warwick shows there is no clear link between the levels of vitamin D in the blood and depression.
Exposure to sunlight stimulates vitamin D in the skin and a shortage of sunlight in the winter has been put forward as one possible cause of SAD. However Warwick Medical School researchers, led by Dr Oscar Franco, have discovered low levels of vitamin D in the blood may not be connected to depression.
Researchers trying to uncover the mechanisms that cause attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and conduct disorder have found an abnormality in the brains of adolescent boys suffering from the conditions, but not where they expected to find it.
Boys with either or both of these disorders exhibited a different pattern of brain activity than normally developing boys when they played a simple game that sometimes gave them a monetary reward for correct answers, according to a new study by a University of Washington research team.
Female birds often choose their mates based on fancy feathers. Female mammals, on the other hand, may be more likely to follow their noses to the right mate. That's one conclusion of Cambridge zoologist Tim Clutton-Brock and Harvard researcher Katherine McAuliffe, whose review of evidence for female mate choice is published in the March 2009 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology.
Historically, most examples of female mate choice and its evolutionary consequences are found in birds. The classic case is the peacock's tail. The ornate tails do nothing to help peacocks survive. Rather, they emerged because peahens prefer to mate with males that have showy plumage.
