If you have watched the NASA channel recently, you might have witnessed a series of experiments regarding flames. On the surface, pardon the pun, it may have seemed like a minor thing, but how flames behave outside our atmosphere has led to discovery of a new type of cool burning flames.   ...

In a previous article I demonstrated how to use a One Time Pad cipher using a pen, paper, and Scrabble tiles (or Boggle cubes). If used correctly, One Time Pads cannot be broken by the NSA or any intelligence service on Earth because the One Time Pad keys use a randomly generated set of letters ...

A new strategy enables molecules to be disconnected essentially anywhere, even remote from functionality.   The organic synthesis strategy, developed by Professor Varinder Aggarwal and Dr Ramesh Rasappan in the School of Chemistry, involves a new method for combining smaller fragments together ...

The Venus Express spacecraft just spent a month of aerobraking that saw it surf in and out of the atmosphere of Venus at altitudes typically between 131 km and 135 km for a couple of minutes on each of its closest approaches to the planet. Why? Because after 8 years its propellant is getting low ...

Insecticides that behave like nicotine, known as neonicotinoids, became popular in the late 1990s as replacements for more toxic products. They have been effective but like all products there is concern about ongoing environmental effects. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified ...

It's no secret that the last few decades have seen a whirlwind of improvements in agricultural science. Where the world once feared the future of Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, with mass starvations and forced sterilization, we now have so much food the US government wants to mandate food stamps ...

When Typhoon Matmo crossed over the island nation of Taiwan it left tremendous amounts of rainfall in its wake. How much? The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite orbits the Earth and provides coverage over the tropics. TRMM is managed by both NASA and the Japan Aerospace ...

There's a concern that global warming may push Earth's climate system past a "tipping point," where rapid melting of ice and further warming may become irreversible. It's a hotly debated conjecture because there is no picture of what this point of no return may look like. To try and find some ...

About 15% of adults suffer from fertility problems, primarily due to genetic factors. This is something of an evolutionary paradox; wouldn't natural selection have caused people with infertility to not reproduce?Various theories explain the survival of harmful mutations: A gene that today causes ...

People can be conditioned to feel less pain when they hear a neutral sound, new research from the University of Luxembourg has found. This lends weight to the idea that we can learn to use mind-over-matter to beat pain. Scientists have known for many years that on-going pain in one part of ...

A probiotic that prevents obesity could be on the horizon, at least if an animal model translates to humans. Bacteria that produce a therapeutic compound in the gut inhibit weight gain, insulin resistance and other adverse effects of a high-fat diet in mice, Vanderbilt University investigators ...

Before the European colonial era, the people who lived on the land now called California used fire to control growth and make sure they had food, fuel, tools, and objects for ritual. The Miwok people of the Sacramento Valley created a fire and flood system. To maintain the blue and valley ...

The first systematic analysis of hepatitis E virus (HEV) transmission by blood components indicates that about 1 in 3,000 donors in England have HEV in their plasma. The findings suggest that around 1,200 HEV-containing blood components (eg, red cells, platelets, and fresh frozen plasma) are likely ...

In some patients, the chronic inflammatory skin diseases psoriasis and eczema are so similar that dermatologists have had to examine tissue samples but a team of researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now analyzed the molecular processes ...

It isn't the tumor that kills up to a third of cancer patients, according to a new study, it's the indirect effects triggered by a process that is heavily studied not to fight cancer, but to fight obesity: the conversion of white fat tissue into brown fat tissue.Cachexia, also called wasting syndrome ...

The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has expressed concern that the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation could make cancer research impossible and add a significant burden to both doctors and cancer patients. The proposed wording of the regulation stipulates 'explicit and ...

If most people run a race, they cheer after they cross the finish line. It is a culturally acceptable psychological reward for all of the training and preparation and execution of the plan. But what happens when that script isn't followed? If you learn of a victory too soon, is it cheapened? Ayelet ...

Marketing is something of a game; retailers want you to spend the most money, but not none at all, and cash flow is important, so sometimes they have sales, even at a loss to get you in the door in the belief that you will spend more money. But is that the optimal strategy for a retailer?A new ...

I’ve often wondered about the Scopes trial, and wanted to read a good account of it.  I was recommended the account by Edward J. Larson in When Science and Christianity Meet, edited by DC Lindberg and RL Numbers (ISBN 0226482162).  .  It’s a very informative book, and wide-ranging ...

A new National Academy of Sciences (NAS) assessment examining the causes of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident affirms the culture of safety adhered to by the U.S. nuclear industry.Core findings from the NAS study, “Lessons Learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving the ...

A new paper in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute addresses the risks associated with the growing popularity of endoscopic resection in the treatment of localized, early-stage esophageal cancer. Researchers found that the more traditional surgical resection, while more invasive, provided ...

Researchers from the University of Bradford say they have devised a simple blood test that will enable doctors to rule out cancer in patients presenting with certain symptoms, saving time and preventing costly and unnecessary invasive procedures such as colonoscopies and biopsies being carried ...

In America, where categorization becomes easy because there are two main political parties, it is well-known that right-wing people donate more to charity. This makes sense; people who believe in smaller government should be willing to help their fellow man rather than relying on government to ...

Revolutions are messy business, they require participation by a type of personality that is not very savory; militant, bombastic, a little crazy. Such traits mean those people are only valuable for a limited time. But that is not the way revolutionaries work; at the first signs of growing ...