Over a year after being launched, NASA's Van Allen Probes mission continues to unravel the mysteries of Earth's high-energy radiation belts that encircle our planet and pose hazards to orbiting satellites and astronauts - termed the Van Allen Radiation Belts.  The Van Allen radiation belts ...

Astronomers have identified the glowing wreck of a star that exploded a mere 2,500 years ago — the blink of an eye in astronomical terms - and revealed an astrophysical novelty of the Milky Way.Situated in the plane of the Milky Way 24,000 to 30,000 light years from Earth in the constellation ...

Raman scattering mode is an optical phenomenon, discovered in 1928 by the physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, that involves the inelastic scattering of photons - the physical phenomenon by which a medium can modify the frequency of the light impinging on it. The difference corresponds ...

A model has shown that the subsurface ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa may have deep currents and circulation patterns with heat and energy transfers capable of sustaining biological life. Astronomers believe Europa is one of the planetary bodies in our solar system most likely to have conditions ...

Loofahs, those exfoliating things for skin that men pretend they don't use in the shower, may be a new potential tool to advance sustainability efforts of both energy and waste, according to a paper in the journal Environmental Science&Technology. The study describes the pairing of loofahs ...

Extraction using hydraulic fracturing - fracking - has made North America the world's largest producer of oil and gas, while US CO2 emissions from energy have dropped back to early 1990s levels and the most offensive producer, coal, has been pushed back to 1980s levels. Despite those benefits ...

Thermionic conversion to heat energy, such as light from the sun or heat from burned fossil fuels, can mean very high efficiency, and because of its promise has been researched for over 50 years with little success. That may soon change, thanks to a new design, dubbed a thermoelectronic generator ...

A new, internationally agreed radiocarbon calibration curve method will allow key past events to be dated more accurately. The work led by Professors Paul Blackwell and Caitlin Buck from the University of Sheffield's School of Mathematics and Statistics and Professor Paula Reimer from Queen's ...

A method to model the way proteins fold, and sometimes misfold, has revealed branching behavior that may have implications for Alzheimer's and other aggregation diseases.  In an earlier study of the muscle protein titin, Rice chemist Peter Wolynes and colleagues analyzed the likelihood of ...

Terroir is the term for the unique blend of a vineyard’s soils, water and climate that impacts the flavor and quality of wine. These unique microbial inputs are key to regional wine fermentations.A new study from UC Davis, MicroTrek, Inc. and Constellation Brands Inc. offers evidence that grapes ...

Modern science has made it possible to synthesize increasingly targeted drugs but Ma Nature is not out of it yet - it just took science to discover what nature could do. Pyridomycin, a substance produced by non-pathogenic soil bacteria, has been found to be a potent antibiotic against a related ...

A new paper in Free Radical Biology and Medicine suggests that a diet low in vitamin D causes damage to the brain. In addition to being essential for maintaining bone health, the new evidence found that vitamin D serves important roles in other organs and tissue, including the brain. The study ...

The concept of permanent neurological injury is so 20th century.Instead, there has been gradual recognition of the brain's potential for long-term regeneration and reorganization and so rehabilitations strategies are undergoing radical changes. The potential for five new translational interventions ...

A single dose of the hormone oxytocin, delivered via nasal spray, has been shown to enhance brain activity while processing social information in children with autism spectrum disorders. Results showed that oxytocin facilitated social attunement, a process that makes the brain regions involved ...

A physical examination is not complete without an assessment of whether a patient appears to be acutely or chronically ill but a new paper says how sick a patient appears to be may have limited value in diagnosing their actual state of health. The researchers took photographs of patients who visited ...

A new paper says that two compounds derived from garlic, diallyl sulfide and ajoene, significantly reduce the contamination risk of Cronobacter sakazakii in the production of dry infant formula powder.  The discovery could make the product safer to consume, easing the minds of new mothers ...

Economists and sociologists have long insisted that abortion and birth control lead to economic growth and a new paper  in the journal Demography says it's instead education.All of those are correlated so there is no wrong answer. More economically developed, educated nations suffer population ...

Trials are often as partially showmanship along with the facts - both attorneys are trying to pick jurors who are most likely to go their way.Moral outrage may be a secret weapon. The last time you were morally outraged you probably felt felt angry, but did you also feel disgust? Consider how you ...

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) advocacy has become all the rage at colleges, universities and other institutions as the US government spends billions doing outreach to make students more technical. But that doesn't mean one-dimensional. The University of Houston College ...

A recent paper from North Carolina State University found that companies that screen the social media accounts of job applicants alienate potential employees – making it harder for them to attract top job candidates.  In some cases, social media screening might even increase the likelihood ...

A new paper from the University of South Carolina says that mothers in the U.S. are far less physically active than they were in previous decades and now spend more time engaged in sedentary activities like watching television than in cooking, cleaning and exercising combined. Since epidemiology ...

Hubert Devonish, who is Professor of Linguistics at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, is one of the very, very few researchers to have published a scholarly paper written entirely in Guyanese Creole.An example paragraph :“In plentii konchrii, di piipl-dem no taakin ...

Fish is good for you. While fish farming takes hold, the legacy way of providing fish, boats and nets, is still in use. But in most parts of the world, it's hard to know how much fish is being caught, and that makes it difficult to engage in proper resource management or justify farmed fish.Google ...

Researchers have built a small vehicle whose flying motion resembles the movements of those boneless, pulsating, water-dwelling creatures we call jellyfish.  Their presentation at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Pittsburgh,demonstrates a new method of ...