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The Scorched Cherry Twig And Other Christmas Miracles Get A Science Look

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The inexpensive medication pantoprazole prevents potentially serious stomach bleeding in critically...

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In the various 'Predator' films, the alien hunter can see across various spectra while enabling...

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Obese teenagers who lose weight are at greater risk of developing eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, a sign that there may be a psychology issue regarding their relationship to food.

But because weight loss is a healthy positive to both doctors and family members, eating disorders may not be adequately detected.  Up to 6 percent of American adolescents suffer from eating disorders, and in surveys more than 55 percent of high school females and 30 percent of males claim disordered eating symptoms including engaging in one or more maladaptive behaviors (fasting, diet pills, vomiting, laxatives, binge eating) to induce weight loss.

In the classic story "Mary Poppins", the lead character told the children she was caring for that she would stay until the wind changed.

Things are a little different in Britain. In many parts of the US, the wind changes every five minutes, but she meant that there was a season (and a reason) she would remain and the wind would be a harbinger that her job was done and she would move on. 

We might like to think that on a cosmic scale, things are more predictable than the weather in Kentucky but, if they are, it is only slightly. Researchers benefiting from data gathered by 11 spacecraft over four decades have determined that even the interstellar wind - the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space - changes direction.

Scientists at the synchrotron PETRA III have investigated X-ray absorption of highly charged iron ions.

 Highly charged ions - that is, atoms which have been stripped of most of their electrons - play an important role in astrophysics. Within the large accumulations of visible (luminous) matter in the universe, the highly charged state is the natural one. This is the case in stellar atmospheres as well as in the interior of stars, where temperatures of several million degrees Celsius rule. Highly charged ions also abound around exotic objects such as neutron stars or black holes. Before matter plunges into their cores, it delivers gravitational energy, heating up and emitting extremely intense X-rays, which can be observed. 

A new technique for improving the connections between stacked solar cells could one day improve the overall efficiency of solar energy devices and reduce the cost of solar energy production.

Stacked solar cells consist of several solar cells that are stacked on top of one another. Stacked cells are currently the most efficient cells on the market, converting up to 45 percent of the solar energy they absorb into electricity.

But to be effective, solar cell designers need to ensure the connecting junctions between these stacked cells do not absorb any of the solar energy and do not siphon off the voltage the cells produce -- effectively wasting that energy as heat.

If you want to see Aurora Borealis (the northern lights) in 3-D with your SLR cameras, and even determine the altitude where electrons in the atmosphere emit the light that produces aurora,  Ryuho Kataoka from the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan can show you how.

Kataoka came up with an idea for a new method to measure the height of aurora borealis after working on a 3D movie for a planetarium. They used two digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras set 8 km apart.

Researchers have uncovered the largest single volcano yet documented on Earth.

Tamu Massif covers an area roughly equivalent to the British Isles or the state of New Mexico, making it nearly as big as the giant volcanoes of Mars and placing it among the largest in the Solar System. Tamu Massif covers an area of about 120,000 square miles. By comparison, Hawaii's Mauna Loa – the largest active volcano on Earth – is approximately 2,000 square miles, or roughly 2 percent the size of Tamu Massif. Olympus Mons on Mars has a giant volcano visible on a clear night with a good backyard telescope, and that is only about 25 percent larger by volume than Tamu Massif.