Higher elevations around the world may be warming much faster than previously thought, according to a paper which reviewed elevation-dependent warming mechanisms such as loss of snow and ice, increased latent heat release at high altitudes, low-elevation aerosol pollutants that increase the difference in warming rates between low and high elevations, plus other factors that enhance warming with elevation in different regions, and in different seasons. 

Rapid treatment with a new anti-inflammatory called
C5aR
could have a major impact on recovery from spinal cord injury.

University of Queensland School of Biomedical Sciences researchers Dr. Marc Ruitenberg and Ph.D. student Faith Brennan said they made the discovery during laboratory trials with an experimental drug. Brennan said that excessive inflammation caused additional damage in spinal cord injuries and hindered recovery. 

The Hubble Space Telescope is almost old enough to buy its own health insurance! 

Tomorrow, April 24th, the Hubble Space Telescope will turn 25. For much of that time, it has been a few hundred miles away, providing a peek into the cosmos. It has long exceeded its mission life (good thing too, it's successor will be a decade past its original completion date and 900% over budget, if it even goes up on the latest 2018 date) but that is okay, Hubble shows no signs of letting up.

One cornerstone of the Science 2.0 approach is the framework for making Big Data manageable. In fields from physics to biology, it's no longer a question of obtaining data, but managing it in ways that are relevant.

It's been problematic in science just as it has been in business and the public sector because relationships between the different parts of a network have been represented as simple links, regardless of how many ways they can actually interact, and that results in a loss of valuable information in science.

Businesses have been expanding their marketing and communication efforts to engage people with their brands through sites such as Facebook and Twitter and they discovered that being open, rather than just engaging in push marketing, helps.

Daily consumption of capsaicin, the active compound of chilli peppers, was found to have beneficial effects on liver damage. The study found capsaicin reduced the activation of hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) in mice models. HSCs are the major cell type involved in liver fibrosis, which is the formation of scar tissue in response to liver damage.

The mice were split into two groups and received capsaicin in their food:

After three days of bile duct ligation (BDL) in which the common bile duct is obstructed, leading to bile accumulation and liver fibrosis