Many viral diseases tend to become chronic - including infections with the HI virus. In persons affected, the immune response is not sufficient to eliminate the virus permanently. Scientists at the University of Bonn have now identified an immune factor which is partially responsible for this. Their results give rise to hopes for new therapeutic approaches. The work, which included researchers from the University of Cologne and the Technical University of Munich, is being published in the renowned journal "Nature Immunology."

A new study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine found a dramatic increase in the number of adolescents undergoing "Tommy John" surgery to repair a pitching-related elbow injury in recent years, outstripping growth among major league pitchers. 

If you live in one of four major U.S. cities chances are you're letting the benefits of a ubiquitous natural resource go right down the drain instead of using it to cut down your water bill.

Toilet flushing is the biggest use of water in households in the United States and the United Kingdom, accounting for nearly one-third of potable water use. But there is no reason that clean, treated, municipal water needs to be used to flush a toilet -- rainwater could do the job just as well.

A new paper indicates it rains enough in Philadelphia, New York, Seattle and Chicago that if homeowners had a way to collect and store even just the rain falling on their roofs, they could flush their toilets often without having to use a drop of municipal water. 

A BLOOD test may be able to sound early warning bells that patients with advanced melanoma skin cancer are relapsing, according to a study* published in the journal Cancer Discovery today (Monday).

Scientists from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute studied the DNA shed by tumours into the bloodstream - called circulating tumour DNA - in blood samples from seven advanced melanoma patients at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust.

In this early work they found they could see whether a patient was relapsing by tracking levels of circulating tumour DNA. And they found that new mutations in genes like NRAS and PI3K appeared, possibly causing the relapse by allowing the tumour to become resistant to treatment.

PULLMAN, Wash.--Washington State University researcher Joyce Ehrlinger has found that a person's tendency to be overconfident increases if he or she thinks intelligence is fixed and unchangeable.

Such people tend to maintain their overconfidence by concentrating on the easy parts of tasks while spending as little time as possible on the hard parts of tasks, said Ehrlinger, a WSU assistant professor of psychology. But people who hold a growth mindset--meaning they think intelligence is a changeable quality--spend more time on the challenging parts of tasks, she said. Consequently, their levels of confidence are more in line with their abilities.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Supervolcanoes capable of unleashing hundreds of times the amount of magma that was expelled during the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 are found in populated areas around the world, including the western United States.

A new study is providing insight into what may happen when one of these colossal entities explodes.

The research focuses on the Silver Creek caldera, which sits at the intersection of California, Nevada and Arizona. When this supervolcano erupted 18.8 million years ago, it flooded parts of all three states with river-like currents of hot ash and gas called pyroclastic flows. These tides of volcanic material traveled for huge distances -- more than 100 miles.

This is a talk I gave last summer to a small conference "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life - Europa&Enceladus" in Oxford, summer 2015. It's about the idea that when searching for life in our solar system, we could find something that's a "super positive" outcome of overwhelming value for us and future generations. And that if so we need to take great care we don't lose the opportunity or destroy it by introducing Earth life by mistake.

On March 3rd and 4th the AMVA4NewPhysics network met in Venice, in the beautiful venue of Ca' Sagredo. Ca' Sagredo is a 500-year-old palace on the Canal Grande, home of the Sagredo family and in the 600s of Giambattista Sagredo, who hosted many times Galileo Galilei there. As for the AMVA4NewPhysics network, it is a "Innovative Training Network" of 16 research institutes, universities and industries that have joined forces to train young scientists in particle physics and the development of advanced multivariate-analysis tools.

Left and right brained makes a difference, even for those good at math. Large numbers are processed in the left side of the brain while small numbers are processed in the right side of the brain, according to a new paper. 

The brain is divided into two halves - the left side controls the right half of the body, and vice versa. Generally, one side of the brain is more dominant than the other. For example, people who are right-handed tend to have more activity in the left side of their brains.

The technological capacity for generating virtual worlds from home computers will soon be widely available to the general public, as special head-mounted displays are brought to market that create the illusion of being immersed in virtual three-dimensional worlds.

The fact that Virtual Reality (VR) can create these strong illusions is a main reason why VR brings new risks - recent studies have shown that immersion in VR can cause behavioral changes that last after subjects leave the virtual environment. And because VR can also create a situation in which the user's bodily appearance and visual environment is determined by the host of the virtual world, it raises the possibility that VR will create vast opportunities for psychological manipulation.