(CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts) - Researchers in the field of mechanobiology are evolving our understanding of health by revealing new insights into how the body's physical forces and mechanics impact development, physiological health, and prevention and treatment of disease. At the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, engineers and biomedical scientists have assembled to form collaborative teams that are helping to drive this exciting area of research forward toward real-world applications. Now, a new study suggests mechanically-driven therapies that promote skeletal muscle regeneration through direct physical stimulation could one day replace or enhance drug and cell-based regenerative treatments.

NASA satellites obtained a number of different views of the great winter storm that left many snowfall records from Virginia to New York City from January 22 to 24, 2016. RapidScat provided a look at the strong winds that led to flooding in southern New Jersey, while NASA's Aqua satellite and NASA/USGS's Landsat satellite provided images of the post-storm snowy blanket.

The RapidScat instrument flies aboard the International Space Station and measures surface winds over the ocean. On Jan. 23 at 5 a.m. EST, RapidScat showed sustained winds as strong as 45 meters per second (100 mph/162 kph) along the coast of southern New Jersey, which included areas from Cape May to Atlantic City. Those winds led to flooding along coastal areas.

A new procedure developed by surgeons at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center improves the accuracy of axillary staging and pathologic evaluation in clinically node-positive breast cancer, and reduces the need for a more invasive procedure with debilitating complications.

The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, has changed treatment guidelines at the institution for a select group of breast cancer patients with lymph node metastasis, who will now receive Targeted Axillary Dissection (TAD).

The TAD procedure involves removing sentinel lymph nodes, as well as additional cancerous lymph nodes found during diagnosis. At the time of diagnosis, those select nodes are clipped for identification during later surgery.

As Europeans spread across the New World, native Americans were overmatched. People who had never even learned how to write were up against soldiers with muskets - and new diseases they had no immunity against.

But lost in all of the anthropological speculation is any real evidence; did Europeans wipe out native populations with disease and war shortly after their first contact, and did it happen so fast it left tell-tale fingerprints on the global climate?

New research by University of Liverpool health expert Dr Emma Boyland has confirmed that unhealthy food advertising does increase food intake in children.

A thin coating of graphene nanoribbons in epoxy developed at Rice University has proven effective at melting ice on a helicopter blade.

The coating by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour may be an effective real-time de-icer for aircraft, wind turbines, transmission lines and other surfaces exposed to winter weather, according to a new paper in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In tests, the lab melted centimeter-thick ice from a static helicopter rotor blade in a minus-4-degree Fahrenheit environment. When a small voltage was applied, the coating delivered electrothermal heat - called Joule heating - to the surface, which melted the ice.