If you want to understand Earth's evolution, start with how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle 400 to 1,800 miles below the surface.

Researchers recently did. They were able to simulate the pressure conditions in this region to measure thermal conductivity using a new measurement technique developed by the collaborators and implemented by the Carnegie team on the mantle material magnesium oxide (MgO). They found that heat transfer is lower than other predictions, with total heat flow across the Earth of about 10.4 terawatts, which is about 60 % of the power used today by civilization. They also found that conductivity has less dependence on pressure conditions than predicted. The research is published in the August 9, online Scientific Reports.

For children and immune-compromised adults in developing countries, diarrheal disease induced by rotavirus can be life threatening.

Rotavirus is the leading cause of diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide, causing more than 114 million episodes of diarrhea annually in children under the age of 5, 80% of which occur in developing countries. More than 600,000 children die annually from rotavirus (RV) infection

Current rotaviral vaccines are highly effective in the Western world, but are not as effective in developing countries. Additionally, these vaccines are not appropriate for use outside of a very narrow age window or in immune compromised individuals. 

An investigational malaria vaccine developed by scientists at Sanaria Inc. and known as PfSPZ Vaccine has been found to be safe, to generate an immune system response, and to offer protection against malaria infection in healthy adults, according to the results of an early-stage clinical trial.

Malaria is transmitted to humans by the bite of an infected mosquito. After the bite occurs, infectious malaria parasites in the immature, sporozoite stage of their life cycle first travel to the liver, where they multiply, and then spread through the bloodstream, at which time symptoms develop.

The PfSPZ Vaccine is composed of live but weakened sporozoites of the species Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly of the malaria-causing parasites.

Researchers have used an atomic clock as a quantum simulator, mimicking the behavior of a different, more complex quantum system, joining a growing list of physical systems that can be used for modeling and perhaps eventually explaining the quantum mechanical behavior of exotic materials such as high-temperature superconductors, which conduct electricity without resistance.

All but the smallest, most trivial quantum systems are too complicated to simulate on classical computers, hence the interest in quantum simulators. Sharing some of the features of experimental quantum computers—a hot research topic—quantum simulators are "special purpose" devices designed to provide insight into specific challenging problems.  

Obesity has risen for decades and social scientists and government officials have scrambled to link cause and correlation, proposing everything from low income to public parks to a thrifty phenotype hypothesis, which says that poor people are biologically unfit to not be poor.

Income may be less of a factor, according to a report by The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Despite record-level food stamp usage, chronic under-employment and earnings increases below the rate of inflation, 19 states saw obesity among low-income preschoolers decline between 2008 and 2011. 

Genomic sequencing has shown a mutational signature of upper urinary tract cancers caused by aristolochic acid, a plant compound contained in herbal remedies for arthritis, gout and inflammation.