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Birth Control Pill: Less Ovulation Linked To Less Ovarian Cancer

A new Artificial Intelligence analysis of data of ovarian cancer patients links birth control...

Marijuana's Impact On Working Memory Revealed In Brain Scans

A new study examined the effects of marijuana use of 1,003 adults aged 22 to 36 from the Human...

Cardiac Medication Digoxin Off Label Reduces Risk Of Breast Cancer Metastases

While off-label uses of medication may be controversial in political media, in science and health...

Electric Cars Match Gas And Diesel For Longevity

An analysis of 300 million United Kingdom Ministry of Transport test records, which tries to estimate...

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Peering backward in time to an instant after the big bang, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised an approach that may help unlock the hidden shapes of alternate dimensions of the universe.

A new study demonstrates that the shapes of extra dimensions can be "seen" by deciphering their influence on cosmic energy released by the violent birth of the universe 13 billion years ago. The method, published today (Feb.

Portable inspection devices that detect food safety and quality problems are being developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists. Recent food safety outbreaks highlight the need for "space-age" ways to prevent such problems at every step in the food production process -- from farm field to grocery store or restaurant.

Scientists led by Yud-Ren Chen at the ARS Instrumentation and Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville, Md., are designing such portable inspection devices by adapting optical technology used for remote sensing of Earth.

Prototypes include binoculars with lenses that detect fecal matter on meat, produce or processing equipment--as well as diseases or quality defects.

In releasing its latest comprehensive report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focuses an important spotlight on the current state of the Earth’s climate.

Climate change is just one of the many symptoms exhibited by a planet under pressure from human activities. "Global environmental change, which includes climate change, threatens to irreversibly alter our planet," says Kevin Noone, Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP).

Polar bear on ice. (Image Credit: Dan Crosbie, courtesy of Canadian Ice Service / Environment Canada)

A giant cloud half the size of the United States has been imaged on Saturn’s moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. The cloud may be responsible for the material that fills the lakes discovered last year by Cassini's radar instrument.

Cloaked by winter's shadow, this cloud has now come into view as winter turns to spring. The cloud extends down to 60 degrees north latitude, is roughly 2400 kilometers in diameter and engulfs almost the entire north pole of Titan.

The new image was acquired on 29 December 2006, by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS).

A little-known lipid plays a big role in helping us grow from a hollow sphere of stem cells into human beings, researchers have found.

They found that in the first few days of life, ceramide helps stem cells line up to form the primitive ectoderm from which embryonic tissues develop, says Dr. Erhard Bieberich, biochemist at the Medical College of Georgia.

Probably 90 percent of ceramide gathers at the top or apical end of these early stem cells, literally helping cells have direction. “We have cell polarity, an up and down, a head and foot of the cell, and that is what ceramide most likely regulates,” says Dr. Bieberich.

Fluctuations in sex hormone levels during women's menstrual cycles affect the responsiveness of their brains' reward circuitry, an imaging study at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has revealed. While women were winning rewards, their circuitry was more active if they were in a menstrual phase preceding ovulation and dominated by estrogen, compared to a phase when estrogen and progesterone are present.


Brain activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (yellow), part of the brain's reward system, was increased during women's pre-ovulatory (follicular) menstrual phase compared to their-post-ovulatory (luteal) phase