A recently identified feathered dinosaur found deep in West Texas reinforces an emerging view that creatures like it were more diverse and widespread in North America than previously thought, according to a new study. (more…)
Spinal muscular atrophy is a debilitating neuromuscular disease that in its most severe form is the leading genetic cause of infant death. By experimenting with an ALS drug in two very different animal models, researchers at Brown University and Boston Children’s Hospital have identified a new potential mechanism for developing an SMA treatment.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — There is no specific drug to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a family of motor neuron diseases that in its most severe form is the leading genetic cause of infant death in the United States and affects one in 6,000 people overall. But a new multispecies study involving a drug that treats amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has pinpointed a mechanism of SMA that drug developers might be able to exploit for a new therapy. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.
In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon. (more…)
Opening the door to more sophisticated investigation of sperm locomotion and biophysics, researchers from UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have identified previously unobserved swimming patterns in human and horse sperm cells.
This research, published in Scientific Reports, a journal of the Nature Publishing Group, could lead to a deeper understanding of how sperm move on their way to fertilization or other functions and how they react when encountering various toxins or chemicals. (more…)
A decade ago, spurred by a question for a fifth-grade science project, University of Washington physicist John Cramer devised an audio recreation of the Big Bang that started our universe nearly 14 billion years ago.
Now, armed with more sophisticated data from a satellite mission observing the cosmic microwave background – a faint glow in the universe that acts as sort of a fossilized fingerprint of the Big Bang – Cramer has produced new recordings that fill in higher frequencies to create a fuller and richer sound. (The sound files run from 20 seconds to a little longer than 8 minutes.) (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — In December of last year the New York Post published images of a man about to be killed by a train while several bystanders did little to help him. Numerous studies have provided evidence that people are less likely to help when in groups, a phenomenon known as the “bystander effect.” Those studies examined situations where only one person was needed to take action to help another. A University of Missouri anthropologist recently found that even when multiple individuals can contribute to a common cause, the presence of others reduces an individual’s likelihood of helping. This research has numerous applications, including possibly guiding the fundraising strategies of charitable organizations.
“In our study, individuals who didn’t want to share money tended to influence others to not share money,” said Karthik Panchanathan, assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Science. “We don’t know what psychological mechanism caused that, but perhaps potential givers did not want to be ‘suckers,’ who gave up their money while someone else got away with giving nothing. Selfish behavior in others may have given individuals an opportunity to escape any moral obligation to share that they might have felt.” (more…)
More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers.
In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach provides a consistent means to integrate the potential contribution of both continental ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — into sea-level rise projections. (more…)
New Appliance, Software and Services Extend the IBM MobileFirst Strategy
LAS VEGAS – 29 Apr 2013: IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy took a major technological step forward today with the introduction of IBM MessageSight, a new appliance designed to help organizations manage and communicate with the billions of mobile devices and sensors found in systems such as automobiles, traffic management systems, smart buildings and household appliances.
Over the next 15 years, the number of machines and sensors connected to the Internet will explode. According to IMS Research, there will be more than 22 billion web-connected devices by 2020[i].These new devices will generate more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day[ii], while every hour enough information is consumed by Internet traffic to fill seven million DVDs.[iii] (more…)
