|  New Test May Help Predict Ovarian Cancer Survival A sensitive new DNA test can predict how long ovarian cancer patients will survive, and guide personalized treatment decisions, according to new research. The technology, called QuanTILfy, counts the number of cells called tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in a cancer patient's tumor biopsy. This test is the first that can precisely count the number of immune cells present in a tumor sample. "We are providing a new tool," said Jason H. Bielas, a cancer geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and lead researcher of the study. Read More » Jamaica scientist launches medical marijuana firm KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — A prominent Jamaican scientist and entrepreneur is launching a company that aims to capitalize on the growing international market for medical marijuana. Read More » 'Noisy' Icebergs Could Mask Whale Calls  | SAN FRANCISCO — The sound of icebergs breaking apart in the ocean could make the seas a noisier place. "Recent reports have said that especially near port of calls in industrial countries, noise levels rose about 10 decibels in the last 30 to 40 years," said study co-author Haru Matsumoto, an acoustic engineer at Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Matsumoto and his colleagues were tracking the sounds from hydrophones, or underwater microphones, located in the Pacific a few hundred miles from Panama, when they noticed an uptick in noise in 2008. It turned out that a massive iceberg called C19 and about the size of Rhode Island, had calved into the ocean and disintegrated that year, Matsumoto said.
| Read More » Triplet Births Due to Fertility Treatments Are Declining More than one-third of U.S. twins, and more than three-quarters of triplets and other multiple births, are now born as a result of fertility treatments, according to estimates from a new study. In 2011, 36 percent of twin births and 77 percent of triplet and higher-order births (quadruplets, etc.) were aided by fertility treatments, which include both in vitro fertilization (IVF) and other treatments, such as the use of drugs to stimulate the ovaries and induce ovulation, the study found. After that, the proportion of triplet and higher-order births attributable to IVF declined by 33 percent (from 48 percent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2011). However, there's still a lot of work to be done to reduce the U.S. rate of multiple births, said study researcher Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brown University. Read More » Climate Scientist: 2 Degrees of Warming Too Much  | NEW YORK — Famed climate scientist and activist James Hansen has said it before, and he'll say it again: Two degrees of warming is too much. International climate negotiators agreed in the Copenhagen Accord, a global agreement on climate change that took place at the 2009 United Nations' Climate Change Conference, that warming this century shouldn't increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But in a new paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Hansen and a cadre of co-authors from a wide array of disciplines argue that even 2 degrees is too much, and would "subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm," Hansen wrote in an accompanying essay distributed to reporters. The new study is a departure from the typical climate science paper, both for the wide variety of fields represented in the list of co-authors, which includes economist Jeffrey Sachs, as well as for the policy implications it raises, something climate scientists tend to shy away from.
| Read More » How to See Venus and Moon in Daytime Sky Thursday  | Venus and the moon get together for yet another celestial dalliance on Thursday (Dec. 5), and you should be able to see the pair in a blue daytime sky. Venus is 38.5 million miles (61.9 million kilometers) from Earth at the moment, while the moon is nearly 173 times closer at 222,800 miles (358,700 km) away.
| Read More » Sunken Japanese WWII Submarine Discovered Off Hawaiian Coast  | A World War II-era Japanese submarine that had been captured and intentionally sunk by U.S. forces was discovered earlier this year in its watery tomb. Researchers at the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL), headquartered at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, located the missing I-400 submarine off Oahu's southwest coast, sitting more than 2,300 feet (700 meters) below sea level. The I-400 was one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Sen Toku-class submarines, which were the largest submarines ever built before the age of nuclear-powered subs. These massive vessels were longer than a football field, and were used as submarine aircraft carriers.
| Read More » Undersea Miracle: How Man in Sunken Ship Survived 3 Days  | Harrison Okene, the ship's cook, was in the bathroom when the boat turned over and began to sink. In the predawn darkness, Okene was tossed from the bathroom wearing only his boxer shorts. Okene was luckier than his crewmates, however. Almost naked, with no food or fresh water, in a cold, wet room with a dwindling supply of oxygen, Okene's odds of survival seemed to be near-zero.
| Read More » Mummy Mystery: Multiple Tombs Hidden in Egypt's Valley of Kings  | Multiple tombs lay hidden in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where royalty were buried more than 3,000 years ago, awaiting discovery, say researchers working on the most extensive exploration of the area in nearly a century. Egyptian archaeologists excavated the valley, where royalty were buried during the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.), between 2007 and 2010 and worked with the Glen Dash Foundation for Archaeological Research to conduct ground- penetrating radar studies. The team has already made a number of discoveries in the valley, including a flood control system that the ancient Egyptians created but, mysteriously, failed to maintain. The team collected a huge amount of data that will take a long time to analyze properly, wrote Afifi Ghonim, who was the field director of the project, in an email to LiveScience.
| Read More » Tidy Cavemen: Neanderthals Organized Their Shelters  | New research suggests that Neanderthals kept a tidy home. During excavations at a cave in Italy where a group of our closest known extinct relatives once lived, scientists say they found a strategically placed hearth and separate spaces for butchering and tool-making. In recent years, researchers have discovered that Neanderthals made tools, buried their dead, used fire and maybe even adorned themselves with feathers, bucking our ancient cousins' reputation as stocky brutes. "There has been this idea that Neanderthals did not have an organized use of space, something that has always been attributed to humans," study researcher Julien Riel-Salvatore, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver, said in a statement.
| Read More » Sharks Do Get Cancer: Tumor Found in Great White  | Scientists have known for more than 150 years that sharks get cancer. That misconception is promoted in part by those who sell shark cartilage, who claim that the substance will help cure cancer, said David Shiffman, a shark researcher and doctoral student at the University of Miami. But no studies have shown that shark cartilage is an effective treatment, and the demand for the material has helped decimate shark populations, researchers say: Humans kill about 100 million sharks per year, according to a March 2013 study (although many factors contribute to the killing of sharks, including demand for shark-fin soup). "This was a very unusual sight as we have never before seen a [great] white shark with tumors," said Rachel Robbins, a study co-author and shark biologist at the Fox Shark Research Foundation, near Adelaide, in southern Australia.
| Read More » Valley Girl Talk Is, Like, Everywhere in Southern California SAN FRANCISCO — Valley girl talk, a style of talking marked by a rise in pitch at the end of sentences, is not just for rich girls from Encino any more. The uptalk is, like, totally ubiquitous amongst native Southern Californians of all demographics, including males, new research shows. Understanding that prevalence could help prevent miscommunications or negative impressions by Midwesterners and others unfamiliar with the SoCal language, said study co-author Amanda Ritchart, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of California San Diego. In Southern California, "most people talk like this, including males and people from all different ethnic groups," said Ritchart, who will present the findings today (Dec. 5) here at the 166th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Read More » Swiss expert contests French finding that Arafat not poisoned  | By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - A Swiss scientist who examined samples from the body of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said French experts had made weak arguments in concluding that he could not have died of poisoning in 2004. French forensic examiners commissioned by magistrates investigating Arafat's death in a Paris hospital assessed on Tuesday that he had not been killed with radioactive polonium found in abnormally high levels in his body and clothing. The Swiss approach resembled that of the French inquiry but dug deeper into the mystery, said Francois Bochud, director of the institute of radiation physics at University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV) who helped exhume Arafat's remains a year ago. Arafat, who signed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords with Israel but then led an uprising after subsequent talks broke down in 2000, died aged 75 in November 2004.
| Read More » Teens' Bonds with Parents Affect Their Sleep During the study, teens' sleep decreased from 9.2 hour per night (on school nights) at age 12, to 7.8 hours per night at age 15. Teens' social ties were much stronger predictors of changes in their sleep patterns than their stages of puberty, the researchers said. The findings underscore the notion that, with regard to sleep habits, "teens' lives, in their totality, matters…not just the phase of puberty," they're going through, said study researcher David Maume, a sociology professor at the University of Cincinnati. Teens were more likely to get adequate sleep if their parents kept close tabs on their child's activities. Read More » US Pregnancy Rate Reaches 12-Year Low The U.S. pregnancy rate has fallen almost continuously over the last decade, and reached a 12-year low in 2009, according to a new government report. Researchers analyzed information on U.S. pregnancy rates for women ages 15 to 44 over the last two decades, with 2009 being the most recent year with data available. During that period, the U.S. pregnancy rate fell 12 percent, from 115.8 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 1990, to 102.1 pregnancies per 1,000 women in 2009. The total number of pregnancies in 2009 was about 6.3 million, which resulted in 4.1 million live births, 1.1 million induced abortions and 1.1 million pregnancy losses, according to the report. Read More » Measles Cases Spiked in 2013, CDC Reports Nearly 200 cases of measles have been reported in the United States so far this year, making 2013 one of the worst for measles outbreaks in the last decade, according to new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases usually occur when a person is infected with measles in another country, and brings the virus back to the United States. Nearly all measles cases in 2013 could be traced back to an infection that occurred abroad, the CDC said. The increase in cases in 2013 serves as a reminder that measles cases anywhere in the world have the potential to cause an outbreak in the United States, said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC. Read More » | |
