Space Weather Center to add world's first 'ensemble forecasting' capability

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Improved Forecasting to Coincide with Peak in Solar Activity

After years of relative somnolence, the sun is beginning to stir. By the time it's fully awake in about 20 months, the team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., charged with researching and tracking solar activity, will have at their disposal a greatly enhanced forecasting capability.

NASA sees a weakening Cyclone Funso's 'closed eye'

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Powerful Cyclone Funso's eye has been clear in NASA satellite imagery over the last several days until NASA's Aqua satellite noticed it had "closed" and become filled with high clouds on January 27.

NASA eyes cyclone Iggy's threat to western Australia

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NASA satellites are providing valuable data to forecasters as Tropical Cyclone Iggy nears Western Australia. NASA's Aqua satellite provided visible and infrared data on Iggy, observing colder cloud tops and strengthening storm. Iggy has already triggered warnings and watches along coastal areas.

The secret life of proteins

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CHICAGO --- Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers have identified a new and unusual role for a key player in the human immune system. A protein initially believed to regulate one routine function within the cell has proven vital for another critical step in the activation of the immune system.

UT researchers' innovation addresses major challenge of drug delivery

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A new physical form of proteins developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could drastically improve treatments for cancer and other diseases, as well as overcome some of the largest challenges in therapeutics: delivering drugs to patients safely, easily and more effectively.

Head & neck cancer in transplant patients: For better or worse?

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DETROIT – Transplant patients who develop head and neck cancer are more likely to be non-smokers and non-drinkers, and less likely than their non-transplant counterparts to survive past one year of diagnosis, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

As part of a 20-year review, Henry Ford researchers found cancers of the throat, tonsils and mouth may be more aggressive in transplant recipients as the result of long-term immunosuppressive therapy required to prevent solid organ rejection.

OHSU discovery may lead to new treatment for Rett Syndrome

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Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (http://www.ohsu.edu) have discovered that a molecule critical to the development and plasticity of nerve cells – brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) -- is severely lacking in brainstem neurons in mutations leading to Rett syndrome, a neurological developmental disorder. The finding has implications for the treatment of neurological disorders, including Rett syndrome that affects one in 10,000 baby girls.

The amygdala and fear are not the same thing

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In a 2007 episode of the television show Boston Legal, a character claimed to have figured out that a cop was racist because his amygdala activated – displaying fear, when they showed him pictures of black people. This link between the amygdala and fear – especially a fear of others unlike us, has gone too far, not only in pop culture, but also in psychological science, say the authors of a new paper which will be published in the February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

SwRI-led RAD measures radiation from solar storm

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The largest solar particle event since 2005 hit the Earth, Mars and the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft travelling in-between, allowing the onboard Radiation Assessment Detector to measure the radiation a human astronaut could be exposed to en route to the Red Planet.

The pupils are the windows to the mind

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The eyes are the window into the soul—or at least the mind, according to a new paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Measuring the diameter of the pupil, the part of the eye that changes size to let in more light, can show what a person is paying attention to. Pupillometry, as it's called, has been used in social psychology, clinical psychology, humans, animals, children, infants—and it should be used even more, the authors say.