Solar flare surprise

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Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Packing a punch equal to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, they obliterate everything in their immediate vicinity. Not a single atom should remain intact.

At least that's how it's supposed to work.

"We've detected a stream of perfectly intact hydrogen atoms shooting out of an X-class solar flare," says Richard Mewaldt of the California Institute of Technology. "What a surprise! If we can understand how these atoms were produced, we'll be that much closer to understanding solar flares."

Warming climate signals big changes for ski areas, says University of Colorado study

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Rocky Mountain ski areas face dramatic changes this century as the climate warms, including best-case scenarios of shortened ski seasons and higher snowlines and worst-case scenarios of bare base areas and winter rains, says a new Colorado study.

God or science? A belief in one weakens positive feelings for the other

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A person's unconscious attitudes toward science and God may be fundamentally opposed, researchers report, depending on how religion and science are used to answer "ultimate" questions such as how the universe began or the origin of life.

Moving in for the winter toxic brown recluse spiders pose danger

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COLUMBIA, Mo. – As the cold weather creeps in, so do brown recluse spiders. True to their name, the brown recluse is a shy, reclusive spider looking for a warm home. Drawn to clutter, closets and complex storage environments, the spiders actually want to stay away from humans. But, if care is not taken, people could find themselves sharing their home with one of 'the big three,' according to a University of Missouri entomologist. The brown recluse is one of three spiders in the United States considered venomous – the other two are the black widow and the hobo spider.

Prostaglandin receptor key to atherosclerosis development

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Atherosclerosis – a disease that includes the buildup of fatty, cholesterol-laden lumps of cells inside the artery wall – is the underlying cause of heart attacks and strokes.

A team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators has now demonstrated that a receptor for prostaglandin-E2 plays a key role in the development of atherosclerosis. The findings, reported this month in Cell Metabolism, point to this receptor and its signaling pathways as molecular targets for modulating atherosclerosis development.

Reducing the damage of a heart attack

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NEW YORK (Dec. 15, 2008) -- In the aftermath of a heart attack, the body's own defenses may contribute to future heart failure. Authors of a new study believe they have identified a protein that plays an important role in a process that replaces dead heart muscle with stiffening scar tissue. The researchers are hopeful that the findings will lead to the development of new therapies to prevent this damage.

Columbia University scientist devises new way to more rapidly generate bone tissue

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NEW YORK (Dec. 15, 2008) – Using stem cell lines not typically combined, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have designed a new way to "grow" bone and other tissues.

Breast cancer genome shows evolution, instability of cancer

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HOUSTON (Dec. 15, 2008) – A newly published genome sequence of a breast cancer cell line reveals a heavily rearranged genetic blueprint involving breaks and fusions of genes and a broken DNA repair machinery, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears online in the journal Genome Research.

Shared survival mechanism explains why 'good' nerve cells last and 'bad' cancer cells flourish

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CHAPEL HILL – Cancer cells and nervous system neurons may not look or act alike, but both use strikingly similar ways to survive, according to new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

The study published in the December issue of Nature Cell Biology is the first to describe how neurons (nerve cells) and cancer cells achieve the common goal of inhibiting the series of biochemical events called apoptosis that eventually causes cells to break down and die.

NASA instruments document contraction of the boundary between the Earth's ionosphere, space

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GREENBELT, Md. - Observations made by NASA instruments onboard an Air Force satellite have shown that the boundary between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space has moved to extraordinarily low altitudes. These observations were made by the Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamics Investigation (CINDI) instrument suite, which was launched aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite on April 16, 2008.