An international team of astronomers reports April 29 the confirmation of the discovery of a giant planet, approximately five times the mass of Jupiter, that is gravitationally bound to a young brown dwarf. This discovery puts an end to a yearlong discussion on the nature of this object, which started with the detection of a red object close to the brown dwarf.
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UAB and international scientists studying iron-overload disorders have made the unexpected discovery, reported in today’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, that Asians and Pacific Islanders have the highest levels of iron in their blood of all racial/ethnic groups who were screened.
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A new optical method that can image subsurface structures under skin has been demonstrated by scientists at NIST and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The method was demonstrated with small pieces of pigskin and inorganic materials but might eventually prove useful for imaging living tissues to help diagnose or determine the extent of various types of skin cancers.
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Severely obese children have lipoprotein profiles that signal early risk of cardiovascular disease and the metabolic syndrome.
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In 1921 Einstein won the Nobel Prize not for his work on relativity, but for solving a puzzle that had baffled scientists since 1887 — the photoelectric effect. Today (Friday 29th April 2005) New Journal of Physics (NJP) published a special celebratory focus issue containing a series of new papers looking at the latest applications of the phenomenon first explained by Einstein one hundred years ago. NJP is co-owned by the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (the German Physical Society).
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Spirituality and the practice of religion may help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, according to research that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology 57th Annual Meeting in Miami Beach.
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Scientists from the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) have provided new evidence that ocean circulation changes lagged behind, and were not the cause of, major climate changes at the beginning and end of the last ice age (short intervals known as glacial boundaries), according to a study published in the March 2005 issue of Science magazine.
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Early-stage breast cancer patients of Japanese descent that are treated with a lumpectomy and radiation therapy are more likely to be cured of their cancer than women of other ancestries, according to a new study published in the May 2005 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.
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For the first time an X-ray image of a pair of interacting stars has been made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The ability to distinguish between the interacting stars — one a highly evolved giant star and the other likely a white dwarf — allowed a team of scientists to observe an X-ray outburst from the giant star and find evidence that a bridge of hot matter is streaming between the two stars.
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Research conducted in monkeys at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, suggests high doses of vitamin C may have potential to counteract some negative impacts of smoking in unborn babies. The research may benefit thousands of babies born to mothers who continue to smoke throughout pregnancy despite physician warnings.
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