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“It’s definitely bigger than Pluto.” So says Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology who announced today the discovery of a new planet in the outer solar system. The planet, which hasn’t been officially named yet, was found by Brown and colleagues using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. It is currently about 97 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 97 Astronomical Units (AU). For comparison, Pluto is 40 AU from the sun.

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A medication used to ease symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, also is helpful in treating people with treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), according to a pilot study at Yale School of Medicine. Although the study included only 13 patients, the preliminary results are promising for persons who have found no relief using other medications and cognitive behavioral therapy, said the first author, Vladimir Coric, M.D.

Using high-speed collisions between gold atoms, scientists think they have re-created one of the most mysterious forms of matter in the universe — quark-gluon plasma. This form of matter was present during the first microsecond of the Big Bang and may still exist at the cores of dense, distant stars.

Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have overcome a major hurdle in the race to create nanotube-based electronics. In an article in the August issue of the journal Nature Materials, available online now, the researchers describe their method of using nanotubes tiny tubes entirely composed of carbon atoms — to create a functional electronic circuit. Their method creates circuits by dipping semiconductor chips into liquid suspensions of carbon nanotubes, rather than growing the nanotubes directly on the circuit.

New software can help people make better decisions in time-stressed situations
Human teams aided by a software system can make decisions more accurately and quickly in time-stressed situations than teams of just people, according to the Penn State researchers who developed the new software. The researchers tested their software in a military command-and-control simulation which involved intelligence gathering, logistics and force protection.

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has found the ingredients for life all the way back to a time when the universe was a mere youngster. Using Spitzer, scientists have detected organic molecules in galaxies when our universe was one-fourth of its current age of about 14 billion years. These large molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are comprised of carbon and hydrogen. The molecules are considered to be among the building blocks of life.

Millions of hospital patients could be spared the humiliation and infection risk that come with a urine-collecting catheter, a new study finds, if hospitals used a simple reminder system to prompt doctors to remove the devices after two days. About 25 percent of hospital patients at any given time have urinary catheters — and a substantial proportion of patients have them much longer than they really need them, experts say. This greatly raises their risk of getting a painful urinary tract infection or even a blood infection

Images taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft show a patch of water ice sitting on the floor of an unnamed crater near the Martian north pole. The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 1343 with a ground resolution of approximately 15 metres per pixel. The unnamed impact crater is located on Vastitas Borealis, a broad plain that covers much of Mars’s far northern latitudes, at approximately 70.5° North and 103° East.

Researchers have isolated compounds from the vegetable broccoli that they believe may help prevent or slow the progress of bladder cancer. The current work builds on a major study conducted six years ago by Harvard and Ohio State universities that found that men who ate two or more half-cup servings of broccoli per week had a 44 percent lower incidence of bladder cancer compared to men who ate less than one serving each week.

Wound healing is slow when an animal is stressed, but extra oxygen almost completely reverses the effect, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In a study of laboratory mice, Phillip Marucha, professor of periodontics at the UIC College of Dentistry, and his colleagues found that psychological stress, brought on by confinement, delayed the closing of wounds by more than 45 percent.

What do hot sauce aficionados and African elephants have in common? They both feel the burn of chilli peppers, the key ingredient for resolving human-elephant conflicts in Africa while raising money for farmers and conservation. Supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and other groups, the Elephant Pepper Development Trust (EPDT) has not only promoted the use of chilli peppers as a means of keeping elephants, buffalo, and other species away from important sources of human food, but has also introduced a viable cash crop to the economy of African nations.

A survey of middle-school girls reveals that their self-confidence in math suffers when their parents believe the gender stereotype that holds that math is a male domain and when the parents give unsolicited help with homework. “There’s still a gender gap in math and science, It’s not a gap about performance or achievement. It’s about attitudes. Girls are not as confident about math and science.”

Air pollution blows across the Pacific Ocean from Asia to North America far more regularly than was previously thought, says a new UC Davis study. The findings are likely to affect attempts to clear hazy skies over much of the U.S. and to understand how growing Asian air pollution will influence global climate change.

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A new image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows that a galaxy once thought to be rather plain and old is actually endowed with a gorgeous set of young spiral arms. The unusual galaxy, called NGC 4625, is a remarkable find because it is relatively nearby. Until now, astronomers had thought that this kind of youthful glow in galaxies was a thing of the past.

Effective control of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) requires treatment of the sexual partners of infected patients. A new study shows that providing infected men with antibiotics to give their partners is more effective than traditional means of contacting and treating the partners, according to an article in the Sept. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. Men with chlamydia or gonorrhea were more likely to see and talk to their female partners about the STD when given medicine to give to their partners than the men who were simply told to inform their partners of their STD exposure.

Patients who are delirious during hospitalization one year later had 13 percent fewer days of survival during the following year when compared to patients without delirium, according to a study published this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Delirium is a frequent problem for hospitalized older patients with consequences ranging from increased morbidity and mortality, persistent functional decline and increased and costlier hospital stay to higher rates of nursing home placement, increased caregiver burden, and overall higher health care costs, the researchers said.

Scientists have made progress in understanding what causes migraines. The research reveals how gene mutations known to cause a form of inherited migraine–the kind that cause debilitating headaches and light flashes known as auras–target a cellular process involved in brain cell communication.

Combining partially differentiated stem cells with gene therapy can promote the growth of new “insulation” around nerve fibers in the damaged spinal cords of rats, a new study shows. The treatment, which mimics the activity of two nerve growth factors, also improves the animals’ motor function and electrical conduction from the brain to the leg muscles. The finding may eventually lead to new ways of treating spinal cord injury in humans. The study was funded in part by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.