ScienceBlog.com

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of Jupiter early this morning, using the massive planet’s gravity to pick up speed on its 3-billion mile voyage to Pluto and the unexplored Kuiper Belt region beyond.

To find prey and avoid being preyed upon, fish rely on a row of specialized sensory organs along the sides of their bodies, called the lateral line. Now, a research team led by Chang Liu at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has built an artificial lateral line that can provide the same functions in underwater vehicles.

Two researchers have established that quantum information cannot be ‘hidden’ in conventional ways, or in other words, “quantum information can run but it can’t hide.” This result gives a surprising new twist to one of the great mysteries about black holes.

Improved transportation systems, tighter building codes and financing for energy-efficiency investments are among the measures recommended in a new scientific report on coping with climate change that was prepared at the request of the United Nations.

Deep red tomatoes get their rich color from lycopene, a disease-fighting antioxidant. A new study, however, suggests that a special variety of orange-colored tomatoes provide a different form of lycopene, one that our bodies may more readily use. Researchers found that eating spaghetti covered in sauce made from these orange tomatoes, called Tangerine tomatoes, caused a noticeable boost in this form of lycopene in participants’ blood.

The release of a new movie often generates quite a “buzz.” However, behind the excitement is a less publicized debate between studios and theater owners. At issue is profitability and how best to distribute new releases.

A car wastes energy almost continuously. Whether it is running in first, second, or a higher gear, there is only one position of the accelerator that guarantees optimal performance. Accelerating a little less or a little bit more can cause considerable loss of energy. John Kessels has designed a way to save energy by enabling the car to achieve optimal engine performance more frequently.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved Humira (adalimumab) to treat adult patients with moderately to severely active Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestines, which affects an estimated one million Americans. Humira is a human-derived, genetically-engineered monoclonal antibody (a protein that can be produced in large quantities in a manufacturing plant).

NASA officials have announced that Space Shuttle Atlantis will roll back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repair after Monday’s hail storm. “This constitutes the worst damage from hail that we have seen on external tank foam,” said Wayne Hale, manager of the Space Shuttle Program.

Molecular scientists have developed a new procedure for the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, with which they have created the first transplantable source of lung epithelial cells.

The brain appears to process information more chaotically than has long been assumed. This is demonstrated by a new study conducted by scientists at the University of Bonn.

Scientists were startled when they discovered in 2004 that the center of our galaxy is emitting gamma rays with energies in the tens of trillions of electronvolts. Now astrophysicists at The University of Arizona, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Adelaide (Australia) have discovered a mechanism that might produce these high-energy gamma rays. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way could be working like a cosmic particle accelerator, revving up protons that smash at incredible speeds into lower energy protons and creating high-energy gamma rays, they report.

Three forms of garlic—including raw garlic and two types of commercial garlic supplements—did not significantly reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad”) cholesterol during a six-month trial, according to results published in the February 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine

Men who regularly take commonly available and widely used pain relievers may have an increased risk of high blood pressure compared with those who do not use these medications, according to a report in the Feb. 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

I like this, from GlobalWarmingFacts.info:

Global warming is a dramatically urgent and serious problem. We don’t need to wait for governments to solve this problem: each one of us can bring an important help adopting a more responsible lifestyle: starting from little, everyday things. It’s the only reasonable way to save our planet, before it is too late.

Mathematicians have finally laid to rest the legendary mystery surrounding an elusive group of numerical expressions known as the “mock theta functions.” Number theorists have struggled to understand the functions ever since the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan first alluded to them in a letter written on his deathbed, in 1920.

Five years ago, Sharon Schafer Bennett suffered from migraines so severe that the headaches disrupted her life, kept her from seeking a job and interfered with participation in her children’s daily activities. Now, thanks to an innovative surgical technique performed by a UT Southwestern Medical Center plastic surgeon who helped pioneer the procedure, the frequency and intensity of Mrs. Bennett’s migraines have diminished dramatically – from two to three per week to an occasional one every few months.

Astronomers have found what appears to be a black hole 25 to 40 times the mass of our Sun, a weight class not previously known to exist.

Black holes can’t be seen, because any light that enters them is trapped. So to find black holes, scientists look for intense radiation from around them as well as their gravitational effects on nearby gas and stars.

One of the defining differences between the sexes is in the size of their gametes. Males make many tiny sperm while females make only a few large eggs. This suggests that sperm are cheap while eggs are expensive. Yet sperm can be very long lived, while eggs degenerate quickly after they are made if they are not fertilized. Why don’t females take better care of their expensive eggs?

A team of biologists with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have recorded for the first time the call of the extremely rare Sumatran ground cuckoo, found only on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. The bird was captured by a trapper and handed over to WCS biologists, who recorded the bird’s call while it nursed an injured foot. Once fully recovered, the bird will be released back into the wild.