The most complex interplanetary mission ever launched is about to meet one of our Solar System’s most enigmatic moons. The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft will fly by Saturn’s largest outer moon, Phoebe, on Friday, 11 June 2004. The spacecraft will capture images of Phoebe that have a resolution more than a thousand times better than existing technology has allowed in the past.
Society is losing $2.4 billion per year because the Colorado River’s water no longer flows all the way to the Gulf of California, says a University of Arizona researcher. It’s the first dollar estimate of the benefits society would get from the natural functioning of a healthy Colorado River delta. Functioning ecosystems provide benefits, known as ecosystem services, to humans. However, so much Colorado River water has been dammed or diverted for human uses that the river’s delta no longer works the way it used to.
For years, researchers have examined climate records indicating that millennial-scale climate cycles have linked the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere and the subtropics of the North Pacific Ocean. What forces this linkage, however, has been a topic of considerable debate. Did the connection originate in the North Pacific with the sinking of oxygen-rich waters into the interior of the ocean during cool climate intervals, or did it originate in the subtropical Pacific with the transfer of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere?
A new study of patients who undergo cardiothoracic surgery has found the elderly, people with diabetes and women were more likely to develop a serious, potentially fatal chest infection caused by drug-resistant bacteria. “The infection occurs infrequently, but when it does occur, it is extraordinarily devastating,” said Vance Fowler, M.D., assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center. “It’s catastrophic for the patient and expensive for the health-care system.”
NASA and University of Maryland scientists have found the African monsoon consists of two distinct seasons.The first season is in the late spring and early summer. The rain is concentrated on the West African Coast near the Gulf of Guinea, five degrees north of the equator. This season appears strongly influenced by sea surface temperatures off the coast of West Africa.
Men with aggressive, metastatic prostate cancer who receive immediate early hormone therapy live on average three to four years longer than others who delay similar treatment, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. Hormone therapy, designed to reduce the production of testosterone known to cause prostate cancer progression, is effective immediately following surgery or radiation therapy, according to Edward M. Messing, M.D., of the University of Rochester Medical Center. He led a randomized, prospective study that focused on the effectiveness of immediate or delayed hormone therapy.
The most complex interplanetary mission ever launched is about to meet one of the solar system’s enigmatic moons. Cassini will fly by Saturn’s largest outer moon, Phoebe, on Friday, June 11. The closest approach is at approximately 1:56 p.m. Pacific Time, just 19 days before Saturn arrival. A final trajectory correction maneuver is scheduled for June 16. On arrival date, June 30, Cassini will become the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn. Once in orbit it will conduct an extensive, four-year tour of the Saturn system, including its majestic rings and many known moons.
As summer temperatures rise so will people’s thirst. Unfortunately, many people will grab a pop or ice tea instead of water. It isn’t just cola’s empty calories (about 150 per 12-ounce can) you should worry about. Many of these carbonated beverages ? especially non-cola drinks and canned ice tea — harm enamel, the protective shell around teeth. A pilot study of the effects some of these beverages had on enamel, appearing in the July/August 2004 issue of General Dentistry, the Academy of General Dentistry’s (AGD) clinical, peer-reviewed journal, found that over time, exposing dental enamel to carbonated beverages weakens and permanently destroys enamel.
An international research team has identified a virulent, new genetic risk factor for colon cancer ? a discovery that could lead to early screening and treatment for people who have this genetic disposition to contract the disease. The team discovered a novel mutant gene in Israeli colon cancer patients. The researchers also discovered that the presence of the gene significantly increased the risk of colon cancer among these patients.
Early results from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine study may determine if drugs called Cox-2 inhibitors, a newer type of non-aspirin pain medicine now widely prescribed for arthritis symptoms, may benefit men with recurrent prostate cancer. The new findings demonstrate that Cox-2 inhibitors may have anti-tumor effects on prostate cancer and may slow disease progression in men whose PSA blood tests indicate the cancer’s recurrence, the researchers said. Findings were presented June 6 at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting.
For the first time in humans, a team headed by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains. The use of a grid atop the brain to record brain surface signals is a brain-machine interface technique that uses electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity-data taken invasively right from the brain surface. It is an alternative to the status quo, used frequently studying humans, called electroencephalographic activity (EEG) – data taken non-invasively by electrodes outside the brain on the skull.
African Americans suffer from cardiovascular diseases at a rate about five times higher than the rest of the U.S. population. In a new study, scientists may have found a culprit: a serious deficiency of nitric oxide, a small molecule vital in the regulation of blood flow and blood pressure.
Scientists have announced new results that change the best estimate of the mass of the postulated Higgs boson from approximately 96 GeV/c2 to 117 GeV/c2. Compared to the previous value, the new value is in better agreement with direct searches – such as those conducted by CERN experiments – that excluded a mass below 114 GeV/c2. In a paper to appear in the June 10 issue of Nature magazine, physicists of Fermilab’s DZero experiment report on results obtained by applying a new analysis technique to data obtained from 1992 to 1996 during Collider Run I at the Fermilab Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator.