Clark Science Center Intranet

Two volcanoes erupting in Alaska: Scientists are monitoring and providing ale...
Two of Alaska's most active volcanoes -- Pavlof and Cleveland -- are currently erupting. At the time of this post, their activity continues at low levels, but energetic explosions could occur without warning. Located close to the western end of the Alaska Peninsula, Pavlof is one of the most active ...

Students perform well regardless of reading print or digital books
Students did equally well on a test whether reading from a digital book or a printed one, new research shows.

Driving and hands-free talking lead to spike in errors
A pilot study shows driving while talking on a hands-free cellular device leads to more driving errors than driving alone.

Cosmic swirly straws: Galaxies fed by funnels of fuel
Computer simulations of galaxies growing over billions of years have revealed a likely scenario for how they feed: a cosmic version of swirly straws. The results show that cold gas -- fuel for stars -- spirals into the cores of galaxies along filaments, rapidly making its way to their "guts." Once t...

Active or 'extremely active' Atlantic hurricane season predicted for 2013
In its 2013 Atlantic hurricane season outlook issued today, NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is forecasting an active or extremely active season this year.

Facial-recognition technology proves its mettle
In a study that evaluated some of the latest in automatic facial recognition technology, researchers were able to quickly identify one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects from law enforcement video, an experiment that demonstrated the value of such technology.

How playing surfaces affect athletic performance, injury potential
Students have been jumping up and down for weeks on a variety of playing surfaces in a study to evaluate how each affects athletic performance and injury potential.

Research effort deep underground could sort out cosmic-scale mysteries
Scientists have begun delivery of germanium-76 detectors to an underground laboratory in South Dakota in a team research effort that might explain the puzzling imbalance between matter and antimatter generated by the Big Bang.

Perfect skin: More touchy-feely robots
Robots could become a lot more 'sensitive' thanks to new artificial skins and sensor technologies. Leading to better robotic platforms that could one day be used in industry, hospitals and even at home.

The better to see you with: Scientists build record-setting metamaterial flat...
For the first time, scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a new type of lens that bends and focuses ultraviolet (UV) light in such an unusual way that it can create ghostly, 3D images of objects that float in free space. The easy-to-build l...

Modulating the immune system to combat metastatic cancer
Researchers have found that regulatory T cells that infiltrate tumors express proteins that can be targeted with therapeutic antibodies.

New fluorescent tools for cancer diagnosis
Researchers have developed a multicolor fluorescence labeling method that can be used to visualize miRNAs in tissue sections, such as those recovered from biopsies.

Youth with type 2 diabetes at much higher risk for heart, kidney disease
The news about youth and diabetes keeps getting worse. The latest data shows that children with type 2 diabetes are at high risk to develop heart, kidney and eye problems faster and at a higher rate than adults with diabetes.

Promising strategy to help vaccines outsmart HIV
New research highlights an ingenious method to ensure the body effectively reacts when infected with the highly-evasive HIV virus that causes AIDS. The method involves the use of cytomegalovirus as a vector to help a vaccine better instruct T cells how to identify and fight the virus.

Hormone levels may provide key to understanding psychological disorders in women
Women at a particular stage in their monthly menstrual cycle may be more vulnerable to some of the psychological side-effects associated with stressful experiences, according to a study from UCL.

Proteins in migration: New animal model provides important clues on mechanism...
Scientists have developed a novel experimental model that reproduces for the first time this pattern of alpha-synuclein brain spreading and provides important clues on the mechanisms underlying this pathological process. They triggered the production of human alpha-synuclein in the lower rat brain a...

Monkey teeth help reveal Neanderthal weaning
Most modern human mothers wean their babies much earlier than our closest primate relatives. But what about our extinct relatives, the Neanderthals? A team of U.S. and Australian researchers reports that they can now use fossil teeth to calculate when a Neanderthal baby was weaned. The new technique...

Hormone replacement therapy: British Menopause Society and Women's Health Con...
The British Menopause Society and Women's Health Concern have released updated guidelines on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to provide clarity around the role of HRT, the benefits and the risks. The new guidelines appear in the society's flagship title, Menopause International, published by SAGE.

Young children who miss well-child visits are more likely to be hospitalized
Young children who missed more than half of recommended well-child visits had up to twice the risk of hospitalization compared to children who attended most of their visits, according to a new study.

Detection of the cosmic gamma ray horizon: Measures all the light in the univ...
Radiation from all galaxies that ever existed suffuses the universe with a diffuse extragalactic background light (EBL). Measuring the EBL is as fundamental to cosmology as measuring heat from the Big Bang (cosmic microwave background) at radio wavelengths. Researchers describe the best measurement ...