Ground-based detection of super-Earth transit paves way to remote sensing of exoplanets

Astronomers have measured the passing of a super-Earth in front of a bright, nearby Sun-like star using a ground-based telescope for the first time. The transit of the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is the shallowest detected from the ground yet. Since detecting a transit is the first step in analyzing a planet's atmosphere, this success bodes well for characterizing the many small planets that upcoming space missions are expected to discover in the next few years.

The international research team used the 2.5-meter Nordic Optical Telescope on the island of La Palma, Spain, a moderate-sized facility by today's standards but equipped with state-of-the-art instruments, to make the detection. Previous observations of this planet transit had to rely on space-borne telescopes.

The host star, 55 Cancri, is located just 40 light-years away from us and is visible to the naked eye. During its transit, the planet crosses 55 Cancri and blocks a tiny fraction of the starlight, dimming the star by 1/2000th (or 0.05%) for almost two hours. This shows that the planet is about twice the size of Earth, or 16,000 miles in diameter.

"Our observations show that we can detect the transits of small planets around Sun-like stars using ground-based telescopes," says Ernst de Mooij of Queen's University Belfast in the United Kingdom, lead author of the study.

He continues, "This is especially important because upcoming space missions such as TESS and PLATO should find many small planets around bright stars and we will want to follow up the discoveries with ground-based instruments."

TESS is a NASA mission scheduled for launch in 2017, while PLATO is to be launched in 2024 by the European Space Agency; both will search for transiting terrestrial planets around nearby bright stars.

"With this result we are also closing in on the detection of the atmospheres of small planets with ground-based telescopes," says co-author Mercedes Lopez-Morales of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "We are slowly paving the way toward the detection of bio-signatures in Earth-like planets around nearby stars."

"It's remarkable what we can do by pushing the limits of existing telescopes and instruments, despite the complications posed by the Earth's own turbulent atmosphere," says study co-author Ray Jayawardhana of York Univerity in Canada. "Remote sensing across tens of light-years isn't easy, but it can be done with the right technique and a bit of ingenuity."

The planet 55 Cancri e is about twice as big and eight times as massive as Earth. With a period of 18 hours, it is the innermost of five planets in the system. Because of its proximity to the host star, the planet's dayside temperature reaches over 3100° Fahrenheit (1700° Celsius), hot enough to melt metal, with conditions far from hospitable to life. Initially identified a decade ago through radial velocity measurements, it was later confirmed through transit observations with the MOST and Spitzer space telescopes.

Until now, the transits of only one other super-Earth, GJ 1214b circling a red dwarf, had been observed with ground-based telescopes. The Earth's roiling air makes such observations extremely difficult. But the team's success with 55 Cancri e raises the prospects of characterizing dozens of super-Earths likely to be revealed by upcoming surveys.

"We expect these surveys to find so many nearby, terrestrial worlds that space telescopes simply won't be able to follow up on all of them. Future ground-based instrumentation will be key, and this study shows it can be done," adds Lopez-Morales.

The research team also includes Raine Karjalainen and Marie Hrudkova of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes. Their findings appear in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

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Climate relicts may help researchers understand climate change

Climate relicts may help researchers understand climate change

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Numerical learning disability: Dyscalculia linked to difficulties in reading and spelling

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Mathematical equation to predict happiness: Doesn't depend on how well things go, but on whether things are better than expected

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Study of twins discovers gene mutation linked to short sleep duration

Study of twins discovers gene mutation linked to short sleep duration

A little video gaming 'linked to well-adjusted children'

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Mercury in the global ocean: three times more mercury in upper ocean since the Industrial Revolution

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Nanostructured metal-oxide catalyst efficiently converts carbon dioxide to methanol, a key commodity for chemicals and fuels

Nanostructured metal-oxide catalyst efficiently converts carbon dioxide to methanol, a key commodity for chemicals and fuels

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Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star

Planet-like object may have spent its youth as hot as a star

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Hubble finds supernova star system linked to potential 'zombie star'

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Massive volcanic outbursts on Jupiter's moon Io: More common than thought?

Study paves way for simple blood test to predict Alzheimer's

 

(Reuters) - British scientists have identified a set of 10 proteins in the blood that can predict the onset of Alzheimer's and call this an important step towards developing a test for the incurable brain-wasting disease.
Such a test could initially be used to select patients for clinical trials of experimental treatments being developed to try to halt progression of Alzheimer's, the researchers said, and may one day move into routine use in doctors' clinics.
"Alzheimer's begins to affect the brain many years before patients are diagnosed (and) many of our drug trials fail because by the time patients are given the drugs the brain has already been too severely affected," said Simon Lovestone of Oxford University, who led this work from King's College London.
"A simple blood test could help us identify patients at a much earlier stage to take part in new trials and hopefully develop treatments," he said.
Shares in biotech company Proteome Sciences, which co-authored the study with scientists from King's College, jumped 12 percent on the news on Tuesday morning.
Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, a brain-wasting disease which in 2010 was estimated to be costing the world $604 billion a year. The fatal disease affects 44 million people worldwide, with the number set to triple by 2050, the campaign group Alzheimer's Disease International says.
Several big pharma firms including Roche, Eli Lilly, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson, are pursuing various approaches to get to the root cause of Alzheimer's and try to find treatments to halt its progression.
Yet over the past 15 years, more than 100 experimental Alzheimer's drugs have failed in trial. Lovestone and other experts believe this may be because drug trials are conducted too late, in patients whose condition has already gone too far.
A predictive test for use before people develop symptoms would help researchers select the right people for drug trials, and help show whether the experimental drugs are working.
SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVE TEST
Previous studies have found that PET brain scans and tests of lumbar fluid can be used to predict the onset of dementia from people with a less severe condition known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), but these tests are expensive and invasive, so scientists are keen to develop a cheaper, simpler blood test.
MCI includes problems with day-to-day memory, language and attention. It can be an early sign of dementia, or a symptom of stress or anxiety.
Around 10 percent of people diagnosed with MCI develop dementia within a year. Apart from regular assessments to measure memory decline, there is currently no accurate way of predicting who will or won't develop dementia.
For this study, published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia, Lovestone's team used blood samples from 1,148 people - 476 with Alzheimer's, 220 with mild cognitive impairment and 452 elderly controls without dementia. They were analysed for 26 proteins previously found to be linked with Alzheimer's.
The team found 16 of these 26 proteins to be strongly associated with brain shrinkage in either MCI or Alzheimer's and then ran a second series of tests to see which of these could predict which patients would progress from MCI to Alzheimer's.
With this second series, they found a combination of 10 proteins capable of predicting with 87 percent accuracy whether people with MCI would develop Alzheimer's disease within a year.
Experts in the field welcomed the results but said they should be replicated in larger studies before an Alzheimer's blood test could be rolled out for use in doctors' clinics.
"The results reported today are interesting, but as the authors point out there is still a very large amount of work remaining until a usable blood test for Alzheimer's disease becomes available," said Adrian Pini of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London.
James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer's Society, said the research "does not mean that a blood test for dementia is just around the corner".
"These 10 proteins can predict conversion to dementia with less than 90 percent accuracy, meaning one in 10 people would get an incorrect result," he said. "Accuracy would need to be improved before it could be a useful diagnostic test."
(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Jason Neely)
 

Watching too much TV may increase risk of early death: Three hours a day linked to premature death from any cause

 

Adults who watch TV for three hours or more each day may double their risk of premature death compared to those who watch less, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

"Television viewing is a major sedentary behavior and there is an increasing trend toward all types of sedentary behaviors," said Miguel Martinez-Gonzalez, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., the study's lead author and professor and chair of the Department of Public Health at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. "Our findings are consistent with a range of previous studies where time spent watching television was linked to mortality."
Researchers assessed 13,284 young and healthy Spanish university graduates (average age 37, 60 percent women) to determine the association between three types of sedentary behaviors and risk of death from all causes: television viewing time, computer time and driving time. The participants were followed for a median 8.2 years. Researchers reported 97 deaths, with 19 deaths from cardiovascular causes, 46 from cancer and 32 from other causes.
The risk of death was twofold higher for participants who reported watching three or more hours of TV a day compared to those watching one or less hours. This twofold higher risk was also apparent after accounting for a wide array of other variables related to a higher risk of death.
Researchers found no significant association between the time spent using a computer or driving and higher risk of premature death from all causes. Researchers said further studies are needed to confirm what effects may exist between computer use and driving on death rates, and to determine the biological mechanisms explaining these associations.
"As the population ages, sedentary behaviors will become more prevalent, especially watching television, and this poses an additional burden on the increased health problems related to aging," Martinez-Gonzalez said. "Our findings suggest adults may consider increasing their physical activity, avoid long sedentary periods, and reduce television watching to no longer than one to two hours each day."
The study cited previous research that suggests that half of U.S. adults are leading sedentary lives.
The American Heart Association recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity each week. You should also do moderate- to high-intensity muscle strengthening at least two days a week.

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Study links Greenland ice sheet collapse, sea level rise 400,000 years ago

 

A new study suggests that a warming period more than 400,000 years ago pushed the Greenland ice sheet past its stability threshold, resulting in a nearly complete deglaciation of southern Greenland and raising global sea levels some 4-6 meters.

The study is one of the first to zero in on how the vast Greenland ice sheet responded to warmer temperatures during that period, which were caused by changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun.
Results of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, are being published this week in the journal Nature.
"The climate 400,000 years ago was not that much different than what we see today, or at least what is predicted for the end of the century," said Anders Carlson, an associate professor at Oregon State University and co-author on the study. "The forcing was different, but what is important is that the region crossed the threshold allowing the southern portion of the ice sheet to all but disappear.
"This may give us a better sense of what may happen in the future as temperatures continue rising," Carlson added.
Few reliable models and little proxy data exist to document the extent of the Greenland ice sheet loss during a period known as the Marine Isotope Stage 11. This was an exceptionally long warm period between ice ages that resulted in a global sea level rise of about 6-13 meters above present. However, scientists have been unsure of how much sea level rise could be attributed to Greenland, and how much may have resulted from the melting of Antarctic ice sheets or other causes.
To find the answer, the researchers examined sediment cores collected off the coast of Greenland from what is called the Eirik Drift. During several years of research, they sampled the chemistry of the glacial stream sediment on the island and discovered that different parts of Greenland have unique chemical features. During the presence of ice sheets, the sediments are scraped off and carried into the water where they are deposited in the Eirik Drift.
"Each terrain has a distinct fingerprint," Carlson noted. "They also have different tectonic histories and so changes between the terrains allow us to predict how old the sediments are, as well as where they came from. The sediments are only deposited when there is significant ice to erode the terrain. The absence of terrestrial deposits in the sediment suggests the absence of ice.
"Not only can we estimate how much ice there was," he added, "but the isotopic signature can tell us where ice was present, or from where it was missing."
This first "ice sheet tracer" utilizes strontium, lead and neodymium isotopes to track the terrestrial chemistry.
The researchers' analysis of the scope of the ice loss suggests that deglaciation in southern Greenland 400,000 years ago would have accounted for at least four meters -- and possibly up to six meters -- of global sea level rise. Other studies have shown, however, that sea levels during that period were at least six meters above present, and may have been as much as 13 meters higher.
Carlson said the ice sheet loss likely went beyond the southern edges of Greenland, though not all the way to the center, which has not been ice-free for at least one million years.
In their Nature article, the researchers contrasted the events of Marine Isotope Stage 11 with another warming period that occurred about 125,000 years ago and resulted in a sea level rise of 5-10 meters. Their analysis of the sediment record suggests that not as much of the Greenland ice sheet was lost -- in fact, only enough to contribute to a sea level rise of less than 2.5 meters.
"However, other studies have shown that Antarctica may have been unstable at the time and melting there may have made up the difference," Carlson pointed out.
The researchers say the discovery of an ice sheet tracer that can be documented through sediment core analysis is a major step to understanding the history of ice sheets in Greenland -- and their impact on global climate and sea level changes. They acknowledge the need for more widespread coring data and temperature reconstructions.
"This is the first step toward more complete knowledge of the ice history," Carlson said, "but it is an important one."
Lead author on the Nature study is Alberto Reyes, who worked as a postdoctoral researcher for Carlson when both were at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Carlson is now on the faculty in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

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NASA's STEREO maps much larger solar atmosphere than previously observed

 

Surrounding the sun is a vast atmosphere of solar particles, through which magnetic fields swarm, solar flares erupt, and gigantic columns of material rise, fall and jostle each other around. Now, using NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, scientists have found that this atmosphere, called the corona, is even larger than thought, extending out some 5 million miles above the sun's surface -- the equivalent of 12 solar radii. This information has implications for NASA's upcoming Solar Probe Plus mission, due to launch in 2018 and go closer to the sun than any human-made technology ever has before.

These STEREO observations provide the first direct measurements of the inner boundary of the heliosphere -- the giant bubble sparsely filled with solar particles that surrounds the sun and all the planets. Combined with measurements from Voyager 1 of the outer boundary of the heliosphere, we have now defined the extent of this entire local bubble.
"We've tracked sound-like waves through the outer corona and used these to map the atmosphere," said Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We can't hear the sounds directly through the vacuum of space, but with careful analysis we can see them rippling through the corona."
The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal on May 12, 2014. The researchers studied waves known as magnetosonic waves, and they are a hybrid of sound waves and magnetic waves called Alfven waves. Unlike sound waves on Earth, which oscillate several hundred times per second, these waves oscillate about once every four hours -- and are about 10 times the length of Earth.
Tracking magnetosonic waves showed DeForest and his team that the material throughout this extended space remained connected to the solar material much further in. That is to say that even out to 5 million miles from the sun, giant solar storms or coronal mass ejections can create ripple effects felt through the corona. Beyond that boundary, however, solar material streams away in a steady flow called the solar wind -- out there, the material has separated from the star and its movement can't affect the corona.
Realizing that the corona extends much further than previously thought has important consequences for NASA's Solar Probe Plus because the mission will travel to within 4 million miles of the sun. Scientists knew the mission would be gathering information closer to the sun than ever before, but couldn't be sure it would travel through the corona proper.
"This research provides confidence that Solar Probe Plus, as designed, will be exploring the inner solar magnetic system," said Marco Velli, a Solar Probe Plus scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "The mission will directly measure the density, velocity and magnetic field of the solar material there, allowing us to understand how motion and heat in the corona and solar wind are generated."
With direct access to the sun's atmosphere, Solar Probe Plus will provide unprecedented information on how the solar corona is heated and revolutionize our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar wind.

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Kids' risks from toxic metals in dirt downplayed when measured with standard tools

 

Current approaches may be underestimating the risks posed to children by toxic metals that they are exposed to while playing outdoors, according to Japanese researchers. The researchers used a new approach that they developed for their study of how much dirt and associated metals adheres to children’s hands. They found that lead, chromium, zinc and other heavy metals adhere more to smaller soil particles than to the larger particles typically employed in soil exposure studies. That finding suggests using the researcher’s new approach going forward to better assess children’s soil-related risks.

Children’s ingestion of contaminants through soil has long been a concern of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its counterparts in other nations, so the study by researchers in Japan adds new insights into better protections for children and the risks posed by soil-related exposures.

As the study explains, soil ingestion is one of the most important pathways through which children are exposed to toxic substances. Children have higher exposure rates from soil than adults because of their hand-to-mouth behavior. As they play outside in dirt mounds and playgrounds, there is a risk that children will ingest soil particles and heavy metals which may have been underestimated by researchers to date.

For the study, researchers collected soil samples from 58 playgrounds located in Kyoto City in Japan and used a standard 2-millimeter (mm), or 2,000 microns (µm), “sieving system” to measure the quantity of heavy metals in the soil. But, according to the paper by Maiko Ikegami of Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and colleagues, using “2-mm sieving in preparation for measuring heavy metal content caused underestimation of the risk of direct soil intake.” The paper, “Effect of Particle Size on Risk Assessment of Direct Soil Ingestion and Metals Adhered to Children’s Hands at Playgrounds,” has been posted electronically in Risk Analysis: An International Journal, published by the Society for Risk Analysis. Dr. Ikegami’s collaborators include Minoru Yoneda, Takashi Tsuji, Osamu Bannai, and Shinsuke Morisawa.

As part of their study, the researchers adopted a hydrochloric acid (HC1) extraction method, which is thought to be capable of measuring the approximate quantity of heavy metals that can be absorbed by the human body. It is used for extracting heavy metals to evaluate the risk of direct soil ingestion. A basic expectation of current soil risk analysis is that soil particles that adhere to the body or are ingested directly from the air will be smaller than 2 mm in size. Some studies have shown, however, that the concentration of metals in soil increases with smaller particle sizes, such as particles less than 45 µm.

For the study, 69 children in a Kyoto City nursery school were selected “to measure the amounts of metal adhered to their hands on a clear day.” After playing outside for 30 minutes, the children had their hands—including fingers, thumb and palm—wiped with cotton pads wetted with purified water. The amount of soil adhered to the children’s hands was estimated from the quantity of metals on their hands.

In conducting their evaluation of particle-size distribution of soil adhered to human hands, the researchers first removed large soil particles that were not obviously adhered to hands from the surface area. After some students' hands were washed and dried, they were rubbed on the surface soil for 30 seconds, moving in a 60-centimeter-wide horizontal direction at 30 times per minute. Soil was removed from the students' hands by tapping the hands without washing until soil particles no longer fell off. Their hands were then washed in 300 milliliters of ultrapure water, creating a liquid sample whose particle-size distribution was then measured.

“To accurately evaluate the risk, it is important to understand what size of the soil particles children ingest directly,” according to the paper. The study “found that smaller particles had a tendency to contain more heavy metals than bigger particles.” According to the authors, the HC1 extraction method using samples of soil smaller than 2 mm “may underestimate the risk of direct soil ingestion if the soil size ingested is usually much smaller than 2 mm.” Researchers measured the particle-size distribution of soil adhered to three students’ hands, producing a particle-size distribution for all samples of 0.22–313.08 µm. Results indicated that approximately 90 percent of soil particles remaining on the hands were less than 100 µm, suggesting that laboratories and researchers should transition to the method used by the authors in order to avoid underestimating children’s risks.

In general, the researchers conclude that more careful methods for assessing soil ingestion are necessary to protect children who ingest soil with metals while playing on dirt playgrounds, near hazardous waste sites, or in areas with heavy vehicle traffic. Also of concern are so-called “pica children,” those with the unusual habit of deliberately ingesting large amounts of soil and the associated contaminants.

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Young researcher discovers source of disco clams' light show

 

Four years after falling in love with the disco clam -- a cute little mollusk known for its underwater light show -- Lindsey Dougherty has discovered the secret of its mirrored lips.

Disco clams are named for the rippling, rhythmic light show they put on with their mirrored lips, visible even in the dim blue depths. Underwater video by Lindsey Dougherty; production by Roxanne Makasdjian & Phil Ebiner, UC Berkeley.

A dive instructor and University of California, Berkeley, graduate student, Dougherty first encountered the two-inch clam in 2010 while diving with her mother and sister in Wakatobi, Indonesia. She and her sister even did a bit of underwater disco dancing to the clam's flashing beat.

"I've dived with humpback whales and great white sharks," said Dougherty, who first learned to dive at age 14 and taught diving in Zanzibar. "But when I saw the disco clam, I was enamored. I said then, 'I'm going to do a Ph.D. on the disco clam.'"

It didn't take long for her to confirm that the flashing was not, as most people assumed, a form of bioluminescence -- a chemical reaction inside animals like plankton that produces light similar to that of a glow stick. Instead, she found, the edge of the clam's mantle lip is highly reflective on one side. When the clam unfurls its lip -- typically twice a second -- the millimeter-wide mirror is revealed and reflects the ambient light, like a disco ball.

In a cover story in this week's issue of the British Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Dougherty reports the unusual and perhaps unique structure of this mirrored lip.

Tiny packed silica balls act as mirrors

The inside of the clam's lip is packed with tiny spheres of silica, only 340 nanometers in diameter, that are ideal reflectors, particularly of the blue light that penetrates deeper into seawater than does red light. The outside of the lip contains no silica nanospheres, so when the lip is furled, no light is reflected.

By repeatedly unfurling and furling the lip, the clam produces a continual rippling light show. The non-reflective back of the lip strongly absorbs blue light, so it appears dark and makes the contrast between the sides even more striking.

Dougherty used high speed video, transmission electron microscopy, spectrometry, energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and computer modeling to study the detailed internal structure of the margin of the clam's lip. She was assisted by colleagues Roy Caldwell, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology; Sönke Johnsen of Duke University; and N. Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She could find no other instance of animals using silica nanospheres as flashing reflectors, though the white color of several insects apparently comes from a layer of silica that reflects white light.

The big question, Dougherty said, is why the clam flashes at all.

Called Ctenoides ales and sometimes referred to as the electric clam, disco clams are found in tropical areas of the Pacific Ocean, living in crevices in reefs and typically in clusters of two or more. Light is dim and blue-green at the clams' typical depth, which ranges from 3 to 50 meters (10-150 feet), but their rippling mirrored lips are visible even without artificial illumination. Dougherty said the question she is exploring is whether the clam is trying to attract prey, mostly plankton, or other clams and potential breeding partners; or if it is trying to scare away predators.

In ongoing experiments in Caldwell's lab, she is studying the structure of the clam's eyes -- all 40 of them -- to see whether they can even see the disco light. She also is raising clams in tanks to determine if they signal one another visually or chemically, and is testing their responses to fake predators.

The field work was conducted at Lizard Island Research Station in Australia and the Raja Ampat Research and Conservation Centre and Lembeh Resort in Indonesia.

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In hairless man, arthritis drug spurs hair growth -- lots

 

A man with almost no hair on his body has grown a full head of it after a novel treatment by doctors at Yale University.

There is currently no cure or long-term treatment for alopecia universalis, the disease that left the 25-year-old patient bare of hair. This is the first reported case of a successful targeted treatment for the rare, highly visible disease.
The patient has also grown eyebrows and eyelashes, as well as facial, armpit, and other hair, which he lacked at the time he sought help.
"The results are exactly what we hoped for," said Brett A. King, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology at Yale University School of Medicine and senior author of a paper reporting the results online June 18 in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. "This is a huge step forward in the treatment of patients with this condition. While it's one case, we anticipated the successful treatment of this man based on our current understanding of the disease and the drug. We believe the same results will be duplicated in other patients, and we plan to try."
The patient had previously been diagnosed with both alopecia universalis, a disease that results in loss of all body hair, and plaque psoriasis, a condition characterized by scaly red areas of skin. The only hair on his body was within the psoriasis plaques on his head. He was referred to Yale Dermatology for treatment of the psoriasis. The alopecia universalis had never been treated.
King believed it might be possible to address both diseases simultaneously using an existing FDA-approved drug for rheumatoid arthritis called tofacitinib citrate. The drug had been used successfully for treating psoriasis in humans. It had also reversed alopecia areata, a less extreme form of alopecia, in mice.
"There are no good options for long-term treatment of alopecia universalis," said King, a clinician interested in the treatment of rare but devastating skin diseases. "The best available science suggested this might work, and it has."
After two months on tofacitinib at 10 mg daily, the patient's psoriasis showed some improvement, and the man had grown scalp and facial hair -- the first hair he'd grown there in seven years. After three more months of therapy at 15 mg daily, the patient had completely regrown scalp hair and also had clearly visible eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair, as well as armpit and other hair, the doctors said.
"By eight months there was full regrowth of hair," said co-author Brittany G. Craiglow, M.D. "The patient has reported feeling no side effects, and we've seen no lab test abnormalities, either."
Tofacitinib appears to spur hair regrowth in a patient with alopecia universalis by turning off the immune system attack on hair follicles that is prompted by the disease, King said.
The drug helps in some, but not all, cases of psoriasis, and was mildly effective in this patient's case, the authors said.
King has submitted a proposal for a clinical trial involving a cream form of tofacitinib as a treatment for alopecia areata.
He cited work by Columbia University scientist Angela Christiano as the reason he decided to try tofacitinib as a therapy in this patient with both alopecia universalis and psoriasis. She has shown that tofacitinib and a related medicine reverse alopecia areata in mice. King called her work exemplary and a clear example of how society's investment in science research leads to improvement in human life.
"This case highlights the interplay between advances in science and the treatment of disease," he said, "and it provides a compelling example of the ways in which an increasingly complex understanding of medicine, combined with ingenuity in treatment, benefits patients."

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How does a soccer ball swerve? Smoothness of a ball's surface, in addition to playing technique, is a critical factor

 

It happens every four years: The World Cup begins and some of the world's most skilled players carefully line up free kicks, take aim -- and shoot way over the goal.

The players are all trying to bend the ball into a top corner of the goal, often over a wall of defensive players and away from the reach of a lunging goalkeeper. Yet when such shots go awry in the World Cup, a blame game usually sets in. Players, fans, and pundits all suggest that the new official tournament ball, introduced every four years, is the cause.

Many of the people saying that may be seeking excuses. And yet scholars do think that subtle variations among soccer balls affect how they fly. Specifically, researchers increasingly believe that one variable really does differentiate soccer balls: their surfaces. It is harder to control a smoother ball, such as the much-discussed "Jabulani" used at the 2010 World Cup. The new ball used at this year's tournament in Brazil, the "Brazuca," has seams that are over 50 percent longer, one factor that makes the ball less smooth and apparently more predictable in flight.

"The details of the flow of air around the ball are complicated, and in particular they depend on how rough the ball is," says John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics at MIT and the author of a recently published article about the aerodynamics of soccer balls. "If the ball is perfectly smooth, it bends the wrong way."

By the "wrong way," Bush means that two otherwise similar balls struck precisely the same way, by the same player, can actually curve in opposite directions, depending on the surface of those balls. Sound surprising?

Magnus, meet Messi

It may, because the question of how a spinning ball curves in flight would seem to have a textbook answer: the Magnus Effect. This phenomenon was first described by Isaac Newton, who noticed that in tennis, topspin causes a ball to dip, while backspin flattens out its trajectory. A curveball in baseball is another example from sports: A pitcher throws the ball with especially tight topspin, or sidespin rotation, and the ball curves in the direction of the spin.

In soccer, the same thing usually occurs with free kicks, corner kicks, crosses from the wings, and other kinds of passes or shots: The player kicking the ball applies spin during contact, creating rotation that makes the ball curve. For a right-footed player, the "natural" technique is to brush toward the outside of the ball, creating a shot or pass with a right-to-left hook; a left-footed player's "natural" shot will curl left-to-right.

So far, so intuitive: Soccer fans can probably conjure the image of stars like Lionel Messi, Andrea Pirlo, or Marta, a superstar of women's soccer, doing this. But this kind of shot -- the Brazilians call it the "chute de curva" -- depends on a ball with some surface roughness. Without that, this classic piece of the soccer player's arsenal goes away, as Bush points out in his article, "The Aerodynamics of the Beautiful Game," from the volume "Sports Physics," published by Les Editions de L'Ecole Polytechnique in France.

"The fact is that the Magnus Effect can change sign," Bush says. "People don't generally appreciate that fact." Given an absolutely smooth ball, the direction of the curve may reverse: The same kicking motion will not produce a shot or pass curving in a right-to-left direction, but in a left-to-right direction.

Why is this? Bush says it is due to the way the surface of the ball creates motion at the "boundary layer" between the spinning ball and the air. The rougher the ball, the easier it is to create the textbook version of the Magnus Effect, with a "positive" sign: The ball curves in the expected direction.

"The boundary layer can be laminar, which is smoothly flowing, or turbulent, in which case you have eddies," Bush says. "The boundary layer is changing from laminar to turbulent at different spots according to how quickly the ball is spinning. Where that transition arises is influenced by the surface roughness, the stitching of the ball. If you change the patterning of the panels, the transition points move, and the pressure distribution changes." The Magnus Effect can then have a "negative" sign.

From Brazil: The "dove without wings"

If the reversing of the Magnus Effect has largely eluded detection, of course, that is because soccer balls are not absolutely smooth -- but they have been moving in that direction over the decades. While other sports, such as baseball and cricket, have strict rules about the stitching on the ball, soccer does not, and advances in technology have largely given balls sleeker, smoother designs -- until the introduction of the Brazuca, at least.

There is actually a bit more to the story, however, since sometimes players will strike balls so as to give them very little spin -- the equivalent of a knuckleball in baseball. In this case, the ball flutters unpredictably from side to side. Brazilians have a name for this: the "pombo sem asa," or "dove without wings."

In this case, Bush says, "The peculiar motion of a fluttering free kick arises because the points of boundary-layer transition are different on opposite sides of the ball." Because the ball has no initial spin, the motion of the surrounding air has more of an effect on the ball's flight: "A ball that's knuckling … is moving in response to the pressure distribution, which is constantly changing." Indeed, a free kick Pirlo took in Italy's match against England on Saturday, which fooled the goalkeeper but hit the crossbar, demonstrated this kind of action.

Bush's own interest in the subject arises from being a lifelong soccer player and fan -- the kind who, sitting in his office, will summon up clips of the best free-kick takers he's seen. These include Juninho Pernambucano, a Brazilian midfielder who played at the 2006 World Cup, and Sinisa Mihajlovic, a Serbian defender of the 1990s.

And Bush happily plays a clip of Brazilian fullback Roberto Carlos' famous free kick from a 1997 match against France, where the player used the outside of his left foot -- but deployed the "positive" Magnus Effect -- to score on an outrageously bending free kick.

"That was by far the best free kick ever taken," Bush says. Putting on his professor's hat for a moment, he adds: "I think it's important to encourage people to try to understand everything. Even in the most commonplace things, there is subtle and interesting physics."

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Childhood maltreatment associated with cerebral grey matter abnormalities: Abuse could lead to permanent brain damage

 

An international study has analysed the association between childhood maltreatment and the volume of cerebral grey matter, responsible for processing information. The results revealed a significant deficit in various late developing regions of the brain after abuse.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), child maltreatment is defined as all forms of physical and/or emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect or negligent treatment or commercial or other exploitation, resulting in actual or potential harm to the child's health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power.
Until now, the results of structural neuroimaging studies carried out have been inconsistent. A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and carried out by experts at London's King's College and the FIDMAG, Sisters Hospitallers Foundation for Research and Teaching, has provided new findings.
"Childhood maltreatment acts as a severe stressor that produces a cascade of physiological and neurobiological changes that lead to enduring alterations in the brain structure," Joaquim Radua, researcher at FIDMAG and the British centre said.
In order to understand the most robust abnormalities in grey matter volumes, the research team, which includes the National University of Singapore, carried out a meta-analysis of the voxel based morphometric study on childhood maltreatment.
VBM is a neuroimaging analysis technique that allows investigation of focal differences in brain anatomy comparing magnetic brain resonance of two groups of people.
The study included twelve different groups of data made up of a total of 331 individuals (56 children or adolescents and 275 adults) with a history of childhood maltreatment, plus 362 individuals who were not exposed to maltreatment (56 children or adolescents and 306 adults).
In order to examine the cerebral regions with more or less grey matter volumes in maltreated individuals, a three-dimensional meta-analytical neuroimaging method was used called 'signed differential mapping' (SDM), developed expressly by Radua.
Abnormalities not related to medication
Relative to comparison subjects, individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment exhibited significantly smaller grey matter volumes: in the right orbitofrontal/superior temporal gyrus extending to the amygdala, insula, and parahippocampal and middle temporal gyri and in the left inferior frontal and postcentral gyri.
"Deficits in the right orbitofrontal-temporal-limbic and left inferior frontal regions remained in a subgroup analysis of unmedicated participants, indicating that these abnormalities were not related to medication but to maltreatment," indicated Radua.
On the other hand, the Spanish expert pointed out that abnormalities in the left postcentral gyrus were found only in older maltreated individuals. These findings show that the most consistent grey matter abnormalities in individuals exposed to childhood maltreatment are located in ventrolateral prefrontal and limbic-temporal regions.
These regions have relatively late development, i.e. after the maltreatment and the malfunction could explain the affective and cognitive deficit of people with a history of child abuse.
"These findings show the serious consequences of adverse childhood environments on brain development," adds Radua.
"We hope the results of this study will help to reduce environmental risks during childhood and to develop treatments to stabilise these morphologic alterations," he concludes.

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Finding thoughts in speech: How human brain processes thoughts during natural communication

 

For the first time, neuroscientists were able to find out how different thoughts are reflected in neuronal activity during natural conversations. Johanna Derix, Olga Iljina and the interdisciplinary team of Dr. Tonio Ball from the Cluster of Excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools at the University of Freiburg and the Epilepsy Center of the University Medical Center Freiburg (Freiburg, Germany) report on the link between speech, thoughts and brain responses in a special issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

"Thoughts are difficult to investigate, as one cannot observe in a direct manner what the person is thinking about. Language, however, reflects the underlying mental processes, so we can perform linguistic analyses of the subjects' speech and use such information as a "bridge" between the neuronal processes and the subject's thoughts," explains neuroscientist Johanna Derix..

The novelty of the authors' approach is that the participants were not instructed to think and talk about a given topic in an experimental setting. Instead, the researchers analysed everyday conversations and the underlying brain activity, which was recorded directly from the cortical surface. This study was possible owing to the help of epilepsy patients in whom recordings of neural activity had to be obtained over several days for the purpose of pre-neurosurgical diagnostics.

For a start, borders between individual thoughts in continuous conversations had to be identified. Earlier psycholinguistic research indicates that a simple sentence is a suitable unit to contain a single thought, so the researchers opted for linguistic segmentation into simple sentences. The resulting "idea" units were classified into different categories. These included, for example, whether or not a sentence expressed memory- or self-related content. Then, the researchers analysed content-specific neural responses and observed clearly visible patterns of brain activity.

Thus, the neuroscientists from Freiburg have demonstrated the feasibility of their innovative approach to investigate, via speech, how the human brain processes thoughts during real-life conditions.

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Regional weather extremes linked to atmospheric variations

 

Variations in high-altitude wind patterns expose particular parts of Europe, Asia and the US to different extreme weather conditions, a new study has shown.

Changes to air flow patterns around the Northern Hemisphere are a major influence on prolonged bouts of unseasonal weather -- whether it be hot, cold, wet or dry.
The high altitude winds normally blow from west to east around the planet, but do not follow a straight path. The flow meanders to the north and south, in a wave-like path.
These wave patterns are responsible for sucking either warm air from the tropics, or cold air from the Arctic, to Europe, Asia, or the US. They can also influence rainfall by steering rain-laden storms.
Pioneering new research, carried out by the University of Exeter and the University of Melbourne, has shown that the development of these wave patterns leaves certain Northern Hemisphere regions more susceptible to different types of prolonged, extreme weather.
Dr James Screen, a Mathematics Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and lead author of the study, said: "The impacts of large and slow moving atmospheric waves are different in different places. In some places amplified waves increase the chance of unusually hot conditions, and in others the risk of cold, wet or dry conditions."
The study showed that larger waves can lead to droughts in central North America, Europe and central Asia, and western Asia exposed to prolonged wet spells. It also shows western North America and central Asia are more prone to heat waves, while eastern North America is more likely to experience prolonged outbreaks of cold.
The collaborative study used detailed land-based climate observations to identify episodes of abnormal temperature and rainfall from 1979-2012 and then examined the wave patterns during these events.
Co-author Professor Ian Simmonds, from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, said the weather extremes they examined were month-long heat waves, cold spells, droughts and prolonged wet periods, which occurred over large areas.
He said: "The study revealed that these types of events are strongly related to well-developed wave patterns, and that these patterns increase the chance of heat waves in western North America and central Asia, cold outbreaks in eastern North America, droughts in central North America, Europe and central Asia, and wet spells in western Asia.
"The findings are very important for decision makers in assessing the risk of, and planning for the impacts of, extreme weather events in the future."

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Unlikely hit app Yo is 'hacked' by students

 

Messaging app Yo, which in the past week has rocketed to the top of the app download charts, has been hit by a hack.

Creator Or Arbel told technology news site TechCrunch the app was having "security issues".

The app allows users to send a message saying "yo" to friends - and nothing else.

It has been branded "pointless", but has nonetheless raised $1m (£600,000) in investment.

TechCrunch said it was contacted by three college students who said they had uncovered a flaw in the app.

"We can get any Yo user's phone number (I actually texted the founder, and he called me back)," the students told TechCrunch.

"We can spoof yos from any users, and we can spam any user... We could also send any Yo user a push notification with any text we want (though we decided not to do that)."

Other developers have been able to recreate the flaw.

Similar problems have hit apps such as Snapchat and Tinder in the past few months.

'Decline of civilisation'

Mr Arbel told TechCrunch he was dealing with the issue, but would not elaborate further.

"Some of the stuff has been fixed and some we are still working on," he said, adding that he had hired a specialist security team.

"We are taking this very seriously."

Despite the app's apparent pointlessness, it has quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of users. Mr Arbel said more than four million "yo" messages had been sent.

A service that sends a "yo" to a user every time a goal is scored in the World Cup has already been launched - with other similar services planned.

The app, which took eight hours to create, has the technology community divided - with some seeing the app, and its seven-figure investment, as a sign of increasing hysteria in Silicon Valley for offbeat ideas.

"We have decided this is an idea with great potential," Mr Arbel told the Financial Times.

One reader of The Verge technology news site said the app, and its sudden mainstream coverage, was "accelerating the decline of civilisation". 

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Liver cancer and malignant melanoma rates rise sharply in England

 

Researchers warn that cancers are strongly linked to lifestyle choices, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity

The number of people diagnosed with liver cancer has risen sharply. An Office for National Statistics study shows the incidence of liver cancer in England increased by 70% for males and 60% for females between 2003 and 2012.

It is now the 18th most common cancer in England, the ONS said. The number of women diagnosed with the disease rose from 889 in 2003 to 1,418 in 2012, while the number of men went up from 1,440 to 2,449 in the same period.

"Since 2003, there have been large increases in the number of registrations of liver, oral, uterine and kidney cancers, and malignant melanoma of the skin," the study authors wrote. "These cancers are strongly linked to lifestyle choices, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity."

The NHS says that while the exact cause of liver cancer is not known, it is thought to be related to damage to the liver, such as cirrhosis, which can be caused by excessive drinking, obesity or hepatitis B or C infections.

The ONS study also found that malignant melanoma, the most dangerous type of skin cancer, has increased by 78% among men and 48% among women between 2003 and 2012.

It is now the fifth most common cancer in England.

Cancer Research UK said 2,000 people die from malignant melanoma each year. While better detection methods have contributed to the rise in the number of cases diagnosed, the charity has previously blamed the problem on a "dramatic explosion" of package holidays and a boom in sunbed use.

The ONS figures also show that in 2012 the three most common cancers among men were prostate, lung and colorectal cancers. Meanwhile, the three most common cancers of women were breast, lung and colorectal cancer.

Matt Wickenden, Cancer Research UK's manager of statistics, said: "More than one in three people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime and these figures reflect the huge number of lives affected.

"We know that more than four in 10 cancers can be prevented through changes to our lifestyle, and smoking causes nearly a fifth of all cancers. So it's vital to reduce smoking rates and so we're urging the government to introduce plain, standardised tobacco packaging without delay to stop the next generation taking up the deadly habit that kills half of all long-term users.

"The good news is that survival has doubled in the last 40 years and half of all cancer patients will now survive the disease for at least 10 years."

The British Lung Foundation also reiterated its calls for the introduction of plain, standardised cigarette packs.

Ciaran Devane, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: "Shockingly, the most common form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma, has shot up by 78% among men and 48% among women in the last 10 years. This makes it now the fifth most common cancer in England.

"The increase in the number of people getting this potentially-fatal disease should be a wake-up call to the government that cancer has not been 'fixed' in this country. We have some of the poorest survival rates for cancer in Europe and Macmillan is calling on all the political parties to prioritise cancer ahead of the next general election."

 

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Exposure to TV violence related to irregular attention and brain structure

 

Young adult men who watched more violence on television showed indications of less mature brain development and poorer executive functioning, according to the results of an Indiana University School of Medicine study published online in the journal Brain and Cognition.

The researchers used psychological testing and MRI scans to measure mental abilities and volume of brain regions in 65 healthy males with normal IQ between the age of 18 and 29, specifically chosen because they were not frequent video game players.
Lead author Tom A. Hummer, Ph.D., assistant research professor in the IU Department of Psychiatry, said the young men provided estimates of their television viewing over the past year and then kept a detailed diary of their TV viewing for a week. Participants also completed a series of psychological tests measuring inhibitory control, attention and memory. At the conclusion, MRI scans were used to measure brain structure.
Executive function is the broad ability to formulate plans, make decisions, reason and problem-solve, regulate attention, and inhibit behavior in order to achieve goals.
"We found that the more violent TV viewing a participant reported, the worse they performed on tasks of attention and cognitive control," Dr. Hummer said. "On the other hand, the overall amount of TV watched was not related to performance on any executive function tests."

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Dr. Hummer noted that these executive functioning abilities can be important for controlling impulsive behaviors, including aggression. "The worry is that more impulsivity does not mix well with the behaviors modeled in violent programming."
Tests that measured working memory, another subtype of executive functioning, were not found to be related to overall or violent TV viewing.
Comparing TV habits to brain images also produced results that Dr. Hummer and colleagues believe are significant.
"When we looked at the brain scans of young men with higher violent television exposure, there was less volume of white matter connecting the frontal and parietal lobes, which can be a sign of less maturity in brain development," he said.
White matter is tissue in the brain that insulates nerve fibers connecting different brain regions, making functioning more efficient. In typical development, the amount or volume of white matter increases as the brain makes more connections until about age 30, improving communication between regions of the brain. Connections between the frontal and parietal lobes are thought to be especially important for executive functioning.
"The take-home message from this study is the finding of a relationship between how much violent television we watch and important aspects of brain functioning like controlled attention and inhibition," Dr. Hummer said.
Dr. Hummer cautions that more research is needed to better understand the study findings.
"With this study we could not isolate whether people with poor executive function are drawn to programs with more violence or if the content of the TV viewing is responsible for affecting the brain's development over a period of time," Dr. Hummer said. "Additional longitudinal work is necessary to resolve whether individuals with poor executive function and slower white matter growth are more drawn to violent programming or if exposure to media violence modifies development of cognitive control," Dr. Hummer said.
Funding for this research was provided through a grant from the Center for Successful Parenting.
IU School of Medicine co-authors of the research are William G. Kronenberger, Ph.D., Vincent P. Mathews, M.D., and Yang Wang, M.D.,; and Caitlin C. Anderson from Iowa State University.
 

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eBay pulls sales of Chinese 'spyware phones'

 

EBay is barring listings for a smartphone after reports the model is pre-installed with spyware in its Chinese factory.

A German security firm reported on Tuesday that the Android-powered Star N9500 sent personal data to a computer server in China, adding that the Trojan could not be removed.

It said the malware was disguised as the legitimate Google Play Store app.

The handset remains on sale on Amazon, which could not be reached for comment.

But eBay said it was rolling out the ban globally.

"Due to reports that some Star 9500 smartphones are loaded with spyware, eBay is not allowing the sale of these devices as a precautionary measure," a spokesman told the BBC.

Intercepted calls

Amazon is still listing the model from third-party sellers

Although the brand Star is far from being a household name, the handset may have appealed to some customers because of its close resemblance to the Samsung Galaxy S4 coupled with the fact it sells for about a third of the cost.

Security firm G Data said it was alerted to the case after receiving tip-offs from its customers.

"The spyware runs in the background and cannot be detected by users," it said.

"Unbeknownst to the user, the smartphone sends personal data to a server located in China and is able to covertly install additional applications.

"This makes it possible to retrieve personal data, intercept calls and online banking data, read emails and text messages or control the camera and microphone remotely.

"The program also blocks the installation of security updates."

The Associated Press news agency has reported that although several Shenzhen-based firms used eBay and other sites to sell the model, it had been unable to track down the manufacturer.

G Data identified the malware involved as being Android.Trojan.Uupay.D

If the allegations are true, it is not known whether the manufacturer itself would have been aware of what was being done at its plant.

This is not the first time that a Chinese factory has been accused of shipping devices preinstalled with malware.

In 2012 Microsoft reported that several PC makers in the country had been found to load malicious programs onto their computers.

Then, last year German firm E-Plus reported that some of its China-made Android smartphones were being shipped with SD memory cards infected with a computer worm.

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