The premier online source for science news since 1996. A service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

(University of Alberta) University of Alberta pilot study shows driving while talking on a hands-free cellular device leads to more driving errors than driving alone.

(Michigan State University) In a study that evaluated some of the latest in automatic facial recognition technology, researchers at Michigan State University 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.

(Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center) After studying noise in one French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans to determine whether or not noise levels exceeded municipal ordinances, Annette Hurley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Audiology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, and Eric Arriaga, a third-year LSUHSC doctor of audiology student, recommend that people use today's technology to protect their own hearing health.

(The University of Bergen) Researchers from the Bergen fMRI Group at the University of Bergen are working on how to help schizophrenics, who hear voices. The way they do this is by studying people who also hear voices, but who do not suffer from a mental illness. For a five-year period, the group is studying the brain processes causing people to hear voices. A recent report published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience shows some of the group's startling results.

(VIB (the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology)) In the search for medication against Alzheimer's disease, scientists focused -- among other factors -- on drugs that can break down Amyloid beta (A-beta). After all, it is the accumulation of A-beta that causes the known plaques in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Starting point of A-beta is APP. Alessia Soldano and Bassem Hassan were the first to unravel the function of APPL -- the fruit-fly version of APP -- in the brain of healthy fruit flies.

(International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA)) One of the challenges faced by those who study friction is finding a connection between the phenomena observed within the macroworld and those in the nanoworld. The stick-slip, a phenomenon observed at every scale when two surfaces slide on one another, could be the starting point to identify such connection. The scientists at SISSA have studied such phenomenon through a system of "trapped cold ions."

(University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center) 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. Alberto Dominguez and six coauthors describe the best measurement yet of the evolution of the EBL over the past 5 billion years, based on observations from radio waves to gamma rays from NASA ...

(Global Water System Project) A conference of 500 leading water scientists from around the world today issued a stark warning that, without major reforms, "in the short span of one or two generations, the majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will be living under the handicap of severe pressure on fresh water, an absolutely essential natural resource for which there is no substitute. This handicap will be self-inflicted and is, we believe, entirely avoidable."

(Journal of Clinical Investigation) In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Thomas Tuschl and colleagues at Rockefeller University developed a multicolor fluorescence labeling method that can be used to visualize miRNAs in tissue sections, such as those recovered from biopsies.

(Journal of Clinical Investigation) In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Ronald Levy at Stanford University found that regulatory T cells that infiltrate tumors express proteins that can be targeted with therapeutic antibodies.