The wind is always blowing somewhere, but deciding where to locate a wind farm is a bit more complicated than holding up a wet finger. Now a team of Penn State researchers have a model that can locate the best place for the wind farm and even help with 24-hour predictions of energy output.
In so-called whole genome sequencing, surveys are made of the total genome of an individual. It is still relatively rare in healthcare today, but it occurs at an increasing rate, for example in order to make an accurate diagnosis in the case of a rare disease. A genetic mapping of an individual is routinely compared to a so-called reference genome, a description of the human genome that is considered to be "standard." In such a comparison, approximately 5 million deviations are normally found. Most are without any major significance, but some of them can cause disease or disabilities.
Astrophysicists Jon Hakkila of the College of Charleston and Robert Nemiroff of the Michigan Technological University have published research indicating that blasts that create gamma-ray bursts may actually exceed the speed of light in surrounding gas clouds, but do so without violating Einstein's theory of relativity. Hakkila and Nemiroff propose that such superluminal jets could create the time-reversibility seen in gamma-ray burst light curves.
As new hurricanes gain strength in the Atlantic, residents of the Bahamas have barely begun recovering from destroyed villages and flooded streets brought by Hurricane Dorian's battering this month. The losses were grim validation of a new Stanford-led study on coastal risk throughout the country.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The most common form of the kidney disease called glomerulonephritis is IgA nephropathy.
IgA nephropathy is believed to be caused by IgA1-containing immune complexes formed in the blood that ultimately deposit in the glomeruli -- the filtering apparatus of the kidneys. When kidney glomeruli become damaged, the kidneys lose their ability to remove waste from the blood and to retain blood proteins, and the injury can lead to kidney failure.
Fish has been a predominant and high-quality protein and oil source in the human diet since ancient times. A new study by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), the Zinman Institute of Archaeology and the Oranim Academic College examined traditional fish preparation employed by fisherfolk in Panama and Egypt, revealing patterns of modifications to the fishes' skeletons, which are comparable to those found among fish remains recovered in archaeological sites.
In the arms race between predators and prey, each evolves more and more sophisticated ways of catching or escaping from the other. Rachel Page, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Ximena Bernal, associate professor at Purdue University, review in Functional Ecology how bats use both private and social information to attack their prey.
For every question about bird poop, uric acid appears to be the answer.
Why are bird droppings so hard to remove from buildings? Uric acid.
Why are they white and pasty? Uric acid.
Why are they corrosive to car paint and metal structures? Uric acid.
A large cohort study of women who have had one or more previous cesarean sections suggests that attempting a vaginal birth in a subsequent pregnancy is associated with higher health risks to both the mother and the infant than electing for another cesarean.
The research, published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine on September 24, addresses a lack of robust information on the outcomes of birth options after previous cesarean section and can be used to counsel women about their choices.
Having a lower body-mass index (BMI), but also having a higher waist-to-height ratio (WHtR), is associated with worse outcomes among Asian patients with heart failure, according to a study published September 24 in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Carolyn Lam of the National Heart Centre Singapore, and colleagues. As noted by the authors, the combined use of BMI and abdominal measures could potentially inform heart failure management better, especially among the particularly vulnerable patients with low BMI and high WHtR in Asia.