ScienceDaily: Top News

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• Cracks in Pluto's moon could indicate it once had an underground ocean
• Aromatic flavors of haze on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, recreated
• Scientists take totally tubular journey through brain cells
• Who's using your data? New technology to track how your private data is used online
• Subseafloor bacteria survive by over-activating DNA-repair and antibiotic target genes
• Summer season springs cluster headaches into action
• Severe scoliosis linked to rare mutations
• Crossing the goal line: New tech tracks football in 3-D space
• Third warmest May in satellite record might portend record-setting El Niño
• Breakthrough for information technology using Heusler materials: May lead to very high performance spintronic components
• Researchers 'cage' water to see it change form
• New membrane-synthesis pathways in bacteria discovered
• Neural reward response may demonstrate why quitting smoking is harder for some
• Transmission of information via proteins could revolutionize drug discovery
• Advanced breast cancer: Benefits of Trastuzumab (Herceptin) outweigh the risk of harm

Cracks in Pluto's moon could indicate it once had an underground ocean Posted: 13 Jun 2014 12:28 PM PDT If the icy surface of Pluto's giant moon Charon is cracked, analysis of the fractures could reveal if its interior was warm, perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water, according to a new study.

Aromatic flavors of haze on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, recreated Posted: 13 Jun 2014 12:28 PM PDT Scientists have created a new recipe that captures key flavors of the brownish-orange atmosphere around Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The recipe is used for lab experiments designed to simulate Titan's chemistry. With this approach, the team was able to classify a previously unidentified material discovered in the moon's smoggy haze.

Scientists take totally tubular journey through brain cells Posted: 13 Jun 2014 12:28 PM PDT Scientists took a molecular-level journey into microtubules, the hollow cylinders inside brain cells that act as skeletons and internal highways, and watched how a protein called tubulin acetyltransferase (TAT) labels the inside of microtubules. The results answer long-standing questions about how TAT tagging works and offer clues as to why it is important for brain health.

Who's using your data? New technology to track how your private data is used online Posted: 13 Jun 2014 10:07 AM PDT By now, most people feel comfortable conducting financial transactions on the Web. The cryptographic schemes that protect online banking and credit card purchases have proven their reliability over decades. As more of our data moves online, a more pressing concern may be its inadvertent misuse by people authorized to access it. Every month seems to bring another story of private information accidentally leaked by governmental agencies or vendors of digital products or services.

Subseafloor bacteria survive by over-activating DNA-repair and antibiotic target genes Posted: 13 Jun 2014 10:07 AM PDT The subseafloor is home to over one-third of the bacteria on the planet, but up until recently it was unclear if this huge microbial biosphere was alive and dividing. Now the same group that demonstrated this activity has shown that bacteria from the hostile sea-floor environment have adapted by over-activating stress response and DNA-repair mechanisms, to cope with the harsh conditions.

Summer season springs cluster headaches into action Posted: 13 Jun 2014 10:05 AM PDT Did you know that while most people celebrate the start of summer on June 21, nearly 1 million Americans are facing the debilitating pain of cluster headaches due to Earth's shift towards the sun? It's true. The human biological rhythm is tied into earth's rotation, making individuals who suffer cluster from headaches encounter unrelenting head pain.

Severe scoliosis linked to rare mutations Posted: 13 Jun 2014 07:17 AM PDT Children with rare mutations in two genes are about four times more likely to develop severe scoliosis than their peers with normal versions of the genes, scientists have found. One to 3 percent of the general population has some mild curvature of the spine. In about one in 10,000 children, scoliosis will produce curvature so pronounced that it requires corrective surgery.

Crossing the goal line: New tech tracks football in 3-D space Posted: 13 Jun 2014 07:16 AM PDT Referees may soon have a new way of determining whether a football team has scored a touchdown or gotten a first down. Researchers have developed a system that can track a football in three-dimensional space using low-frequency magnetic fields.

Third warmest May in satellite record might portend record-setting El Niño Posted: 13 Jun 2014 07:15 AM PDT May 2014 was the third warmest May in the 35-year satellite-measured global temperature record, and the warmest May that wasn't during an El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event, according to new data. The global average temperature for May was 0.33 C (about 0.59 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than seasonal norms for the month. The warmest May was in 1998, during the "El Niño of the century."

Breakthrough for information technology using Heusler materials: May lead to very high performance spintronic components Posted: 13 Jun 2014 05:44 AM PDT It is the breakthrough that physicists and chemists around the world have long anticipated and it will play a pivotal role in information technology in coming years. Researchers have managed, for the first time, to directly observe the 100 percent spin polarization of a Heusler compound. Heusler alloys are composed of several metallic elements arranged in a lattice structure. They are among those materials that potentially can be used for ever smaller data storage components with ever greater storage capacity.

Researchers 'cage' water to see it change form Posted: 13 Jun 2014 05:44 AM PDT Scientists are using a pioneering method of 'caging' and cooling water molecules to study the change in orientation of the magnetic nuclei at the center of each hydrogen atom - a process which transforms the molecule from one form of water to another. By trapping water molecules in carbon spheres and cooling them, scientists have been able to follow the change in form (or isomer) of the molecules.

New membrane-synthesis pathways in bacteria discovered Posted: 13 Jun 2014 05:44 AM PDT New mechanisms used by bacteria to manufacture lipids, i.e. fat molecules, for the cell membrane have been discovered by researchers. Those mechanisms are a combination of familiar bacterial synthesis pathways and of such that occur in higher organisms. Thus, the team has debunked the long-standing theory that lipid production in bacteria differs substantially from that in higher organisms.

Neural reward response may demonstrate why quitting smoking is harder for some Posted: 12 Jun 2014 02:46 PM PDT For some cigarette smokers, strategies to aid quitting work well, while for many others no method seems to work. Researchers have now identified an aspect of brain activity that helps to predict the effectiveness of a reward-based strategy as motivation to quit smoking. "Our results suggest that... 'at-risk' smokers could potentially be identified prior to a quit attempt and be provided with special interventions designed to increase their chances for success," researchers remarked.

Transmission of information via proteins could revolutionize drug discovery Posted: 12 Jun 2014 06:50 AM PDT The existence of information highways that connect and correlate distant sites within a single protein have been discovered by researchers. Their article furthers a key theoretical field for drug discovery, as it would allow the discovery of many more drug binding sites in proteins of biomedical interest.

Advanced breast cancer: Benefits of Trastuzumab (Herceptin) outweigh the risk of harm Posted: 12 Jun 2014 05:59 AM PDT In women with advanced (or metastatic) breast cancer, treatment with the breast cancer drug Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is associated with prolonged survival but also increases the risk of developing heart problems, a new systematic review shows. However, the review concludes that more women benefit from use of Trastuzumab than are harmed.

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