EurekAlert!

Rice students put calculations by German physicist Gustav Mie, made in 1908, to the test when they decided to look at the optical properties of single nanoparticles.

A research team led by Mayo Clinic has found a national trend toward younger, more diverse patients having total knee replacement surgery.

NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Ului during the morning hours (Eastern Time) on March 12 and noticed a large area of strong convection in the storm's center, indicating strengthening.

The second-ever known tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic Ocean can't escape satellite eyes, and today, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-12 captured a visible image of Tropical Storm 90Q now located off the coast of Argentina.

WWF and TRAFFIC welcome a World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies statement urging its members not to use tiger bone or any other parts from endangered wildlife.

Using green algae to produce hydrocarbon oil for biofuel production is nothing new; nature has been doing so for hundreds of millions of years, according a Texas AgriLife Research scientist.

Nanocages that efficiently convert light to heat are the basis for a targeted form of phototherapy that would destroy tumors without making cancer patients sick.

Tropical Storm Tomas is on a southern track in the South Pacific Ocean, and residents of Nadi, Fiji will be watching it as it approaches the eastern side of the island late this weekend. A tropical cyclone alert is in effect for all of Fiji this weekend.

One of the oldest available anti-seizure medications, ethosuximide, is the most effective treatment for childhood absence epilepsy, according to initial outcomes published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine

In an attempt to explain away invisible dark matter and dark energy, some theorists have offered modified theories of gravity that try to improve on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. A new study based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and inspired by the work of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory cosmologist Uros Seljak indicates that at least one of these alternate theories is wrong.

According to a U-M study, it is common for patients 65 and older to receive potentially inappropriate medications when treated in an emergency room. Nearly 19.5 million older patients, or 16.8 percent of eligible emergency visits from 2000-2006, received one or more of these medications.

A team led by Princeton University scientists has tested Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity to see if it holds true at cosmic scales. And, after two years of analyzing astronomical data, the scientists have concluded that Einstein's theory, which describes the interplay between gravity, space and time, works as well in vast distances as in more local regions of space.

The American Thoracic Society has released a new official clinical policy statement on congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, a disorder of respiratory and autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation. The ANS regulates reflexive acts, including heart rate and blood pressure, digestion, body temperature and pain perception.

New findings that shed light on how genetic damage to muscle cell proteins can lead to the development of the rare muscle-wasting disease, nemaline myopathy, are reported today, March 15, in the Biochemical Journal.

Researchers have found that interval training does not have to be "all out" to be effective in helping reduce the risk of such diseases at Type 2 diabetes.

Correct management of soil and irrigation is a vital factor in modern viticulture, due to the influence of the water balance of the vineyard on wine quality and the environmental impact of agricultural practices on vineyard soils.

Space physicists from the University of Leicester are part of an international team that has identified the impact of the Sun on Mars' atmosphere.

A new study of the scorpion family Typhlochactidae, a group of nine dark-adapted species endemic to Mexico, shows that specialized traits are not necessarily an evolutionary dead end. At least three reversals, or a return to generalized morphology, were found in a phylogenetic analysis.

The reluctance of securities analysts to recommend investment in veteran companies using new techniques to grapple with radical technological change may be harming these companies as they struggle to compete, according to a new study in the current issue of Organization Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Researchers at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center have discovered that "microtentacles," or extensions of the plasma membrane of breast cancer cells, appear to play a key role in how cancers spread to distant locations in the body. Targeting these microtentacles, which are linked to a protein called "tau," might prove to be a new way to prevent or slow the growth of these secondary cancers, the scientists say.