Scientists have solved a decades-long mystery of a red glow that permeates our Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies.
The red glow is most prominent in a strange, dying star called the Red Rectangle, named for the bizarre structure that surrounds it.
According to SPACE.com, astronomers now say the red light radiates from invisibly small clusters of dust that are now believed to glow because of newly described molecular forces that oppose each other on very small scales.
The glow, called the Extended Red Emission (conveniently ERE for short) has been known but inexplicable for more than 30 years. Researchers suspected carbon-rich molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were the culprit. These clusters of molecules form a structure that looks like chicken wire; they are measured on a scale of billionths of a meter, far too small to see.
Thing is, for PAHs to create the red glow, they would have to be bombarded by ultraviolet radiation so harsh that it would destroy all known forms of these structures.
“Although I had results that strongly supported the idea that PAHs had something to do with the ERE, the experimental results made it clear that if PAHs were involved, they were present in some as-yet unknown exotic form,“ said Murthy Gudipati, a NASA researcher also at the University of Maryland. So exotic, indeed, that they can’t be recreated in a lab. In fact, the red glow seen in space doesn’t occur on Earth because the nano-sized PAH clusters are very reactive and don’t last long.
The findings were detailed recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research could help scientists better understand how soot is formed during combustion in diesel engines and jets, a process that’s poorly understood. The PAHs might serve as seeds in a flame around which a soot particle forms, the scientists said.

The new Johns Hopkins computer-controlled motor, enables precise and smooth motion as fine as 50 micrometers, finer than a human hair,"

Engineers at the Johns Hopkins Urology Robotics Lab report the invention of a motor without metal or electricity that can safely power remote-controlled robotic medical devices used for cancer biopsies and therapies guided by magnetic resonance imaging. The motor that drives the devices can be so precisely controlled by computer that movements are steadier and more precise than a human hand.
“Lots of biopsies on organs such as the prostate are currently performed blind because the tumors are typically invisible to the imaging tools commonly used,“ Dan Stoianovici, Ph.D., an associate professor of urology at Johns Hopkins and director of the robotics lab, told UPI. “Our new MRI-safe motor and robot can target the tumors. This should increase accuracy in locating and collecting tissue samples, reduce diagnostic errors and also improve therapy.“
A description of the new motor, made entirely out of plastics, ceramics and rubber, and driven by light and air, was published in the February issue of the IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechanotronics.
The new Johns Hopkins motor, dubbed PneuStep, consists of three pistons connected to a series of gears. The gears are turned by air flow, which is in turn controlled by a computer located in a room adjacent to the MRI machine. “We’re able to achieve precise and smooth motion of the motor as fine as 50 micrometers, finer than a human hair,“ says Stoianovici.
The robot goes alongside the patient in the MRI scanner and is controlled remotely by observing the images on the MR. The motor is rigged with fiber optics, which feeds information back to the computer in real time, allowing for both guidance and readjustment.
“The robot moves slowly but precisely, and our experiments show that the needle always comes within a millimeter of the target,“ says Stoianovici. This type of precision control will allow physicians to use instruments in ways that currently are not possible, he says.

Psychology major Skyler Shollenbarger demonstrates the Sniff Magnitude Test.

Olfactory disorders can be detected by a new medical device in development at University of Cincinnati and researchers may sniff out an early warning of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other problems outside the typical sensory loss associated with aging.
The Sniff Magnitude Test (SMT), an invention of UC Psychology Professor Robert Frank and Professor Emeritus Robert Gesteland of the UC Department of Cell Biology, is now under further development, Science Daily reports.
“The whole test is based on the very simple observation that when you sniff and you detect a smell, you take a smaller sniff than if you inhaled and didn’t detect a smell,“ Frank explains. “For someone with normal sense of smell, the size of the sniff when detecting an odor is cut in half. For someone who cannot detect odor, the size of the sniff for just air and the size of the sniff for an odor are the same.“
In humans, Frank says the sense of smell is one of our less robust senses. He says it’s more susceptible to harm because there is less neurological machinery in the brain devoted to processing the sense of smell. “So, that’s the reason it might be acting a little bit like the canary in the mineshaft. Because it’s more fragile, when you have insult to the brain, it may be sensitive to loss earlier in the disease process.“
“What’s also unique about this test is that it does not require a good memory, which is an issue in testing people with Alzheimer’s or some other dementia-related disease,“ Frank says. “For instance, other tests ask, ’Does this smell like garlic?’ or, ’Does this smell like tar, or roses?’ Once there’s a problem with memory, this kind of test would be difficult.“
Because the really nasty smells worked best for the Sniff Magnitude Test, Frank says the test subjects get a whiff of three odors: a blend of ripe cheese and rancid meat, a fragrance that combines a burning smell with a skunk-like smell, and amyl acetate, which smells like banana. Frank adds that his current research is exploring the patterns of loss of smell that could be an indicator of Alzheimer’s. He says the Sniff Magnitude Test is also getting a look by researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago as part of a major epidemiological study on aging, Alzheimer’s disease and sense of smell.

A new study appearing in Epilepsia shows that a new drug called Eslicarbazepine (ESL) shows promise as a treatment for epilepsy patients whose symptoms remain uncontrolled with existing medications. A once-daily dose was shown to be most effective, offering patients added convenience as current treatments can involve several doses per day.
According to Science Daily, the trial was conducted across 19 locations in five European countries: Croatia, The Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania and Poland. Patients with at least four partial-onset seizures per month, in spite of treatment with other medications, were administered ESL doses ranging between 400mg and 1,200mg.
The study demonstrates that ESL is well tolerated and effective when used as adjunct therapy for adult patients with partial epilepsy, fully eliminating seizures in 24 percent of tested patients. The occurrence of side effects was also low compared to other current treatment methods.
No age- or gender-related differences were found in the effectiveness of the treatment. “Our study shows that ESL was safe and well tolerated,“ says Patr?cio Soares-da-Silva, co-author of the study. “We believe that ESL may have the potential to become an important new central nervous system drug not only for the treatment of epilepsy, but also for patients suffering from bipolar disorder and neuropathic pain.“

Researchers suggest that a chemical produced by fat cells makes colon cancers grow faster.
The British Journal of Surgery study could help explain why severely overweight people appear to be at far greater risk of the disease, BBC reports.
A team at the University of California, San Diego found that the hormone leptin triggered increased growth in human colon cancer cells.
Obese people are up to three times more likely to develop colorectal cancer.
Other researchers have already found that some colon cancer cells appear to be set up to respond to leptin, with “receptors“ for the chemical on their surfaces.
The more fat cells a person has, the more leptin will be in their bloodstream.
This research builds on previous work suggesting that leptin, a hormone released from fat cells, may play a role in the link between obesity and cancer.
“The researchers have shown that leptin is involved in two molecular pathways known to play a role in bowel cancer development.“
“Although at an early stage, the findings shed light both on the development of bowel cancer and the link between obesity and cancer.“
Previously, a study suggested that severely obese men doubled their risk of dying from prostate cancer, and obesity is also believed to increase the chance of developing breast cancer.

Breathe easy--new car smell is apparently non-toxic, although it might exacerbate allergies, new research suggests.
The molecules responsible for the characteristic leathery, plastic aroma that suffuses new cars are known as volatile organic compounds. These are regularly emitted from plastics, synthetic fabrics, upholstery, carpets, adhesives, paints, cleaning materials and other sources. Only a fraction of these volatile organic compounds are obvious--the rest are odorless.
According to LiveScience, toxicologist Jeroen Buters at the Technical University of Munich in Germany and his colleagues investigated the health effects of volatile organic compounds that cars emit. They focused on conditions mimicking those where the molecules would likely get emitted most in cars--when parked in hot sunshine.
New car smell does not appear to be toxic, the scientists found. Air from the new car did cause a slight aggravation of the immune response that could affect people with allergies, but the same was not seen with the older vehicle.
The scientists detailed their findings in the April 1 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Buters also researches “sick building syndrome,“ in which people apparently get sick after working in new buildings, where the air can be loaded with volatile organic compounds.
Curiously, “if you had the concentration of volatile organic compounds in the air of new buildings that you had in new motor vehicles, you would immediately get sent home out of fear of sick building syndrome,“ Buters told LiveScience.
This discrepancy might be explained in part by the different mindsets people have when it comes to entering new cars versus new buildings, he said.

People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors, according to a new study.
The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place, LiveScience says.
Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come to believe that they had past lives.
Subjects were asked to read aloud a list of 40 non-famous names, and then, after a two-hour wait, told that they were going to see a list consisting of three types of names: non-famous names they had already seen (from the earlier list), famous names, and names of non-famous people that they had not previously seen. Their task was to identify which names were famous.
The researchers found that, compared to control subjects who dismissed the idea of reincarnation, past-life believers were almost twice as likely to misidentify names. In particular, their tendency was to wrongly identify as famous the non-famous names they had seen in the first task. This kind of error, called a source-monitoring error, indicates that a person has difficulty recognizing where a memory came from.
People who are likely to make these kinds of errors might end up convincing themselves of things that aren’t true, said lead researcher Maarten Peters of Maastricht University in The Netherlands. When people who are prone to making these mistakes undergo hypnosis and are repeatedly asked to talk about a potential idea--like a past life--they might, as they grow more familiar with it, eventually convert the idea into a full-blown false memory.
This is because they can’t distinguish between things that have really happened and things that have been suggested to them, Peters told LiveScience.

A traditional rehabilitation program that incorporates mental practice of tasks during therapy significantly improves outcomes in patients with chronic stroke, according to a report in the journal Stroke.
“Mental practice, sometimes called ’motor imagery,’ is a technique by which physical skills can be cognitively rehearsed in a safe, repetitive manner,“ Dr. Stephen J. Page and colleagues from the University of Cincinnati Academic Medical Center, Ohio, write. “Mental practice increases motor-skill learning and performance in rehabilitative settings, and the same neural and muscular structures are activated when movements are mentally practiced as during physical practice of the same skills.“
According to Reuters Health, the researchers compared the effectiveness of a rehabilitation program incorporating mental practice of specific arm movements to traditional rehabilitation.
In addition to traditional rehabilitation, patients who were assigned to the experimental condition also received 30-minute mental practice sessions directly after therapy that required daily mental practice of the activities of daily living and showed significant improvements in arm movement. They also had significant increases in daily arm function. Moreover, the ability to perform valued activities was only observed in subjects in the group receiving mental practice.
“The results support the efficacy of programs incorporating mental practice for rehabilitating affected arm motor function in patients with chronic stroke,“ the authors conclude.

The Journal of Personality published a new study that shows selfless and social behavior is not purely a product of environment, specifically religious environment. After studying the behavior of adult twins, researchers found that, while altruistic behavior and religiousness tended to appear together, the correlation was due to both environmental and genetic factors.
Study author Laura Koenig told UPI, the popular idea that religious individuals are more social and giving because of the behavioral mandates set for them is incorrect. “This study shows that religiousness occurs with these behaviors also because there are genes that predispose them to it.“
“There is, of course, no specific gene for religiousness, but individuals do have biological predispositions to behave in certain ways,“ says Koenig. “The use of twins in the current study allowed for an investigation of the genetic and environmental influences on this type of behavior.“
This research is another example of the way that genes have an impact on behavior. “Society as a whole assumes that home environments have large impacts on behavior, but studies in behavior genetics are repeatedly showing that our behavior is also influenced by our genes,“ says Koenig.