Taylor Swift's "Speak Now" album spoke loud and clear last week, as it will debut at No. 1 on this week's Billboard 200 chart with a whopping 1,047,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It's the largest sales week for an album since 50 Cent's "The Massacre" bowed at No. 1 with 1,141,000 in March of 2005.
Beta cells, which make insulin in the human body, do not replicate after the age of 30, indicating that clinicians may be closer to better treating diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is caused by a loss of beta cells by auto-immunity while type 2 is due to a relative insufficiency of beta cells. Whether beta cells replicate after birth has remained an open issue, and is critically important for designing therapies for diabetes.
Heavy smoking in middle age appears to be associated with more than double the risk for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia two decades later, according to a report posted online that will be published in the February 28 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Current estimates suggest smoking is responsible for several million deaths per year from causes such as heart disease and cancer, according to background information in the article. Although smoking increases risks of most diseases and of death, some studies have shown a reduced risk of Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions among smokers. "The link between smoking and risk of Alzheimer's disease, the most common subtype of dementia, has been somewhat controversial, with some studies suggesting that smoking reduces the risk of cognitive impairment," the authors write.
A new meta-analysis study conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.
Results from Ortigue's team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image.
A new type of sound sensor system has been developed to predict the likelihood of a landslide.
Thought to be the first system of its kind in the world, it works by measuring and analysing the acoustic behaviour of soil to establish when a landslide is imminent so preventative action can be taken.
An international CSIRO-led team of astronomers has developed a new way to weigh the planets in our Solar System -- using radio signals from the small spinning stars called pulsars.
"This is first time anyone has weighed entire planetary systems -- planets with their moons and rings," said team leader Dr David Champion from Germany's Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie.
Four-time GRAMMY Award winner Taylor Swift’s highly-anticipated third studio album, Speak Now, arrives in stores on October 25th, and Taylor has planned a bi-coastal week with her fans to launch the Big Machine Records album.
On October 25th, a group of winners of contests held around the world will join Taylor for a private performance at the United Nations in New York City. The event will be streamed on many of MTV Networks' web properties, including CMT.com, MTV.com, VH1.com and websites across Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America.
Taylor says:“‘Back to December’ is a song that addresses a first for me, in
that I’ve never apologized to someone in a song before. This is about a
Check out Taylor Swift’s new string-laden ballad “Back To December” off of her
forthcoming album Speak Now, which drops Oct. 25. The 20-year-old country cutie has
Galaxies like our own Milky Way formed easily and have also been the largest spiral galaxies in the universe for almost 4 billion years.
This is shown in a new study by associate professor Kambiz Fathi of the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University. The study is now published in the scientific journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
