Flu Shot During Pregnancy Shows Unexpected Benefits in Large Study

Getting a flu shot during pregnancy provides unanticipated benefits to the baby, according to the authors of a large population-based study examining the issue. Specifically, the study showed that H1N1 vaccination during the pandemic was associated with a significantly reduced risk of stillbirth, preterm birth and extremely small babies at birth.

Researchers at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), the CHEO Research Institute and the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) used data from Ontario's birth record database, BORN, to examine 55,570 single-child births that took place in Ontario during the H1N1 pandemic. The resulting paper was recently published by the American Journal of Public Health.

The study shows that, compared to pregnant women who were not immunized against H1N1, mothers who received the H1N1 vaccination were:

34% less likely to have a stillbirth, 28% less likely to deliver before 32 weeks, and 19% less likely to give birth to a child with a birth weight for gestational age in the bottom third percentile.

"These are all significant results, but especially interesting is the finding that the vaccinated mothers were one-third less likely to have a stillborn child," says lead author Deshayne Fell, an epidemiologist for BORN Ontario. "This is one of the only studies large enough to evaluate the association between maternal flu vaccination and stillbirth -- a very rare event."

"What surprised me and the research team was the strength of the protective benefits we found," says co-author Dr. Ann Sprague, the Scientific Manager of BORN Ontario at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute.

The study also found no increase in adverse outcomes for H1N1-vaccinated mothers and their babies during the weeks before and just after birth, also referred to as the perinatal period.

"The findings of this study are very helpful," says co-author Dr. Mark Walker, a Senior Scientist at OHRI, a High-Risk Obstetrician at The Ottawa Hospital, and a Professor and Tier One Research Chair in Perinatal Research at the University of Ottawa. "Pregnant women are generally very, very careful about what they put into their bodies. For health-care providers like me, such a large-scale study that shows no adverse perinatal outcomes resulting from the H1N1 flu vaccine will be extremely helpful when discussing maternal vaccination."

Of all the single-child births recorded from November 2009 to April 2010, 42% of the women received the H1N1 vaccination, which makes the findings robust. BORN -- the Better Outcomes Registry & Network -- collects data from all births in Ontario. In order to conduct the research for this study, questions about H1N1 vaccination were added to the database in advance of the H1N1 vaccine becoming available. BORN includes demographic data that allowed the research team to correct for smoking, education and income; however, as with any population-based study, it may not be possible to account for all influencing factors.

This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The Public Health Agency of Canada provided support to add the H1N1 questions to the BORN database. BORN is funded by Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, with its main offices based at the CHEO Research Institute.

Read more at Science Daily

Gold-Plated Fossil Solution

An international team of scientists in the University of Leicester's Department of Geology has found a solution to a research problem involving fossils right next door -- in the University's Chemistry Department.

Many objects, including fossils, can reveal a huge amount of scientific information when studied using the high power magnification of electron microscopes, but in order to study tiny fossils or microscopic details of larger fossils in this way, palaeontologists routinely coat the fossils with an ultra-thin layer of gold. This obviously changes the way the fossil looks, and so it is often necessary to remove the gold after analysis, but this is difficult and expensive and uses dangerous chemicals like cyanide.

University of Leicester chemists are developing industrial electro-plating and polishing techniques using liquid salts called 'ionic liquids' which are safe, cheap and environmentally friendly. Scientists from the two departments got together to see whether a similar process could be used on fossils. The work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

They found that ionic liquids can remove gold quickly and easily without damaging even tiny, delicate fossils. The liquids are safe to handle, can be simply disposed of and can even dissolve the gold without affecting the glue that holds the fossil specimen in place for analysis.

Professor Mark Purnell, from the Department of Geology, said: "There are many cases where collecting the evidence required for research affects fossils or other objects in ways that might be considered as somewhat destructive -- gold coating for electron microscopy falls into this category. Understandably, this creates problems for places like museums which have to balance the value of research on their collections against the risk that specimens will be affected. This approach to gold removal offers a new way of tackling this problem that is safe for both researchers and the specimens."

Professor Andy Abbott, from the Department of Chemistry, added: "This is a very nice demonstration of the use of ionic liquids for metal recovery but it is just the tip of the iceberg as we are using this technology for the recycling of a wide range of alloys and waste materials. The University of Leicester is building a strong reputation for the development of sustainable materials."

Read more at Discovery News

Flesh-Eating Bacteria Explained

Aimee Copeland, a 24-year-old University of West Georgia graduate student, is breathing on her own today. It's a huge milestone in her continuing battle against a rare infection -- necrotizing fasciitis.

Copeland contracted the rare form of flesh-eating bacteria after a zip line accident over a river in Georgia on May 1.

The germs that cause flesh-eating disease are common in warm and brackish waters like ponds, lakes and streams and rivers like the one that Copeland fell into when her zip line broke. The bacteria are not a threat to most people.

Swimmers sometimes come into contact with aeromonas hydrophila -- the type of bacteria Copeland is fighting.

If swallowed, your immune system will attempt to fight off gastrointestinal infections. You may experience some diarrhea -- but in most cases, says Dr. William Schaffner, president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, you're perfectly fine after towelling off.

If you have an open wound, like Copeland's, the bacteria can enter the body and quickly reproduce. While the bacteria don't actually eat flesh, they attack skin and tissue by giving off toxins.

"It requires the perfect storm of circumstances," Schaffner. "It's unlikely to happen. Which is also scientists' way of saying we don't really know."

When someone is infected, the bacteria spreads quickly by hiding from the body's immune system, making it difficult to diagnose. It's one of the fastest spreading infections known, according to The National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation.

Treatment starts with antibiotics, and usually involves removal of the infected areas as well. In Copeland's case, her hands were endangering her recovery, her father wrote on Facebook: "As always, my decision was simple. Do whatever it takes to give us the best chance to save Aimee's life." The bacteria live in areas devoid of oxygen, so exposing the wounds to oxygen through surgery helps prevent their spread. But because the infection moves so fast, and because the bacteria thrive deep within the tissue, undetected, surgeons often have to go back in a second or third time, Schaffner says.

In the most severe cases, organs can go into systemic shock, accompanied by respiratory and/or heart failure.

Jacqueline Roemmele, executive director of The National Necrotizing Fasciitis Foundation and NF survivor, says Copeland’s case is typical in terms of diagnosis and treatment.

“It’s pretty typical, and tragic,” Roemmele said. “It’s lightening fast, and drastic steps have to be taken quickly.”

Roemmele, who calls herself the “grandma of flesh-eating disease” because she contracted the bacteria 18 years ago, says the most important thing to watch out for is pain out of proportion to the injury.

“If you have a tiny cut on your leg, and 5-6 hours later your entire leg is killing you, and you have a fever, and your leg is turning red and swelling, don’t wait,” she says. “Get to a doctor.”

Copeland’s case is atypical, however, in that she contracted the bacteria through water, Roemmele says. Some have contracted the bacteria in shellfish, while shucking oysters, for example. And in a strikingly similar case to Copeland’s, a Long Island woman contracted the bacteria last year on spring break while playing in the water.

“She almost lost her leg; as she went into surgery, she was told her leg would be amputated,” Roemmele says. Instead, surgeons were able to remove only flesh, and she made it to her graduation ceremony two weeks after her skin grafts.

But most cases are caused by group A streptococcus bacteria that don’t respond to antibiotics, the culprit of the common Strep throat; a mixed bacterial infection can also occur after surgery.

Read more at Discovery News

Monster Telescope Combo Spies Feeding Black Hole

Astronomers are finally getting a look at the extreme processes inside and around black holes. By combining the light from three powerful infrared telescopes, an international team has observed the active gas and dust accretion around a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light-years away.

Resolving these features isn't just confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centers of galaxies, it's how the image was taken is a major step in our Earth-bound exploration of the cosmos.

The team, led by Gerd Weigelt, a director of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, resolved the inner ring of debris in the inner region of the active galaxy NGC 3783.

They used the AMBER interferometry instrument of the ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile to combine the infrared light from three telescopes. Sebastian Hoenig, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Santa Barbara Department of Physics, called the method "a major milestone toward directly imaging the growth phase of supermassive black holes."

Interferometry is an imaging method that uses two or more -- in this case, three -- separate points on a telescope array to observe an object. The light from the individual telescopes in combined or "interfered" to create a complete picture.

Since each individual image contains high-resolution information, the combined image can give astronomers stunning detail. With separate vantage points, the clarity of the final image is similar to the clarity of a telescope if its diameter were the same as the distance between the two points. In other words, this technique gives astronomers a spectacular view without the impossibly large hardware.

This method was necessary to see such a small object -- the ring-shaped distribution of hot dust called a torus in the inner region of the active galaxy NGC 3783. The dust torus has an angular radius of only 0.7 milliarcseconds in the sky. That's 5 million times smaller than one degree. To resolve something this small, astronomers would need a telescope with a mirror at least 100 meters in diameter. As we don't have the technology to build such a large telescope, interferometry was the best bet.

This method was able to achieve an angular resolution equivalent to the resolution of a telescope with a diameter of 130 meters, 15 times higher than one of the VLTI telescopes alone. Each telescope has a mirror 8 meters (26 ft) in diameter.

Read more at Discovery News

Understanding Arctic Ocean's Carbon Cycle

Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have conducted a new study to measure levels of carbon at various depths in the Arctic Ocean. The study, recently published in the journal Biogeosciences, provides data that will help researchers better understand the Arctic Ocean's carbon cycle -- the pathway through which carbon enters and is used by the marine ecosystem. It will also offer an important point of reference for determining how those levels of carbon change over time, and how the ecosystem responds to rising global temperatures.

"Carbon is the currency of life. Where carbon is coming from, which organisms are using it, how they're giving off carbon themselves -- these things say a lot about how an ocean ecosystem works," says David Griffith, the lead author on the study."If warming temperatures perturb the Arctic Ocean, the way that carbon cycles through that system may change."

Griffith's team sampled suspended particles of organic matter, as well as organic carbon and carbon dioxide (CO2) dissolved into the surrounding water. This is the first time that researchers have focused broadly on measuring multiple types of carbon at the same time and place in the Arctic Ocean -- due to its remote location and the challenges of operating in sea ice, few comprehensive carbon surveys had been conducted there before this study.

Griffith and his colleagues conducted their fieldwork in 2008 aboard the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent. At two different spots in the Canada Basin, an area northwest of the Canadian coast, they gathered samples from 24 depths ranging from the surface to the ocean floor 3800 meters (roughly 12,500 feet) below.

Collecting samples at those intervals was necessary, Griffith says, because the Arctic Ocean is separated into distinct layers, each with its own unique carbon characteristics. At the surface is a freshwater layer from river runoff and sea-ice melt. Below that is a layer of cold water from the Pacific, and below that is a warm, salty Atlantic layer. The deepest layer is slowly replaced by mixing with overlying Atlantic water.

Measuring the different amounts of carbon in each layer (and determining its source) is an essential step in understanding the flow of carbon through the marine ecosystem, says Griffith: "It's kind of like understanding how freight and people move in a city. If you don't know what's coming in and out, it's really hard to understand how the city works."

To analyze the contents of his samples, Griffith turned to Ann McNichol, a WHOI senior researcher and staff chemist. At WHOI's National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Facility (NOSAMS), she tallied the total number of carbon atoms in each specimen, including carbon-13, a stable isotope of the element. McNichol says that it can be used to determine where a particular pool of carbon originated, and how it may have been utilized by the marine ecosystem.

"Carbon-13 is primarily a source indicator," she says. "By measuring levels of carbon-13 at different depths, it's possible to determine if the carbon there was generated by the marine environment, ocean ice environment, or by terrestrial sources." The team also examined levels of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope that can help determine the age of each sample to further determine its source.

In addition to understanding the basic carbon cycle in the Arctic Ocean, Griffith's team hopes that the results of this baseline study will help evaluate how Arctic Ocean carbon levels and global climate interact. Griffith says there are several ways this could happen.

As the Arctic gradually warms, it may cause a more intense precipitation cycle over northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, generating more rainfall each year. This in turn would cause more runoff from melting permafrost and eroded soil -- both rich sources of organic carbon.

One possible outcome of that scenario could be an increase of carbon dioxide in the region. As bacteria in Arctic Ocean use the new influx of carbon as a food source, they may create CO2 as a byproduct. A second possibility, Griffith posits, is that warming temperatures and melting sea ice might boost the production of phytoplankton, tiny plant-like organisms that live near the ocean's surface and thrive on carbon dioxide in the water. As those phytoplankton die (or are eaten by other organisms and released as waste), they would sink to the sea floor, causing the carbon in their bodies to be sequestered in thick sediments -- effectively removing the increased carbon from the environment.

"Those are just a few aspects of what might happen. But for every one that we think about, there could be 10 others that drive the system in a different direction," says Griffith. "We don't yet have the kind of data to say anything definitive about how the Arctic would be affected by warming climate -- but what we do have is a very important baseline of data to help evaluate changes that will happen in the future. Without that, you're unfortunately just guessing at how things change over time."

Read more at Science Daily

Unique Gold Earring Found in Intriguing Collection of Ancient Jewelry in Israel

Hoard of gold and silver jewelry hidden for thousands of years could have Egyptian origin, say TAU researchers

Researchers from Tel Aviv University have recently discovered a collection of gold and silver jewelry, dated from around 1100 B.C., hidden in a vessel at the archaeological site of Tel Megiddo in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. One piece -- a gold earring decorated with molded ibexes, or wild goats -- is "without parallel," they believe.

According to Prof. Israel Finkelstein of TAU's Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures, the vessel was found in 2010, but remained uncleaned while awaiting a molecular analysis of its content. When they were finally able to wash out the dirt, pieces of jewelry, including a ring, earrings, and beads, flooded from the vessel. Prof. Finkelstein is the co-director of the excavation of Tel Megiddo along with Professor Emeritus David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University and Associate Director Prof. Eric Cline of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

The researchers believe that the collection, which was discovered in the remains of a private home in the northern part of Megiddo, belongs to a time period called "Iron I," and that at least some of the pieces could have originated in nearby Egypt. Some of the materials and designs featured in the jewelry, including beads made from carnelian stone, are consistent with Egyptian designs from the same period, notes Ph.D. candidate Eran Arie, who supervises the area where the hoard was found.

A treasure trove with mysterious origins

When the researchers removed the ceramic jug from the excavation site, they had no idea there was jewelry hidden within. The jewelry was well preserved and wrapped in textiles, but the circumstances surrounding it are mysterious. According to Prof. Finkelstein, it is likely that the jug was not the jewelry's normal storage place. "It's clear that people tried to hide the collection, and for some reason they were unable to come back to pick it up." The owners could have perished or been forced to flee, he says. Prof. Ussishkin believes that it was the jewelry collection of the Canaanite woman who lived in the house.

The assortment of jewelry is also out of the ordinary, notes Arie. Though the collection includes a number of lunette (moon-shaped) earrings of common Canaanite origin, researchers found an abundance of gold items in the collection and a number of beads made from carnelian, which was frequently used in the making of Egyptian jewellery in the same period. This points to a strong Egyptian connection, whether in influence or origin. Such a connection would not be surprising, according to Prof. Cline, who stated that interactions between Egypt and Megiddo are known to have taken place during both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

The most notable piece, the researchers agree, is a gold earring with a pattern of molded wild goats. "For unique items, we work to find parallels to help place the items in their correct cultural and chronological settings, but in this case we still haven't found anything," say the researchers.

Adding dimension to a multi-layer dig

It's another fascinating find from a unique archaeological site. Tel Megiddo was an important Canaanite city-state until the early 10th century B.C.E. and a pivotal center of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. It is a multi-layered site with various time periods clearly differentiated, and in this time period there are 10 to 11 strata well-dated through radiocarbon analysis. "Such a sequence of radiocarbon dates doesn't exist anywhere else in the region," says Prof. Finkelstein.

The layer in which the jewelry was found has already been dated to the 11th century B.C., just after the end of Egyptian rule in the 12th century B.C., Arie says. Either the jewelry was left behind in the Egyptian withdrawal or the people who owned the jewelry were influenced by Egyptian culture.

Read more at Science Daily

Time-Lapse Video of Incredible Annular Solar Eclipse

Did you see the eclipse yesterday? In case of poor geographic location or general Sunday laziness, here’s a time-lapse video showing the celestial event in its full glory.

Created by amateur astrophotographer Cory Poole, a math and science teacher, the video gives a great overview of the entire eclipse from start to finish. Poole watched the event from Redding, California, which was directly in the path of the moon’s shadow, allowing him to capture the full extent of the “ring of fire.”

During this annular eclipse, the moon was slightly too far from the Earth to completely block out the sun, leaving a bright red ring that would make any Xbox player shiver.

Read more at Wired Science

Jurassic Squid Ink Same as Modern Squid Ink

Ink from 160-million-year-old giant squid is essentially identical to today's squid ink.

The discovery suggests that the ink and the ink-screen escape mechanism of squid have not evolved much (if at all) since the Jurassic Period. The finding, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, might just prove that if it isn't broken, nature isn't going to fix it.

Researchers came to the determination after studying ink sacs from two giant squid fossils found two years ago in England. The primary component of squid ink is melanin, a substance that gives skin, hair and certain other things color. It's why squid ink is so dark in color. (On a side note, some studies show that squid ink has some anti-tumor properties.)

Since melanin hasn't changed much over the years, this research indicates that melanin could be preserved intact in the fossils of a range of organisms. Recent research has revealed, for example, the color of certain dinosaurs and other long-gone animals.

"Though the other organic components of the squid we studied are long gone, we've discovered through a variety of research methods that the melanin has remained in a condition that could be studied in exquisite detail," co-author John Simon said in a press release. He's a chemistry professor and the executive vice president and provost at the University of Virginia.

One of the ink sacs studied is the only intact prehistoric ink sac ever discovered.

Simon and his colleagues used a combination of direct, high-resolution chemical techniques to determine that the melanin had been preserved. The researchers also compared the chemical composition of the ancient squid ink remains to that of modern squid ink from Sepia officinalis, a squid common to the Mediterranean, North and Baltic seas.

"It's close enough that I would argue that the pigmentation in this class of animals has not evolved in 160 million years," Simon said. "The whole machinery apparently has been locked in time and passed down through succeeding generations of squid. It's a very optimized system for this animal and has been optimized for a long time."

Usually animal tissue, made up mostly of protein, degrades quickly. All that's then left of prehistoric animals is their skeletal remains -- or so we used to think. The preservation of melanin proves that some organic matter can survive.

Read more at Discovery News

Drug Found for Parasite That Is Major Cause of Death Worldwide

Research by a collaborative group of scientists from UC San Diego School of Medicine, UC San Francisco and Wake Forest School of Medicine has led to identification of an existing drug that is effective against Entamoeba histolytica. This parasite causes amebic dysentery and liver abscesses and results in the death of more than 70,000 people worldwide each year.

Using a high-throughput screen for drugs developed by the research team, they discovered that auranofin -- a drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration 25 years ago for rheumatoid arthritis -- is very effective in targeting an enzyme that protects amebae from oxygen attack (thus enhancing sensitivity of the amebae to reactive oxygen-mediated killing).

The results of the work, led by Sharon L. Reed, MD, professor in the UCSD Departments of Pathology and Medicine and James McKerrow, MD, PhD, professor of Pathology in the UCSF Sandler Center for Drug Discovery, will be published in the May 20, 2012 issue of Nature Medicine.

Entamoeba histolytica is a protozoan intestinal parasite that causes human amebiasis, the world's fourth leading cause of death from protozoan parasites. It is listed by the National Institutes of Health as a category B priority biodefense pathogen. Current treatment relies on metronidazole, which has adverse effects, and potential resistance to the drug is an increasing concern.

"Because auranofin has already been approved by the FDA for use in humans, we can save years of expensive development," said Reed. "In our studies in animal models, auranofin was ten times more potent against this parasite than metronidazole."

In a mouse model of amebic colitis and a hamster model of amebic liver abscess, the drug markedly decreased the number of parasites, damage from inflammation, and size of liver abscesses.

"This new use of an old drug represents a promising therapy for a major health threat, and highlights how research funded by the National Institutes of Health can benefit people around the world," said Reed. The drug has been granted "orphan-drug" status (which identifies a significant, newly developed or recognized treatment for a disease which affects fewer than 200,000 persons in the United States) and UC San Diego hopes to conduct clinical trials in the near future.

Read more at Science Daily

Newfound Exoplanet May Turn to Dust: Planet’s Dust Cloud May Explain Strange Patterns of Light from Its Star

Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris -- much like the tail of a comet -- is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet's disintegration. According to the team's calculations, the tiny exoplanet, not much larger than Mercury, will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.

The team found that the dusty planet circles its parent star every 15 hours -- one of the shortest planet orbits ever observed. Such a short orbit must be very tight and implies that the planet must be heated by its orange-hot parent star to a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers hypothesize that rocky material at the surface of the planet melts and evaporates at such high temperatures, forming a wind that carries both gas and dust into space. Dense clouds of the dust trail the planet as it speeds around its star.

"We think this dust is made up of submicron-sized particles," says co-author Saul Rappaport, a professor emeritus of physics at MIT. "It would be like looking through a Los Angeles smog."

The group's findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal, are based on data from the Kepler Observatory, a space-based telescope that surveys more than 160,000 stars in the Milky Way. The observatory records the brightness of each star at regular intervals; scientists then analyze the data for signs of new planets outside our own solar system.

A curiously stellar case

Astronomers using the Kepler satellite typically identify exoplanets by looking for regular dips in a star's brightness. For example, if a star dims every month, one possibility is that the dimming is due to a planet that travels around the star over the course of a month; each time the planet travels in front of the star, the planet blocks the same small amount of light.

However, Rappaport and his colleagues came across a curious light pattern from a star dubbed KIC 12557548. The group examined the star's light curves, a graph of its brightness over time, and found that its light dropped by different intensities every 15 hours -- suggesting that something was blocking the star regularly, but by varying degrees.

The team considered several explanations for the puzzling data, including the possibility that a planetary duo -- two planets orbiting each other -- also orbited the star. (Rappaport reasoned that the planetary pair would pass by the star at different orientations, blocking out different amounts of light during each eclipse.) In the end, the data failed to support this hypothesis: The dimming every 15 hours was judged far too short a period to allow sufficient room for two planetary bodies orbiting each other, in the same way that Earth and the moon together orbit the sun.

A dusty idea

Instead, the researchers landed on a novel hypothesis: that the varying intensities of light were caused by a somewhat amorphous, shape-shifting body.

"I'm not sure how we came to this epiphany," Rappaport says. "But it had to be something that was fundamentally changing. It was not a solid body, but rather, dust coming off the planet."

Rappaport and his colleagues investigated various ways in which dust could be created and blown off a planet. They reasoned that the planet must have a low gravitational field, much like that of Mercury, in order for gas and dust to escape from the planet's gravitational pull. The planet must also be extremely hot -- on the order of 3,600° F.

Rappaport says there are two possible explanations for how the planetary dust might form: It might erupt as ash from surface volcanoes, or it could form from metals that are vaporized by high temperatures and then condense into dust. As for how much dust is spewed from the planet, the team showed that the planet could lose enough dust to explain the Kepler data. From their calculations, the researchers concluded that at such a rate, the planet will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.

The researchers created a model of the planet orbiting its star, along with its long, trailing cloud of dust. The dust was densest immediately surrounding the planet, thinning out as it trailed away. The group simulated the star's brightness as the planet and its dust cloud passed by, and found that the light patterns matched the irregular light curves taken from the Kepler Observatory.

"We're actually now very happy about the asymmetry in the eclipse profile," Rappaport says. "At first we didn't understand this picture. But once we developed this theory, we realized this dust tail has to be here. If it's not, this picture is wrong."

Dan Fabrycky, a member of the Kepler Observatory science team, says the model may add to the many different ways in which a planet can disappear.

Read more at Science Daily