PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Global warming could change strength of El Niño

Coral samples reveal how ENSO cycle has changed over 4,300 years

2013-09-11
(Press-News.org) Wednesday, September11: Global warming could impact the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), altering the cycles of El Niño and La Niña events that bring extreme drought and flooding to Australia and many other Pacific-rim countries. New research published in Nature Geoscience using coral samples from Kiribati has revealed how the ENSO cycle has changed over the past 4300 years. This research suggests that external changes have an impact on the strength and timing of El Niño events. "Our research has showed that while the development of La Niña and El Niño events is chaotic and hard to predict, the strength of these events can change over long time spans due to changes in the global climate," said one of the paper's authors Dr Steven Phipps. "For instance, we found that the ENSO cycle was much weaker 4300 years ago than it is today. This weaker cycle persisted for almost two centuries." The researchers determined that natural influences on the Earth's climate, such as those caused by variations in its orbit around the sun, could affect the strength of El Niño events. Although small, these natural influences altered seasonal trade winds across the Eastern Pacific and affected the development of El Niño events. Interestingly, the research also showed that El Niño events in the past started later in the year and were often less intense. "We found there was a small strengthening of the regular seasonal trade winds in the Eastern Pacific in response to natural warming cycles in the Earth's orbit around the sun. Remarkably this acted in a big way to stop El Niño events from forming and growing," said lead author Dr Helen McGregor from the University of Wollongong. "This shows us that external factors can influence the ENSO process and that it may have a sustained response to future greenhouse gas changes. Currently 20th Century observations are too short to confirm whether this is occurring now." Importantly, these new observations can now be used in climate models to see if these past changes in ENSO processes can be reproduced. "Currently, climate models do not agree on how El Niño may change under future global warming scenarios," said Dr Phipps "With these new observations we can determine which models reproduce the most accurate response to changes in the global climate. This will help us to more accurately forecast the response of ENSO under future global warming scenarios."

### END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Selection drives functional evolution of large enzyme families

2013-09-11
Researchers at Umeå University in Sweden, together with researchers at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, show in a new study how natural selection drives functional evolution of a large protein family in conifer trees. The study sheds light on the mechanisms and adaptive significance of gene family evolution. Most structural and regulatory genes in eukaryotes are members of gene families. Over the course of evolution, some duplicate genes are short-lived, losing functionality and ultimately being removed. However, some duplicates persist and diversify ...

Mosquito bites deliver potential new malaria vaccine

2013-09-11
This study suggests that genetically engineered malaria parasites that are stunted through precise gene deletions (genetically attenuated parasites, or "GAP") could be used as a vaccine that protects against malaria infection. This means that the harmless (attenuated) version of the parasite would interact with the body in the same way as the infective version, but without possibility of causing disease. GAP-vaccination would induce robust immune responses that protect against future infection with malaria. According to the World Health Organization, there were 219 million ...

New study discovers copper destroys highly infectious norovirus

2013-09-11
Scientists from the University of Southampton have discovered that copper and copper alloys rapidly destroy norovirus – the highly-infectious sickness bug. Worldwide, norovirus is responsible for more than 267 million cases of acute gastroenteritis every year. In the UK, norovirus costs the National Health Service at least £100 million per year, in times of high incidence, and up to 3,000 people admitted to hospital per year in England. There is no specific treatment or vaccine, and outbreaks regularly shut down hospital wards and care homes, requiring expensive deep-cleaning, ...

Airbrushing could facilitate large-scale manufacture of carbon nanofibers

2013-09-11
Researchers from North Carolina State University used airbrushing techniques to grow vertically aligned carbon nanofibers on several different metal substrates, opening the door for incorporating these nanofibers into gene delivery devices, sensors, batteries and other technologies. "Because we're using an airbrush, this technique could easily be incorporated into large-scale, high-throughput manufacturing processes," says Dr. Anatoli Melechko, an adjunct associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. ...

Versatile microRNAs choke off cancer blood supply, suppress metastasis

2013-09-11
HOUSTON – A family of microRNAs (miR-200) blocks cancer progression and metastasis by stifling a tumor's ability to weave new blood vessels to support itself, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report today in Nature Communications. Patients with lung, ovarian, kidney or triple-negative breast cancers live longer if they have high levels of miR-200 expression, the researchers found. Subsequent experiments showed for the first time that miR-200 hinders new blood vessel development, or angiogenesis, and does so by targeting cytokines interleukin-8 ...

Transplanting fat may be effective treatment for metabolic disease

2013-09-11
Transplanting fat may treat such inherited metabolic diseases as maple syrup urine disease (MSUD) by helping the body process the essential amino acids that these patients cannot, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. The researchers are targeting maple syrup urine disease because it disproportionately affects the Amish and Mennonites who reside in the central Pennsylvania communities surrounding the College of Medicine and its hospital, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. The team transplanted up to two grams of fat into either abdomens ...

How schizophrenia affects the brain

2013-09-11
It's hard to fully understand a mental disease like schizophrenia without peering into the human brain. Now, a study by University of Iowa psychiatry professor Nancy Andreasen uses brain scans to document how schizophrenia impacts brain tissue as well as the effects of anti-psychotic drugs on those who have relapses. Andreasen's study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, documented brain changes seen in MRI scans from more than 200 patients beginning with their first episode and continuing with scans at regular intervals for up to 15 years. The study is considered ...

Drug treatment means better, less costly care for children with sickle cell disease

2013-09-11
The benefits of hydroxyurea treatment in people with sickle cell disease are well known -- fewer painful episodes, fewer blood transfusions and fewer hospitalizations. Now new research from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and other institutions reveals that by preventing such complications, the drug can also considerably lower the overall cost of medical care in children with this condition. The cost-benefit analysis, described online Sept. 2 in the journal Pediatrics and believed to be the first of its kind in pediatric patients, showed that children whose standard ...

New system allows cloud customers to detect program-tampering

2013-09-11
CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- For small and midsize organizations, the outsourcing of demanding computational tasks to the cloud — huge banks of computers accessible over the Internet — can be much more cost-effective than buying their own hardware. But it also poses a security risk: A malicious hacker could rent space on a cloud server and use it to launch programs that hijack legitimate applications, interfering with their execution. In August, at the International Cryptology Conference, researchers from MIT and Israel's Technion and Tel Aviv University presented a new system that ...

Development of a new program that simulates protein movements

2013-09-11
This news release is available in Spanish and Spanish. Proteins are molecules involved in most of the biological processes that take place in our bodies. They have to move in order to fulfil many of their functions. For example, they open or close to keep and transport the molecules inside them. Until now, costly methods were the only available option for studying these movements: supercomputers were needed and the calculations took many days. The department of mechanics of the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao has now developed a shorter method. On the basis of ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

Social media use may help to empower plastic surgery patients

Q&A: How to train AI when you don't have enough data

Wayne State University researchers uncover potential treatment targets for Zika virus-related eye abnormalities

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

Small birds spice up the already diverse diet of spotted hyenas in Namibia

Imaging detects transient “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain

Dissolved organic matter could be used to track and improve the health of freshwaters

Indoor air quality standards in public buildings would boost health and economy, say international experts

Positive associations between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

New imaging method illuminates oxygen's journey in the brain

Researchers discover key gene for toxic alkaloid in barley

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

Bidirectional link between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

Cell division quality control ‘stopwatch’ uncovered

Vaccine protects cattle from bovine tuberculosis, may eliminate disease

Andrew Siemion to receive the SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Award

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy proves effective for locally advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma

Study flips treatment paradigm in bilateral Wilms tumor, shows resistance to chemotherapy may point toward favorable outcomes

[Press-News.org] Global warming could change strength of El Niño
Coral samples reveal how ENSO cycle has changed over 4,300 years