(Press-News.org) Alexandria, VA - In the years following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, forest fires billowed plumes of contaminated smoke, carrying radioactive particles throughout Europe on the wind. Now, researchers fear that a shift to a hotter, drier climate in Eastern Europe could increase the frequency of these fires.
Researchers from the University of South Carolina in Columbia used satellite imagery of fires in the 2000s and field measurements of radioisotope levels to model changes in the distribution of radiation over the region. The researchers found that fires likely spread radiation across much of Eastern Europe, with Ukraine, Belarus and Russia receiving the highest doses. Traces of radioactive cesium-137 may have even traveled to Turkey, Italy and Scandinavia.
Previously, the same researchers had found that reduced microbial activity in the area leads to slower than expected rates of decomposition of dead plant matter, leading to a build-up of leaf litter and plant debris on the forest floor -- providing more fuel for forest fires.
Under climate models that predict a hotter, drier Eastern Europe in the future, such forest fires could become more frequent, the researchers concluded. Read more about it in EARTH Magazine: http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/flames-fan-lasting-fallout-chernobyl.
The June issue of EARTH Magazine, now available on the digital newsstand at http://www.earthmagazine.org, looks at how solar winds are mapped, and how tiny plant fossils offer scientists insight about ancient ecosystems, as well exclusive features on how geologists are potrayed on the silver screen and how new collaborations in paleoanthropology are bringing our ancestors to life.
INFORMATION:
Keep up to date with the latest happenings in Earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine online at: http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geosciences Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.
Maureen Moses (mmoses@americangeosciences.org)
Researchers have developed a model to assess how dams affect the viability of sea-run fish species that need to pass dams as they use both fresh and marine waters during their lifetimes. NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) have partnered on this project to test how varying passage efficiency at dams related to survival rates for these species.
Using a model of endangered Atlantic salmon in Maine's Penobscot River as a case study, NOAA researchers found that abundance, distribution and number of fish ...
Hamilton, ON (May 21, 2015) - Scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make adult sensory neurons from human patients simply by having them roll up their sleeve and providing a blood sample.
Specifically, stem cell scientists at McMaster can now directly convert adult human blood cells to both central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) neurons as well as neurons in the peripheral nervous system (rest of the body) that are responsible for pain, temperature and itch perception. This means that how a person's nervous system cells react and respond to ...
One of the reasons pluripotent stem cells are so popular in medical research is that they can be differentiated into any cell type. However, typical differentiation protocols lead to a heterogeneous population from which the desired type must be purified. Normally, antibodies that react to surface receptors unique to the desired cell are used for this purpose. However, in many cases the purification levels remain poor and the cells can be damaged. New RNA technology produced at CiRA may avoid these problems.
Professor Hirohide Saito at the Dept. of Reprogramming Science ...
Receptors carrying built-in decoys are the latest discovery in the evolutionary battle between plants and pathogens. The decoy domains within the receptor detect pathogens and raise the cell's alarm when there is an infection.
Plants display component parts of their immune system on receptors to trick pathogens into binding with them, which then triggers defence mechanisms. The discovery comes from Professor Jonathan Jones' group at The Sainsbury Laboratory, published in the high-impact journal Cell with a companion paper on a similar discovery from the Deslandes group ...
Almost 90 per cent of men with advanced prostate cancer carry genetic mutations in their tumours that could be targeted by either existing or new cancer drugs, a landmark new study reveals.
Scientists in the UK and the US have created a comprehensive map of the genetic mutations within lethal prostate cancers that have spread around the body, in a paper being hailed as the disease's 'Rosetta Stone'.
Researchers say that doctors could now start testing for these 'clinically actionable' mutations and give patients with advanced prostate cancer existing drugs or drug combinations ...
May 21, 2015 - A University of Wyoming faculty member led a research team that discovered a certain type of soil bacteria can use their social behavior of outer membrane exchange (OME) to repair damaged cells and improve the fitness of the bacteria population as a whole.
Daniel Wall, a UW associate professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, and others were able to show that damaged sustained by the outer membrane (OM) of a myxobacteria cell population was repaired by a healthy population using the process of OME. The research revealed that these social organisms ...
When Dolphin was a typhoon on May 16, NASA's CloudSat satellite completed a stunning eye overpass of Typhoon Dolphin in the West Pacific at 0412 UTC (12:12 a.m. EDT). By May 22, Dolphin's remnants were moving through the Northern Pacific.
NASA's CloudSat satellite sends pulses of microwave energy through the clouds, and some of the energy in the pulses is reflected back to the spacecraft. The time delay between when the pulse is sent and when the reflected energy is received back at the spacecraft is mapped into a distance of the cloud from the surface of the Earth, and ...
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Last year, researchers at the University of Missouri published a study on genetic diversity in American black bears in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma and determined that conservation management is needed to maintain healthy populations in the region. Now, those scientists have expanded the study to include black bears throughout North America. They discovered that black bears in Alaska are more closely related to bears in the eastern regions of the U.S. and Canada than those located in western regions. Details from the study revealed ancient movement patterns ...
(PARIS, FRANCE) - Stent thrombosis following urgent angioplasty for acute heart attack occurred in less than 1% of patients in a large, "real-world" registry, regardless of whether the antithrombotic treatment used during the procedure was bivalirudin, heparin alone, or a GP IIb/IIIa inhibitor (typically in combination with heparin).*
However, patients who experienced a stent thrombosis between days 2 and 30, regardless of drug regimen, were more likely to die within one year than were patients who developed stent thrombosis within the first 24 hours of their procedure.
"What ...
Skin pliability and elasticity improved after treatment with onabotulinum toxin (Botox) for mild facial wrinkles and the effect lasted for up to four months, according to a report published online by JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.
Human skin has three biomechanical features: strength, pliability (the ability to stretch) and elasticity (the ability to recoil). As people age, these properties change and the loss of skin elasticity appears to be the most prominent. Physicians use a variety of methods to reverse the signs of aging and onabotulinum toxin A injections are among ...
