(Press-News.org) Mars turned cold and dry long ago, but researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have discovered evidence of an ancient lake that likely represents some of the last potentially habitable surface water ever to exist on the Red Planet.
The study, published Thursday in the journal Geology, examined an 18-square-mile chloride salt deposit (roughly the size of the city of Boulder) in the planet's Meridiani region near the Mars Opportunity rover's landing site. As seen on Earth in locations such as Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats, large-scale salt deposits are considered to be evidence of evaporated bodies of water.
Digital terrain mapping and mineralogical analysis of the features surrounding the deposit indicate that this one-time lakebed is no older than 3.6 billion years old, well after the time period when Mars is thought to have been warm enough to sustain large amounts of surface water planet-wide. Planetary scientists believe that the solar system formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
"This was a long-lived lake, and we were able to put a very good time boundary on its maximum age," said Brian Hynek, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU-Boulder and lead author of the study. "We can be pretty certain that this is one of the last instances of a sizeable lake on Mars."
Based on the extent and thickness of the salt, the researchers estimate that the lake was only about 8 percent as salty as the Earth's oceans and therefore may have been hospitable to microbial life.
"By salinity alone, it certainly seems as though this lake would have been habitable throughout much of its existence," said Hynek, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at CU-Boulder and director of the CU Center for Astrobiology. He noted, however, that other factors such as acidity levels were not included in the scope of the study.
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Mikki Osterloo and Kathryn Kierein-Young, both research associates at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU-Boulder, co-authored the study.
The University of Alaska Geophysical Institute's Remote Sensing Laboratory and the University of Arizona's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) team provided assistance with digital terrain mapping and data processing. The NASA-Mars Data Analysis Program provided funding for the research.
Ruxolitinib (trade name: Jakavi) has been approved since March 2015 for the treatment of adults with polycythaemia vera, a rare disease of the bone marrow. It can be used when the drug hydroxyurea is ineffective or not tolerated. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy.
According to the findings, ruxolitinib offers better relief of individual symptoms and improves quality of life. Dyspnoea and muscle cramps are more frequent, ...
Brussels, [7 August 2015] - An unresolved inflammatory response is likely to be involved from the early stages of disease development. Controlling inflammation is crucial to human health and a key future preventative and therapeutic target. In a recent ILSI Europe's article published in the British Journal of Nutrition, a coalition of experts explain how nutrition influences inflammatory processes and help reduce chronic diseases risk.
Inflammation is a normal component of host defence, but elevated unresolved chronic inflammation is a core perturbation in a range of ...
Simon Fraser University scientist Jonathan Moore has authored new research suggesting that a proposed controversial terminal to load fossil fuels in the Skeena River estuary has more far-reaching risks than previously recognized.
In a letter newly published in the journal Science Moore and First Nations leaders and fisheries biologists from throughout the Skeena watershed refer to the new data, which is on the Moore Lab site.
Moore is a Faculty of Science and a Faculty of Environment professor of ecology and conservation of freshwaters and the Liber Ero Chair of Coastal ...
HOUSTON, August 6, 2015 - This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. This week also marks a watershed ruling by a federal appeals court striking down the controversial Texas voter ID law as violating that landmark civil rights act.
A new study conducted by the University of Houston Hobby Center for Public Policy and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy examines the impact of the contested Texas law in U.S. Congressional District 23 (CD-23).
The study suggests that the most significant impact of the Texas voter photo ID law on voter ...
Psychologists from Cardiff University have developed the first self-assessment test designed to help clinicians diagnose autism in adults.
Published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders the test measures the extent to which adults are affected by repetitive behaviours - one of the criteria used to diagnose autism.
These behaviours include common habits and routines, such as lining up objects or arranging them in patterns, fiddling obsessively with objects, or insisting that aspects of a daily routine remain exactly the same.
Researchers say that the ...
A web-based programme to encourage more frequent handwashing reduces the risk of catching and passing on respiratory tract infections to other household members, a randomised trial of more than 16000 UK households published in The Lancet has found. Users of the programme, called PRIMIT [1], also reported fewer gastrointestinal infections, a lower demand for consultations with their doctors, and fewer antibiotic prescriptions.
"Our findings suggest that a simple, cheap internet programme to encourage handwashing can reduce the risk of infection by around 14%. Because most ...
Adding the price tag to prescription medicines worth more than £20 in England is just a "headline grabbing gimmick," which, among other things, could potentially mislead patients into believing that cheaper drugs are somehow less important, says an editorial in Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (dtb).
On 1 July this year, health secretary for England Jeremy Hunt announced plans to print the indicative cost of medicines on all packs of those worth more than £20 alongside the phrase "funded by the UK taxpayer."
The initiative aims to encourage more people to ...
There is very little evidence to recommend avoiding certain types of dietary carbohydrate, known as the FODMAP diet, to ease the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS for short, concludes a review of the available data in Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (dtb).
IBS is characterised by abdominal pain/discomfort and altered bowel frequency in the absence of any obvious gut abnormalities. Symptoms can include abdominal bloating, which eating can worsen.
Up to one in five of the population is thought to be affected, with women twice as likely to develop IBS symptoms ...
Highlights
In a population-based study, poor kidney function was strongly related to decreased blood flow to the brain.
Poor kidney function was linked to stroke and dementia most strongly in participants with decreased blood flow to the brain.
A growing body of research suggests a link between kidney impairment and brain disorders.
Washington, DC (August 6, 2015) -- Impaired kidney function may lead to decreased blood flow to the brain, and ultimately to the occurrence of stroke or dementia. The findings, which come from a study appearing in an upcoming issue ...
Simon Fraser University scientist Jonathan Moore has authored new research suggesting that a proposed controversial terminal to load fossil fuels in the Skeena River estuary has more far-reaching risks than previously recognized.
In a letter newly published in the journal Science Moore and First Nations leaders and fisheries biologists from throughout the Skeena watershed refer to the new data, which is on the Moore Lab site.
Moore is a Faculty of Science and a Faculty of Environment professor of ecology and conservation of freshwaters and the Liber Ero Chair of Coastal ...
