This week from AGU: California tsunami, air pollution, Indian Ocean & 4 papers
2015-08-19
(Press-News.org) GeoSpace
New study shows significant tsunami strength for parts of Southern California
A new simulation of tsunamis generated by earthquake faults off the Santa Barbara coast demonstrates a greater potential for tsunami inundation in the cites of Ventura and Oxnard than previously thought, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters.
Scientists track air pollution by meal times
Cars and trucks shouldn't take all of the blame for air pollution in Hong Kong. Smoke from cooking adds more of a specific type of pollution - organic aerosols - to the city's air than traffic emissions, a new study find in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Eos.org
Making the Northern Indian Ocean a hub of geomagnetic data
A new initiative seeks to unite and network the magnetic research community in the northern Indian Ocean region.
New research papers
Tidally driven mixing and dissipation in the stratified boundary layer above steep submarine topography, Geophysical Research Letters
Dissolved gas dynamics in wetland soils: Root-mediated gas transfer kinetics determined via push-pull tracer tests, Water Resources Research
Untangling the effects of shallow groundwater and soil texture as drivers of subfield-scale yield variability, Water Resources Research
Multidecadal trends of oxygen and their controlling factors in the western North Pacific, Global Biogeochemical Cycles
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2015-08-19
New supercomputer models have come closer than ever to capturing the behavior of normal human heart valves and their replacements, according to recent studies by groups including scientists at the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University.
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2015-08-19
Irvine, Calif., Aug. 19, 2015 -- Patients with hypertension treated with acupuncture experienced drops in their blood pressure that lasted up to a month and a half, researchers with the Susan Samueli Center for Integrative Medicine have found.
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2015-08-19
Don't look now, but the pronoun "I" is becoming obsolete.
Recent microbiological research has shown that thinking of plants and animals, including humans, as autonomous individuals is a serious over-simplification.
A series of groundbreaking studies have revealed that what we have always thought of as individuals are actually "biomolecular networks" that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes that have a significant effect on how the host develops, the diseases it catches, how it behaves and possibly even its social interactions.
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2015-08-19
A longstanding mystery about the tiny stars that let loose powerful explosions known as Type Ia supernovae might finally be solved.
For decades, astronomers have debated whether one white dwarf star, or two, is necessary for firing up this particular kind of supernova. The answer is not merely academic. Understanding the nitty-gritty physics and diversity of Type Ia supernovae will help illuminate our study of the evolution of galaxies and the strange cosmic force known as dark energy.
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2015-08-19
In a paper titled Hummingbird tongues are elastic micropumps which appears in the August 19 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Alejandro Rico Guevara and Margaret Rubega from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Tai-Hsi Fan from the School of Engineering, say that fluid is actually drawn into the tongue by the elastic expansion of the tongues grooves after they are squeezed flat by the beak.
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2015-08-19
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed an efficient algorithm that can interpret the wheezing of patients with breathing difficulties to give medical providers information about what's happening in the lungs. The research is part of a larger, ongoing project to develop wearable smart medical sensors for monitoring, collecting and interpreting personal health data.
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2015-08-19
CHICAGO --- Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) has been passed down in many families for generations -- causing reproductive and metabolic health problems for millions of women around the world. Yet, its cause remains unknown despite more than 80 years of research since the disorder was first described in 1935.
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2015-08-19
LAWRENCE -- Compulsory schooling laws instituted in the late 1800s and early 1900s caused more people in Northern states to marry people at their same education level and race, possibly contributing to economic inequality, according to a University of Kansas researcher's study.
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2015-08-19
Solo travellers don't go alone because they have to, they do it because they want to, a new Queensland University of Technology study has found.
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2015-08-19
This news release is available in Japanese.
An international research team has some good news for the struggling honeybee, and the millions of people who depend on them to pollinate crops and other plants.
These valuable pollinators have faced widespread colony losses over the past decade, largely due to the spread of a predatory mite called Varroa destructor. But the bees might not be in as dire a state as it seems, according to research recently published in Nature Communications.
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[Press-News.org] This week from AGU: California tsunami, air pollution, Indian Ocean & 4 papers