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

Study examines Earth and Mars to determine how climate change affects the paths of rivers

2023-08-04
(Press-News.org) In a new study published in Nature Geosciences, researchers, led by a Tulane University sedimentologist , investigated why the paths of meandering rivers change over time and how they could be affected by climate change.

Chenliang Wu, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Tulane University School of Science and Engineering, began this research by looking at the Mississippi River before adding other rivers on Earth and ancient riverbeds on Mars to the study.

The study specifically looks at river sinuosity, or how much rivers curve. The sinuosity of rivers changes over time, depending on the age of the river and environmental changes. Some of these changes include sediment and water supply and riverbank vegetation, all of which are affected by climate change. The study found that river sinuosity is related to the changes in how much water flows through the river. Rivers have different water levels depending on environmental factors, like precipitation levels. 

The researchers looked at maps of the rivers on Earth over time by using historical data from as early as the fifth century and images from as early as 1939. They used data of 21 lowland meandering rivers. For the ancient riverbeds on Mars, they used previously identified ancient river channels from remote sensing data. 

The ancient riverbeds on Mars, untouched by human influence, gave Wu and his team a system to test their hypotheses on how the river systems migrated and what their sinuosity looked like by the time they dried up. Their analysis is also a step toward understanding what the hydroclimate on Mars was like when there was still surface water. 

“It really lays the foundation for more advanced topics,” Wu said, “like, were the environmental conditions suitable for life on Mars?”

After performing analysis on the rivers, the researchers separated them into two categories: variable-sinuosity and constant-sinuosity. The variable-sinuosity rivers never reached a steady state, meaning their sinuosities continue changing, and the constant sinuosity rivers did reach a steady state, meaning their average sinuosity remained relatively constant. Of the 21 Earth rivers studied, 13, including the Mississippi River, had variable sinuosity, while 8 had constant sinuosity. 

Understanding what factors affect the sinuosity of rivers will give researchers and engineers insight into how to manage rivers in the future. It can help with river restoration, future infrastructure projects and flood management. This insight can be invaluable in attempts to mitigate the impacts of climate change. 

As more extreme weather happens more frequently due to the effects of climate change, research like Wu’s will become even more important when it comes to protecting and helping populations who live near rivers. According to a 2019 study in the International Journal of Water Resources Development, half of the world’s population lives in river basins, all of whom could be affected by future floods from extreme weather events.

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

MSU scientists help discover the highest-energy light coming from the sun

2023-08-03
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Sometimes, the best place to hide a secret is in broad daylight. Just ask the sun. “The sun is more surprising than we knew,” said Mehr Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University. “We thought we had this star figured out, but that’s not the case.” Nisa, who will soon be joining MSU’s faculty, is the corresponding author of a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that details the discovery of the highest-energy ...

Outdoor air pollution may increase non-lung cancer risk in older adults

2023-08-03
Key points: A cohort study of millions of Medicare beneficiaries found that chronic exposures to PM2.5 and NO2 over a 10-year period increased the risk of developing colorectal and prostate cancers. Even in areas with low pollution levels, researchers found substantial associations between exposures to these pollutants and the risk of developing colorectal and prostate cancers, in addition to breast and endometrial cancers. For immediate release: August 3, 2023 Boston, MA—Chronic exposure to fine particulate air pollutants (PM2.5) ...

University of Minnesota-led study links long-term artificial sweetener intake to increased body fat adipose tissue volume

2023-08-03
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (08/03/2023) — Published in the International Journal of Obesity, University of Minnesota Medical School and School of Public Health researchers led a study on the relationship between dietary intake and cardiovascular disease risk factors.  Over 20 years, the research team examined people's regular dietary intake, paying particular attention to non-nutritive sweeteners commonly found in artificial sweeteners. They found that long-term consumption of aspartame, saccharin and diet beverages were linked to increased fat stores in the abdomen and fat within muscle. However, ...

Deep learning for new protein design

Deep learning for new protein design
2023-08-03
The key to understanding proteins — such as those that govern cancer, COVID-19, and other diseases — is quite simple.  Identify their chemical structure and find which other proteins can bind to them. But there’s a catch. “The search space for proteins is enormous,” said Brian Coventry, a research scientist with the Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington and The Howard Hughes Medical Institute.  A protein studied by his lab typically is made of 65 amino acids, and ...

Scientists uncover a startling—and exploitable—coordination of gene expression in tumors

Scientists uncover a startling—and exploitable—coordination of gene expression in tumors
2023-08-03
AUGUST 3, 2023, NEW YORK – A Ludwig Cancer Research study has identified a pair of genes whose expression by a type of immune cell within tumors is predictive of outcomes for cancer patients and is linked to a vast network of gene expression programs, engaged by multiple cell types in the tumor microenvironment, that control human cancers. Researchers led by Ludwig Lausanne’s Mikaël Pittet report in the current issue of Science that patients with higher expression of the gene CXCL9 in their tumor-associated macrophages had far better clinical outcomes than those with higher expression of a gene named SPP1 by the immune cells. Macrophages expressing the former ...

Fatal heart disease has plummeted since 1990, but progress has stalled

2023-08-03
After decades of decline, fatal coronary heart disease may rise again unless Americans modify three major risk factors: smoking, drinking, and obesity. A Rutgers study just published in American Heart Journal found that deaths from coronary heart disease among people ages 25 to 84 dropped to 236,953 in 2019 from 397,623 in 1990, even though Americans’ median age increased to 38 from 33 over the last three decades. Between 1990 and 2019, the US age-standardized coronary heart disease mortality rate per 100,000 fell from 210.5 to 66.8 for females (4 percent decline per year) and from 442.4 to 156.7 for males (3.7 percent decline per year). However, the decline has slowed significantly ...

UCF, MIT designing technology to fight bacterial infections, improve aquaculture farming

2023-08-03
UCF, MIT Designing Technology To Fight Bacterial Infections, Improve Aquaculture Farming    BY SUHTLING WONG | AUGUST 3, 2023 11:11 AM UCF and MIT researchers are using farm-raised seafood as a model to create new technologies that fight pathogenic bacteria. University of Central College of Medicine microbiologist Dr. Salvador Almagro-Moreno and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Dr. Otto Cordero were recently awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation  to create synthetic microbiomes –  communities of microorganisms – that will better protect aquatic environments from bacteria.  The team ...

Researchers discuss the ethical challenges of studying DNA from a 18th–19th century African American community

2023-08-03
A population genetics team recently identified the genetic relationship between over 40,000 23andMe users and a population of enslaved and free African Americans that lived in Catoctin Furnace, Maryland between 1776–1850. Over the course of this study, the researchers considered how best to inform descendants and other genetic relatives of their genetic connection to the site. The group has published their considerations and the ethical questions they have encountered on August 3rd in the American Journal of Human Genetics. “This study required us to consider several ethical issues that had not been explicitly addressed in the existing literature ...

Tropical trees use social distancing to maintain biodiversity

Tropical trees use social distancing to maintain biodiversity
2023-08-03
Tropical forests often harbor hundreds of species of trees in a square mile, but scientists often struggle to understand how such a diversity of species can coexist. In a study published in Science, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have provided new insights into the answer by uncovering a key characteristic of the spatial distribution of adult trees. Combining computational modeling with data collected during a 30-year period, the researchers discovered that adult trees in a Panamanian forest are three times as distant from other adults of the same species as what the proverbial “the apple doesn’t fall far from ...

Ferroelectric material is now elastic

Ferroelectric material is now elastic
2023-08-03
A research group led by Prof. LI Runwei at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have proposed a "slight crosslinking" method that imparts elastic recovery to ferroelectric materials. The study was published in Science. Ferroelectric materials are very useful for applications such as data storage and processing, sensing, energy conversion, and optoelectronics, etc., making them highly desirable in mobile phones, tablets and other ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Transforming treatment outcomes for people with OCD

Damage from smoke and respiratory viruses mitigated in mice via a common signaling pathway

New software tool could help better understand childhood cancer

Healthy lifestyle linked to lower diverticulitis risk, irrespective of genetic susceptibility

Women 65+ still at heightened risk of cervical cancer caused by HPV

‘Inflammatory’ diet during pregnancy may raise child’s diabetes type 1 risk

Effective therapies needed to halt rise in eco-anxiety, says psychology professor

Nature-friendly farming boosts biodiversity and yields but may require new subsidies

Against the odds: Endometriosis linked to four times higher pregnancy rates than other causes of infertility, new study reveals

Microplastics discovered in human reproductive fluids, new study reveals

Family ties and firm performance: How cousin marriage traditions shape informal businesses in Africa

Novel flu vaccine adjuvant improves protection against influenza viruses, study finds

Manipulation of light at the nanoscale helps advance biosensing

New mechanism discovered in ovarian cancer peritoneal metastasis: YWHAB restriction drives stemness and chemoresistance

New study links blood metabolites and immune cells to increased risk of urolithiasis

Pyruvate identified as a promising therapeutic agent for ulcerative colitis by targeting cytosolic phospholipase A2

New insights into the clinical impact of IKBKG mutations: Understanding the mechanisms behind rare immunodeficiency syndromes

Displays, imaging and sensing: New blue fluorophore breaks efficiency records in both solids and solutions

Sugar, the hidden thermostat in plants

Personality can explain why some CEOs earn higher salaries

This puzzle game shows kids how they’re smarter than AI

Study suggests remembrances of dead played role in rise of architecture in Andean region

Brain stimulation can boost math learning in people with weaker neural connections

Inhibiting enzyme could halt cell death in Parkinson’s disease, study finds

Neurotechnology reverses biological disadvantage in maths learning

UNDER EMBARGO: Neurotechnology reverses biological disadvantage in maths learning

Scientists target ‘molecular machine’ in the war against antimicrobial resistance

Extending classical CNOP method for deep-learning atmospheric and oceanic forecasting

Aston University research: Parents should encourage structure and independence around food to support children’s healthy eating

Thunderstorms are a major driver of tree death in tropical forests

[Press-News.org] Study examines Earth and Mars to determine how climate change affects the paths of rivers