From AGU's blogs: Should NASA be Studying the Earth? Joseph R. Dwyer, a Professor at the Department of Physics and the Space Science Center in the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire, shares his thoughts about whether NASA should be studying the Earth in a blog post on The Bridge. From Eos.org: Musical Composition Conveys Climate Change Data A student at the University of Minnesota communicates climate change science in an innovative way. From AGU's journals: Dynamics of the Earth's Surface in the Eastern Tibetan ...

When you're blasting though space at more than 98 percent of the speed of light, you may need driver's insurance. Astronomers have discovered for the first time a rear-end collision between two high-speed knots of ejected matter. This discovery was made while piecing together a time-lapse movie of a plasma jet blasted from a supermassive black hole inside a galaxy located 260 million light-years from earth. The finding offers new insights into the behavior of "light saber-like" jets that are so energized that they appear to zoom out of black hole at speeds several times ...

Cleveland . . . A new relative joins "Lucy" on the human family tree. An international team of scientists, led by Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie of The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, has discovered a 3.3 to 3.5 million-year-old new human ancestor species. Upper and lower jaw fossils recovered from the Woranso-Mille area of the Afar region of Ethiopia have been assigned to the new species Australopithecus deyiremeda. This hominin lived alongside the famous "Lucy's" species, Australopithecus afarensis. The species will be described in the May 28, 2015 issue of the international ...

Ovarian cancer cells can lock into survival mode and avoid being destroyed by chemotherapy, an international study reports. Professor Sean Grimmond, from The University of Queensland's Institute for Molecular Bioscience, said ovarian cancer cells had at least four different ways to avoid being destroyed by platinum-based chemotherapy treatments. "One way involves breaking and rearranging big groups of genes - the chromosomes," Professor Grimmond said. "This is fundamentally different to other cancers where the disease is driven by smaller but more gradual changes ...

Is it possible to tap into the signalling in the brain to figure out where you will go next? Hiroshi Ito, a researcher at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), can now say yes. Ito has just published a description of how this happens in this week's edition of Nature. Ito and his colleagues, including his supervisors, 2014 Nobel Laureates May-Britt and Edvard Moser, sampled a specific neural pathway to figure out if it is the location of the mechanism that enables animals to code their plan to get from ...

The latest generation of genomic testing offers a chance for significant improvements in patient care, disease prevention, and possibly even the cost-effectiveness of healthcare. A new report recommends that Congress act to incentivize the development of the massive data systems that doctors and regulators will need to make these tests safe and effective for patients. A team of three leading researchers in law, bioethics, and medical genetics believes the solution lies in bolstering existing regulatory oversight with a systematic, ongoing program of postmarket data ...

A new study suggests that states may not save as much money as anticipated by eliminating adult dental coverage under Medicaid. The study from University of Iowa researchers looked at California, which decided to end adult dental coverage under Medicaid in mid-2009. Some 3.5 million low-income adults in the Golden State lost dental benefits. The researchers found those adults made more than 1,800 additional visits annually to hospital emergency departments for dental care after losing the benefit. In all, California spent $2.9 million each year in Medicaid costs for ...

Today's industrial robots are remarkably efficient -- as long as they're in a controlled environment where everything is exactly where they expect it to be. But put them in an unfamiliar setting, where they have to think for themselves, and their efficiency plummets. And the difficulty of on-the-fly motion planning increases exponentially with the number of robots involved. For even a simple collaborative task, a team of, say, three autonomous robots might have to think for several hours to come up with a plan of attack. This week, at the Institute for Electrical and ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - May 27, 2015 - Picture yourself in a medical office, anxiously awaiting your annual flu shot. The nurse casually states, "This won't hurt a bit." But when the needle pierces your skin it hurts, and it hurts a lot. Your expectations have been violated, and not in a good way. In a study published in the early online edition of the journal PAIN, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have identified through imaging the part of the brain that is activated when a person expects one level of pain but experiences another. "This finding gives ...

New models developed at the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota reveal the genes and pathways that, when altered, can cause osteosarcoma. The information could be used to better target treatments for the often-deadly type of cancer. The new research is published in Nature Genetics. "Human osteosarcoma tumors are so genetically disordered it is nearly impossible to utilize usual methods to identify the genes associated with them," said first author Branden Moriarty, Ph.D., researcher in the Masonic Cancer Center and the University of Minnesota Medical School's ...

ANN ARBOR--Economically vulnerable families are increasingly willing to take on debt to maintain a basic standard of living--a situation that can put them into a deep financial hole, according to a new University of Michigan study. Poor families can find it challenging to stay on top of bills to keep the lights on, food on the table and a roof over their head--and they fall into debt, said Kristin Seefeldt, U-M assistant professor of social work and public policy. "Unfortunately, once in debt, getting out was difficult," she said. Trying to replace short-term losses ...

Using ever more energetic lasers, Lawrence Livermore researchers have produced a record high number of electron-positron pairs, opening exciting opportunities to study extreme astrophysical processes, such as black holes and gamma-ray bursts. By performing experiments using three laser systems -- Titan at Lawrence Livermore, Omega-EP at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and Orion at Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in the United Kingdom -- LLNL physicist Hui Chen and her colleagues created nearly a trillion positrons (also known as anti-matter particles). In previous ...

ANN ARBOR--For decades, scientists have known that ET-743, a compound extracted from a marine invertebrate called a mangrove tunicate, can kill cancer cells. The drug has been approved for use in patients in Europe and is in clinical trials in the U.S. Scientists suspected the mangrove tunicate, which is a type of a sea squirt, doesn't actually make ET-743. But the precise origins of the drug, which is also known as trabectedin, were a mystery. By analyzing the genome of the tunicate along with the microbes that live inside it using advanced sequencing techniques, researchers ...

WASHINGTON -- A national regulatory framework designed to prevent and limit indoor tanning is needed to alleviate the cancer burden and reduce the billions in financial costs from preventable skin cancer, say two Georgetown University public health experts. In their "Viewpoint" published online today in JAMA, Darren Mays, PhD, MPH, and John Kraemer, JD, MPH, explore a regulatory opportunity--similar to the way toy safety standards were achieved--that could help drive strong, national policies regarding indoor tanning. According to "The Surgeon General's Call to Action ...

Psychotic experiences were infrequent in the general population, with an average lifetime prevalence of ever having such an episode estimated at 5.8 percent, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Interest in the epidemiologic landscape of hallucinations and delusions has grown because these psychotic experiences (PEs) are reported by a sizable minority of the population. Some have called for more fine-grained analyses of PEs to guide the field. Researcher John J. McGrath, Ph.D., M.D., of the University of Queensland, Australia, and coauthors examined ...

An Internet-based acne education program that included automated counseling was not better than a standard educational website in improving acne severity and quality of life in adolescents, according to an article published online by JAMA Dermatology. Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that is prevalent among adolescents. Patient education is an important part of managing acne along with medication. However, the effect of patient education on clinical outcomes is not well characterized in dermatology publications. Researcher April W. Armstrong, M.D., ...

The controversial practice of administering pre-surgery beta-blockers to patients having noncardiac surgery was associated with an increased risk of death in patients with no cardiac risk factors but it was beneficial for patients with three to four risk factors, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. Pre-surgery β-blockade is a widely accepted practice in patients having cardiac surgery. But its use in patients at low risk of heart-related events having noncardiac surgery is controversial because of the increased risk of stroke and hypotension (low ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (May 27, 2015)-- In what may be the largest study ever conducted on changes in Americans' religious involvement, researchers led by San Diego State University psychology professor Jean M. Twenge found that millennials are the least religious generation of the last six decades, and possibly in the nation's history. The researchers -- including Ramya Sastry from SDSU, Julie J. Exline and Joshua B. Grubbs from Case Western Reserve University and W. Keith Campbell from the University of Georgia -- analyzed data from 11.2 million respondents from four nationally ...

Seeking to advance minimally invasive medical treatments, researchers have proposed using tiny robots, driven by magnetic potential energy from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. The researchers described the work in a paper presented this week during ICRA, the conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society in Seattle. Aaron T. Becker, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston, said the potential technology could be used to treat hydrocephalus and other conditions, allowing surgeons to avoid current treatments ...

LOGAN, UT -- Fruit growers in the U.S. Intermountain West (the region including the states of Montana, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado) are faced with challenges that include decreased agricultural land availability, harsh climatic conditions, and significant competition from both domestic production and imports. In order to keep fruit production viable in the region, growers need to adopt strategies that minimize these challenges. The authors of a new report have identified production technologies that can extend the growing season for strawberry crops and result in ...

WASHINGTON (May 27, 2015) --George Washington University (GW) researcher Valerie Hu, Ph.D., has found an important sex-dependent difference in the level of RORA protein in brain tissues of males and females. Specifically, females without autism have a slightly higher level of RORA in the frontal cortex of the brain than males without autism, while the levels of the protein are comparably lower in the brain of both males and females with autism. The new study, published this month by Molecular Autism in a special issue on sex differences in autism, further shows a stronger ...

SHIRAZ, IRAN - Following the introduction of kiwifruit to the world market from New Zealand in the 1950s, increased export of kiwi led to rapid expansion in consumer demand and production. One of the challenges for growers is kiwifruit's short storage life; the popular fruit is susceptible to severe disorders during storage. A new study from Iran recommends treatments that can extend storage life and improve quality in kiwifruit. Shirin Shahkoomahally and Asghar Ramezanian from the Department of Horticultural Science at Shiraz University published the study in the March ...

Women tolerate an unattractive man up to a point, but beware if he misbehaves. Then they'll easily shun him. So says Jeremy Gibson and Jonathan Gore of the Eastern Kentucky University in the U.S., after finding that a woman's view of a man is influenced by how handsome and law-abiding he is. Their study in Springer's journal Gender Issues has significance for those using dating sites or doing jury duty. Discovering how someone can make a positive first impression is an important field of study, because of its role in forming relationships. It is often based on physical ...

A collaboration of physicists and a mathematician has made a significant step toward unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics by explaining how spacetime emerges from quantum entanglement in a more fundamental theory. The paper announcing the discovery by Hirosi Ooguri, a Principal Investigator at the University of Tokyo's Kavli IPMU, with Caltech mathematician Matilde Marcolli and graduate students Jennifer Lin and Bogdan Stoica, will be published in Physical Review Letters as an Editors' Suggestion "for the potential interest in the results presented and on the ...

ALNARP, SWEDEN -- In organic apple orchards, one of the most serious challenges for growers is determining ways to limit weed competition while improving soil quality and ensuring high yields of quality apples. Scientists from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences published a study of orchard floor management systems (HortScience, March 2015) that revealed the benefits of using "sandwich systems" in organic orchards. Ibrahim I. Tahir, Sven-Erik Svensson, and David Hansson investigated different orchard management systems in an organic apple orchard adapted to ...