The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, underscore the need for continuous satellite monitoring of the ice sheets to better identify and predict melting and the corresponding sea-level rise. The ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland contain about 99.5 per cent of the Earth's glacier ice which would raise global sea level by some 63m if it were to melt completely. The ice sheets are the largest potential source of future sea level rise – and they also possess the largest uncertainty over their future behaviour. They present some unique challenges for predicting ...

It is not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption. They can reach a point of such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor that resembles sound made by various types of musical instruments, though at frequencies much lower than humans can hear. A new analysis of an eruption sequence at Alaska's Redoubt Volcano in March 2009 shows that the harmonic tremor glided to substantially higher frequencies and then stopped abruptly just before six of the eruptions, five of them coming in succession. "The frequency of this ...

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered that a human antiviral enzyme causes DNA mutations that lead to several forms of cancer. The discovery, reported in the July 14 issue of Nature Genetics, follows the team's earlier finding that the enzyme, called APOBEC3B, is responsible for more than half of breast cancer cases. The previous study was published in Nature in February. APOBEC3B is part of a family of antiviral proteins that Harris has studied for more than a decade. His effort to understand how these proteins work has led to these surprising ...

At the end of the last Ice Age, as the world began to warm, a swath of the North Pacific Ocean came to life. During a brief pulse of biological productivity 14,000 years ago, this stretch of the sea teemed with phytoplankton, amoeba-like foraminifera and other tiny creatures, who thrived in large numbers until the productivity ended—as mysteriously as it began—just a few hundred years later. Researchers have hypothesized that iron sparked this surge of ocean life, but a new study led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and colleagues at the University ...

Contact: Liz Williams williams@wehi.edu.au 61-428-034-089 Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Kris Van der Beken kris.vanderbeken@vib.be 32-473-783-435 VIB Scientists discover kill-switch controls immune-suppressing cells Scientists have uncovered the mechanism that controls whether cells that are able to suppress immune responses live or die. The discovery of the cell death processes that determine the number of 'regulatory T cells' an individual has could one day lead to better treatments for immune disorders. Regulatory T cells are members of a group ...

Powdery mildew is one of the most dreaded plant diseases: The parasitic fungus afflicts crops such as wheat and barley and is responsible for large harvest shortfalls every year. Beat Keller and Thomas Wicker, both plant biologists from the University of Zurich, and their team have been analyzing the genetic material of wheat mildew varieties from Switzerland, England and Israel while the team headed by Paul Schulze-Lefert at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne studies the genetic material of barley mildew. The results recently published in Nature ...

PITTSBURGH—The interior of a living cell is a crowded place, with proteins and other macromolecules packed tightly together. A team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon University has approximated this molecular crowding in an artificial cellular system and found that tight quarters help the process of gene expression, especially when other conditions are less than ideal. As the researchers report in an advance online publication by the journal Nature Nanotechnology, these findings may help explain how cells have adapted to the phenomenon of molecular crowding, which has ...

Exceptional spatial ability at age 13 predicts creative and scholarly achievements over 30 years later, according to results from a new longitudinal study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study, conducted by psychology researcher David Lubinski and colleagues at Vanderbilt University, provides evidence that early spatial ability — the skill required to mentally manipulate 2D and 3D objects — predicts the development of new knowledge, and especially innovation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ...

BOSTON – When Georgetown University neurologist R. Scott Turner, MD, PhD, began enrolling people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease into a nationwide study last year, he expected to find only a handful of participants with undiagnosed glucose intolerance, as all the patients were already under a doctor's care and those with known diabetes were excluded. But Turner says he was "shocked" by how many study participants were found to have pre-diabetes — a finding that is triggering important questions. Turner's study examines resveratrol, a compound found in red grapes ...

CHICAGO, IL – Baseball players undergoing ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) surgery are able to return to the same or higher level of competition for an extended period of time, according to research presented today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL. "Previous studies showed successful return to play after UCL surgery, but we were also able to evaluate each athlete's career longevity and reason for retirement," commented lead author, Daryl C. Osbahr, MD of MedStar Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. "These ...

Alexandria, VA – One of the greatest controversies in science is what's underneath the Yellowstone supervolcano. The controversy surrounds a unique relationship between a mantle plume (like the one that powers Hawaiian volcanoes) and the subduction zone off the Washington-Oregon coast. Cutting-edge research using a common kitchen ingredient is explored in the latest issue of EARTH Magazine. Recently published research explores this problem in 3-D, using a model created with corn syrup, fiberglass and a series of hydraulic pistons. What the scientists saw was a plume sliced ...

CHICAGO, IL – Athletes who didn't get enough sleep the night before undergoing baseline concussion testing didn't perform as well as expected, say researchers presenting their work today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL. "Our results indicate athletes sleeping less than 7 hours the night prior to baseline concussion testing did not do as well on 3 out of 4 ImPACT scores and showed more symptoms," said lead author, Jake McClure, MD from Vanderbilt University. "Because return-to-play decisions often hinge on ...

CHICAGO, IL – 40,000 high school football kids get a concussion every year, but contrary to equipment manufacturers' claims, the specific brand of helmet and helmet age were not associated with lower risk of concussion, say researchers presenting their work today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL. "According to our research, lower risks of sustaining a sports-related concussion (SRC) and its severity were not improved based on a specific manufacturer. In addition, the SRC rates were similar for players wearing new ...

BOSTON -- Although women who survived childhood cancer face an increased risk of infertility, nearly two-thirds of those who tried unsuccessfully to become pregnant for at least a year eventually conceived, according to clinical researchers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Brigham and Women's Hospital. This is comparable to the rate of eventual pregnancy among all clinically infertile women. "Most women think that if they had cancer as a child, then they'll never have children. It turns out that many of them can get pregnant. It ...

TORONTO, ON – Males and females face different challenges in accessing treatment for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Uganda Ministry of Health and Imperial College London. The study, published by PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases on July 11, explores the role of gender in access to treatment in the Uganda National Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program. NTDs are a group of parasitic, viral and bacterial diseases that affect at least a billion people worldwide. ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Twenty-five new articles have been posted online ahead of print on Geology's website since 28 June. The science covers a gamut of topics, from microbial mats to super-eruptions; sand to monsoons; glaciers to sinkholes. All Geology articles go through a rigorous peer-review process prior to print. Geology is the highest rated journal for geoscience for the seventh year in a row, according to a 2012 Thomson Reuters survey. Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ahead of print can be accessed online at http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent. ...

NJIT Professor Michel Boufadel, is a co-author of a new expert report on the effects of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Mississippi Canyon-252 oil spill on ecosystem services in the Gulf of Mexico. Entitled "An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico," the report, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes the case for how and why a more resilient Gulf of Mexico ecosystem needs to be developed. Recommendations include a plea to build an infrastructure to organize and integrate data. The ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Social media websites can be a boon for employers scoping out job applicants, and that's bad news for certain groups of young people, according to a new Northwestern University study. Researchers found that -- among young adults -- men, Hispanics and those with lower Internet skills are the least likely to keep employment-related audiences in mind when it comes to their online profiles. Women, whites and those with higher Internet skills are more likely to actively manage their social media privacy settings as they seek a job or maintain employment. This ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 12, 2013 – Older African-American and Hispanic men who have survived cancer are less likely than their white counterparts to see a specialist or receive basic preventive care, such as vaccinations, according to new research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Researchers examined racial/ethnic disparities in health care receipt among a nationally representative sample of male cancer survivors. They found that disparities are evident among older, but not younger, cancer survivors, despite their access to Medicare. Lead author Nynikka Palmer, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A new study by psychology researchers suggests that whether parents are gay, lesbian or straight, how well they work together as a couple and support each other in parenting is linked to fewer behavior problems among their adopted children and is more important than their sexual orientation. Rachel H. Farr at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Charlotte J. Patterson at the University of Virginia report their findings from this first empirical examination of differences and similarities in co-parenting among lesbian, gay and heterosexual adoptive ...

Typhoon Soulik's eyewall appears to have rebuilt as evidenced in NASA satellite imagery. Soulik is approaching Taiwan and is forecast to make landfall in southeastern China over the weekend of July 13 and 14. On July 12 at 05:05 UTC (1:05 a.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Typhoon Soulik approaching Taiwan. The image clearly showed a tight, powerful ring of thunderstorms around Soulik's center with a small eye in the center. Soulik underwent eyewall reconstruction ...

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite spotted the remnant clouds and showers from former Tropical Storm Chantal lingering over the Bahamas on July 12. Chantal's chances for regeneration are diminishing because of upper-level winds. A visible image from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite at 9:45 a.m. EDT on July 12, 2013 showed Chantal's remnant clouds and showers moving north in the Atlantic. The image of Chantal's remnants resembled the sideways view of a jellyfish. The GOES image was created by NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The National Hurricane ...

Baltimore, MD—Proper tissue function and regeneration is supported by stem cells, which reside in so-called niches. New work from Carnegie's Yixian Zheng and Haiyang Chen identifies an important component for regulating stem cell niches, with impacts on tissue building and function. The results could have implications for disease research. It is published by Cell Stem Cell. Lamins are proteins that the major structural component of the material that lines the inside of a cell's nucleus. Lamins have diverse functions, including suppressing gene expression. It has been ...

VIDEO: Watch the changing dust density and the growth of structure in this simulated debris disk, which extends about 100 times farther from its star than Earth's orbit around the sun.... Click here for more information. Many young stars known to host planets also possess disks containing dust and icy grains, particles produced by collisions among asteroids and comets also orbiting the star. These debris disks often show sharply defined rings or spiral patterns, features ...

A natural tissue graft can spur regeneration of cartilage and improve symptoms in patients who have cartilage damage in their knee, according to a study by researchers from Hospital for Special Surgery. The new research, the first case-series evaluation of De Novo NT Natural Tissue Graft, will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM), to be held July 11-14, in Chicago. "The results at this time are encouraging," said lead author of the study Scott Rodeo, M.D., orthopedic surgeon and co-chief of the sports medicine ...