Past winners have included scientists who found that asthma symptoms can be treated with a roller coaster ride and veterinarians who reported cows with names give more milk than those without. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. –– New observations by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought. The findings also indicate NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids, meeting a goal agreed to with Congress in 1998.
Astronomers now estimate there are roughly 19,500 — not 35,000 — mid-size near-Earth asteroids. Scientists say this improved understanding of the population may indicate the hazard to Earth could be somewhat less than previously thought. However, the majority of these mid-size asteroids remain to be discovered. More research also is needed to determine if fewer mid-size objects (between 330 and 3,300-feet wide) also mean fewer potentially hazardous asteroids, those that come closest to Earth. (more…)
*Sea turtles face an uncertain future as a warming climate threatens to reduce their reproductive viability.*
*However, new research led by the University of Exeter and published this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that some turtles are naturally heat-tolerant.*
The study focused on green turtles nesting on Ascension Island, a UK overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. Scientists from the Universities of Exeter and Groningen found that eggs laid by turtles nesting on a naturally hot beach withstand high temperatures better than eggs from turtles nesting on a cooler beach just a few kilometres away. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Continuing a global effort to prevent malaria infections, Michigan State University researchers have created a new malaria vaccine – one that combines the use of a disabled cold virus with an immune system-stimulating gene – that appears to increase the immune response against the parasite that causes the deadly disease.
At the same time, the group led by Andrea Amalfitano of the College of Osteopathic Medicine also discovered another immune-system stimulating agent – created at MSU and which has been successful in improving immune responses in vaccines for diseases such as HIV – paradoxically made for a less effective malaria vaccine. (more…)
*Global sampling of 48 sites on five continents yields unprecedented data set*
For decades, ecologists have toiled to nail down principles explaining why some habitats have many more plant and animal species than others.
Much of this debate is focused on the idea that the number of species is determined by the productivity of the habitat.
Shouldn’t a patch of prairie contain a different number of species than an arid steppe or an alpine tundra? (more…)
A new study puts an end to the longstanding debate about how archaic birds went extinct, suggesting they were virtually wiped out by the same meteorite impact that put an end to dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
For decades, scientists have debated whether birds from the Cretaceous period — which are very different from today’s modern bird species — died out slowly or were killed suddenly by the Chicxulub meteorite. The uncertainty was due in part to the fact that very few fossil birds from the end of this era have been discovered. (more…)
PASADENA, Calif. – NASA’s new Aquarius instrument has produced its first global map of the salinity of the ocean surface, providing an early glimpse of the mission’s anticipated discoveries. (more…)
Research by a University of Exeter astrophysicist has helped to explain how the first stars and galaxies formed
Research led by Professor Gilles Chabrier of the University of Exeter suggests that large magnetic fields were generated shortly after the Big Bang and played a key role in the formation of the first stars and galaxies
The international team of researchers, headed by Professor Chabrier and Dr Christoph Federrath of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France), used three-dimensional computer simulations to make their discovery. Their simulations show that even under extreme physical conditions, magnetic fields are efficiently amplified by turbulent flows. The findings are now published in the journal Physical Review Letters. (more…)
