Blue mussels not yet the bellwether of NE coastal environment

Marcy Cockrell installs cages to protect mussels from predators. In Maine, mussels inside cages faired as well as mussels in the wild. In Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay it was a different story. Credit: Brown University Ecologists sometimes look to mussel species, a well-studied and foundational genus in estuaries, as model organisms for assessing the condition of coastal habitats, wh

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UCLA and CASIS to collaborate on International Space Station study of possible therapy for bone loss

A study of rodents on the International Space Station will allow astronauts to test the ability of a bone-forming molecule to direct stem cells to induce bone formation. Credit: Nasa UCLA has received grant funding from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space to lead a research mission that will send rodents to the International Space Station. The mission will allow astronauts on t

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Why do zebras have stripes?

A mother zebra with a foal in Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park. Credit: Brenda Larison/UCLA One of nature’s fascinating questions is how zebras got their stripes. A team of life scientists led by UCLA’s Brenda Larison has found at least part of the answer: The amount and intensity of striping can be best predicted by the temperature of the environment in which zebras live. In the Jan

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Drug combo supresses growth of late-stage prostate cancer turmors

By Natalie van Hoose Low doses of metformin, a widely used diabetes medication, and a gene inhibitor known as BI2536 can successfully halt the growth of late-stage prostate cancer tumors, a Purdue University study finds. Prostate cancer causes the second-highest number of cancer-related deaths in men in the U.S., and methods of treating advanced prostate cancer are limited. Xiaoqi Liu (pron

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NASA Launches Groundbreaking Soil Moisture Mapper

NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory lifts off from Space Launch Complex 2 West at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, beginning a three-year mission to map Earth's vital moisture hidden in the soils beneath our feet. Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA successfully launched its first Earth satellite designed to collect global observations of the vital soil moisture hid

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Helicopter Could Be 'Scout' for Mars Rovers

Enter the Mars Helicopter, a proposed add-on to Mars rovers of the future that could potentially triple the distance these vehicles currently drive in a Martian day, and deliver a new level of visual information for choosing which sites to explore. The helicopter would fly ahead of the rover almost every day, checking out various possible points of interest and helping engineers back on Earth

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Atmospheric warming heats the bottom of ice sheets, as well as the top

A 70-meter-deep basin formed near the summit of Greenland’s Flade Isblink Ice Cap in the fall of 2012 when a lake 540 meters beneath the ice surface suddenly emptied. Summer meltwater streams on the ice cap surface (blue) enter crevasses near the bottom of the image. Photo Credit: WorldView-2 Imagery (c) 2014, DigitalGlobe, Inc. University of Minnesota researchers are part of a national team

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NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Captures Best-Ever View of Dwarf Planet

This animation of the dwarf planet Ceres was made by combining images taken by the Dawn spacecraft on January 25, 2015. NASA's Dawn spacecraft has returned the sharpest images ever seen of the dwarf planet Ceres. The images were taken 147,000 miles (237,000 kilometers) from Ceres on Jan. 25, and represent a new milestone for a spacecraft that soon will become the first human-made probe to vis

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Building a Better Weather Forecast? SMAP May Help

SMAP's soil moisture measurements will help with forecasts of precipitation and temperature. Image credit: UCAR If you were trying to forecast tomorrow's weather, you would probably look up at the sky rather than down at the ground. But if you live in the U.S. Midwest or someplace with a similar climate, one key to a better weather forecast may lie beneath your feet. Precipitation and temper

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Switching to vehicles powered by electricity from renewables could save lives - Video

Use of corn ethanol or electricity from coal worse than gasoline for public health Driving vehicles that use electricity from renewable energy instead of gasoline could reduce the resulting deaths due to air pollution by 70 percent. This finding comes from a new life cycle analysis of conventional and alternative vehicles and their air pollution-related public health impacts, published Monday

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Cassini Catches Titan Naked in the Solar Wind

This diagram depicts conditions observed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during a flyby in Dec. 2013, when Saturn's magnetosphere was highly compressed, exposing Titan to the full force of the solar wind. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Researchers studying data from NASA's Cassini mission have observed that Saturn's largest moon, Titan, behaves much like Venus, Mars or a comet when exposed to th

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NASA Study Finds Earth’s Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed

While the upper part of the world’s oceans continue to absorb heat from global warming, ocean depths have not warmed measurably in the last decade. This image shows heat radiating from the Pacific Ocean as imaged by the NASA’s Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System instrument on the Terra satellite. (Blue regions indicate thick cloud cover.) Image Credit: NASA The cold waters of Earth’s

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Small change in blood acidity could prove detrimental to kidney disease patients

A University of Manchester scientist has discovered that very small changes in the level of acidity in blood may have a detrimental impact on the health of patients with kidney disease. Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is common in the UK.  It is estimated that about one in five men and one in four women between the ages of 65 and 74 has some degree of CKD. The leading single cause of CKD is

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New Stanford research finds computers are better judges of personality than friends and family

New research shows that a computer's analysis of data can better judge a person's psychological traits than family and friends. Computers can judge personality traits far more precisely than ever believed, according to newly published research. In fact, they might do so better than one's friends and colleagues. The study, published Jan. 12 and conducted jointly by researchers at Stanford Uni

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