science wire

ANN ARBOR-University of Michigan Professor Thomas Finholt has been appointed dean of the U-M School of Information.

When did it become wrong to challenge science? There is a recent move to publicly bully, disparage and shame those who challenge a purported scientific consensus. It may feel satisfying in the short term to deal with the "deniers" via public belittling or even legal action, but in the long run, this tactic will erode the integrity of scientific institutions and the very process of science.

The UK has seen a 20% fall in the incidence of dementia over the past two decades, according to new research from England, led by the University of Cambridge, leading to an estimated 40,000 fewer cases of dementia than previously predicted. However, Our evidence shows that the so-called dementia 'tsunami' is not an inevitability: we can help turn the tide if we take action now Carol Brayne Reports in both the media and from governments have suggested that the world is facing a dementia 'tsunami' of ever-increasing numbers, particularly as populations age.

Dr Kate Hendry, Royal Society Research Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences, has joined an EU-funded project to examine the ecology and diversity of deep-sea sponge ecosystems in the North Atlantic.

Seasickness, snow and sea ice couldn't keep a University of Queensland scientist from his mission to learn more about Antarctica's dinosaurs, with the palaeontologist returning from his trip with more than a tonne of fossils.

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth's climate has remained on a fairly even keel, with some dramatic exceptions: Around 80 million years ago, the planet's temperature plummeted, along with carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

18. The Swiss Polar Institute will study the Earth's poles and extreme environments. Its first project is ambitious: an international scientific expedition, comprising 55 researchers from 30 countries working on 22 research projects, will circumnavigate Antarctica.

Oliver Lamb is a PhD student in the  Volcanology research group  in the University's School of Environmental Sciences. "Volcanoes are a spectacular and dangerous embodiment of the dynamic nature of our planet. An estimated 800 million people now live within 100 km of an active volcano around the world, and this figure continues to increase every year.

Architectural rendering of the David Rumsey Map Center, which opens on the fourth floor of Green Library on Tuesday, April 19.

The ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars spacecraft are in excellent health following launch last month, with the orbiter sending back its first test image of a starry view taken en route to the Red Planet. In the weeks following liftoff on 14 March, mission operators and scientists have been intensively checking the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli entry, descent, and landing demonstrator to ensure they will be ready for Mars in October.

For the first time, an international group of scientists, has come up with a way to estimate on a large scale how phosphorus flows through an environment over many decades. The research team, including the University of Bristol, found the UK is using less fertilizer to grow food and that both historically and currently, it is a world leader in modern wastewater treatment.

Tidal forces explain how an icy moon of Saturn keeps its 'tiger stripes' Posted April 12, 2016; 02:15 p.m. by Morgan Kelly, Office of The persistence of the massive, explosive fissures on the surface of Saturn's sixth-largest moon, Enceladus — despite the moon's astoundingly frigid surface — have remained a mystery for 11 years.

University of Sussex appoints Adam Tickell as Vice-Chancellor The University of Sussex has appointed Professor Adam Tickell as its eighth Vice-Chancellor.

Suzanne Mahlburg Kay, Cornell's William and Katherine Snee Professor of Geological Sciences, was recently inducted into the National Academy of Sciences of Argentina.

ESA Space in Images Title Saturn's past and present moons Released 11/04/2016 11:09 am Copyright NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Description Saturn's beautiful rings form a striking feature, cutting across this image of two of the planet's most intriguing moons.

The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History is marking its 150 th anniversary with an exhibition that utilizes "treasures" from the museum's collections to weave a story of innovation and scientific revelation spanning from the Peabody's founding in 1866 through to the present day. The exhibit, "Treasures of the Peabody: 150 Years of Exploration & Discovery, " features 150 artifacts and specimens from the museum's collections alongside stories about the scientists and researchers who have shaped people's understanding of life on Earth.

ESA Space in Images Title Bernese Alps Released 06/04/2016 11:50 am Copyright Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2015], processed by ESA Description Part of the Swiss Alps are pictured in this Sentinel-1A image from 11 September 2015.

NASA's newest space weather research satellite, the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, is on course for a summer 2017 launch after UC Berkeley scientists and their colleagues shipped its four instruments to Utah for testing, prior to being packed into the final satellite.

It turns out not all clouds are created equal. Though Seattle presents an ideal location for cloud-gazing, it can't reproduce the unique clouds in a part of the world thought to play a key role in the planet's climate.

ESA Space in Images Title Proba-V view of Hawaii Released 06/04/2016 9:32 am Copyright ESA/Belspo - produced by VITO Description ESA's Proba-V minisatellite gazes down at Earth's largest volcano - Mauna Loa, or 'long mountain' which covers half of the island of Hawaii.

Levels of greenhouse gas CO2 continue to rise and are about to exceed the next threshold. Empa makes sure that this and other air pollutants can be measured correctly and in a globally comparable way.

Tam Pa Ling cave sits at the top of Pa Hang Mountain, in Hua Phan Province, Laos. Every day, we climb the mountain and descend into the cave to dig.

Anthropology professor Laura Shackelford and her colleagues are attending a ceremony to open a museum that will house ancient human fossils they discovered in a cave in northeast Laos. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer VIENTIANE, LAOS - I normally would not make a trip to Laos lasting less than a week.

Freie Universität Berlin and Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research Set Up Joint Visiting Professorship in Environmental Research Freie Universität Berlin and the prestigious Nether

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Up until now catching lightning in a bottle has been easier than reproducing a range of earthquakes in the laboratory, according to a team of seismologists who can now duplicate the range of fault slip modes found during earthquakes, quiet periods and slow earthquakes.

Unusually warm oceans can have widespread effects on marine ecosystems. Warm patches off the Pacific Northwest from 2013 to 2015, and a couple of years earlier in the Atlantic Ocean, affected everything from sea lions to fish migrations to coastal weather. A University of Washington oceanographer is lead author of a study looking at the history of such features across the Northern Hemisphere.

The last remaining section of Antarctica's Larsen B Ice Shelf, which partially collapsed in 2002, is quickly weakening and likely to disintegrate completely before the end of the decade.

Water joins as well as divides - and maritime communities often defy the borders imposed by the state.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have developed computer models of the bodies of sauropod dinosaurs to examine the evolution of their body shape.

The Cassini spacecraft has observed geysers erupting on Saturn's moon Enceladus since 2005, but the process that drives and sustains these eruptions has remained a mystery.

On May 17, 2012 the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center forecasted normal summer temperatures in the Northeast and Midwest United States and a 33 to 40 percent chance of above-normal temperatures for the Southeast.

For centuries, the solar system was viewed as a standard blueprint for planetary systems in the universe, with a star (our sun) at the center of a circular track, and a planet orbiting within each lane.

Humans are releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any event in the past 66 million years, according to new research from the University of Hawaii, the University of Bristol and the University of California, published.

Sediment-filled craters on Mars (top) in different stages of erosion compared with results of a crater model in wind-tunnel experiment (bottom). Warm colors indicate high elevation, cool colors low elevation. Mackenzie Day AUSTIN, Texas - New research has found that wind carved massive mounds of more than a mile high on Mars over billions of years.

Volcano Licancabur, an active volcano in the Andean continental volcanic arc on the Chile-Bolivia border, looms above flamingos in a nearby lake. Brian Horton AUSTIN, Texas - A new study in the April 22 edition of Science reveals that volcanic activity associated with the plate-tectonic movement of continents may be responsible for climatic shifts from hot to cold over tens and hundreds of millions of years throughout much of Earth's history.

An international team of scientists - led by a Cornell professor of natural resources - will help communities in Asia's Pamir Mountains recalibrate their seasonal-indicator ecological calendars to reckon the future effects of climate change.

ESA Space in Images Title Lonely lunch Released 22/03/2016 11:26 am Copyright ESA/IPEV/PNRA-F. van den Berg Description ESA-sponsored medical doctor Floris van den Berg scans the horizon and contemplates life at Concordia research station in Antarctica during a freezing picnic.

Scientists have discovered a 'bizarre' microorganism which plays a key role in the food web of Earth's oceans. Researchers from Spain's Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC), alongside colleagues at the University of Bristol in the UK, discovered that symbiotic phytoplankton capable of fertilising the ocean with nitrogen 'fertilizer' evolved back in the Cretaceous at a time when the oceans were nutrient deprived.

Mistakes can happen when estimating emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Researchers from Empa, the University of Berne and ETH Zurich funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation have developed a method to independently validate national statistics. The signatory countries of the Kyoto Protocol and the new Paris Agreement have committed to reduce global warming.

For News Media FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 3/21/16 : Brian Harvey, (650) 521-1988, brianjamesharvey [a] gmail (p) com ; Monica Turner, (608) 262-2592, turnermg [a] wisc (p) edu PHOTOS: https://uwmadison&pe

For two University of Washington researchers, the real test came as they walked across a barren-looking field. They were on the Columbia Plateau with two state wetland ecologists, searching for a 1-acre body of water identified and mapped for the first time using a new method they developed. But when the group arrived at the expected coordinates, map in hand, the soil was dry and cracked and there wasn't a wetland in sight.

Alice Trevail from the University's School of Environmental Sciences has recently returned from field work for her PhD in Antarctica: "Myself and one other seabird researcher, Sebastien Descamps from

I've been waiting for weeks to share this with you, patient reader, but thought it best to report only the final outcome of this year's adventure to Ojos del Salado, the highest active volcano in the world.

Volcanologists from the University took part in an international volcanoes workshop which was held on the active Santiaguito volcano in Guatemala. Santiaguito volcano has been erupting lava since 1922 and every few hours explosions spurt hot ash and fragmented rocks, making it an ideal "natural laboratory" for scientists to study explosive eruptions.

The first of two joint ESA-Roscosmos missions to Mars has begun a seven-month journey to the Red Planet, where it will address unsolved mysteries of the planet's atmosphere that could indicate present-day geological - or even biological - activity. The Trace Gas Orbiter and the Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing demonstrator lifted off on a Proton-M rocket operated by Russia's Roscosmos at 09:31 GMT (10:31 CET) this morning from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Research based on a new study of California's 1812 earthquake yields insights to improve future seismic hazard predictions. A deadly earthquake that rocked Southern California two centuries ago was likely caused by the slippage of one fault line that then triggered a second fault, according to a new study.

  Researchers led by John Higgins (above, holding ice core), a Princeton University assistant professor of geosciences, spent seven weeks in Antarctica drilling for ice cores over 1 million years old, which would be the oldest collected.

How does the ice on the polar caps change? And which are the geological characteristics of the Earth's crust beneath? What is the structure of the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle? Geoph