science wire

Sentinel-1A rides into space on a Soyuz Cameras mounted on the Soyuz Fregat upper stage that sent Sentinel-1A into space on 3 April 2014 captured this footage from liftoff to separation.

The snowpack in California's mountains is at the lowest level ever recorded. The long-term effects of the drought could be devastating.

UC Berkeley seismologists have proven that the Hayward Fault is essentially a branch of the Calaveras Fault that runs east of San Jose, which means that both could rupture together, resulting in a significantly more destructive earthquake than previously thought. The Bay Area fault system and the spot (red star) where the Hayward Fault branches off from the Calaveras Fault.

The University of Washington and NASA are preparing for a campaign next winter to measure rain in America's rainiest place: the Olympic Peninsula, famed for its dripping rainforests, snowy mountain peaks and cloudy vampire novels.

Christelle Nahas UCLA's Meteorite Gallery has added two large iron meteorites, one weighing more than 800 pounds.

'Dumberclash' is an old Cheshire term for a short but violent storm. A 'lumpenhole' is a deep trench for fluid farmyard waste.

'Towards Self-Improving School Systems: Lessons from a City Challenge' - a new book from professor of education, Mel Ainscow CBE, draws on over ten years of research including the Greater Manchester Challenge.

A projection of the Madison area's vulnerabilities in an extreme rainfall event. Courtesy of the College of Engineering Floodwaters from Lake Mendota and Lake Monona could reach clear across central Madison's isthmus.

The summit caldera of Tambora, which is about 6 kilometers wide and 7 kilometers long and more than 1 kilometer deep, was created by the 1815 eruption.

Despite being thousands of kilometres apart, a team of international scientists are collecting samples from the bottom of the Arabian Sea to find out how the growth of the Himalayan mountain range has affected the Asian Monsoon over the last 50 million years. The drilling, taking place off the coast of Mumbai, India, will also help scientists predict monsoon intensity in the future.

The first phase of an exciting and inventive project to help regenerate area is about to get underway.

Greenland ice streams This image combines two Sentinel-1A radar scans from 3 and 15 January 2015 to show ice velocities on outlet glaciers of Greenland's west coast. Sentinel-1 offers excellent capabilities for observing the velocities of Greenland's outlet glaciers with unprecedented temporal resolution at complete spatial coverage, extending and enhancing the time series of ice-velocity maps available from previous satellite sensors.

Observations of Jupiter made by Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope are being analysed by Dr Sarah Badman at Lancaster University.

The history of the settlement of the American West comes to life with Geography of the Post, a digital mapping platform that creates visualizations of where and when post offices operated.

Jessica Jacobs, Research Fellow at QMUL's School of Geography, argues that the systematic neglect of border regions by military-backed governments in the Middle East has enabled the success of extreme terrorist groups in these marginalised areas, resulting in "geographies of hate".

ESA Space in Images Title Campi Flegrei monitored by Sentinel-1 Released 23/03/2015 4:12 pm Copyright Copernicus data (2015)/ESA/DLR Microwaves and Radar Institute/INGV/e-GEOS/GFZ-SEOM INSARAP study

Scientists are making advances in the use of satellite radar data - such as those from the Sentinel-1 mission - to monitor Earth's changing surface.

An environmental scientist at Lancaster University has published a book about his career as part of the "Coolest Jobs on the Planet" book series. Dr Hugh Tuffen of the Lancaster Environment Centre describes the incredible life of a volcanologist in the book which is aimed at young people who are looking for interesting and adventurous careers.

A 400 kilometre-wide impact zone from a huge meteorite that broke in two moments before it slammed into the Earth has been found in Central Australia. The crater from the impact millions of years ago has long disappeared. But a team of geophysicists has found the twin scars of the impacts - the largest impact zone ever found on Earth - hidden deep in the earth's crust.

ESA Space in Images Title Ulan Bator, Mongolia Released 20/03/2015 10:00 am Copyright USGS/ESA Description The Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator is captured in this image from the Landsat-8 satellite.

On March 22, 2014, the deadliest landslide in U.S. history struck Oso, Washington. The year since then has been relentless for University of Washington researchers who helped answer questions, survey the aftermath and address issues raised by the disaster that killed 43 people.

"The Dynamic Sun," a new exhibit conceived, designed and built by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), has just opened at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museu

Ankur Desai stands in front of the 27-meter-tall Willow Creek flux tower, which is tucked into the woods west of Minocqua, a few feet from a logging road.

A valley underneath East Antarctica's most rapidly-changing glacier delivers warm water to the base of the ice, causing significant melting.

ESA Space in Images Title São Miguel, Azores Released 13/03/2015 10:00 am Copyright DEIMOS Imaging Description This image from over the Azores island of São Miguel features a volcanic complex called the Sete Cidades Massif.

Trying to divine the future of a precarious administration, "House of Cards" President Frank Underwood enters the inner sanctum with a trusted adviser.

For more than 100 years, marine biologists at Friday Harbor Laboratories have studied the ecology of everything from tiny marine plants to giant sea stars. Now, as the oceans are undergoing a historic shift in chemistry, the lab is establishing itself as a place to study what that will mean for marine life.

Trying to divine the future of a precarious administration, "House of Cards" President Frank Underwood enters the inner sanctum with a trusted adviser.

On the boundary between the heavily cratered southern highlands and the smooth northern lowlands of Mars is an area rich in features sculpted by water and ice.

  Jeroen Tromp, Princeton's Blair Professor of Geology and a professor of geosciences and applied and computational mathematics, is using seismic wave data from earthquakes and the Titan supercomputer

The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, according to new research published today in Nature.

Newly discovered fossils of a giant, extinct sea creature show it had modified legs, gills on its back, and a filter system for feeding - providing key evidence about the early evolution of arthropods. The new animal, named Aegirocassis benmoulae in honor of its discoverer, Mohamed Ben Moula, attained a size of at least seven feet, ranking it among the biggest arthropods that ever lived.

LRT along major east-west arterial roads make the most sense for Scarborough's urban makeup, according to a new report on rapid transit options from the University of Toronto.

The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, with an unusual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the irreversible exchange of species between the New and Old Worlds, according to new research .

ANN ARBOR-The University of Michigan's Graham Sustainability Institute has awarded seven grants, totaling $70,000, to U.S. and Canadian researchers who will help residents of shoreline communities adapt to current and future variability in Great Lakes water levels.

The world's oldest scientific journal is celebrating its 350 th anniversary with commentaries by leading scientists, including Yale paleontologist Derek Briggs.

ESA Space in Images Title Hungary Released 06/03/2015 10:00 am Copyright Copernicus data/ESA (2014) Description This image of Hungary, with the political border in white, is a mosaic of 11 scans by Sentinel-1A's radar from October to December 2014.

An update from LKCMedicine, an Ebola doctor's story and new research on how the dinosaurs were wiped out.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The earliest known record of the genus Homo - the human genus - represented by a lower jaw with teeth, recently found in the Afar region of Ethiopia, dates to between 2.8 and 2.75 million years ago, according to an international team of geoscientists and anthropologists.

A rare, bright yellow lichen, which until recently was believed to be extinct in the UK, has been found by University of Bristol postgraduate students during a recent field trip to South Wales.

Meteorologists sometimes struggle to accurately predict the weather here on Earth, but now we can find out how cloudy it is on planets outside our solar system, thanks to researchers at MIT. In a paper to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) at MIT describe a technique that analyzes data from NASA's Kepler space observatory to determine the types of clouds on planets that orbit other stars, known as exoplanets.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Step away from the villages and idyllic beaches of Hawaii, and you may think you've been transported to the moon.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The recent slowdown in climate warming is due, at least in part, to natural oscillations in the climate, according to a team of climate scientists, who add that these oscillations represent variability internal to the climate system. They do not signal any slowdown in human-caused global warming.

An Imperial scientist has received a prestigious fellowship to reduce the number of marine species being harmed accidentally by commercial fishing.

Emergency services rescued 1780 people in the Austrian Alps last year. They can now count on satellites to access maps, send messages, give warnings and stay in.

Early morning at one of several geyser fields in the El Tatio region of Chile's Atacama desert. Michael Manga photo.

University of Queensland experts are working with Japanese schools to help identify and reduce the long-term effects of trauma in children after a disaster.

A collaboration between UCL's Department of Earth Sciences, Rocktype Limited, and FEI will potentially enable faster and more efficient processing of large data sets in the study of sedimentary geology.