science wire

ANN ARBOR-Three University of Michigan geologists are participating in an international effort to drill nearly a mile beneath the surface of New Zealand this fall to bring back rock samples from an active fault known to generate major earthquakes.

Sabrina Brounts (front), clinical associate professor of large animal surgery, uses ultrasound to gauge how well a Missouri Fox Trotter horse is healing.

19 September 2014 Over billions of years, the southern uplands of Mars have been pockmarked by numerous impact features, which are often so closely packed that they overlap.

Press release issued: 19 September 2014 New light has been shed on one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in the last 500 years - the so-called 'Unknown eruption' - thanks to an unusual collaboration between a historian and a team of earth scientists at the University of Bristol.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Tami Bond , a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been awarded a 2014 MacArthur Fellowship , commonly known as a "genius grant," from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

What set the Earth's plates in motion? 17 September 2014 An 87 million year long story. This shows an early buoyant continent slowly spreading toward the adjacent immobile plate (blue).

Take a walk along any sandy shoreline, and you're bound to see a rippled pattern along the seafloor, formed by the ebb and flow of the ocean's waves. Geologists have long observed similar impressions - in miniature - embedded within ancient rock. These tiny, millimeter-wide wrinkles have puzzled scientists for decades: They don't appear in any modern environment, but seem to be abundant much earlier in Earth's history, particularly following mass extinctions.

University of Washington If historic explorer Ernest Shackleton were recruiting for the job, he might point out the bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, danger and eventual "honor and recognition in event of success.

When a segment of a major fault line goes quiet, it can mean one of two things: The "seismic gap" may simply be inactive - the result of two tectonic plates placidly gliding past each other - or the

MIAMI - Researchers for the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science are part of a $21 million collaborative research program led by Princeton University to create a biogeochemical and physical portrait of the Southern Ocean using hundreds of robotic floats deployed around Antarctica and an expanded computational capacity.

In the typical textbook picture, volcanoes, such as those that are forming the Hawaiian islands, erupt when magma gushes out as narrow jets from deep inside Earth. But that picture is wrong, according to a new study from researchers at Caltech and the University of Miami in Florida. New seismology data are now confirming that such narrow jets don't actually exist, says Don Anderson, the Eleanor and John R. McMillian Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus, at Caltech.

Professor Richard Chiverrell, from the University of Liverpool's School of Environmental Sciences talks about his experience on board Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Cook.

University of Washington The number of California blue whales has rebounded to near historical levels, according to new research by the University of Washington, and while the number of blue whales st

University of Washington Late summer is the peak time for harmful algae that can turn lakes into toxic scum, cancelling fishing trips and fouling water supplies.

04 Sep 2014 A new species of dinosaur unearthed in Southern Patagonia, Argentina, may represent one of the most complete examples of gigantic titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs ever discovered. The colossal creature, described in Scientific Reports, may have weighed around 59.3 metric tonnes, and was approximately 26 metres long.

University of Washington One of Arizona's largest watersheds - home to many native species of fish already threatened by extinction - is providing a grim snapshot of what could happen to watersheds and fish in arid areas around the world as climate warming occurs.

Scientists have used a new Earth-observation satellite called Sentinel-1A to map the ground movements caused by the earthquake that shook up California's wine-producing Napa Valley on 24 August 2014. This is the first earthquake to be mapped by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) new satellite and demonstrates the capabilities of the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) in analysing its observations quickly.

Title ESRO-4 readied for solar simulation testing Released 18/09/2014 9:48 am Copyright ESA Description The ESRO-4 satellite being prepared for solar simulation testing in Building 24 of the ESTEC technical centre in early 1972.

A quake close to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta could affect supplies of fresh water for 25 million Californians Scott Brandenberg and Jonathan Stewart U.S. Army Corps of Engine

Increased water-recycling and improved irrigation techniques among six strategies identified as key to successfully reducing global water scarcity Water scarcity is not a problem just for the developing world.

Large earthquakes occurred much more frequently in the Bay Area during the 19th century, says Stanford geophysicist Greg Beroza.

Maria Patsarika, Research Associate from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield comments on the idea of architects and landscape designers involving children in the design process.

Scientists have historically underestimated the potential productivity of the earth's land plants, researchers report in a new study.

Due to global warming, scientists say, the chances of the southwestern United States experiencing a decadelong drought is at least 50 percent, and the chances of a "megadrought" - one that lasts up to 35 years - ranges from 20 to 50 percent over the next century. The study by Cornell, University of Arizona and U.S. Geological Survey researchers will be published in a forthcoming issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.

Postgraduate student Leo Peskett, Basu Civil Engineering Prize winner, talks about his summer field trip to Rwanda to investigate geothermal energy.

18 August 2014 Scarring the southern highlands of Mars is one of the Solar System's largest impact basins: Hellas, with a diameter of 2300 km and a depth of over 7 km.

University of Washington From research stations drifting on ice floes to high-tech aircraft radar, scientists have been tracking the depth of snow that accumulates on Arctic sea ice for almost a century. Now that people are more concerned than ever about what is happening at the poles, research led by the University of Washington and NASA confirms that snow has thinned significantly in the Arctic, particularly on sea ice in western waters near Alaska.

A fisherman walks toward open water in the Antarctic ice sheet. Conflicting research on the heating and cooling of Earth has led to a global temperature conundrum, which climate scientists plan to address further this fall. Photo: iStock Photo When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently requested a figure for its annual report, to show global temperature trends over the last 10,000 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Zhengyu Liu knew that was going to be a problem.

Little known volcanoes in one of Africa's most stunning locations are to be explored in a bid to understand the threat they pose to life, livelihood and the landscape.

Pee on the pods 7 August 2014 Urine could be successfully recycled to fertilise crops according to University of Sydney civil engineering researchers who have examined the effectiveness of reusing nutrients from the human waste. Dr Federico Maggi, senior lecturer in the School of Civil Engineering and expert in environmental modelling says there is growing evidence that the use of human urine in agriculture is completely viable.

Press release issued: 7 August 2014 Little known volcanoes in one of Africa's most stunning locations are to be explored in a bid to understand the threat they pose to life, livelihood and the landscape.

When NASA's next rover lands on Mars in 2020 to conduct unprecedented investigations, the seven highly-sophisticated instruments on board will include a long-anticipated radar with a U of'T connection.

Cornell civil engineers report that retrofitting pipelines with "cured-in-place pipe" (CIPP) linings - flexible tubular membranes saturated with thermosetting resin - would prevent earthquake damage to seismically vulnerable, 50- to 100-year-old cast iron U.S. pipelines.

What can organisations and individuals do about all the food we waste? 6 August 2014 A-third of all food produced is never consumed according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations.

Cambridge, Mass.

Although it can be easy to overlook their seemingly calm waters, the Great Lakes have a long history of dangerous currents.

Three massive volcanic eruptions occurred on Jupiter's moon Io, a satellite the size of Earth's moon, within a two-week period last August, leading astronomers to speculate that these presumed rare outbursts, which can send material hundreds of miles above the surface, might be much more common than previously thought.

Press release issued: 1 August 2014 The Government's justification for its decision to reform AS-levels was based on flawed data analysis, according to University of Bristol academics who have shown that one in five students could have their chances to fulfil their potential on a degree course damaged.

While the Curiosity rover continues to interrogate Gale Crater on Mars, planning is well under way for its successor-another rover that is currently referred to as Mars 2020 .

30 July 2014 Although ESA's GOCE satellite is no more, all of the measurements it gathered during its life skirting the fringes our atmosphere, including the very last as it drifted slowly back to Earth, have been drawn together to offer new opportunities for science. Carrying the first 3D gravity sensor in space, this state-of-the-art satellite measured Earth's gravity with unprecedented accuracy.

28 July 2014 ESA's Venus Express spacecraft has climbed to a new orbit following its daring aerobraking experiment, and will now resume observations of this fascinating planet for at least a few more months.

Dinosaurs might have survived the asteroid strike that wiped them out if it had taken place slightly earlier or later in history.

Title Cal Madow mountain range, Somalia Released 25/07/2014 10:00 am Copyright JAXA/ESA Description Northern Somalia's Cal Madow mountain range is pictured in this image from Japan's ALOS satellite.

To most, crocodiles conjure images of sharp teeth, powerful jaws and ferocious, predatory displays - but they are certainly not famous for their hearing abilities. However, this could all change, as new research is shedding light on the reptiles' ears, showcasing their evolution from the reign of the dinosaurs to the era of Crocodile Dundee .

UM Rosenstiel scientists studied how fertilization of region could trigger carbonate formation July 25, 2014 MIAMI - A new study suggests that Saharan dust played a major role in the formation of the Bahamas islands. Researchers from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science showed that iron-rich Saharan dust provides the nutrients necessary for specialized bacteria to produce the island chain's carbonate-based foundation.

Much artificial-intelligence research addresses the problem of making predictions based on large data sets.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. After the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period that triggered the dinosaurs' extinction and ushered in the Paleocene, leaf-mining insects in the western United States completely disappeared. Only a million years later, at Mexican Hat, in southeastern Montana, fossil leaves show diverse leaf-mining traces from new insects that were not present during the Cretaceous, according to paleontologists.

These maps show the amount of chlorophyll associated with three main phytoplankton groups, averaged over the period 1998-2007. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Responding to the impact that a growing population and changing land use have had on the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays over the past 60 years is the focus of a research project led by Penn State and supported by a $1.4 million grant from NASA.

It's all eyes down in late June as UW-Madison students and local volunteers dig and screen for artifacts in the village of Trempealeau.

A pleasant scientific surprise: The North Atlantic right whale population - once projected for extinction - exhibited an unexpected increase in calf production and population size during the past decade.