News Articles

For more than a decade geoscientists have detected what amount to ultra-slow-motion earthquakes under Western Washington and British Columbia on a regular basis, about every 14 months. Such episodic tremor-and-slip events typically last two to three weeks and can release as much energy as a large earthquake, though they are not felt and cause no damage.
Now University of Washington researchers have found evidence that these slow-slip events are actually affected by the rise and fall of ocean tides.
"There has been some previous evidence of the tidal effect, but the detail is not as great as what we have found," said Justin Rubinstein, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences.

STANFORD, Calif. - Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have taken a small but significant step, in mouse studies, toward the goal of transplanting adult stem cells to create a new immune system for people with autoimmune or genetic blood diseases.
The researchers found a way to transplant new blood-forming stem cells into the bone marrow of mice, effectively replacing their immune systems. Many aspects of the technique would need to be adapted before it can be tested in humans, said Irving Weissman, MD, a co-senior author of the study and director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. The work was done on a particular group of mice that are a poor mimic for the human immune system.

Brain scanning experiment shows how much we take others' earnings as a measure of our success.
The feelings an individual has on receiving his paycheque depend critically on how much his colleague earns. Hard evidence for this comes from an experiment conducted by economists and brain scientists at the University of Bonn. They tested male subjects in pairs, asking them to perform a simple task and promising payment for success. Using magnetic resonance tomographs, the researchers examined the volunteers' brain activity throughout the activities. Participants who got more money than their co-players showed much stronger activation in the brain's "reward centre" than occurred when both players received the same amount.

MIT researchers have found that the children of mothers whose water supplies were contaminated with arsenic during their pregnancies harbored gene expression changes that may lead to cancer and other diseases later in life.
In addition to establishing the potential harmful effects of these prenatal exposures, the new study also provides a possible method for screening populations to detect signs of arsenic contamination.
This is the first time evidence of such genome-wide changes resulting from prenatal exposure has ever been documented from an environmental contaminant. It suggests that even when water supplies are cleaned up and the children do not experience any direct exposure to the pollutant, they may still suffer lasting damage.

It was not the isolation of the Ice Age that determined the genetic distribution of bears, as has long been thought, according to an international research team writing in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology. One possible interpretation is that the hunting of bears by humans and human land use have been crucial factors.
Twenty thousand years ago Europe was covered by ice down to Germany, and the climate in the rest of Europe was such that several species were confined to the southern regions, like the Iberian Peninsula and Italy.
These regions were refuges, areas where species could survive during cold periods and then re-colonize central and northern Europe when it got warmer.

Newly launched nerve cells in a growing embryo must chart their course to distant destinations, and many of the means they use to navigate have yet to surface. In a study published in the current issue of the journal Neuron, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have recovered a key signal that guides motor neurons – the nascent cells that extend from the spinal cord and must find their way down the length of limbs such as arms, wings and legs.
The Salk study, led by Samuel Pfaff, Ph.D, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory, identifies a mutation they christened Magellan, after the Portuguese mariner whose ship Victoria was first to circumnavigate the globe.

Writing in Atoms for Peace, Energy consultant David Wood suggests that Iran's demands for nuclear power in economic and technical terms are a justified response to rapid growth in domestic energy demands and an increased dependence on oil exports for revenue.
Despite its vast oil and gas reserves, years of under-investment in Iran has limited access to technology and stifled its production capacity. Indeed, Iran now relies on imports for certain refined petroleum products and natural gas. Wood argues that the development of this situation has forced Iran to consider alternative future energy solutions.

An essential component of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) molecular machinery responsible for infecting cells consists of functionally-specialized layers, according to a study by investigators at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Antiviral Research Center (AVRC), published November 23 in PLoS Computational Biology.
The unprecedented genetic diversity and adaptability of HIV-1 has so far foiled the best efforts to eradicate the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. The surface of the HIV-1 particle is studded with protein spikes that allow the virus to enter human cells. This study examined an important component of the protein spike called the third variable loop (labeled “V3”).

There has recently been a huge growth in transnational English language television channels, with the launch in the UK of Al Jazeera English, Press TV (Iran), CCTV9 (China), France 24 and Russia Today. These join existing channels such as CNN International, Voice of America and BBC World TV. But what are the purposes of these channels? Who are they for and who is watching them? Do they constitute a global group of English speaking nations, an ‘Anglosphere’?
These were some of the questions debated by media professionals and academics at a workshop, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), entitled ‘Transnational TV News and Media Diplomacy: Al Jazeera English in Context.’

Researchers writing in BMC Genomics reveal that the grapevine's gene expression analysis reveals two distinct molecular and functional phases that correspond with the green and red grape stages.
Researchers have reported the first biochemical evidence that reactive oxygen species accumulate during the color transition. Stefania Pilati and fellow researchers from the IASMA Research Center, San Michele all'Adige, Italy, investigated ripening Pinot Noir grapes (Vitis vinifera L.) to identify fruit ripening genes and investigate seasonal influences.
They found a core set of more than 1,400 ripening-specific genes that fluctuated similarly across three growing seasons and a smaller gene group strongly influenced by climatic conditions.

An enormous submarine landslide that disintegrated 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet documented on Earth. The massive submarine flow travelled 1,500 kilometres – the distance from London to Rome – before depositing its load.
Details of the landslide and consequent sediment flow are reported online today in Nature by Dr Peter Talling from the University of Bristol, with colleagues from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and several other institutions.
Dr Talling said: “The volume of sediment transported by this flow in the deep ocean is difficult to comprehend. It was one of the largest movements of material ever to occur on our planet. This mass was ten times that transported to the ocean every year by all of the Earth’s rivers.

Astronomers have discovered white dwarf stars with pure carbon atmospheres. The discovery could offer a unique view into the hearts of dying stars.
These stars possibly evolved in a sequence astronomers didn't know before. They may have evolved from stars that are not quite massive enough to explode as supernovae but are just on the borderline. All but the most massive two or three percent of stars eventually die as white dwarfs rather than explode as supernovae.
When a star burns helium, it leaves "ashes" of carbon and oxygen. When its nuclear fuel is exhausted, the star then dies as a white dwarf, which is an extremely dense object that packs the mass of our sun into an object about the size of Earth.