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What leads to weight loss success in adults with asthma?

Among overweight and obese adults who had asthma and participated in weight loss programs, more severe asthma, male sex, and improvements in eating behaviors were all linked with better success at losing weight.

The finding that individuals with more severe asthma may have a greater motivation to lose weight suggests that these individuals should be targeted for intervention. Also, gender tailoring of weight loss programs may be useful to enhance weight loss success, said Lisa Wood, senior author of the Respirology study.

Mongoose sentinels respond flexibly to threats

Just as soldiers on sentry duty constantly adjust their behaviour to match the current threat level, dwarf mongoose sentinels exhibit flexible decision-making in relation to predation risk, new research from the University of Bristol has shown.

Atomic timekeeping, on the go

What time is it? The answer, no matter what your initial reference may be -- a wristwatch, a smartphone, or an alarm clock -- will always trace back to the atomic clock.

Latest supercomputers enable high-resolution climate models, truer simulation of extreme weather

Not long ago, it would have taken several years to run a high-resolution simulation on a global climate model. But using some of the most powerful supercomputers now available, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) climate scientist Michael Wehner was able to complete a run in just three months.

Shaking the topological cocktail of success

Graphene is the miracle material of the future. Consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, the material is extremely stable, flexible, highly conductive and of particular interest for electronic applications. ETH Professor Tilman Esslinger and his group at the Institute for Quantum Electronics investigate artificial graphene; its honeycomb structure consists not of atoms, but rather of light. The researchers align multiple laser beams in such a way that they create standing waves with a hexagonal pattern.

A twisted world -- chemists build a molecular banister

Chemists at the University of Basel in Switzerland have succeeded in twisting a molecule by combining molecular strands of differing lengths. The longer strand winds around a central axis like a staircase banister, creating a helical structure that exhibits special physical properties. The results were published in the renowned scientific journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Twisted light waves sent across Vienna

A group of researchers from Austria have sent twisted beams of light across the rooftops of Vienna.

It is the first time that twisted light has been transmitted over a large distance outdoors, and could enable researchers to take advantage of the significant data-carrying capacity of light in both classical and quantum communications.

This week from AGU: Volcano hazards and the role of westerly wind bursts in El Niño

From this week's Eos: Scientists Engage With the Public During Lava Flow Threat

Notre Dame network physicists create model to predict traffic patterns

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have designed a simple, yet highly accurate traffic prediction model for roadway transportation networks. They have recently published their work in the journal Nature Communications.

"Transportation networks and in particular the highway transportation network are like the body's circulatory system for the nation," says Zoltán Toroczkai, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, who co-authored the study with physics graduate student Yihui Ren and national and international collaborators.

New therapy for trauma survivors

A newly developed transdiagnostic psychotherapy, called the Common Elements Treatment Approach (CETA), is effective for reducing mental health symptoms among Burmese trauma survivors living in Thailand, according to a study published by Paul Bolton and colleagues from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and University of Washington, USA in this week's PLOS Medicine.

Study: Farmers and scientists divided over climate change

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Crop producers and scientists hold deeply different views on climate change and its possible causes, a study by Purdue and Iowa State universities shows.

Associate professor of natural resource social science Linda Prokopy and fellow researchers surveyed 6,795 people in the agricultural sector in 2011-2012 to determine their beliefs about climate change and whether variation in the climate is triggered by human activities, natural causes or an equal combination of both.

This Week From AGU: Volcano hazards and the role of westerly wind bursts in El Niño

From this week's Eos: Scientists Engage With the Public During Lava Flow Threat

Groundwater warming up in synch

For their study, the researchers were able to fall back on uninterrupted long-term temperature measurements of groundwater flows around the cities of Cologne and Karlsruhe, where the operators of the local waterworks have been measuring the temperature of the groundwater, which is largely uninfluenced by humans, for forty years. This is unique and a rare commodity for the researchers. "For us, the data was a godsend," stresses Peter Bayer, a senior assistant at ETH Zurich's Geological Institute.

Maps reveal targets for preserving tropical carbon stocks

Washington, D.C.-- A new high-resolution mapping strategy has revealed billions of tons of carbon in Peruvian forests that can be preserved as part of an effort to sequester carbon stocks in the fight against climate change. Tropical forests convert more carbon from the atmosphere into biomass than any other terrestrial ecosystem on Earth. However, when land is used for agriculture, as a wood source, or for mining, carbon is often released into the atmosphere where it contributes to climate change.

How variable are ocean temperatures?

The earth's climate appears to have been more variable over the past 7,000 years than often thought. This is the conclusion of a new study forthcoming online this week in the U.S. scientific journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" (PNAS). In the study, scientists from the Potsdam-based Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, and Harvard University show that sea surface temperatures reconstructed from climate archives vary to a much greater extent on long time scales than simulated by climate models.