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Oregon's Coos Bay historically has avoided serious hypoxic conditions

EUGENE, Ore. -- May 17, 2016 -- A study of the 15-mile length of Coos Bay, from the ocean to the city of the same name, finds the bay is free of toxic levels of reduced oxygen that often affect other Oregon locations.

The narrow offshore continental shelf combines with the deep-dredged ship channel to help maintain safe oxygen levels during summertime wind changes and reduced rainfall that curtails freshwater discharge from the Coos River, says Dave Sutherland, a professor in the Department of Geological Sciences.

Infertility risk posed by endometriosis may be half of previous estimation

About 5 to 10 percent of the general female population is affected with endometriosis, and a higher prevalence is found among women with infertility. Although endometriosis is commonly observed in women who are infertile, it is unknown when endometriosis is the cause of infertility or an incidental discovery during the infertility examination.

Squeezing out mountains, mathematically, on Jupiter's moon Io

Mountains aren't the first thing that hit you when you look at images of Jupiter's innermost moon, Io. But once you absorb the fact that the moon is slathered in sulfurous lava erupted from 400 active volcanoes, you might turn your attention to scattered bumps and lumps that turn out, on closer inspection, to be Io's version of mountains.There are about 100 of them, and they don't look anything like the low lying volcanoes.

Polluted dust can impact ocean life thousands of miles away, study says

As climatologists closely monitor the impact of human activity on the world's oceans, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found yet another worrying trend impacting the health of the Pacific Ocean.

A new modeling study conducted by researchers in Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences shows that for decades, air pollution drifting from East Asia out over the world's largest ocean has kicked off a chain reaction that contributed to oxygen levels falling in tropical waters thousands of miles away.

Clues to ancient giant asteroid found in Australia

Scientists have found evidence of a huge asteroid that struck the Earth early in its life with an impact larger than anything humans have experienced.

Tiny glass beads called spherules, found in north-western Australia were formed from vaporised material from the asteroid impact, said Dr Andrew Glikson from The Australian National University (ANU).

"The impact would have triggered earthquakes orders of magnitude greater than terrestrial earthquakes, it would have caused huge tsunamis and would have made cliffs crumble," said Dr Glikson, from the ANU Planetary Institute.

Poor countries to bear brunt of climate change despite emitting least CO2

Poor countries to bear brunt of climate change despite emitting least CO2

Many of the world's poorest countries are expected to experience daily heat extremes due to climate change sooner than wealthier nations - according to research from an international team including the University of East Anglia.

New findings published today in Environmental Research Letters show that the poorest fifth of the global population will be the first to experience more frequent heat extremes - despite cumulatively emitting the least amounts of CO2.

Scientists create novel 'liquid wire' material inspired by spiders' capture silk

Why doesn't a spider's web sag in the wind or catapult flies back out like a trampoline? The answer, according to new research by an international team of scientists, lies in the physics behind a 'hybrid' material produced by spiders for their webs.

UC geologists identify sources of methane, greenhouse gas, in Ohio, Colorado and Texas

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati recently studied the sources of methane at three sites across the nation in order to better understand this greenhouse gas, which is much more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than is carbon dioxide.

Watching whisky dry for science (video)

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2016 -- Have you ever watched paint dry? How about whisky? It turns out whisky could hold some chemical clues to making better paints. Princeton researcher Howard Stone and photographer Ernie Button wanted to figure out whisky's unique drying properties. The Speaking of Chemistry team then compared dried whisky rings to another popular beverage, coffee. Sophia Cai serves the science, straight, in our latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfXB-EAMOZw.

Why is female sexuality more flexible than male sexuality?

A new evolutionary theory argues that women may have been evolutionarily designed to be sexually fluid--changing their sexual desires and identities from lesbian, to bisexual, to heterosexual and back again--in order to allow them to have sex with their co-wives in polygynous marriages, therefore reducing conflict and tension inherent in such marriages while at the same time successfully reproducing with their husbands in heterosexual unions.

Theorists smooth the way to modeling quantum friction

Theoretical chemists at Princeton University have pioneered a strategy for modeling quantum friction, or how a particle's environment drags on it, a vexing problem in quantum mechanics since the birth of the field. The study was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

"It was truly a most challenging research project in terms of technical details and the need to draw upon new ideas," said Denys Bondar, a research scholar in the Rabitz lab and corresponding author on the work.

Rice-led study offers new answer to why Earth's atmosphere became oxygenated

Earth scientists from Rice University, Yale University and the University of Tokyo are offering a new answer to the long-standing question of how our planet acquired its oxygenated atmosphere.

Based on a new model that draws from research in diverse fields including petrology, geodynamics, volcanology and geochemistry, the team's findings were published online this week in Nature Geoscience. They suggest that the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere was an inevitable consequence of the formation of continents in the presence of life and plate tectonics.

NASA satellite data could help reduce flights sidelined by volcanic eruptions

A volcano erupting and spewing ash into the sky can cover nearby areas under a thick coating of ash and can also have consequences for aviation safety. Airline traffic changes due to a recent volcanic eruption can rack up unanticipated expenses to flight cancellations, lengthy diversions and additional fuel costs from rerouting.

New research estimates probability of mega-earthquake in the Aleutians

A team of researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (UHM) published a study this week that estimated the probability of a Magnitude 9+ earthquake in the Aleutian Islands--an event with sufficient power to create a mega-tsunami especially threatening to Hawai'i. In the next 50 years, they report, there is a 9% chance of such an event. An earlier State of Hawai'i report (Table 6.12) has estimated the damage from such an event would be nearly $40 billion, with more than 300,000 people affected.

Proton-conducting material found in electrosensory organs of sharks

Sharks, skates, and rays can detect very weak electric fields produced by prey and other animals using an array of unusual organs known as the ampullae of Lorenzini. Exactly how these electrosensory organs work has remained a mystery, but a new study has revealed an important clue that may have implications for other fields of research.