PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A marathon summer of field work by Mark Bertness, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and a squadron of students may finally help settle the heated debate about what's killing the coastal saltmarshes of southern New England and Long Island. The group's work has yielded two new papers that offer clear evidence of the cause.
Heavens
A "brown dwarf" star that appears to be the coldest of its kind -- as frosty as Earth's North Pole -- has been discovered by a Penn State University astronomer using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes. Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun.
April is in the middle of the dry season, which runs from January through May in this region, and naturally coincides with fire season. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. Fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture. Some of the fires in this image may be wildfires, with natural (lightning) or accidental (human) sources.
The southern hemisphere of Mars is home to a crater that contains very well-preserved gullies and debris flow deposits. The geomorphological attributes of these landforms provide evidence that they were formed by the action of liquid water in geologically recent time.
Evidence of liquid water
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have applied a new image processing technique to obtain near-infrared scattered light photos of five disks observed around young stars in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database. These disks are telltale evidence for newly formed planets.
This release is available in Japanese.
An exceptionally bright supernova reported in 2013 is so luminous, a new study reports, because a lens in the sky amplified its light. The discovery of the lens settles an important controversy in the field of astronomy.
In 2010, a team of scientists observed a supernova, PS1-10afx, shining brighter than any other in its class.
"PS1-10afx is like nothing we have seen before," said senior author Robert Quimby of the University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe.
MADISON – When chemist Tehshik Yoon looks out his office window, he sees a source of energy to drive chemical reactions. Plants "learned" to synthesize chemicals with sunlight eons ago; Yoon came to the field a bit more recently.
But this week, in the journal Science, he and three collaborators detail a way to use sunlight and two catalysts to create molecules that are difficult to make with conventional techniques.
This press release is available in Japanese.
Kashiwa Japan - A team of researchers led by Robert Quimby at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has announced the discovery of a galaxy that magnified a background, Type Ia supernova thirtyfold through gravitational lensing. This is the first example of strong gravitational lensing of a supernova confirms the team's previous explanation for the unusual properties of this supernova.
A new analysis of NASA satellite data shows Africa's Congo rainforest, the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world, has undergone a large-scale decline in greenness over the past decade.
PHILADELPHIA – One of the first studies to look at a relationship between death and the two types of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), or problems with memory and thinking abilities, suggests that people who have thinking problems but their memory is still intact might have a higher death rate in a period of six years compared to those who have no thinking or memory problems. The research was released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014.
Tropical Cyclone Jack had weakened to a tropical depression when NASA and JAXA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed above on April 22, 2014 at 1120 UTC/7:20 a.m. EDT.
Inverse Effects of Midlife Occupational and Leisure Time Physical Activity on Mobility Limitation in Old Age
Strenuous occupational physical activity in midlife increases the risk of mobility limitation in old age, whereas leisure-time physical activity decreases the risk. This is found in a study which followed up 5,200 public sector employees for 28 years. The study was conducted at the Gerontology Research Center in Finland and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health.
One of the most influential ecological disturbances is fire. Fire can spread so rapidly and for such far distances that its impact on land is for the most part far greater than any other factor. Less than optimal logging practices in the Primorksy region worsen the problems of human-caused fires in this area. Abandoned fields with dry grasses provide the detritus that can fuel an out of control blaze with a single spark.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Two independent studies use two very different approaches to reach the same conclusion: some online retailers really do have an advantage over traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
The studies find evidence from investors, analysts and consumers themselves that suggest online stores have a competitive edge when they don't have to collect sales tax from shoppers.
Both studies were conducted by researchers at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and their colleagues.