Futurity.org » California Institute of Technology

Faults at rest yield earthquake clues

Katie Neith-Caltech — Fri, 11 May 2012 21:07:13 +0000

CALTECH (US) — A new computer model reveals the physics of faults—both during earthquakes and at times of “rest”—to better predict future seismic activity.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed the first computer model of an earthquake-producing fault segment that reproduces, in a single physical framework, the available observations of both the fault’s seismic (fast) and aseismic (slow) behavior.

“Our study describes a methodology to assimilate geologic, seismologic, and geodetic data surrounding a seismic fault to form a physical model of the cycle of earthquakes that has predictive power,” says Sylvain Barbot, a postdoctoral scholar in geology and lead author of the study.

Dunes on the move reveal Mars in flux

Katie Neith-Caltech — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:51:38 +0000

CALTECH/JOHNS HOPKINS (US) — New technology has allowed scientists to take the first measurements of sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars.

Last year, images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the activity on Mars’ surface—observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not a lot of movement on the red planet’s surface.

The new method for data processing is outlined in an advance online publication of the journal Nature.

Why we blow it when stakes are high

Marcus Woo-Caltech — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:42:35 +0000

CALTECH (US) — In sports, on a game show, or just on the job, what causes people to choke when the stakes are high?

A new study by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that when there are high financial incentives to succeed, people can become so afraid of losing their potentially lucrative reward that their performance suffers.

In the tropics, stalagmites tell climate story

Kimm Fesenmaier-Caltech — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:02:27 +0000

CALTECH (US) — Researchers are using stalagmites to reconstruct a history of the climate in the tropics throughout the late Pleistocene era.

Many existing historical climate records are biased to the high latitudes—coming from polar ice cores and North Atlantic deep ocean sediments. But a main driver of climate variability today is El Niño, which is a completely tropical phenomenon.

Exoplanets orbit in star ‘sweet spots’

Anne Ju-Cornell — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:26:45 +0000

CORNELL (US) — Three Earth-like planets have been discovered orbiting within their host stars’ habitable zone—a finding that means they could be hospitable to life.

Astronomers used the Near-Infrared Triple Spectrograph (TripleSpec) at California’s Mount Palomar Observatory to measure the temperatures and metallicities of small stars called M dwarfs, first recorded by the NASA Kepler mission, which then led to observations of planets orbiting these stars.

Black hole wrangle ejects rogue stars

David Salisbury-VU — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:11:50 +0000

VANDERBILT(US) — Astronomers have identified nearly 700 new rogue stars that appear to have been ejected from the Milky Way.

It’s very difficult to knock a star out of the galaxy. In fact, the main mechanism that astronomers have come up with that can give a star the two-million-plus mile-per-hour kick it takes involves tangling with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core.

Fight parasites with compounds in worms

Krishna Ramanujan-Cornell — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:58:28 +0000

CORNELL (US) — A class of molecules used by all nematodes could lead to news ways to treat parasites that infects humans, animals, and crops.

Hookworms, whipworms, Ascaris, Guinea worms, and trichina worms are just a few parasitic nematodes that infect some 2 billion people. Researchers report that nematodes use the newly discovered class of small molecules to signal such processes as growing, developing, mating, and moving toward or away from an area.

Nematodes ‘speak’ a universal language

Deborah Williams-Hedges-Caltech — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:09:02 +0000

CALTECH (US) — Biologists have decoded the language of worms to discover that different roundworm species communicate by using the same types of chemical cues.

All animals seem to have ways of exchanging information—monkeys vocalize complex messages, ants create scent trails to food, and fireflies light up their bellies to attract mates. Yet, despite the fact that nematodes, or roundworms, are among the most abundant animals on the planet, little has been known about the way they network.

To uncover stem cell fates, pinpoint genes

Kimm Fesenmaier-Caltech — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:18:10 +0000

CALTECH (US) — New research traces the steps by which stem cells become T cells—key components of the immune system that help destroy invading pathogens.

What happens to a stem cell at the molecular level that causes it to become one type of cell rather than another? At what point is it committed to that cell fate, and how does it become committed? The answers to these questions have been largely unknown.

But now, in studies that mark a major step forward in our understanding of stem cells’ fates, a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has traced the stepwise developmental process that ensures certain stem cells will become T cells.

Icy tropics triggered mass extinction

Kimm Fesenmaier-Caltech — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:46:49 +0000

CALTECH (US) — The second-largest mass extinction in Earth’s history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped.

Although it has long been agreed that the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction—which occurred about 450 million years ago—was related to climate change, exactly how the climate change produced the extinction has not been known.