The lava lake at the Halema'uma'u Crater of Kilauea volcano has finally overflowed--an event that has been . The lake of molten rock formed in 2010, and has been a source of fascination for both scientists and volcano lovers, who trek to the site in hopes of glimpsing the lake's overflow. Last week, the crater had so many visitors that park officials encouraged people to visit to avoid traffic jams.
Right now, you can't get close to the lava lake. A visitor's area overlooking the crater has been closed for a while due to volcanic hazards. Yesterday, a rockfall showed the world why those precautions were a good idea.
Rocks sliding down the crater's side into the lava lake resulted in an explosion, splattering hot lava 280 feet into the air. Take a look through some of the photos above or watch the explosion in the video below.
If you're interested in seeing more of the lava lake, you can check out the action for yourself at any of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory's (one of which was hit by a glob of lava yesterday), or visit one of the outlooks a safe distance away. Just don't bring a drone. Last weekend, a tourist at the park was after piloting a toy UAV near the crater, since drones are banned throughout the national parks system.
In late 2012, a in the south of France. DNA evidence led officials to two suspects, a pair of twins. The victims recognized the men, but couldn’t tell them apart; since the twins' DNA is identical, officials didn’t have a way to figure out which one of them to prosecute.
Different twins, different melting points.
Forensics specialists have a few ways to tell twins apart, such as testing sperm or using identifying markings like tattoos or scars, but these techniques are very limited. Now a team of researchers to differentiate twins’ DNA by identifying parts of it that have changed over time because of environmental factors.
Over time, factors like diet and smoking can change how our DNA is expressed, which is called epigenetics. These environmental factors often cause certain chemicals that are part of the methyl group to attach to the DNA. But the methylation does more than just change how the DNA is expressed—it changes the DNA’s melting point. The researchers took cheek swabs of five pairs of identical twins, extracted the DNA, and then identified spots in the DNA with particularly indicative types of methyl chemicals had bonded. The researchers then calculated the of the DNA and found that the methylation changes the melting point ever so slightly, allowing the researchers to distinguish one twin from another.
The researchers acknowledge that this technique might not work with twins that are too young to have undergone much epigenetic change, or those who have lived in such similar environments their entire lives that their DNA methylation would be exactly the same. Still, this technique is much faster and cheaper than existing methods, which might help officials effectively solve more crimes.
People have brewed beer for thousands of years, but there are some things that brewers still don't have down to a science. Despite the best efforts of brewers everywhere, sometimes a tiny, nefarious bacterium will manage to squirm its way into a batch of beer, ruining it for everyone.
Usually, brewers don't find out about the presence of bacteria until too late. They rely on cultures, taking small samples of beer and incubating them in petri dishes to see if harmful bacteria grows. But some breweries are taking a more proactive approach.
As the Verge , breweries like Russian River are turning to a quick, easy DNA testing method that takes just a few hours, and can identify beer-contaminating culprits such as bacteria from the Pediococcus and Lactobacillus genuses, which can ruin a beer's flavor.
There are a few different brands of the test, but they all use the same basic technique: PCR, or .
In order to quickly identify a tiny amount of bacteria in a beer sample, PCR searches for a small snippet of the offending DNA. If the DNA is found, PCR makes billions of copies of it so that it's more easily detected by a reader (which the Verge likens to a pregnancy test). The test alerts brewers to a potential problem before it gets too out of control, resulting in less wasted beer and money.
PCR is also used in numerous other quality-control applications, identifying everything from to .
The USGS Identified 17 zones where earthquakes were more frequent than in the past.
Just days after Oklahoma's government the idea that human actions could, in fact, cause earthquakes, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) released a outlining how they could potentially map people-induced earthquake hazards.
'Induced' or 'potentially induced' earthquakes (the terms are used interchangeably in the report) are earthquakes caused by human activities--typically the injection of wastewater deep into the earth. The water can essentially lubricate faults, causing them to slip. Sudden movement along faults are what generate an earthquake.
Injecting wastewater into the ground is different from the hydraulic fracturing process (better known as fracking), and the USGS that accompanied the report is quick to point that out. The agency noted: "USGS’s studies suggest that the actual hydraulic fracturing process is only occasionally the direct cause of felt earthquakes."
The organization identified 17 sites that are at an increased risk of these induced earthquakes, including a large segment of Oklahoma. That state has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of tremors . In 2011, Oklahoma experienced a large quake that damaged numerous buildings and was to wastewater injection wells.
This new map is a starting point for the USGS, which hopes to release a more detailed hazard model at the end of the year. Such guidelines could help predict the risk of an induced earthquake in communities across the United States, helping local and state governments plan for potential disasters.
“These earthquakes are occurring at a higher rate than ever before and pose a much greater risk to people living nearby," Mark Petersen, Chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Modeling Project. "The USGS is developing methods that overcome the challenges in assessing seismic hazards in these regions in order to support decisions that help keep communities safe from ground shaking.”
Chile's Calbuco volcano has been sleeping since 1972--and yesterday, it woke up with a start. The peak finally erupted, sending a huge ash plume into the air pouring out of the mountain's vents shortly afterwards.
Calbuco's eruption took locals by surprise, but the government moved quickly, about 4,000 people from a 12-mile radius around the volcano.
The volcano is considered to be among the three volcanoes in Chile--a not-insignificant designation in a country with about 90 active volcanoes. Luckily, no deaths or injuries have been reported so far. And just like when the Villarrica volcano (also in Chile) , there is some amazing visual documentation of this eruption.
BBC News readers sent in of the event, which occurred near sunset, giving early pictures of the explosion a surprisingly peaceful quality.
Even more incredible are some of the amazing timelapses and taken by people who were lucky enough to be in the area (at a safe distance of course). One of the most incredible videos to make the rounds was by Rodrigo Barrera.
Awesome, but kind of tranquil, right? For a more dramatic view, check out this GIF of the eruption, taken from a camera at a local airport:
And just as a reminder, this is what the volcano looked like from about 1972 until yesterday evening:
Calbuco
A view of the volcano in 2012.
The triggers behind a volcanic eruption are still being investigated by volcanologists around the world. Just like earthquakes, accurately forecasting an eruption is something only possible in a Hollywood script. Luckily, cutting-edge technologies like , , and are letting scientists get a closer look at volcanoes before they lose their tempers, so that in the future, the next eruption might not be such a surprise.
T. rex has its big head and tiny arms, triceratops has horns, and brontosaurus (yes, ) has its super long neck. The stegosaurus, on the other hand, has a tiny brain and the equivalent of a set of China plates set in long lines running down its back. It turns out that the size and shape of the plates of these might actually give paleontologists a clue as to whether stegosaurus fossils were male or female.
Stegosaurus fossils from Montana showed two different types of plates; some were large, wide, rounded, and others were taller and spikier. For a while some paleontologists assumed that these were two different species of stegosaur. But in a published today in PLOS One, researchers suggest that the difference might be related to the dinosaurs' reproductive system.
In a statement, lead author Evan Saitta speculates:
"As males typically invest more in their ornamentation, the larger, wide plates likely came from males. These broad plates would have provided a great display surface to attract mates. The tall plates might have functioned as prickly predator deterrents in females. These stegosaurs seem to provide the first really convincing evidence for sexual dimorphism in a dinosaur species (excluding birds, which are technically dinosaurs themselves)."
The reason that Saitta thinks the fossils didn't belong to different species is that dinosaurs with different types of plates were found together, suggesting that they co-existed. In addition, the plates had similar growth rings--both sets of dinosaurs were around the same age, so it's not a question of older dinosaurs having larger plates.
Figuring out whether a dinosaur is male or female is incredibly tricky. Dinosaur fossils, like reptile bones, don't usually show evidence of being male or female. Reproductive organs, along with other soft tissues, rarely survive in the fossil record, leaving paleontologists with little to no direct evidence of anatomical characteristics.
Like Saitta, researchers have to rely on modern animals to make educated guesses about what the world was like millions of years ago. Birds, as Saitta notes, are the heirs of the dinosaur lineage, and into dinosaur reproduction has focused on comparing dinosaur skeletons to modern bird anatomy. Back in 2005, researchers found that a T. rex fossil had a unique bone structure similar to the create eggshells. And in 2011, another study used stegosaurus hind limb bones to separate the fossils into two groups, but didn't go so far as to identify which was male or which was female, because there just wasn't enough information.
As that study's lead author at the time, "We'll probably never know that unless a complete, spectacularly well preserved specimen of Kentrosaurus (a type of stegosaurus) is found with an egg in its oviduct."
Since this new study didn't find an egg in the oviduct--the paleontological version of a smoking gun--there is a chance that the wider plates belonged to females and the narrower plates to males. Until we get a time machine, a , or a narrow-plated stegosaurus with an egg in its oviduct or a medullary bone, we won't know for sure which is which.
In Hawaii, where 12 percent of the homes have solar panels, handling the surplus power is putting pressure on the state’s biggest utility, which is fighting to reduce what it pays for the energy.
HONOLULU — Allan Akamine has looked all around the winding, palm tree-lined cul-de-sacs of his suburban neighborhood in Mililani here on Oahu and, with an equal mix of frustration and bemusement, seen roof after roof bearing solar panels.
Mr. Akamine, 61, a manager for a cable company, has wanted nothing more than to lower his $600 to $700 monthly electric bill with a solar system of his own. But for 18 months or so, the state’s biggest utility barred him and thousands of other customers from getting one, citing concerns that power generated by rooftop systems was overwhelming its ability to handle it.
Only under strict orders from state energy officials did the utility, the Hawaiian Electric Company, recently rush to approve the lengthy backlog of solar applications, including Mr. Akamine’s.
It is the latest chapter in a closely watched battle that has put this state at the forefront of a global upheaval in the power business. Rooftop systems now sit atop roughly 12 percent of Hawaii’s homes, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, by far the highest proportion in the nation.
“Hawaii is a postcard from the future,” said Adam Browning, executive director of Vote Solar, a policy and advocacy group based in California.
Other states and countries, including California, Arizona, Japan and Germany, are struggling to adapt to the growing popularity of making electricity at home, which puts new pressures on old infrastructure like circuits and power lines and cuts into electric company revenue.
As a result, many utilities are trying desperately to stem the rise of solar, either by reducing incentives, adding steep fees or effectively pushing home solar companies out of the market. In response, those solar companies are fighting back through regulators, lawmakers and the courts.
The shift in the electric business is no less profound than those that upended the telecommunications and cable industries in recent decades. It is already remaking the relationship between power companies and the public while raising questions about how to pay for maintaining and operating the nation’s grid.
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The issue is not merely academic, electrical engineers say.
In solar-rich areas of California and Arizona, as well as in Hawaii, all that solar-generated electricity flowing out of houses and into a power grid designed to carry it in the other direction has caused unanticipated voltage fluctuations that can overload circuits, burn lines and lead to brownouts or blackouts.
“Hawaii’s case is not isolated,” said Massoud Amin, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota and chairman of the smart grid program at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a technical association. “When we push year-on-year 30 to 40 percent growth in this market, with the number of installations doubling, quickly — every two years or so — there’s going to be problems.”
The economic threat also has electric companies on edge. Over all, demand for electricity is softening while home solar is rapidly spreading across the country. There are now about 600,000 installed systems, and the number is expected to reach 3.3 million by 2020, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
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The Edison Electric Institute, the main utility trade group, has been warning its members of the economic perils of high levels of rooftop solar since at least 2012, and the companies are responding. In February, the Salt River Project, a large utility in Arizona, that could add about $50 to a typical monthly bill for new solar customers, while last year in Wisconsin, where rooftop solar is still relatively rare, regulators approved fees that would add $182 a year for the average solar customer.
In Hawaii, the current battle began in 2013, when Hawaiian Electric started barring installations of residential solar systems in certain areas. It was an abrupt move — a panicked one, critics say — made after the utility became alarmed by the technical and financial challenges of all those homes suddenly making their own electricity.
The utility wants to cut roughly in half the amount it pays customers for solar electricity they send back to the grid. But after a study showed that with some upgrades the system could handle much more solar than the company had assumed, the state’s public utilities commission ordered the utility to begin installations or prove why it could not.
It was but one sign of the agency’s growing impatience with what it considers the utility’s failure to adapt its business model to the changing market.
Hawaiian Electric is scrambling to accede to that demand, approving thousands of applications in recent weeks. But it is under pressure on other fronts as well. NextEra Energy, based in Florida, is awaiting approval to buy it, while other islands it serves are exploring defecting to form their own cooperative power companies.
It is also upgrading its circuits and meters to better regulate the flow of electricity. Rooftop solar makes far more power than any other single source, said Colton Ching, vice president for energy delivery at Hawaiian Electric, but the utility can neither control nor predict the output.
“At every different moment, we have to make sure that the amount of power we generate is equal to the amount of energy being used, and if we don’t keep that balance things go unstable,” he said, pointing to the illuminated graphs and diagrams tracking energy production from wind and solar farms, as well as coal-fueled generators in the utility’s main control room. But the rooftop systems are “essentially invisible to us,” he said, “because they sit behind a customer’s meter and we don’t have a means to directly measure them.”
For customers, such explanations offer little comfort as they continue to pay among the highest electric rates in the country and still face an uncertain solar future.
“I went through all this trouble to get my electric bill down, and I am still waiting,” said Joyce Villegas, 88, who signed her contract for a system in August 2013 but was only recently approved and is waiting for the installation to be completed.
Mr. Akamine expressed resignation over the roughly $12,000 he could have saved, but wondered about the delay. “Why did it take forceful urging from the local public utility commission to open up more permits?” he asked.
Installers — who saw their fast-growing businesses slow to a trickle — are also frustrated with the pace. For those who can afford it, said James Whitcomb, chief executive of Haleakala Solar, which he started in 1977, the answer may lie in a more radical solution: Avoid the utility and its grid altogether.
Customers are increasingly asking about the batteries that he often puts in along with the solar panels, allowing them to store the power they generate during the day for use at night. It is more expensive, but it breaks consumer reliance on the utility’s network of power lines.
“I’ve actually taken people right off the grid,” he said, including a couple who got tired of waiting for Hawaiian Electric to approve their solar system and expressed no interest in returning to utility service. “The lumbering big utilities that are so used to taking three months to study this and then six months to do that — what they don’t understand is that things are moving at the speed of business. Like with digital photography — this is inevitable.”
Worker without access to adequate pollen early in life , as adults.
The bees’ so-called waggle dance, a figure-eight movement, is used to tell other members of the colony how far and in what direction to fly to find flowers. If the pollen-deprived bees went out to forage, they often did not return, said Heather Mattila, a biologist at Wellesley College..
Dr. Mattila and Hailey Scofield, an undergraduate student, raised one group of bees with limited access to pollen and another with adequate pollen. They combined the bees in one hive and observed them. Their study was published this month in PLOS One.
“Pollen-stressed workers were less likely to waggle dance, and if they danced, the information they conveyed was less precise,” Dr. Mattila said.
Outside the lab, bees encounter pollen stress regularly. At the beginning of spring, for instance, cold weather makes it difficult to search for pollen, and flowers have not fully bloomed.
“And beekeepers do tons of things to put their bees under stress,” Dr. Mattila added, “like driving them across the country to pollinate almonds.”
Poor foraging and waggle dancing could add to the decline in honeybees, and threaten crops like apples and almonds that depend on the insects for pollination, Dr. Mattila said.
Earlier this year, Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist in Stockholm, made the jarring suggestion that might cause cancer. She was not talking about the “dark matter” of the genome (another term for junk DNA) but about the hypothetical, lightless particles that cosmologists believe pervade the universe and hold the galaxies together.
Though it has yet to be directly detected, dark matter is presumed to exist because we can see the effects of its gravity. As its invisible particles pass through our bodies, they could be mutating DNA, the theory goes, adding at an extremely low level to the overall rate of cancer.
It was unsettling to see two such seemingly different realms, cosmology and oncology, suddenly juxtaposed. But that was just the beginning. Shortly after Dr. Hossenfelder , Michael Rampino, a professor at New York University, added geology and paleontology to the picture.
Dark matter, he proposed in an article for the Royal Astronomical Society, that have periodically swept , including the one that killed the dinosaurs.
His idea is based on speculations by other scientists that the Milky Way is sliced horizontally through its center by a thin disk of dark matter. As the sun, traveling around the galaxy, bobs up and down through this darkling plane, it generates gravitational ripples strong enough to dislodge distant comets from their orbits, sending them hurtling toward Earth.
An was put forth last year by the Harvard physicists Lisa Randall and Matthew Reece. But Dr. Rampino has added another twist: During Earth’s galactic voyage, dark matter accumulates in its core. There the particles self-destruct, generating enough heat to cause deadly volcanic eruptions. Struck from above and below, the dinosaurs succumbed.
It is surprising to see something as abstract as dark matter take on so much solidity, at least in the human mind. The idea was invented in the early 1930s as a theoretical contrivance — a means of explaining observations that otherwise didn’t make sense.
Galaxies appear to be rotating so fast that they should have spun apart long ago, throwing off stars like sparks from a Fourth of July pinwheel. There just isn’t enough gravity to hold a galaxy together, unless you assume that it hides a huge amount of unseen matter — particles that neither emit or absorb light.
Some mavericks propose alternatives, attempting to tweak the equations of gravity to account for what seems like missing mass. But for most cosmologists, the idea of unseeable matter has become so deeply ingrained that it has become almost impossible to do without it.
Said to be five times more abundant than the stuff we can see, dark matter is a crucial component of the theory behind gravitational lensing, in which large masses like galaxies can bend light beams and cause stars to appear in unexpected parts of the sky.
That was the explanation for the spectacular observation of an “Einstein Cross” reported last month. Acting like an enormous lens, a cluster of galaxies — a cosmological mirage. The light for each reflection followed a different path, providing glimpses of four different moments of the explosion.
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But not even a galactic cluster exerts enough gravity to bend light so severely unless you postulate that most of its mass consists of hypothetical dark matter. In fact, astronomers are so sure that dark matter exists that they .
Dark matter, in other words, is used to explain gravitational lensing, and gravitational lensing is taken as more evidence for dark matter.
Some skeptics have wondered if this is a modern-day version of what ancient astronomers called “saving the phenomena.” With enough elaborations, a theory can account for what we see without necessarily describing reality. The classic example is the geocentric model of the heavens that Ptolemy laid out in the Almagest, with the planets orbiting Earth along paths of complex curlicues.
Ptolemy apparently didn’t care whether his filigrees were real. What was important to him was that his model worked, predicting planetary movements with great precision.
Modern scientists are not ready to settle for such subterfuge. To show that dark matter resides in the world and not just in their equations, they are trying to detect it directly.
Though its identity remains unknown, most theorists are betting that dark matter consists of WIMPs — weakly interacting massive particles. If they really exist, it might be possible to glimpse them when they interact with ordinary matter.
Based on that hope, scientists have constructed underground detectors attempting to measure the impact of the particles as they fly through Earth and occasionally collide with atoms of xenon, argon or some other substance. But so far, there have been no hits.
Somewhere from 10 to a few thousand times a year, Dr. Hossenfelder estimated, a WIMP may happen to strike one of our own atoms, including some that make up DNA. The energy would be strong enough to break molecular bonds and cause mutations.
When it comes to cancer, that is a negligible threat. Two of Dr. Hossenfelder’s colleagues, Katherine Freese and Christopher Savage, estimate that cosmic rays zipping through a human body than dark matter would in a lifetime. But the effect of dark matter is still strong enough that scientists are considering .
If WIMPs turn out to be a fiction, something else will have to be found to explain all of the missing mass. Something is screwy about the universe, and astronomers are determined to find out why.
A Silicon Valley start-up with some big-name backers is threatening to upend genetic screening for breast and by offering a test on a sample of saliva that is so inexpensive that most women could get it.
At the same time, the nation’s two largest clinical laboratories, and , normally bitter rivals, are joining with French researchers to pool their data to better interpret mutations in the two main risk genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2. Other companies and laboratories are being invited to join the effort, called BRCA Share.
The announcements being made on Tuesday, although coincidental in their timing, speak to the surge in competition in genetic risk screening for since 2013, when the Supreme Court invalidated the gene patents that gave Myriad Genetics a monopoly on BRCA testing.
The field has also been propelled by the actress and filmmaker Angelina Jolie, who has a BRCA1 mutation and to have her breasts, ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to sharply reduce her risk of developing cancer.
But the issue of who should be tested remains controversial. The effort of the start-up, Color Genomics, to “democratize access to genetic testing,” in the words of the chief executive, Elad Gil, is generating concern among some experts.
The company plans to charge $249 for an analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2, plus 17 other cancer-risk genes. That is one tenth the price of many tests now on the market.
Testing of the BRCA genes has generally been limited by medical guidelines to women who already have cancer or those with a family history of breast or ovarian cancers. Insurers generally have not paid for BRCA tests for other women, and some insurers for a newer type of screening known as a panel test that analyzes from 10 to 40 genes at once.
Dr. Gil of Color said his company’s test would be inexpensive enough for women to pay out of pocket, so that neither the woman nor Color will have to deal with insurance companies. He said the company was starting a program to provide free testing to women who cannot afford its test.
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One of the company’s unpaid advisers is Mary-Claire King, the University of Washington geneticist whose work led to the discovery of the BRCA1 gene. Dr. King last year for testing to be offered to all American women 30 and older.
She said that half the women with dangerous mutations would not qualify for testing under current guidelines, in part because many inherit the mutation from their fathers rather than their mothers and a family history of breast or ovarian cancer might not be evident.
But other experts say that fewer women in the expanded group would be found to have dangerous mutations, raising the overall cost of testing per cancer case prevented. Moreover, expanded testing could result in many more women being told they have mutations that cannot be classified as either dangerous or benign, leaving women in a state of limbo as to whether they have an increased risk of cancer.
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“We have to be careful that we are not just increasing this group of worried-well who have incomplete information,” said Dr. Kenneth Offit, chief of the clinical service at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Dr. Offit said it was contradictory that Color was trying to expand testing to everyone on the same day the two biggest testing companies were joining forces to try to reduce how often they find these so-called variants of uncertain significance.
Color is planning to allow women to order tests through its website. Another Silicon Valley start-up that did that, 23andMe, had its in 2013 by the Food and Drug Administration.
Color executives say that unlike with 23andMe, a doctor will be involved in every order and in the test results. If a consumer orders the test directly from its website, her information will be sent to a doctor hired by the company to evaluate it.
An F.D.A. spokeswoman said that if doctors place orders, testing companies that operate their own laboratories do not need F.D.A. approval to offer their tests.
Some testing experts question whether Color can provide testing as inexpensively as it claims. While the actual sequencing might be done for less than $250, that is only part of the cost, which also involves interpretation and working with patients and doctors, they say. Other companies generally charge at least $1,500 for complete analyses of the BRCA genes or for multigene tests.
But Dr. Gil said Color has highly automated its processes and will even offer genetic counseling to women. He said the company chose the saliva test rather than a blood one because it’s easier for users but still accurate. Women send the saliva sample to Color for testing.
Dr. Gil received a doctoral degree in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying a cancer gene. But he has spent much of his career at Google and Twitter. The company’s president, Othman Laraki, also worked at Google and Twitter.
Color’s backers — it says it has raised about $15 million — are mainly from the world of high tech rather than life sciences. Its lead investors are the venture capital firms Khosla Ventures and Formation 8. Individual investors include Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs; Susan L. Wagner, a co-founder of the investment firm BlackRock; Padmasree Warrior, the chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco; and Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo.
Dr. Offit of Sloan Kettering said that even Myriad, which long had a monopoly on BRCA testing and has the most data, has reported having a 2 percent rate of variants of unknown significance, meaning 2 percent of the time it cannot tell if a variant in a gene increases the risk of cancer or is benign. Other companies might have higher rates. And the rates for some other, less-well-studied genes can be 20 or 30 percent, he said.
The entire testing industry is now scrambling to pool data to lower that rate, and in some cases to catch up to Myriad, which has kept much of its data proprietary as a competitive advantage. Various data-sharing efforts are already underway, including by and the .
Now there is also BRCA Share, which is based on a database of genetic variants maintained by Inserm, a French government health research institute. Quest Diagnostics agreed to provide money to improve that database and pay for experiments on cells that could help determine whether certain mutations raise the risk of cancer.
“We are going to help them make it better,” said Dr. Charles M. Strom, vice president for genomics and genetics at Quest. He said BRCA Share would be open to others, with LabCorp becoming the first to join.
Participants will have to contribute their data to the database. Companies will pay for access to the data on a sliding scale based on their size, while others will have access to the data without paying, he said.
Reducing methane leaks from oil and gas operations around the world could provide a relatively inexpensive way to fight climate change, according to commissioned by the .
The amount of methane that escaped worldwide in 2012 was roughly 3.6 billion cubic feet and would have been worth $30 billion on the market, said Kate Larsen, a director of the , which produced the study. A country that produced that amount of gas would rank seventh in the world, coming in just after Russia, she said.
Methane, the major component of natural gas, is also a powerful greenhouse gas. It is valued as an alternative to coal because it produces half of the carbon dioxide that coal does when burned in power plants. But released directly into the atmosphere, methane has short-term climate effects that are much greater than those of carbon dioxide.
“Methane is both a serious climate challenge and also, in our view, a major untapped opportunity to start reversing the tide of global greenhouse gas emissions,” said Mark Brownstein, chief counsel for the environmental fund’s United States climate and energy program.
sponsored by the group suggests that leaks from natural gas facilities could be reduced by 40 percent at a cost of 1 cent per 1,000 cubic feet.
In the United States, the Obama administration to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to as much as 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and to by up to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025.
Without action to combat leaks, Ms. Larsen said, methane emissions will grow 23 percent by 2030. According to the report, if the 30 nations that emit the most methane from oil and gas reduced emissions 50 percent by 2030, the impact on climate change of curtailing that waste would be as great as stopping the combined carbon dioxide emissions of India and the entire European Union in 2012.
The new study is sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund to gain a better understanding of the methane problem. This study, which was not published in a scientific journal, was financed entirely by the Environmental Defense Fund, said Drew Nelson, senior manager in the group’s natural gas program.
A spokesman for the petroleum industry said its companies were already at work to reduce leaks. Carlton Carroll, a spokesman for the , said that industry and government had worked together to reduce methane emissions.
“Even as U.S. oil and natural gas production has risen dramatically, methane emissions have fallen thanks to industry leadership and investment in new technologies,” he said. “Emissions are low and will continue to fall as operators innovate and find new ways to capture and deliver more methane to consumers, and existing E.P.A. and state regulations are working,” he continued, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency.
For decades, the has had fewer than a dozen pages of instructions for how to regulate the millions of lipsticks, moisturizers and other cosmetics sold each year.
Now, a new bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Senators , Democrat of California, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, proposes to give the broader oversight, including the authority to force recalls of dangerous products.
The proposal has backing from the cosmetics industry and proponents of strengthening the agency’s oversight, including the , a left-leaning advocacy group.
“This bill is the best hope for meaningful cosmetics regulation in many years,” said Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group.
The bill reflects a new reality for manufacturers of personal care products, which face more pressure than ever to respond to consumer concerns.
Regulating cosmetics has not changed much since passage of the in 1938. The F.D.A. can only ask companies to voluntarily recall products, and manufacturers are not legally required to disclose adverse health effects reported by consumers. (Many manufacturers say they do so anyway.)
“Most consumers don’t have much faith in voluntary company commitments,” Mr. Faber said. “The absence of a credible regulator has undermined consumer confidence in everyday products.”
Various efforts to get stronger legislation passed over the years have failed.
John Hurson, the executive vice president of government affairs at the , an industry trade group, said of the new bill, “There were things that we liked more than others, but it is a compromise, and that’s a first.”
The F.D.A. expressed dismay last year at some proposals offered by trade organizations like Mr. Hurson’s and said it would drop negotiations with industry groups for new rules.
Under the new proposal, companies will be required to report “serious” adverse health effects they hear about from consumers — reactions to products that result in death, disfigurement or hospitalization, for example — within 15 business days. Companies must report all nonserious events — like — in an annual report.
An F.D.A. spokesman declined to comment, saying that “as a matter of practice, F.D.A. does not comment on proposed or pending legislation.”
Also under the proposal, the F.D.A. would study five different chemicals for safety annually. The first ones would include chemicals that have already generated widespread consumer concern and backlash: propylparaben, a common cosmetic preservative; methylene glycol, a formaldehyde-releasing chemical previously used in some hair-straightening treatments; and two formaldehyde-releasing preservatives. The other would be lead acetate, an ingredient used in men’s hair dye.
“We do feel that it’s very important that the F.D.A.’s authority in this space bring peace of mind to consumers and at the same time reflect modern science and advancements,” said Darrel Jodrey, executive director of federal affairs at Johnson & Johnson, the world’s biggest maker of health care products.
Spring has sprung, and as you begin to shed your fur...sorry, I mean, start spring cleaning, you might be wondering where all this dust came from. If you live in the United States, science may have an answer.
A published in PLOS One shows that the tiny particles of fungi present in all dust vary by location. There is enough difference between fungal communities across the country that researchers can pinpoint the origin of dust to within miles of where it came from, and with more data about fungal distributions in the United States, future predictions could be even more accurate.
Scientists at NC State looked at a of dust samples collected from 1000 sites in 47 states. The outdoor dust samples contained plenty of microbes, including particles of fungi. Of the nearly 40,000 types of fungi found in the samples, not too many overlapped. As the researchers mentioned in the paper, some fungi were only found on the west coast, or were closely associated with crops like grapes, so a sample containing both might have come from a wine-growing region in the West. With thousands of fungi, each with their own preferred habitat, the researchers had a lot to work with.
“Based on that finding, we wanted to determine if you could predict where a dust sample came from based on the fungi present in the sample, and – most of the time – we can,” lead author of the study Neal Grantham .
In the absolute best case scenario, Grantham and his colleagues were able to pinpoint the origin of a dust sample to within 35 miles of where it was taken. At the other end of the spectrum, they could sometimes be off by as much as 645 miles. Most of the time, the researchers were able to predict the origin of the dust within 143 miles.
1,000 locations isn't an insignificant sample size, but some places, like the northern Midwest were sorely underrepresented. With more samples from around the country, and better predictive models, scientists hope that they can make future predictions even more accurate.
“Ultimately, we want to have an online tool for law enforcement to run the results of dust samples taken from a piece of clothing, a body, or a vehicle, and get information on where the clothing, body, or vehicle has been,” Grantham said.
This champagne is of a slightly more modern vintage.
Losing a shipment of over 160 bottles champagne in the Baltic Sea must have been a huge blow to European importers back in the early 1800's. But their loss is definitely our gain. Discovered on the seafloor in 2010, the shipwrecked cargo has become a treasure trove of information to scientists interested in how alcohol was made in the past.
In a published today in PNAS researchers analyzed the champagne, finding that it was still remarkably unspoiled after its sleep with the fishes.
This isn't the first analysis of alcohol from the ill-fated shipwreck. Last month, scientists from Germany analyzed and tasted varieties of that were also aboard the ship.
Unlike the beer, which was contaminated by seawater, the champagne (manufactured by Heidsieck, Juglar, and Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin) stayed impressively intact in the cold, dark waters of the Baltic Sea. A few bottles of the champagne were put up for sale in 2012, fetching prices of . Expert taste-testers described the sparkling wine as “spicy,” “grilled,” and “leathery”. Unfortunately, even though the corks were undamaged, the CO2 slipped out of the bottles in the 170 years underwater, leaving the researchers with only a tingling feeling on the tongue, as opposed to bubbles.
Based on chemical analysis of the wine, which showed that it contained added sugar, researchers think that it may have been headed for Germany, which had a population at the time that favored sweeter wines. Chemical analysis revealed that the champagne was stored in wooden barrels, and that the makers added grape syrup into the champagne--an usual practice nowadays.
Because the shipment survived so well in the water, winemakers are interested in seeing if storing and aging wine in deep, cold waters like the Baltic might be a good strategy. Last year, Veuve Cliquot began its own experiments --on purpose this time. By storing some bottles in the Baltic, near where the shipwrecked wines were found, and some in their cellars, the company hopes to see if the loss 170 years ago might have inadvertently led to a whole new way of aging champagne today.
Whether it's melted down for use in baking, coating strawberries, or simply held a little too long in the palm of your hand, everyone knows that heat plays a central role in making chocolate gooey. That's still true, but it turns out that genetics has some say in the process as well.
In a published in Frontiers in Plant Science, researchers at Penn State found a gene that controls the point at which cacao butter melts. The finding could help scientists breed or genetically modify plants to produce seeds with cacao butter that melts only when conditions are just right.
Cacao butter is a lipid, a kind of fat extracted from the seeds of a cacao plant. Typically it melts at around the temperature of the human body but, eyeing warm weather markets, chocolate companies have been searching for a way to make if you leave them in a hot car.
“The ‘snap’ and ‘melt’ of chocolate are two very important textural features that determine the appeal of chocolate to consumers, and having new varieties of the cocoa plant that produce butter with different melting points would be a valuable resource to control those characteristics,” lead scientist Mark Guiltinan.
The revised its on Sunday night, urging survivors to abstain from all forms of sex or use every time “until more information becomes available,” rather than three months as previously recommended.
The and have in recent weeks. They were acting on evidence suggesting that a Liberian man who recovered from might have transmitted the virus to his female partner many months later.
Ebola genetic material was found in a semen sample the man provided 175 days after he developed symptoms, 74 days longer than ever before found in a survivor. the genetic sequence of the virus found in the woman, Ruth Tugbah, 44, to partial sequences obtained from the virus in her boyfriend’s semen and in blood samples taken months ago from his potential contacts with Ebola, and found that they matched at several key points.
Thus far, the information is consistent with sexual transmission, scientists said, but not conclusive, and the study is continuing. Researchers at the C.D.C. were also trying to establish whether the sample the man provided contained infectious virus, rather than only harmless genetic material or RNA.
Experts said they had expected sexual transmission of Ebola to be rare. It has not yet been proved, but “cannot be ruled out,” the C.D.C. guidance said. Marburg, a similar virus, is thought to have been transmitted sexually. The World Health Organization, the C.D.C. and the health ministry are planning a study of survivors intended to help establish the range of time that various body fluids, such as semen, urine and , tend to contain Ebola after it has been cleared from the blood. That time frame has varied in the small number of survivors previously studied.
“The problem is we haven’t looked at a large number of cases,” said Stuart Nichol, an Ebola researcher at the C.D.C. Philip Ireland, a Liberian doctor who contracted Ebola while working last summer at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia, the capital, said that despite the practical difficulty involved in collecting semen samples, all survivors should be offered the chance to know whether their body fluids still contain traces of Ebola. “Tests have to be made available, and have to be made next-to-free,” he said.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, the lead Ebola official at the W.H.O., said the agency was exploring the feasibility of just such a program. “It’s a smart thing to do,” he said.
MANSON, Iowa — The flat, endless acres of black dirt here in northern Iowa will soon be filled with corn and soybean seeds. But as farmers tuned up their tractors and waited for the perfect moment to plant, another topic weighed on their minds: a lawsuit filed in federal court by the state’s largest water utility.
After years of mounting frustration, the utility, , sued the leaders of three rural Iowa counties last month. Too little has been done, the lawsuit says, to prevent nitrates from flowing out of farm fields into the Raccoon River and, eventually, into the drinking water supply for roughly 500,000 Iowans. The suit seeks to make farmers comply with that apply to factories and commercial users, and requests unspecified damages.
“It’s very clear to me that traditional, industrial agriculture has no real interest in taking the steps that are necessary to radically change their operations in a way that will protect our drinking water,” said Bill Stowe, the chief executive of Des Moines Water Works. High nitrate runoff, which can result from nitrogen-rich soil and applied fertilizer, places Des Moines’s drinking water in danger of violating federal quality standards, Mr. Stowe said, and increases costs and poses health risks for customers.
The lawsuit raises not only the legal question of whether the government should regulate the water that drains off farmers’ land, but also the existential issue of whether rural and urban Iowans can collaborate to solve vexing problems. In a state where agriculture drives the economy, grain silos are featured on license plates and people pride themselves on a certain brand of “Iowa nice,” farmers like Brent Johnson have criticized the litigation as an antagonistic overreach that comes at the expense of cooperation and neighborliness.
“It’s a confrontational approach,” said Mr. Johnson, who farms corn and soybeans here in Calhoun County, one of three counties whose boards of supervisors were named as defendants in the lawsuit. “I think there’s been a lot of progress made. I don’t know any farmer who wants to increase nitrates in the river.”
The nitrate issue is, in many ways, an unfortunate side effect of one of Iowa’s great assets: the nutrient-rich dirt that makes for some of the world’s most productive cropland. Though that nitrogen-filled soil helps Mr. Johnson and others grow prodigious amounts of corn and soybeans, a significant rainstorm can wash many of those nutrients, along with nitrates applied as fertilizer, into tributaries of the Raccoon River. The Raccoon is one of two rivers that provide drinking water for Des Moines, the state’s capital and urban center.
Notably, most everyone involved agrees that the nitrates in the water supply are a problem, and that farmers can play a role in solving it. But while Mr. Stowe and the utility want to hold farmers to strict federal water quality standards, Mr. Johnson and the state’s powerful agricultural groups favor a voluntary system.
Last year, months before the lawsuit was filed, the state associations for corn, soybean and pork producers formed the , which bills itself as a farmer-led effort to improve water quality. The group’s executive director, Sean McMahon, said that many farmers were eager to employ conservation practices, but that education and time were needed to see more results. Money, he said, would be better spent on outreach and cost-sharing programs than on lawyers for the lawsuit.
Leaders of other agricultural associations expressed similar sentiments, while saying they still appreciated the urgency of the problem.
“We need to scale it up,” said Roger Wolf, director of environmental programs and services for the Iowa Soybean Association. “We know that.”
Mr. Johnson, whose family has worked these fields for more than 100 years, says he and his neighbors care deeply about the land and understand the concerns raised in the lawsuit. On his property, Mr. Johnson uses a limited-tilling method, and he has planted rows of switch grass on the edge of one field and has filled wetlands with native grasses. Experts say those tactics can help keep nutrients in the field and out of the water system.
Mr. Johnson, who serves on the county soil and water conservation commission, made those changes on his own. He said he feared that the lawsuit, if successful, would add a regulatory burden just as many farmers were making voluntary changes. “That’s not healthy for agriculture, I don’t think, to take the voluntary out,” he said.
In Des Moines, Mr. Stowe said years of encouraging changes through voluntary programs had simply not brought about significant results. Nitrate levels in the Raccoon River remain stubbornly high, which required the utility to run its nitrate removal facilities for three months last winter, a rarity. In 2013, he said, Des Moines was barely able to remove nitrates quickly enough to keep up with demand, and nearly violated federal regulations. Just last Thursday, the utility turned its nitrate removal tanks back on, citing high levels of runoff upstream.
However the issue is addressed, there are costs. Mr. Johnson’s conservation practices required taking land out of production, potentially reducing profits at harvest time. For Des Moines Water Works, operating the tanks that remove nitrates is expensive.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court for the Northern District of Iowa, names the boards of supervisors in Buena Vista and Sac Counties, along with the board in Calhoun County, as defendants, saying they are responsible for overseeing drainage districts that have allowed nitrate-heavy water to make its way into rivers.
Water with excessive nitrates can cause serious health problems, especially in infants, and some environmental groups, including the and the , have expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of voluntary reductions.
Individual farmers’ efforts and anecdotal reports of success, Mr. Stowe said, have not been enough to counter others’ reluctance to make major changes. At this point, he said, collaboration with agricultural groups would have to come in addition to regulation, not instead of it.
“Talking the game and walking the game were two very different issues,” Mr. Stowe said. “This is not ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ This is Iowa. Our water’s getting worse, and we’re going to fight forward to protect it.”
That fight, however, has drawn the ire of many politicians. State Senator Randy Feenstra, a Republican, wrote in a recent blog post that the lawsuit was proof of an “arrogant mentality against rural Iowa.” He called for rural Iowans to .
Iowa’s elected agriculture secretary, Bill Northey, has also criticized the lawsuit, though with less pointed language. Mr. Northey, a Republican who farms corn and soybeans, said the effects of the lawsuit could resound far beyond the three counties named as defendants if the water utility succeeded. The state has recently invested in programs to limit nitrate runoff, he said, and more time should be allowed for those programs to work.
Several farmers agreed, and many said they had seen significant progress in just the past few years. On his farm in Greene County, in central Iowa, David Ausberger planted cover crops last fall, which can help keep dirt in place between the harvest and planting seasons. In Ida and Sac Counties, Jolene Riessen said her family was reducing tilling and using other methods to limit runoff.
“Farmers want to do the right thing,” said Ms. Riessen, a farmer and seed dealer. “But sometimes, it’s learning what is the right thing, or the combination of right things, and having the finances to do it.”
In the meantime, as planting season begins, farmers say they are discussing the lawsuit, figuring out what it could mean for them and bracing for a contentious court battle that could last years.
“Some guys are mad; some guys are sad,” Mr. Johnson said. “Everybody’s concerned.”
ITHACA, N.Y. — Throughout the school year, ’s strength and conditioning center is filled with a chorus of clanging weights and thumping rock music.
Posters in the entrance to the center instruct athletes — from nearly 300-pound offensive linemen to 5-foot-tall field hockey players — to refuel their bodies after sweat-inducing workouts.
But the suggested products are not jugs of protein powder or sports energy drinks commonly found around gyms; instead, they use locally produced eight-ounce bottles of 1 percent low-fat chocolate milk, similar to what is found in standard school lunches.
At Cornell, the benefits of having an on-campus dairy extend beyond a diverse dining hall menu with pumpkin cheesecake and Bavarian raspberry fudge ice cream flavors. Since January 2014, Cornell’s athletic department has teamed with the college of agriculture and life sciences in an effort to systematically change workout recovery habits.
“The composition of low-fat chocolate milk is probably the gold standard for a recovery beverage,” said Clint Wattenberg, Cornell’s coordinator of sports nutrition. “We don’t have to second-guess where this supplement is coming from.”
As a two-time all-American wrestler for the Big Red from 1998 to 2003 and a former coach and dietitian, Wattenberg had witnessed athletes under-fueling their bodies during the day, then completing rigorous training sessions and overeating at night.
When Wattenberg was hired by Cornell in July 2013, most athletes did not have post-workout recovery plans.
“Bridging the fueling gaps throughout the day is really a critical component to an effective performance nutrition plan that student-athletes aren’t very well-suited to manage, especially their first year on campus,” he said.
One of the first people Wattenberg contacted upon his return to Cornell was the former dairy plant manager Jason Huck, who proved to be an ideal partner.
Huck’s master’s project while he was a Cornell graduate student was centered on methods to make milk taste better and last longer, and he studied organisms that cause spoilage.
Wattenberg started by emphasizing replenishment 30 minutes after workouts. That made it difficult for some athletes like the Cornell field hockey player Marisa Siergiej, who often has to shower and attend classes after sessions. In previous years, she and her teammates would run to the dining hall and overeat to refuel.
“It gives us something we can use right away,” Siergiej said of the milk.
Most of the athletes savor the taste (the sugar from chocolate milk also stimulates muscle and glycogen repair). Cornell’s boathouse has its own dispenser and storage cooler stocked with bottles of the product for the rowing teams.
The next step in the collaboration between Cornell’s athletes and the dairy program is a protein drink, Big Red Refuel, which is expected to be released in the coming months.
Huck began the process by using a software program to develop a conceptual formula, employing ingredients already on hand and nutrition specifications provided by the athletic department.
Creating the ideal chocolate milk recipe was akin to harvesting the ingredients for a fine wine. At one point, Huck wanted to fortify the drink with Omega 3, but that would have boosted the fat content significantly. If the sugar content were too high, that could cause gastric distress.
There were also N.C.A.A. specifications to follow — athletes cannot consume supplement products with more than 30 percent protein to avoid any potential effects from protein toxicity.
In the end, Huck and Wattenberg created a smooth-tasting drink with 16 grams of protein and 230 calories per eight-ounce serving. In contrast, a similar serving of low-fat chocolate milk has 8 grams of protein and 160 calories.
Through research, Wattenberg estimated that 20 grams of protein is optimal for muscle recovery for an athlete weighing 150 to 160 pounds; after that there are diminishing returns, because excess protein is stored as body fat. A 300-pound lineman with greater muscle mass might need around 30 to 35 grams of protein.
For athletes who need more protein than what Big Red Refuel or chocolate milk supplies, Wattenberg educates them on what supplements they can take, like a bar or another drink, and how to properly measure proportions.
Cornell’s coaches have been quick to praise the collaboration. While the Big Red do not widely advertise their recovery beverage of choice, other university dairies and creameries are also forming relationships with athletes.
North Carolina State students and faculty dedicated to protein research developed a similar drink called Power Pack. Brigham Young’s creamery previously provided athletes with a concoction of yogurt, powdered milk, fruit juice and fresh fruit. Wisconsin’s dairy is working on a protein drink called “Bucky Fuel” for its football team, while its Big Ten rival Penn State has a protein drink for its football players called Aclr8, which was named with the help of the Hall of Fame fullback Franco Harris.
For years, Cornell and Penn State students have had fun with the notion of an ice cream rivalry. Thomas Palchak, manager of Penn State’s Berkey Creamery, said the university creameries are fraternal and communicate regularly.
In June, the managers will convene at the University Creamery Managers Association’s 12th annual meeting at the University of Delaware.
Palchak was excited with the advancements and the dairies’ growing influence on college sports, and was intrigued to see what other universities may have in the works.
“The general idea is we’ve avoided any outlandish claims or competitiveness,” Palchak said. “We share papers and documents. I know all of them personally, and they’re a great group.”
Once released, Big Red Refuel, which has an 18-day shelf life, will also be accessible to Cornell’s student body. The Cornell dairy plant manager Tim Barnard said he was already hearing requests from other universities. Cornell’s coaches also frequently ask Barnard when the latest drink will be bottled. Barnard said the relationship with athletics has made campus dairy workers feel “part of the team.”
Dairy production has been a vital element at Cornell and other land-grant universities for more than a century. Food company managers from across the nation train at Cornell’s dairy facilities, working alongside students preparing for careers in food science, safety and other fields.
One mile from campus, the veterinary school operates a farm with about 85 cows that produces the milk for Big Red athletes, as well as cheeses, yogurt and 18 ice cream flavors available at the Cornell Dairy Bar, which has been a social institution on campus for generations.
Wattenberg and Huck also have plans for more products and have discussed creating a yogurt and fruit yogurt smoothie.
“The insight and awareness around recovery and nutrition has adapted and really become part of the training plan,” Wattenberg said. “Fueling recovery is as important as the work you put in. This is part of our tool kit we can use to optimize our performance.”
