Coral 'White Plague' Epidemic Could Be Caused by Virus
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 7 minutes
| 1411 words
| Patria Henriques
The Caribbean Sea is battling an epidemic — a nasty plague that spreads and kills quickly. Unlike the historical Black Plague, which killed millions of people in the Middle Ages, this so-called white plague is devastating populations of marine corals.
Scientists long believed the scourge, which first popped up in the 1970s, had strictly bacterial origins, but research now suggests viruses may play a prominent role in causing white plague.
[Read More]Decades-Old Fetus Caused Woman's Side Pain
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 646 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Doctors have removed the skeletal remains of an unborn child from its mother 36 years after the baby's conception, according to news reports.
The operation happened last week, and the case may mark the longest time a fetus from an ectopic pregnancy has stayed in a woman's body, The Times of India reported.
The 60-year-old woman, Kantabai Gunvant Thakre, began complaining about an intense pain in her abdomen about two months ago, according to The Times of India.
[Read More]Dozens Dead in Siberia from Drinking Bath Oil: How Methanol Kills
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 2 minutes
| 415 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Nearly 50 people died recently in a Siberian city after they drank bath oil as a substitute for alcohol. But why was the substance so deadly?
Authorities in Irkutsk, the sixth-largest city in Russia, declared a state of emergency today (Dec. 19) after at least 49 people died from drinking the apparently mislabeled bath oil, according to the Washington Post. Another 15 people were hospitalized and are in critical condition.
[Read More]Earth's Magnetic North Pole Was Moving So Fast, Geophysicists Had to Update the Map
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 4 minutes
| 643 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Now that the government shutdown is over, federal agencies have finally released an early edition of the World Magnetic Model, almost a full year before the next one was scheduled to be released, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today (Feb. 4).
Previously, the World Magnetic Model, which tracks Earth's roving magnetic north pole, was updated in 2015 with the intent that the model would last until 2020.
[Read More]In Images: Mysterious Desert Varnish
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 624 words
| Trudie Dory
Desert VarnishIn the desert areas around the world, the rocks found there are often totally covered with or display patterns of deep reddish brown or black streaks known as desert varnish. Desert varnish does not form on all rock surfaces; rarely is it seen on granite. But it is often found on sandstone and can turn a hill of tan volcanic basalt into a mountain of black boulders.
Picking and ChoosingYet within spectacular desert gorges, such as the one shown here in Canyon De Chelly National Monument in Arizona, desert varnish will form on one sandstone wall while other walls remain totally unadorned.
[Read More]Incredible Technology: How to Forecast Severe Storms
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 5 minutes
| 968 words
| Fernande Dalal
Editor's Note: In this weekly series, LiveScience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery.
Predicting how strong a storm, whether a hurricane, tornado or thunderstorm will be is part science and part art — and it wouldn't be possible without sophisticated measurement and forecasting technology.
To create these forecasts, meteorologists combine observations from atmospheric sensors, weather balloons, radar, satellites and aircraft monitoring with complex computer models to predict when a storm will form, where it will strike and how severe it will be.
[Read More]Living Stem Cells Discovered in 17-Day-Old Human Corpses
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 509 words
| Arica Deslauriers
Stem cells can remain alive in human corpses for at least 17 days after death, researchers say.
Stem cells give rise to all other cells in the body, a property that makes them extraordinarily valuable in potential therapies. These potent cells are often rare, only present in small numbers in tissue samples from patients and difficult to distinguish from other cell types in many cases. As such, scientists are investigating novel ways to procure stem cells and improve the viability of the ones they can get.
[Read More]Mysterious radiation spike detected over Scandinavia
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 485 words
| Trudie Dory
Radioactivity levels have spiked in the atmosphere over northern Europe, and that could indicate damage at a nuclear power plant in western Russia, according to a Dutch health agency that has analyzed the data. The radioactive spike suggests damage to a nuclear fuel element, the Associated Press reported.
However, the Russian nuclear power operator Rosenergoatom has denied problems related to facilities in Kola and Leningrad, the two nuclear plants operating in the region, according to TASS, a Russian news agency, as reported by the AP.
[Read More]New Blood Test Could Determine Whether a Patient Needs Antibiotics
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 572 words
| Mittie Cheatwood
A simple blood test may be able to distinguish between a viral infection and a bacterial infection in just a few hours, a new study finds.
That's valuable information for doctors, who prescribe antibiotics for people with bacterial infections but should not give them to people with viral infections, such as the common cold or the flu. (Antibiotics are not effective against viruses.)
Indeed, the overprescription of antibiotics for patients who do not need them can lead to antibiotic-resistant infections that can be very difficult for doctors to treat, according to the study, published today (July 6) in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
[Read More]Siberian wildfires dwarf all others on Earth combined
Posted on December 10, 2022
| 3 minutes
| 591 words
| Trudie Dory
(opens in new tab)Smoke from massive wildfires in Russia's Siberia region has reached the geographic North Pole "for the first time in recorded history," according to NASA — while the forest blazes themselves are bigger than all the other wildfires currently burning in the world combined, one expert said.
The U.S space agency published a photograph Saturday (Aug. 7) from one of its satellites that shows the acrid blanket of smoke stretching more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers), from the Yakutia region in the northeast of Siberia up to the North Pole.
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