A new map released by the federal government is showing that over half the U.S. is at greater risk for experiencing earthquakes.
The U.S. Geological Survey has updated the national seismic hazard maps for the first time since 2008. The new maps use research from the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the Japanese coast along with the 2011 earthquake that shook Virginia and caused significant damage to national monuments in Washington, D.C.
Parts of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and Tennessee have moved into the top two hazard zones in the new map according to project chief Mark Petersen.
Sixteen states have all or part of their territory in the highest risk category: Alaska, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky and South Carolina.
Most of the major regions are in the western part of the country, however, there is a major hazard area comprising of southeast Missouri, western Kentucky & Tennessee and eastern Arkansas.
Scientists in Britain have developed a test that can detect as much as a year in advance if a patient will develop Alzheimer’s disease.
The test comes after a decade of research by Oxford University and King’s College London. A study showed that the brain develops 10 proteins just before the disease takes hold in the brain.
The doctors hailed the test as groundbreaking because once someone develops Alzheimer’s, there’s no real way to treat it. With the development of an early warning test, doctors hope to find a way to treat a patient to stop the development of Alzheimer’s.
“Although we are making drugs [to treat Alzheimer’s] they are all failing. But if we could treat people earlier it may be that the drugs are effective,” said Simon Lovestone, professor of translational neuroscience at Oxford. “Alzheimer’s begins to affect the brain many years before patients are diagnosed with the disease. If we could treat the disease in that phase we would in effect have a preventative strategy.”
The test has been proven to have 87 percent accuracy in predicting the onset of Alzheimer’s.
The Big Bang theory for the creation of the universe has taken a big blow.
A new study conducted by secular scientists based on the discovery of the Higgs Boson, called the “God particle”, shows that the Big Bang would not have been possible for the creation of the universe because of shaking of particles.
“During the early universe, we expected cosmic inflation — this is a rapid expansion of the universe right after the Big Bang,” study co-author Robert Hogan, a doctoral candidate in physics at King’s College in London, said to Christian News Network. “This expansion causes lots of stuff to shake around, and if we shake it too much, we could go into this new energy space, which could cause the universe to collapse.”
The intense shaking in the energy field, known as quantum fluctuation, should have collapsed the entire universe shortly after creation according to the model based on Higgs physics.
The scientists explained the lack of answers and holes in the Big Bang theory by saying their must be some kind of new physics that man hasn’t been able to discover yet.
Scientists investigating the rapid increase in movement of Antarctic glaciers have found that underwater volcanoes are heating water and increasing ice melt.
The segment of ice in danger has six major glaciers that are facing major collapse. If the area completely melts, the entire global sea level will rise at least four feet. (A collapse is considered the point when a glacier starts an unstoppable retreat that would drop millions of tons of ice into the sea.)
Dustin Schroeder of the University of Texas at Austin says that volcanoes and “other geothermal hotspots” are driving the melting of the glaciers and recent studies are showing there is no way to stop the eventual collapse of the glaciers. The challenge to scientists is to accurately estimate if it will take hundreds of years or thousands for the glaciers to be completely destroyed.
The problem with predicting the outcome is that computer models cannot accurate anticipate the volcanic activity taking place under the ice sheet. Much of the area is unexplored and unmapped, as a new under-ice volcano was discovered in 2013.
One of the hottest points is around Mount Takahe, a volcano that actually has broken through the ice sheet. There are smaller volcanoes and vents that increase the temperature of the water as much as three times the level of sea water under other parts of the continent.
Schroeder said the scientists believe the extra melt from the volcanoes lubricates the ice sheets from beneath and accelerates their slide toward the open water.
A new study from the University of Southern California shows fasting for as little as two days can regenerate the body’s immune system.
The study showed that fasting worked not only for normal, “healthy” people but also the elderly and people whose immune systems have been compromised because of chemotherapy treatments.
The periods without eating would lower the amount of white blood cells in the body, which would trigger stem cells to begin regeneration of the white blood cells, rushing them into the body. However, the scientists also found that the rush of white blood cells also repaired damage.
“[Fasting] gives the OK for stem cells to go ahead and being proliferating and rebuild the entire system,” Professor Valter Longo said. “And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.”
A pilot clinical trial found that fasting for 72 hours prior to chemotherapy protected the patients against toxicity.
A new study and book is challenging long-held myths that half of all marriages end in divorce and that the divorce rate in the church is the same or higher than outside the church.
The book outlines an eight-year study that shows despite summations and claims of media outlets, the divorce rate in America have never actually topped 50%. The study shows that according to 2009 U.S. Census Data, the percentage of women still married to their first spouse on average is 71 percent across all age groups. The number of those married to a second husband is 65 percent on average.
Researcher Shaunti Feldhahn says the total percentage of American women who have been divorced, including all marriages, is just 30.8%.
Feldhahn also notes that according to statistics, there are many women not married to their first spouse who lost a spouse to death and not divorce. Many reports do not make the distinction between a re-married woman being divorced versus widowed.
The study also showed the highest rates of divorce were in the age groups over 35, contradicting a societal myth that young couples are quickly marrying and divorcing. The largest percentage of divorces was in the 50 to 59 age group.
In the case of Christians, the study showed that couples who attend church on a regular basis have a significantly lower divorce rate than Christians who rarely attend church or non-Christians. A joint study between Feldhahn and Barna showed the divorce rate of people who attended church the previous week was 27% and as much as 50% lower than people who do not attend church.
A group of scientists are conducting a study under the sea in an attempt to better understand the nature of tsunamis.
Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic in 1985, is leading a deep-sea team examining the Kick’em Jenny volcano. The volcano is considered “active and dangerous” sitting about 6,000 feet below the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Grenada.
The volcano has been releasing hot and cold gasses since a 2003 event. Scientists say that based on the volcano’s pattern during the last century another eruption is likely to happen within the next 40 years with a significant tsunami.
The reason the volcano is being studied for tsunamis is that the one side of the volcano collapsed during the last eruption and the sliding of the earth caused a tsunami. The scientists believe that by tracking the results of any upcoming eruption by the undersea volcano, they will be able to detect movement of the land and thus predict size and strength of the tsunami.
The information could then be used to extrapolate tsunami chances and strength with other major underwater eruptions and create an advanced warning system.
Submarine volcanoes are also considered dangerous because they can suddenly erupt from underwater near shorelines and cause massive death and devastation from lava or the release of toxic gas.
The Centers for Disease Control has released a report that says children who are raised in the biological home of their mother and father have much less trauma than children in one-parent homes or in foster care.
The study looked at a variety of traumatic experiences including divorce, death of a parent, alcohol or drug problems or suffered racial discrimination.
The report shows that 70 percent of children raised in the home of their biological parents had no adverse family experiences compared to 21.7 percent of single parent homes and 18.7 of those raised by no biological parents.
The information from the National Survey of Children’s Health shows that of the children who experienced trauma, those in the homes of biological parents saw much less extremes.
In the case of drug or alcohol problems, only 4 percent of children with their mother and father saw that problem compared to 18.9 percent in single parent homes and 42.2 percent in foster care.
Scientists say that magma is slowing starting to build inside Washington’s Mount St. Helens.
However, the scientists say there is no indication of an impending eruption like the one that killed 57 people in 1980.
“The magma reservoir beneath Mount St. Helens has been slowly re-pressurizing since 2008,” the U.S. Geological Survey said in a Wednesday statement. “It is likely the re-pressurization is caused by the arrival of a small amount of additional magma 2 to 5 miles beneath the surface.”
The USGS said they will be working this summer with the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington to monitor ground deformation and seismic activity at the volcano. They will also measure gases and gravity field which can monitor subsurface magma.
Doctors have now been able to confirm that type 2 diabetes has a direct connection to the loss of brain matter.
Doctors have known for many years that diabetes has a negative impact on the brain but the study of patients using MRIs shows that long term diabetes has a direct correlation to the greatest loss of brain tissue.
“It’d been thought that most, if not all, of the effect of diabetes on the brain was due to vascular disease that diabetics gets and, therefore, stroke,” Dr. R. Nick Bryan of the University of Pennsylvania told Fox News. “We found in addition to that, there’s sort of diffuse loss of brain tissue, atrophy, we think may have a direct effect on the diabetes on the brain.”
A study of MRIs on patients close to 62 years of age with type 2 diabetes for at least 10 years showed the greatest reductions of the brain’s gray matter, where the neurons of the brain are located.
Researchers say that for people with diabetes, proper care is a priority to help delay the impact the disease will have on the vascular system and the brain.