Costa Rica’s Turriabla Volcano spewed ash from its crater for about an hour which was wind-blown in the Central Valley. Scientists are warning that this is just the beginning of what could be a much more dangerous eruption.
“There is a very high possibility that [the volcano] will reach a higher level of activity,” said Lidier Esquivel, the chief investigator of risk management for the National Emergency Commission (CNE).
The activity Sunday comes less than a week after a tower of ash over a mile and a half into the sky.
Scientists with the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Coast Rica reported to San Jose’s “Tico Times” the volcano is already showing the signs of a major eruption and that eruptions are going to increase in intensity over the next few months.
“The volcano is already throwing lava, it is fragmented lava that is creating the ash,” Guillermo Alvarado, coordinator for volcanic and seismic threats and monitoring for the Costa Rican Electricity Institute, said during a volcano roundtable event last week.
The continuing ash emissions are threatening health of the region. Alvarado said that the lava fragments in ash can significantly cause problems for lungs and create risks for animals and humans.
“At this point there have been very few serious health problems to arise, but ash can cause respiratory problems, throat problems and burning in the eyes or skin.” Esquivel said. “As more people are regularly exposed to volcanic ash, we expect to see these problems in a larger portion of the population.”
The scientists said that the wind could take the ash from a major eruptions over Costa Rica’s capital city and the surrounding metropolitan area.
The death toll in the massive Nepal earthquake and aftershock has passed the 4,000 mark and local officials say it’s likely to continue a fast rise over the next few days.
Almost every member of the Nepalese military has been dispatched for search and rescue operations with focus on villages that have been inaccessible due to debris and damage.
Officials have now confirmed at least 7,000 people have been injured as a result of the quakes. The hospitals are full and tent surgical theaters and treatment tents have been set up in the parking areas and open fields near the hospitals.
The Nepalese government has sent out an emergency call for “tents, dry goods, blankets, mattresses and 80 different medicines”.
The United States announced Monday an additional $9 million in relief supplies for the rescue effort. China, India and Pakistan have sent emergency response teams to the region. International aid agencies say that Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand have also contributed to the rescue efforts.
The United Nations World Food Program said they are preparing a “large, massive operation” for the region.
A spokesman for World Vision released a somber statement to the press. Matt Darvas said that some villages that were on mountainsides could be completely buried by rock falls. Some of the villages that are wiped out had up to 1,000 residents.
A team of scientists has announced that one of the bones in the “Lucy” skeleton, the “ape-man” that proves evolution, is actually from a baboon.
The scientific team reported in New Scientist that one of the vertebra was significantly smaller than the vertebra for a human being. The scientists said after they noticed “something odd’ they investigated further.
“Baboons were a close match, both in shape and size,” researcher Scott Williams of New York University explained. “So we think we’ve solved this mystery. It seems that a fossil gelada baboon thoracic vertebra washed or was otherwise transported in the mix of Lucy’s remains.”
The researchers also released the report at a Paleoanthropology Society meeting in San Francisco last week.
“Even though Lucy is fairly complete for a mammal fossil (47 of 207 bones found), the bones are mostly small fragments with many pieces missing,” Doug Henderson wrote of the fossil in 2013. “Other specimens have been found, but they are far more fragmentary. No matter how complete, all fossils must be interpreted. Some interpretation is always left to the imagination of the person doing the reconstruction.”
Scientists at Imperial College London have found what they call a “game-changer” for cancer treatment: a protein that will “turbo-charge” the immune system to fighting cancers and viruses.
“This is exciting because we have found a completely different way to use the immune system to fight cancer,” said Professor Philip Ashton-Rickardt, from the Section of Immunobiology in the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the study.
“It could be a game-changer for treating a number of different cancers and viruses. This is a completely unknown protein. Nobody had ever seen it before or was even aware that it existed. It looks and acts like no other protein.”
When the body detects cancer, it will immediately flood the immune system with T-cells which fight the cancer. However, the body quickly reduces that output after the initial wave. The new protein creates T-cells in large enough numbers that cancer cannot fight them off.
The protein also creates “memory cells” in the immune system to recognize previously fought cancers and viruses to lessen the chances of their return.
“The discovery of a protein that could boost the immune response to not only cancer, but also to viruses, is a fascinating one,” Dr. Mike Turner of the Wellcome Trust, told the Daily Telegraph. “Further investigation in animal models is needed before human trials can commence, but there is potential for a new type of treatment that capitalizes on the immune system’s innate ability to detect and kill abnormal cells.”
The study has been published in the journal Science.
A new report says that long dormant Oklahoma fault lines are being reactivated and could lead to a massive earthquake.
The study, which includes researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, says Oklahoma now must be considered possible for “a high degree of potential earthquake hazards.”
‘The majority of the recent earthquakes in central Oklahoma define reactivated ancient faults at shallow depths in the crust’ of less than 3.7 miles (6 km), said the report for the American Geophysical Union.
The study did not involve any research regarding fracking and if it had any impact on the reawakening of the fault lines.
‘Any one of these fault zones that are producing magnitude 3 or 4 earthquakes could rupture into a larger earthquake. There are as many as 12 different fault zones that are capable of producing a large, 5 to 6 magnitude earthquake,’ Daniel McNamara of the USGS stated.
Building codes in Oklahoma are not strong enough for a high earthquake. A major quake would result in mass destruction.
A severe geomagnetic storm struck Earth Tuesday morning.
Scientists say the storm is rated as G4 on a scale that has a maximum of G5. The storm is the strongest to hit the planet during the current 11-year solar cycle.
The Space Weather Prediction Center says the storm could bring voltage control problems at many power systems. Also electrical systems and devices in areas like Alaska and Canada could be damaged by the intensity of the storm.
The storm could also impact GPS and other satellite based systems throughout the day.
The NWPC says the storm was created by sun activity on March 15th.
The last major storm to strike the planet was January 7th when a G3 rated storm passed over the planet.
The U.S. Geological Survey has released a new estimate saying that the chance of an 8.0 magnitude or greater earthquake striking California is 7%, up from 4.7%.
The USGS said the increase in the percentage is due to new understanding that quakes aren’t always limited to separate faults. A quake could start on one fault and jump to another causing a simultaneous mega-quake.
“The new likelihoods are due to the inclusion of possible multi-fault ruptures, where earthquakes are no longer confined to separate, individual faults, but can occasionally rupture multiple faults simultaneously,” USGS seismologist Ned Field, the lead author of the report, told the L.A. Times.
“This is a significant advancement in terms of representing a broader range of earthquakes throughout California’s complex fault system.”
Data for the report included the April 4, 2010 quake that triggered aftershocks in at least six different fault lines. The report also found quakes jumping over a gap in the fault of over seven miles, more than double the previously observed three miles.
“As the inventory of California faults has grown over the years, it has become increasingly apparent that we are not dealing with a few well-separate faults, but with a vast interconnected fault system,” the report said. “In fact, it has become difficult to identify where some faults end and others begin, implying many more opportunities for multifault ruptures.”
They did it with nowhere near the fanfare of their first announcement, but scientists who last year announced they had proven the “Big Bang” theory for the universe have now admitted they were wrong.
Last March, astronomers using the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole claimed they had found “primordial gravitational waves” that proved the Big Bang. They called the evidence the “smoking gun” that disproved the Biblical account of creation.
A year after calling it a “genuine breakthrough” and something that would “represent a new era in cosmology and physics”, researcher Jean-Loup Puget confirmed the lack of proof.
“Unfortunately, we have not been able to confirm that the signal is an imprint of cosmic inflation,” Puget said in the statement.
“We are effectively retracting the claim,” BICEP2 researcher Brian Keating told the Associated Press.
“It is the announcement no one wanted to hear,” Space.com reported. “The most exciting astronomical discovery of 2014 has vanished. Two groups of scientists announced today that a tantalizing signal—which some scientists claimed was ‘smoking gun’ evidence of dramatic cosmic expansion just after the birth of the universe—was actually caused by something much more mundane: interstellar dust.”
Meteorologists say that February 2015 could end up as one of the coldest months in Detroit history with an average temperature of just over 13 degrees.
“I’m doing some calculations but I think we are on track here to have the coldest month ever in Detroit, the way things are looking,” said AccuWeather’s Dean DeVore. “And it’s going to be brutally cold here today.”
“It’s like an open spigot from like Barrow, Alaska down to the Great Lakes. Meantime, they can’t buy a drop of rain on the west coast for the past month or so,” AccuWeather’s Dave Bowers added. “It’s been wicked. It really is quite a contrast. The western half of the country is having an extremely warm winter, and here it really is more like the Northwest Territories in our backyard.
“We’re running about almost 12 degrees below normal his month.”
Other cities across the U.S. have been setting records for cold temperatures. Cleveland fell to -5 on Monday breaking a record set in 1873 and the first time since 1889 it was below zero on February 23rd. The temperature hit -17 on Friday, shattering the previous low and was just 3 degrees short of the all time record for low temperature in the city.
Ann Arbor, Michigan hit -7 on Monday which broke the previous record for the date set in 1900.
British scientists say they have found a way to “jam” the genetic code of the common cold and stop the virus from being able to replicate inside the body.
If true, it could mean almost immediate cures to the common cold.
Scientists with the Universities of Leeds and York say they used a computer model to identify the viral genome that causes rhinoviruses. The molecules can be blocked at the genetic level and essentially stop the disease before it starts.
The breakthrough’s news was tempered by the fact the scientists would have to conduct animal testing before they can develop the drug that could deliver the necessary items to block the genetic code.
“We have understood for decades that the RNA carries the genetic messages that create viral proteins, but we didn’t know that, hidden within the stream of letters we use to denote the genetic information, is a second code governing virus assembly,” Dr Roman Tuma, Reader in Biophysics at the University of Leeds, told the London Daily Telegraph.
“It is like finding a secret message within an ordinary news report and then being able to crack the whole coding system behind it.”