New web calculator to more accurately predict bowel cancer survival

“How long do I have, doctor?” For many cancer patients, following the initial shock of their diagnosis, thoughts quickly turn to estimating how much precious time they have left with family and friends or whether certain treatments could prolong their life.

1,000 Days in Orbit: MAVEN's Top 10 Discoveries at Mars

On June 17, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) will celebrate 1,000 Earth days in orbit around the Red Planet. Since its launch in November 2013 and its orbit insertion in September 2014, MAVEN has been exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars. MAVEN is bringing insight to how the sun stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, turning a planet once possibly habitable to microbial life into a barren desert world.

Improved understanding of a widely used 'thermometer' for Earth's ancient oceans

Scientists have improved our ability to interpret one of the most common measures of the temperature of Earth's oceans in the distant past.

The measurement is based on the ancient remains of tiny marine organisms called foraminifera, a type of plankton that lives and feeds in water.

Technology which makes electricity from urine also kills pathogens, researchers find

A scientific breakthrough has taken an emerging biotechnology a step closer to being used to treat wastewater in the Developing World.

Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) (Ieropoulos & Greenman) have discovered that technology they have developed which has already been proven to generate electricity through the process of cleaning organic waste, such as urine, also kills bacteria harmful to humans.

Seasonal rain and snow trigger small quakes on California faults

California’s winter rains and snow depress the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges, which then rebound during the summer, changing the stress on the state’s earthquake faults and causing seasonal upticks in small quakes, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley seismologists.

The weight of winter snow and stream water pushes down the Sierra Nevada mountains by about a centimeter, or three-eighths of an inch, while ground and stream water depress the Coast Ranges by about half that. This loading and the summer rebound – the rise of the land after all the snow has melted and much of the water has flowed downhill – makes the earth’s crust flex, pushing and pulling on the state’s faults, including its largest, the San Andreas.

Global diet and farming methods 'must change for environment's sake'

Reducing meat consumption and using more efficient farming methods globally are essential to stave off irreversible damage to the environmental, a new study says.

The research, from the University of Minnesota, also found that future increases in agricultural sustainability are likely to be driven by dietary shifts and increases in efficiency, rather than changes between food production systems.

Researchers examined more than 740 production systems for more than 90 different types of food, to understand the links between diets, agricultural production practices and environmental degradation. Their results are published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Researchers find way to reduce environmental impact of idling buses and delivery trucks

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a system for service vehicles that could reduce emissions and save companies and governments millions of dollars per year in fuel costs.

In a study recently published in Energy, Waterloo engineers found a way to capture waste energy from service vehicles, such as buses or refrigerated food delivery trucks, as they are slowing down.

They also figured out how to use that energy to replace the fossil fuels that are currently needed to operate secondary systems, such as air conditioning or refrigeration units, when the vehicles are stopped and idling.

Researchers use light to manipulate mosquitoes

Scientists at the University of Notre Dame have found that exposure to just 10 minutes of light at night suppresses biting and manipulates flight behavior in the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, the major vector for transmission of malaria in Africa, according to new research published in the journal Parasites and Vectors.

Critical behaviors exhibited by the species, such as feeding, egg laying and flying, are time-of-day specific, including a greater propensity for nighttime biting. A recent report from the World Health Organization stated an estimated 212 million people worldwide are infected with the disease, resulting in 429,000 deaths – mostly children.

Researchers discover short-cut to satellite-based quantum encryption network

In a new study, researchers demonstrate ground-based measurements of quantum states sent by a laser aboard a satellite 38,000 kilometers above Earth. This is the first time that quantum states have been measured so carefully from so far away.

“We were quite surprised by how well the quantum states survived traveling through the atmospheric turbulence to a ground station,” said Christoph Marquardt from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany. “The paper demonstrates that technology on satellites, already space-proof against severe environmental tests, can be used to achieve quantum-limited measurements, thus making a satellite quantum communication network possible. This greatly cuts down on development time, meaning it could be possible to have such a system as soon as five years from now.”

Increase in ciguatera fish poisoning cases in Europe

Fish is a healthy diet, it supplies important omega-3 fatty acids and trace elements like iodine and selenium. However, eating fish caught in certain regions can sometimes also have its risks. In Bavaria, there have recently been reports of multiple cases of diarrhoea, vomiting and cold pain following consumption of imported deep-frozen fish. The symptoms are typical signs of ciguatera - one of the most frequent fish poisonings worldwide caused by ciguatoxins in edible fish.