Scientists used satellite data to map the Houston-Galveston area impacted by Hurricane Harvey to understand why the flooding was so severe and widespread. ASU researcher Manoochehr Shirzaei of the School of Earth and Space Exploration and former graduate student and lead author Megan Miller (now a postdoctoral researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute…

A new study suggests that Mylodon — a ground sloth that lived in South America until about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago — was not a strict vegetarian like all of its living relatives. Based on a chemical analysis of amino acids preserved in sloth hair, the researchers uncovered evidence that this gigantic extinct sloth…

Cas proteins like CRISPR-Cas9 have great potential for gene therapy to treat human disease and for altering crop genes, but the gene-targeting and gene-cutting Cas proteins are often large and hard to ferry into cells with viral vectors such as adenovirus. Scientists have now discovered a hypercompact Cas protein, Cas-phi, that should work better. It…

A new method developed by engineers may offer a starting point for delivering life-saving treatments to plants ravaged by diseases. A new method developed by engineers at MIT may offer a starting point for delivering life-saving treatments to plants ravaged by such diseases. These diseases are difficult to detect early and to treat, given the…

Researchers have devised a new ‘greener’ method to make a key compound in fertilizer, and that may pave the way to a more sustainable agricultural practice as global food demand rises. Devised by NTU researchers, the method produces a compound known as ‘urea’, which is a natural product found in the urine of mammals, and…

More frequent and intense rainfall events due to climate change could cause more landslides in the High Mountain Asia region of China, Tibet and Nepal, according to the first quantitative study of the link between precipitation and landslides in the region. High Mountain Asia stores more fresh water in its snow and glaciers than any…

Researchers unveiled a physical model that yields an unprecedented, high-resolution look at the slip rates of faults, which determine the likelihood of earthquakes. When most of us picture a fault line, we imagine a giant crack in the earth where two tectonic plates smash into each other. When geologists think of faults, however, they see…

The San Andreas and San Jacinto faults have ruptured simultaneously at least three times in the past 2,000 years, most recently in 1812, according to a new study by geologists. Large earthquakes involving multiple faults increase the threat of strong ground shaking. However, each of these faults on their own can generate a large-magnitude (7.5…

Expanding monoculture threatens valuable services from land, such as flood control, water purification and climate stabilization. A new approach promises to protect these benefits, while improving biodiversity and human livelihoods in rural areas around the world. A recent case-study by researchers at Stanford, McGill University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences provide a promising demonstration…

The Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream, which this week brought storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin to the UK has been getting faster and moving northwards over the past century. Just this week the jet stream has brought storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin to the UK. Jet streams are fast bands of air which flow around the…