Troy Oakes

Simple Way to Massively Improve Crop Loss Simulations

In a new study, researchers with NASA, the University of Chicago, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research added data on when each specific region plants and harvests its crops — and found it was the single most effective way to improve crop loss simulations. Droughts or heat waves have consequences that spread beyond ...

Troy Oakes

People Can Sustainably Share Resources, Under Some Conditions

In an analysis of eight case studies from around the world — from foragers in Australia to mangrove fishers in Ecuador — researchers found that people can successfully sustainably share resources under certain conditions. Thus, there is no “tragedy” in the “tragedy of the commons,” according to a new analysis that challenges a widely accepted ...

Troy Oakes

Climate Change Could Lead to Threefold Increase in Storms

Powerful storms that cause extreme weather conditions — such as flooding across Europe and North America, with the potential to wreak social and economic havoc — could increase threefold by the end of the 21st century due to climate change. Pioneering new research, led by Dr. Matt Hawcroft from the University of Exeter, has shown new and ...

Troy Oakes

Thunderstorm with lightning.

Brain Activity Pattern May Indicate Early Signs of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia, a brain disorder that produces hallucinations, delusions, and cognitive impairments, usually strikes during adolescence or young adulthood. While some signs can suggest that a person is at high risk for developing the disorder, there is no way to definitively diagnose it until the first psychotic episode occurs. MIT neuroscientists working with researchers at Beth ...

Troy Oakes

Abnormal brain connections can predict onset of psychotic episodes.

Giant Planets Around Young Star Raise Questions About How Planets Form

Researchers have identified a young star with four Jupiter- and Saturn-sized planets in orbit around it, the first time that so many giant planets have been detected in such a young system. The system has also set a new record for the most extreme range of orbits yet observed: The outermost planet is more than ...

Troy Oakes

Cl Tau with orbiting giant gas planets.

Drug Pollution Is Passing From Stream Bugs to Predators

Sixty-nine pharmaceutical compounds have been detected in stream insects, some at concentrations that may threaten animals that feed on them, such as trout and platypuses. When these insects emerge as flying adults, they can pass this drug pollution on to spiders, birds, bats, and other streamside foragers. These findings by an international team of researchers ...

Troy Oakes

A syringe and hospital drugs.

Where Did Earth’s Water Come From? An Overlooked Source Discovered

Where did Earth’s water come from? A team of Arizona State University geoscientists led by Peter Buseck, Regents’ Professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) and School of Molecular Sciences, has found an answer in a previously neglected source. The team has also discovered that our planet contains considerably more hydrogen, a ...

Troy Oakes

Astronomers Discover Super-Earth Around Barnard’s Star

The potentially rocky planet, known as Barnard’s star b, is a “super-Earth” with a mass of at least 3.2 times that of the Earth, and it orbits around its host star once every 233 days. The results, published in the journal Nature, show the planet lies at a distant region from the star known as the ...

Troy Oakes

Newly Discovered Deep-Sea Microbes Gobble Greenhouse Gases and Perhaps Oil Spills

Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin’s Marine Science Institute have discovered nearly two dozen new types of deep-sea microbes, many of which use hydrocarbons, such as methane and butane, as energy sources to survive and grow — meaning the newly identified bacteria might be helping to limit the concentrations of greenhouse gases in ...

Troy Oakes

Lasers Could Be Used as a Porch Light to Attract Alien Astronomers

If extraterrestrial intelligence exists somewhere in our galaxy, a new MIT study proposes that lasers on Earth could, in principle, be fashioned into something of a planetary porch light — a beacon strong enough to attract attention from as far as 20,000 light-years away. The research, which author James Clark calls a “feasibility study,” appears ...

Troy Oakes