A magnitude 4.5 earthquake shook a large portion of Southern California on Tuesday, and was felt from San Diego to Santa Clarita, authorities said.
Tuesday’s temblor struck at 4:49 a.m. about seven miles north of Cabazon and 85 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. The epicenter was close to the San Gorgonio Pass, through which Interstate 10 connects Palm Springs with San Bernardino.
The strongest shaking — Intensity Level 6 — occurred in an uninhabited mountainous area in Riverside County. The cities of Riverside and San Bernardino felt only “light” shaking calculated as Intensity Level 4, while many areas in L.A. and Orange counties felt only “weak” Intensity Level 2 or 3 shaking.
.
The temblor struck about seven miles north of Cabazon. (Los Angeles Times)
A video of lava deluging a car during Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano eruption and other staggering photos provide a grim look at how powerful the spewing molten rock is.
Shared late Sunday night by WeatherNation, the time-lapse clip shows the creeping lava engulfing a car parked on the side of the road in the Big Island’s Leilani Estates.
Since it first began spewing lava into residential areas on Thursday, the volcano has forced about 1,700 evacuations as it blanketed the island’s Puna district, destroyed at least 35 structures and forced roadway closures. Authorities have identified the emergence of 10 fissures, elongated fractures or cracks in the earth’s surface from which lava spews.
.
Handout via Getty Images
A lava flow moves on Makamae Street on Sunday in Leilani Estates.
Prof Stephen Hawking’s final research paper suggests that our Universe may be one of many similar to our own.
The theory resolves a cosmic paradox of the late physicist’s own making.
It also points a way forward for astronomers to find evidence of the existence of parallel universes.
The study was submitted to the Journal of High-Energy Physics 10 days before Prof Hawking died.
In the 1980s, the Cambridge scientist, along with US physicist James Hartle developed a new idea about the beginning of the Universe.
This resolved a difficulty with Einstein’s theory that suggested that the Universe began nearly 14 billion years ago but said nothing about how it began.
Instead, the Hartle-Hawking idea used a different theory called quantum mechanics to explain how the Universe arose from nothingness.
.
Prof Stephen Hawking
DETLEV VAN RAVENSWAAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARYImage caption Artwork: The Big Bang may have created many universes
Our Milky Way galaxy contains tens of billions of potentially habitable planets, but we have no idea whether we’re alone. For now Earth is the only world known to harbor life, and among all the living things on our planet we assume Homo sapiens is the only species ever to have developed advanced technology.
But maybe that’s assuming too much.
In a mind-bending new paper entitled “The Silurian Hypothesis” — a reference to an ancient race of brainy reptiles featured in the British science fiction show “Doctor Who” — scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the University of Rochester take a critical look at the scientific evidence that ours is the only advanced civilization ever to have existed on our planet.
“Do we really know we were the first technological species on Earth?” asks Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rochester and a co-author of the paper. “We’ve had an industrial society for only about 300 years, but there’s been complex life on land for nearly 400 million years.”
.
Monolith on Lifeless Planetbestdesigns / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Cocaine and other drugs of abuse hijack the natural reward circuits in the brain. In part, that’s why it’s so hard to quit using these substances. Moreover, relapse rates hover between 40 and 60 percent, similar to rates for other chronic conditions like hypertension and Type 1 diabetes.
University of Pennsylvania behavioral pharmacologist and neuroscientist Heath Schmidt studies how long-term exposure to drugs such as cocaine, nicotine, and prescription opioids affects the brain and how these changes promote relapse in someone who has kicked the habit. A recent paper, published in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology, investigated a novel treatment for cocaine addiction, something that touches 900,000 people in the United States annually.
“As a basic scientist I’m interested in how the brain functions during periods of abstinence from cocaine and other drugs and how neuro-adaptations in the brain promote relapse back to chronic drug taking,” he explains. “From the clinicians’ perspective, they’re looking for medications to try to prevent relapse. Our goal as basic scientists is to use animal models of relapse to identify novel medications to treat cocaine addiction.”
.
The green fluorescent ‘dots’ above show where Exendin-4, an FDA-approved drug used to treat diabetes and obesity, ends up in the brain. The drug activates receptors for glucagon-like peptide 1 or GLP-1, a hormone that reduces food intake. The blue and red coloring indicate neurons and astrocytes, respectively. Credit: University of Pennsylvania
The Food and Drug Administration says it is re-examining the safety of a medication that was approved despite concerns that not enough was known about the drug’s risks.
In response to questioning at a budget hearing last week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told members of Congress that he would “take another look” at Nuplazid, which is the only drug approved to treat hallucinations and delusions associated with Parkinson’s disease psychosis. The medication has been cited as a so-called “suspect” medication in hundreds of deaths voluntarily reported by caregivers, doctors and other medical professionals since it hit the market, as highlighted in a recent CNN report.
.
The FDA told CNN this week that the agency had already begun conducting a new evaluation of the medication when Gottlieb was questioned about it at the hearing. The agency said the review had started several weeks ago.
.
“What does it take for a drug like this to be taken off the market?” asked US Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a member and former chair of the congressional subcommittee responsible for funding and overseeing the FDA.
The U.S. military bases are shifting towards renewable energy and are using solar panels and wind farms to eventually become net-zero energy and net-zero water users.
A team of US doctors has successfully carried out the world’s first total transplant of a penis and scrotum.
Surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, performed the operation on a soldier who had been wounded by a bomb in Afghanistan.
They used a penis, scrotum and partial abdominal wall transplanted from a deceased donor.
They say the soldier should be able to regain sexual function, which is impossible with penis reconstructions.
The team of 11 surgeons performed the transplant over 14 hours on 26 March.
It is the first surgery on a combat veteran injured on duty and the first to transplant a complete section of tissue including the scrotum and surrounding abdominal area.
Wildfires continued to rip through western Oklahoma on Thursday, burning over 300,000 acres of land and leaving behind dozens of destroyed homes.
Flames broke out last week amid historic fire conditions, including dry weather and high winds. At least two people have been killed as a result of the fires, including a 61-year-old man who had been out hunting and a woman, who was found dead in her vehicle.
Exceptional droughts have plagued large parts of the southern plains, Todd Lindley, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, told HuffPost. Some areas of the state have gone roughly 185 days without a quarter inch of rainfall, he said.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Handout via Getty Images
Prof Stephen Hawking
.
Climate change
First total transplant of a penis and scrotum
Oklahoma tornado chasing van
James' World 2 