Science Media Centre

Hundreds of metres of solid ice were lost from West Antarctica’s glaciers between 2002 and 2009, according to a US-led study published today in Nature Communications. Warm ocean waters beneath ice shelves are linked to melting the ice from below, but the effect is difficult to measure. Using data collected from a NASA airborne study, […]

New Zealand is a leader in earth and environmental sciences in the Asia Pacific region, according to an analysis of high level research publications. The Nature Index analyses countries’ and institutions’ contributions to research published in 68 top tier journals. The Index‘s overview of the last year’s data singles out New Zealand as “a leader in […]

AusSMC: A dramatic increase in the strength of the Pacific trade winds (a pattern of easterly winds spanning the tropics) over the past two decades has caused ocean circulation at the equator to speed up, increasing the transport of heat into the deeper ocean while bringing cooler water to the surface. The extra heat absorbed […]

In UK newspaper the Guardian, Nobel Prize winner Randy Schekman calls for an end to the scientific community’s dependence on high-profile journals a measure of the quality of research. In an opinion piece titled ‘How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science‘, Schekman outlines how the major journals artificially restrict the number of […]

US researchers have successfully silenced the extra chromosome responsible for Down’s syndrome in cells, opening up potential for treatment of the condition in humans. The scientists, who published their results in Nature,  took cells from people with Down’s and were able to silence the extra chromosome 21 responsible for the traits that lead to Down’s Syndrome, […]

Nature News reports on new developments regarding the stem cell breakthrough published last week: several errors have been noted in the article and critics are unimpressed with incredibly short peer review process. An excerpt (read in full here): Stem-cell cloner acknowledges errors in groundbreaking paper Critics raise questions about rush to publication. A blockbuster paper […]

New research published in the leading journal Nature has started the difficult process picking apart the underlying genetic factors that contribute to Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Although it is well accepted that genetics make a strong contribution to ASD, most of the underlying causes remain unknown. In addition, despite the identification of specific […]

Japan’s approach to earthquake analysis and prediction is flawed and outdated, according to an expert commentary published in the journal Nature. An Japan-based American Seismologist, Robert J. Geller, has written a commentary article in Nature which makes a scathing attack on the earthquake prediction methodologies used by Japanese experts in the years preceding the devastating […]

International research involving University of Otago researchers has found a new neuronal signalling pathway which could lead to improved treatments better able to limit the brain damage sustained after a stroke has taken place. The research, published in prestigious journal Nature, looked at brain damage in mice following stroke. It found that using a drug […]

SMC UK: New research on the cooling of the Earth’s surface that occurred in the 1970s suggests that the culprit might in fact have been the rapid cooling oceans in the Northern Hemisphere rather than the increase in sulphate aerosols from pollution and volcanic eruptions which have traditionally been blamed for this hiatus in global […]