A new study by researchers from McGill University and the University of British Columbia shows that mice, like humans, express pain through facial expressions.

McGill Psychology Prof. Jeffrey Mogil, UBC Psychology Prof. Kenneth Craig and their respective teams have discovered that when subjected to moderate pain stimuli, mice showed discomfort through facial expressions in the same way humans do. Their study, published online May 9 in the journal Nature Methods, also details the development of a Mouse Grimace Scale that could inform better treatments for humans and improve conditions for lab animals.

Because pain research relies heavily on rodent models, an accurate measurement of pain is paramount in understanding the most pervasive and important symptom of chronic pain, namely spontaneous pain, says Mogil.

“The Mouse Grimace Scale provides a measurement system that will both accelerate the development of new analgesics for humans, but also eliminate unnecessary suffering of laboratory mice in biomedical research,” says Mogil. “There are also serious implications for the improvement of veterinary care more generally.”

This is the first time researchers have successfully developed a scale to measure spontaneous responses in animals that resemble human responses to those same painful states.

Mogil, graduate student Dale Langford and colleagues in the Pain Genetics Lab at McGill analyzed images of mice before and during moderate pain stimuli – for example, the injection of dilute inflammatory substances, as are commonly used around the world for testing pain sensitivity in rodents. The level of pain studied could be comparable, researchers said, to a headache or the pain associated with an inflamed and swollen finger easily treated by common analgesics like Aspirin or Tylenol.

Mogil then sent the images to Craig’s lab at UBC, where facial pain coding experts used them to develop the scale. Craig’s team proposed that five facial features be scored: orbital tightening (eye closing), nose and cheek bulges and ear and whisker positions according to the severity of the stimulus. Craig’s laboratory had previously established studying facial expression as the standard for assessing pain in human infants and others with verbal communication limitations. This work is an example of successful “bedside-to-bench” translation, where a technique known to be relevant in our species is adapted for use in laboratory experiments.

Continuing experiments in the lab will investigate whether the scale works equally well in other species, whether analgesic drugs given to mice after surgical procedures work well at their commonly prescribed doses, and whether mice can respond to the facial pain cues of other mice.

Source: University of British Columbia

The bright spot comes from one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers that is also the second-largest supplier of flu vaccines in the United States.

Novartis reports latest clinical trials of its H1N1 vaccine (to be called Celtura) boasts an 80-percent immune response in just one dose.

This is especially important since health officials have been saying for weeks that two doses of vaccine might be needed to properly fight swine flu.

Novartis’ first pilot trial involved 100 subjects aged between 18 and 50. The study also found a potentially protective response in more than 90-percent after two doses.

The vaccine maker is still conducting larger pivotal trials with larger numbers of subjects around the world. They will include more than 6,000 adults and children.

"The pilot trial results are encouraging," said Dr. Andrin Oswald, CEO of Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics. "The study suggests that while two doses seem to provide better protection, one dose of our adjuvanted Celtura vaccine may be sufficient to protect adults against the swine flu. This is important information for public health authorities who prepare for vaccination in the coming months with limited vaccine supply."

The Centers for Disease Control continues to monitor the spread of swine flu in the U.S. The government agency reports 556 deaths across the country and nearly 9,000 hospitalizations.

The CDC reports that visits to doctors for influenza-like illness were most recently highest in February during the 2008-09 flu season, but rose again in April 2009 after the new H1N1 virus emerged. Current visits to doctors for influenza-like illness are down from April, but are higher than what is expected in the summer and has increased over the last two weeks.

The CDC offers the following guidelines for protecting yourself from swine flu:
* Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
* Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
* Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
* Stay home if you get sick. CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.

Click here for more information from the CDC.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska—It is a misinterpretation of the application of the bedrock of scientific naming with regard to the number of moose species that Kris Hundertmark, a University of Alaska Fairbanks wildlife geneticist at the Institute of Arctic Biology, seeks to correct.

The adoption of Carl Linnaeus’ two-part, genus-species system of naming, called taxonomy, has been used for centuries on all described organisms on Earth and is considered one of the greatest triumphs in science.

Hundertmark will be presenting his research during the American Society of Mammalogists 89th Annual Meeting June 24-28 at UAF.

“When we give something its own name we’re saying this is a unit of biodiversity that deserves to be conserved,” Hundertmark said. “If you name something that doesn’t deserve a name, you’re wasting resources that could be spent on worthwhile groups.”

The reference book Mammal Species of the World, which Hundertmark calls the “unofficial bible of what is a mammal species and what isn’t,” lists two species of moose. The two-species concept is based primarily on a difference in chromosome numbers and the physical structure, or morphology, of moose

Chromosomes are ranked and numbered by size, largest to smallest, and can be depicted in a standard format knows as a karyogram. A typical chromosome pair is shaped like an “X” connected at the middle, though some are V-shaped and connected at the apex. The karyogram for North American moose show 70 chromosome pairs. A Eurasian moose karyogram shows two V-shaped chromosomes that appear to have united to form one X-shaped chromosome resulting in 68 pairs.

“We’ve always known that North American moose have one more pair of chromosomes than Eurasian moose,” Hundertmark said. “But it is a minor rearrangement rather than a functional difference.”

The morphology argument is a nonstarter because similar physical differences exist among other animals considered one species and “… moose are distributed throughout the Northern Hemisphere and would be expected to exhibit regional variation in morphology,” said Hundertmark.

One way of defining a species is whether two individuals can mate and produce viable offspring. If they can, they’re the same species; if they can’t, they’re not. But transporting moose for breeding experiments is prohibitively expensive and according to Hundertmark it is not unreasonable to assume that the two types can interbreed until it is proven otherwise.

To test the two-species hypothesis, Hundertmark examined the DNA from moose tissue samples collected by colleagues around the world. He arranged the samples into two groups based on the two-species hypothesis and into three groups based on continent of origin – Europe, Asia and North America – and examined the distribution of genetic variation within and between groups.

“It turns out that there are actually three genetic groups of moose, not two, and the genetic differences among those groups do not rise to the level of separate species. It is just regional variation,” Hundertmark said.

Source: University of Alaska Fairbanks

It is the concentration of a few signaling molecules that determines the fate of individual cells during the early development of organisms. In the renowned journal Current Biology, a team of molecular biologists led by Pia Aanstad of the University of Innsbruck reports that a variety of molecular mechanisms accounts for the interpretation of the concentration of the signaling molecule Hedgehog.

The development of an organism is a complex process to which a dozen or hundreds of signaling molecules contribute. Some of these molecules have dozens of functions in the fruit fly and in humans alike. One of these molecules – Hedgehog – controls the development of, for example, the extremities, the central nervous system, the teeth, eyes, hair, lung and the gastrointestinal tract. “What is most remarkable: The cells are told what to do not only because the molecule is present but also by the different concentrations of the molecules in the tissue”, says group leader Pia Aanstad of the Institute for Molecular Biology of the University of Innsbruck. “The concentration of Hedgehog makes the thumb of the right hand grow on the left hand side and the thumb of the left hand grow on the right hand side.” Thus, scientists define Hedgehog as a morphogen – a signal that is concentration-dependent and controls the pattern formation of an organism. A mutation in this signaling pathway induces dramatic and embryonically lethal malformations in the early developmental stage such as the formation of just one central eye. Defects in the Hedgehog signaling pathway in humans are a cause for one of the most common birth defects – holoprosencephaly. “Hedgehog genes are not new in evolution and the signaling pathway functions in the fly, mouse, fish and in humans similarly”, says Pia Aanstad. In her research work she focuses on the zebra danio or zebra fish. Due to the short developmental cycle, the scientists are able to observe the development of the small tropic fish in fast motion. “We want to better understand how the cells process the signals of the signaling molecules and how they react.”

Mutants do not react to high concentrations

Already during her time as a post doc in San Francisco, U.S., Pia Aanstad discovered a mutated zebra fish whose Hedgehog signaling pathway was disrupted. The fish showed a genetic alteration at the so-called Smoothened (Smo) protein, which is located at the cell membrane and transfers the Hedgehog signal into the cell. In 2005, Aanstad and her colleagues published a paper in the renowned journal Nature, in which they showed that Smo is concentrated at cilia (cellular projections) and also functions at the cilium. “By using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy, we have now shown that in the new mutants a small genetic alteration at the extracellular part of this protein inhibits localization in the cilia and that while the cells identify the Hedgehog signals, they interpret the concentration incorrectly”, explains Pia Aanstad. “This is evidence for the notion that cells use various molecular mechanisms for interpreting different Hedgehog concentrations.” This fact may also be of importance for the diagnosis and treatment of certain cancers (basal cell carcinoma), where the constant up-regulation of the Hedgehog signal is responsible for uncontrolled cell growth. Aanstad published the findings together with her colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco in the journal Current Biology.

Source: University of Innsbruck

This press release is also available in German.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The analysis of a termite entombed for 100 million years in an ancient piece of amber has revealed the oldest example of “mutualism” ever discovered between an animal and microorganism, and also shows the unusual biology that helped make this one of the most successful, although frequently despised insect groups in the world.

The findings were made by George Poinar, an Oregon State University researcher and international expert on life forms found in amber. It was just published in Parasites and Vectors, a professional journal.

This particular termite was probably flying around while mating in a wet, humid tropical forest in what is now Myanmar during the Early Cretaceous period – the age of the dinosaurs. It may have been attacked by a bird or somehow torn open, and then it dropped into the sticky, oozing tree sap that would later become amber, providing an opportunity for the biology of this ancient insect to be revealed in a way that would otherwise have been impossible.

Out of its wounded abdomen spilled a range of protozoa, which even then were providing a key function for the termite – they helped it to digest wood. Between animals and microorganisms, this is the earliest example ever discovered of “mutualism,” which is one type of symbiotic relationship in which two species help each other.

“Termites live on cellulose, mostly from the dead wood they chew, but they depend on protozoa in their gut to provide the enzymes that can digest the wood,” Poinar said. “These protozoa would die outside of the termite, and the termite would starve if it didn’t have the protozoa to aid in digestion. In this case they depend on each other for survival.”

Even more primitive termites may have fed on a range of things they could digest themselves, Poinar said, but eventually they acquired protozoa that dramatically increased their ability to digest cellulose, and through evolutionary processes they came to depend on it.

Today, modern termites are one of the world’s most pervasive and successful insect groups, with about 2,300 known species, mostly in tropical settings, busily at work chewing wood or other plant fiber that protozoa help to digest. They have important ecological roles, helping to create habitat, build soil fertility, recycle nutrients and serve as food for many predators. As a social species similar to ants, some colonies can have 20 million individual insects. And they also cause massive amounts of damage every year to wood structures in much of the world.

Their dependence on these protozoa is now well understood, and the process isn’t always pretty.

Somewhere on the evolutionary scale the termites began producing a liquid that contained protozoa that they would excrete. The termite offspring in turn consume the feces and thereby gain the protozoa in their digestive systems.

It took time for all of this to get worked out, the study indicated. The successful establishment of protozoa in the termites required them to withstand the chemical and physical conditions inside the alimentary tract, use the gut contents as a food source, cause no damage to the host and be carried through successive stages and generations.

But by the different species each specializing at what they do best – the termite eats, the protozoa digests – the two groups have both had extraordinary evolutionary success.

“The relationship between termites and protozoa is very close and has been stabilized now for a very long time because of its obvious value,” Poinar said. “It’s exciting to understand that this classic example of mutualism has been going on now for at least 100 million years.”

As well as outlining this age-old example of mutualism, the new study revealed 10 new fossil flagellate species of protozoa, a new species of termite, a new genus of fossil amoeba and 14 additional trophic and encysted protist stages.

Poinar for many years has studied life forms and other material found trapped in amber. As a semi-precious stone that first begins to form as sap oozing from a tree, amber has the unique ability to trap very small animals or other materials and – as a natural embalming agent – display them in nearly perfect, three-dimensional form millions of years later. This phenomenon has been invaluable in scientific and ecological research, and allows researchers to characterize the biology of ecosystems that existed millions of years ago.

The amber that contained the termite used in this study came from a mine first excavated in 2001 in the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, in a formation that was between 97 and 110 million years old.

Source: Oregon State University

As the swine flu continues its global spread, researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have discovered important clues about why influenza is more severe in some people than it is in others. In their research study published online in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org), the scientists show that the influenza virus can actually paralyze the immune systems of otherwise healthy individuals, leading to severe secondary bacterial infections, such as pneumonia. Furthermore, this immunological paralysis can be long-lived, which is important to know when developing treatment strategies to combat the virus.

According to Kathleen Sullivan, M.D., Ph.D., the senior researcher involved in the study and Chief of the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “We have a very limited understanding of why some people who get influenza simply have a bad cold and other people become very sick and even die. The results of this study give us a much better sense of the mechanisms underlying bacterial infections arising on top of the viral infection.”

Sullivan and colleagues recruited pediatric patients with severe influenza and examined the level of cytokines, which serve as the first line initiators of immune response, in the blood plasma. Although they found elevated levels of cytokines, they also found a decreased response of toll-like receptors, which activate immune cell responses as a result of invading microbes. This suggests that the diminished response of these receptors may be responsible for the paralysis of the immune system, leading to secondary bacterial infections. The influenza patients were compared with patients with moderate influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and a control group of healthy individuals. The immune paralysis appeared to be specifically a result of influenza infection and was not seen in patients with respiratory syncytial virus. This process might explain why one quarter of children who die from influenza, die from a bacterial infection occurring on top of the virus.

“Despite major medical advances since the devastating flu outbreak of 1918 and 1919, influenza virus infection remains a very serious threat,” said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, “and the current swine flu outbreak is a grim reminder of this fact. The work by Dr. Sullivan and colleagues brings us a step closer to understanding exactly what goes wrong in some people who get the flu, so, ultimately, physicians can develop more effective treatment strategies.”

Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology

During the last two decades, astronomers have found hundreds of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. New research indicates they might have found even more except for one thing – some planets have fallen into their stars and simply no longer exist.

The idea that gravitational forces might pull a planet into its parent star has been predicted by computer models only in the last year or so, and this is the first evidence that such planet destruction has already occurred, said University of Washington astronomer Rory Barnes.

“When we look at the observed properties of extrasolar planets, we can see that this has already happened – some extrasolar planets have already fallen into their stars,” he said.

Computer models can show where planets should line up in a particular star system, but direct observations show that some systems are missing planets close to the stars where models say they should be.

Barnes, a postdoctoral astronomy researcher with the Virtual Planet Laboratory at the UW, is a co-author of a paper describing the findings that was accepted this month for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Brian Jackson and co-author Richard Greenberg are with the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

The research involves planets that are close to their parent stars. Such planets can be detected relatively easily by changes in brightness as their orbits pass in front of the stars.

But because they are so close to each other, the planet and star begin pulling on each other with increasingly strong gravitational force, misshaping the star’s surface with rising tides from its gaseous surface.

“Tides distort the shape of a star. The bigger the tidal distortion, the more quickly the tide will pull the planet in,” Jackson said.

Most of the planets discovered outside of our solar system are gas giants like Jupiter except that they are much more massive. However, earlier this year astronomers detected an extrasolar planet called CoRoT-7 B that, while significantly larger than our planet, is more like Earth than any other extrasolar planet found so far.

However, that planet orbits only about 1.5 million miles from its star, much closer than Mercury is to our sun, a distance that puts it in the category of a planet that will fall into its star. Its surface temperature is around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit “so it’s not a pleasant environment,” Barnes said, and in a short time cosmically – a billion years or so – CoRoT-7 B will be consumed.

The destruction is slow but inevitable, Jackson said.

“The orbits of these tidally evolving planets change very slowly, over timescales of tens of millions of years,” Jackson said. “Eventually the planet’s orbit brings it close enough to the star that the star’s gravity begins tearing the planet apart.

“So either the planet will be torn apart before it ever reaches the surface of the star, or in the process of being torn apart its orbit eventually will intersect the star’s atmosphere and the heat from the star will obliterate the planet.”

The researchers hope the work leads to better understanding of how stars destroy planets and how that process might affect a planet’s orbit, Jackson said.

The scientists also say their research will have to be updated as more extrasolar planets are discovered. NASA, which funded the research, recently launched the Kepler telescope, which is designed specifically to look for extrasolar planets that are closer in size to Earth.

Jackson hopes new observations will provide new lines of evidence to investigate how a star’s tides can destroy planets.

“For example, the rotation rates of stars tend to drop, so older stars tend to spin more slowly than younger stars,” he said. “However, if a star has recently consumed a planet, the addition of the planet’s orbital angular momentum will cause the star to rapidly increase its spin rate. So we would like to look for stars that are spinning too fast for their age.”

Source: University of Washington

A possible flu outbreak in the U.S. and Mexico has health officials across the globe keeping an eye on developments.

It’s the perfect time to remind everyone that the biggest weapon we all have is simply washing our hands as often as possible.

Margaret Chan, the director-general of the World Health Organzation, said on Saturday that the outbreaks have the potential to cause a global pandemic and urged health authorities everywhere to be on alert for cases in their areas.

The situation is worst south of the border, where more then 1,000 have been diagnosed with a new strain of swine flu that is blamed for nearly 70 deaths in Mexico. The new H1N1 flu strain is a mixture of swine, human and avian flu viruses.

In the U.S., so far all the cases have been limited to California and Texas, where one family was under quarantine after a teenager tested positive for swine flu.

What’s of greatest concern is that the flu appears to be a new mutation of the swine flu that killed millions all over the world back in 1918.

The Centers for Disease Control has set up a page on its website that tallies the number of cases so far in the outbreak investigation. Click here to learn more.

It has many people asking, what is swine flu, and how does someone get it?

The CDC also has answers to these questions and more on its website. Some of them are listed below.

What is swine flu?
Swine Influenza is a respiratory disease in pigs caused by type A influenza viruses.

Is this swine flu virus contagious?
CDC has determined that this virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human.

What are the signs and symptoms of swine flu in people?
The symptoms are similar to regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported diarrhea and vomiting associated with swine flu. In the past, severe illness (pneumonia and respiratory failure) and deaths have been reported with swine flu infection in people.

How do you catch swine flu?
Spread of swine flu can occur in two ways:  Through contact with infected pigs or environments contaminated with swine flu viruses.  Through contact with a person with swine flu.

Are there medicines to treat swine flu?
Yes. CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with these swine influenza viruses. Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaler) that fight against the flu by keeping flu viruses from reproducing in your body.

What can I do to protect myself from getting sick?
Since there is no vaccine available right now, common sense steps can best protect your health, such as: Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze, then throw it away, wash your hands with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. (Use of alcohol-based hand cleaners is also effective), try to avoid close contact with sick people. If you get sick with influenza, it is recommended that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them. Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.

How many swine flu viruses are there?
Like all influenza viruses, swine flu viruses change constantly. Pigs can be infected by avian influenza and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. When influenza viruses from different species infect pigs, the viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of swine, human and/or avian influenza viruses can emerge. Over the years, different variations of swine flu viruses have emerged. At this time, there are four main influenza type A virus subtypes that have been isolated in pigs: H1N1, H1N2, H3N2, and H3N1. However, most of the recently isolated influenza viruses from pigs have been H1N1 viruses.

Can I get swine influenza from eating or preparing pork?
No. Swine influenza viruses are not food-borne illnesses and are not spread by eating pork products.

Scientists from Texas AgriLife Research and the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVM) are part of a consortium of researchers who have developed an annotated sequence of the cattle genome which could lead to better disease resistance and higher quality meat for consumers, the researchers say. Their work was led by the Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center and published in two reports that appear today in the journal “Science.”

The researchers used the complete sequence from a single Hereford cow and comparative genome sequences for six more breeds, looking for changes called single nucleotide polymorphisms – SNPs – markers that can help researchers identify favorable traits.

“The biggest thing that came out of the SNP project was the resource of the SNPs themselves,” said Dr. Clare Gill, a Texas AgriLife Research beef geneticist who co-led the SNP initiative. “That has changed how we operate when we do DNA studies and identification of genes.”

Texas AgriLife Research is part of the Texas A&M University System, with scientists based at Texas A&M in College Station and 13 research centers across the state.

SNPs in 497 cattle from 17 geographically and biologically diverse breeds and two related species (anoa and water buffalo) were used in the project. Using SNPs, Gill said there could be considerable progress made in cattle health as well as meat production.

“There could be progress made in disease resistance, production efficiency, tenderness and marbling,” Gill said.

Dr. James Womack, who holds the title of Distinguished Professor in the CVM and has studied the bovine genome for the past 20 years and is one of the team leaders of the project, said the work “opens the door to look at all sorts of specific interests in cattle – from disease immunity to better meat quality, better milk production and on and on.”

“Ten to 20 years down the line, this will lead to new avenues in cattle research that were not available to us previously,” Womack says. “It’s a huge step in the field of cattle research.”

His colleague in much of the work was Dr. Loren Skow, also a faculty member in the CVM.

Gill hosted the DNA repository from cattle around the world. Gill is using the SNP resources generated in this study to tie information into the agency’s own cattle mapping resource at the AgriLife Research Center in McGregor.

Gill also led a team that annotated the genes detailed in “Science” and received contributions from students in her applied animal genomics graduate-level course. Contributing to the research were graduate students Carl Muntean, Cody Gladney, Natasha Romero and Jungwoo Choi. Undergraduates Clayton Boldt and Jennifer Chapin contributed annotations, as well as Kris Wunderlich (doctoral candidate) and Colette Abbey (research associate). AgriLife Research scientists Drs. Penny Riggs and Tom Welsh also contributed to the annotation process.

Womack said the cattle sequence took six years to complete, annotate and analyze with more than 300 scientists from 25 countries. Most of more than 25 companion reports describing detailed analyses of the two projects by the Bovine Sequencing Project and the Bovine Hapmap Consortia appear online at www.biomedcentral.com in a special electronic issue of the BioMed Central journal group.

“The future challenge will be to explore the bovine genome sequence in greater depth to fully understand the genetic basis of the evolutionary success of ruminants as this will provide opportunities to address some of the crucial issues of the present time – efficient and sustainable food production for a rapidly increasing human population,” said Dr. Richard Gibbs, director of the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center and principal investigator on the project.

The authors concluded that the bovine genome, consisting of at least 22,000 genes, is more similar to that of humans than that of mice or rats. They note that most cattle chromosomes correspond to part or all of human chromosomes, although the DNA is rearranged in some areas.

Source: Texas A&M University

Credit: Walt Feimer, NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center

WASHINGTON — Twin NASA spacecraft have provided scientists with their first view of the speed, trajectory, and three-dimensional shape of powerful explosions from the sun known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. This new capability will dramatically enhance scientists’ ability to predict if and how these solar tsunamis could affect Earth.

When directed toward our planet, these ejections can be breathtakingly beautiful and yet potentially cause damaging effects worldwide. The brightly colored phenomena known as auroras — more commonly called Northern or Southern Lights — are examples of Earth’s upper atmosphere harmlessly being disturbed by a CME. However, ejections can produce a form of solar cosmic rays that can be hazardous to spacecraft, astronauts and technology on Earth.

Space weather produces disturbances in electromagnetic fields on Earth that can induce extreme currents in wires, disrupting power lines and causing wide-spread blackouts. These sun storms can interfere with communications between ground controllers and satellites and with airplane pilots flying near Earth’s poles. Radio noise from the storm also can disrupt cell phone service. Space weather has been recognized as causing problems with new technology since the invention of the telegraph in the 19th century.

NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, spacecraft are providing the unique scientific tool to study these ejections as never before. Launched in October 2006, STEREO’s nearly identical observatories can make simultaneous observations of these ejections of plasma and magnetic energy that originate from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. The spacecraft are stationed at different vantage points. One leads Earth in its orbit around the sun, while the other trails the planet.

Using three-dimensional observations, solar physicists can examine a CME’s structure, velocity, mass, and direction in the corona while tracking it through interplanetary space. These measurements can help determine when a CME will reach Earth and predict how much energy it will deliver to our magnetosphere, which is Earth’s protective magnetic shield.

“Before this unique mission, measurements and the subsequent data of a CME observed near the sun had to wait until the ejections arrived at Earth three to seven days later,” said Angelos Vourlidas, a solar physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. Vourlidas is a project scientist for the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation, STEREO’s key science instrument suite. “Now we can see a CME from the time it leaves the solar surface until it reaches Earth, and we can reconstruct the event in 3D directly from the images.”

These ejections carry billions of tons of plasma into space at thousands of miles per hour. This plasma, which carries with it some of the magnetic field from the corona, can create a large, moving disturbance in space that produces a shock wave. The wave can accelerate some of the surrounding particles to high energies that can produce a form of solar cosmic rays. This process also can create disruptive space weather during and following the CME’s interaction with Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere.

“The new vantage point of these spacecraft has revolutionized the study of solar physics,” said Madhulika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We can better determine the impact of CME effects on Earth because of our new ability to observe in 3D.”

STEREO is part of NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes Program in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The program seeks to understand the fundamental physical processes of the space environment from the sun to Earth and other planets.

The Solar Terrestrial Probes Program also seeks to understand how society, technological systems and the habitability of planets are affected by solar processes. This information may lead to a better ability to predict extreme and dynamic conditions in space, and the development of new technologies to increase safety and productivity of human and robotic space exploration.

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center