Ice loss in Antarctica increased by 75 percent in the last 10 years due to a speed-up in the flow of its glaciers and is now nearly as great as that observed in Greenland, according to a new comprehensive study by NASA and university scientists. In a first-of-its-kind study, an international team estimated changes in Antarctica's ice mass between 1996 and 2006 and mapped patterns of ice loss on a glacier-by-glacier basis. They detected a sharp jump in Antarctica's ice loss, from enough ice to raise global sea level by 0.3 millimeters (.01 inches) a year in 1996, to 0.5 millimeters (.02 inches) a year in 2006. The losses, which were primarily concentrated in West Antarctica's Pine Island Bay sector (the location of the volcano in the last story) and the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, are caused by ongoing and past acceleration of glaciers into the sea.

Although global warming is certainly a concern here on Earth, just be grateful we don’t have to put up with the weather on the solar system’s largest planet. Last year astronomers using several instruments including the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based instruments in Hawaii and the Canary Islands observed the eruption of two gigantic storms in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere.

The storms erupted in March of 2007 and grew from 250 miles in diameter to over 1200 miles in diameter in less than 24 hours. According to the reported data these extremely bright storms originate among the deepest clouds of water and then rise rapidly to the surface of Jupiter’s cloud tops. There they erupt violently and eject a mixture of ice, ammonia and water up to 20 miles above the cloud tops. They are moving at 400 miles per hour on their trip to the surface and they eject reddish clouds that circle the whole planet. Surprisingly, and despite the enormous amount of energy deposited by the storms, the jet stream into which they erupted was relatively unaffected. The computer models simulating the phenomenon suggest that the jet stream originates deep in Jupiter’s atmosphere, more than 60 miles below the visible cloud level. Oddly enough, this phenomenon has occurred before in 1975 and 1990. These three eruptions have a periodicity of between 15 to 17 years. This is odd because that frequency has no obvious relationship with the known natural periods of the planet. The storms arise at the peak of the jet, where the velocity is greatest, and there have always been two storms that move at the same speed. Just a reminder that there’s a LOT we don’t know about our giant neighbor! And now we’ll come back down to Earth for a couple of medical stories.

DRINK THAT COFFEE

One of the most dreaded cancers that can strike women is ovarian cancer mainly because there are usually no symptoms until the cancer has advanced to virtually inoperable levels. Because of this, it is extremely important to identify risk factors for this deadly disease. A new study has found that cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption have no effect on ovarian cancer risk, while caffeine intake may lower the risk, particularly in women not using hormones. Various studies have assessed the potential link between modifiable factors such as smoking or caffeine and alcohol intake and have generated conflicting results. To help clarify these associations, Dr. Shelley S. Tworoger, of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues examined ongoing questionnaire data from the Brigham and Women's Hospital-based Nurses' Health Study, which includes 121,701 US female registered nurses. The Nurses' Health Study cohort was established in 1976, when women aged 30-35 completed and returned initial questionnaires. Every two years, questionnaires are sent to the women to update exposure variables and document newly diagnosed diseases. Dr. Tworoger and her co-investigators discovered that there was no association between current or past smoking and ovarian cancer risk, however smoking was significantly associated with risk of mucinous tumors, a rare form of ovarian cancer. The scientists also found no association between alcohol consumption and ovarian cancer risk. However they observed that there was a downturn of ovarian cancer reports when subjects reported drinking caffeinated coffee. There was no correlation with decaffeinated coffee. The positive effect appeared to be strongest for women who had never used oral contraceptives or postmenopausal hormones. So drink that coffee, ladies, it just may be good for you!

BATTLING PANDEMICS

I’ve done several stories about the possibility of a pandemic of killer flu. If you are paying attention to the news, you may have decided that there’s no longer any risk of this happening; but that isn’t true. There will be a global outbreak of pandemic flu. The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when’. Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine have found that automated electronic medical laboratory reporting (ELR) improves both the completeness and timeliness of disease surveillance, significantly bettering the odds of stopping the spread of disease. So what does that mean? It’s simple. If we are really worried about pandemic disease (and rapid reporting of food contamination) then certainly all labs and hospitals in the US and eventually world-wide should be required to place their findings on an electronic medical laboratory reporting system (ELR). This grid would pinpoint outbreaks of all sorts of diseases and other health issues before they get out of hand. "Doctors offices, clinics and public health officials across the United States are currently doing a very good job but if we rely on the traditional, slower paper approach to disease surveillance, there is less opportunity to intervene at an early stage. And, with many of these diseases, time is of the essence," said J. Marc Overhage, M.D., Ph.D., first author of the study. Building an ELR system is very feasible, according to Dr. Overhage, and I hope someone is listening to him. To have the information about a deadly disease outbreak bottled up in a lab somewhere is frightening and in this day of Internet connectivity, almost criminal. Privacy isn’t an issue here; the data would simply be a reporting of disease numbers with no names attached. Here’s hoping a global grid of ELR reporting is in place BEFORE the flu gets us all!