Latest University of Hawaii Stories

Dr. Michelle Matter's discovery published today in PLoS ONE University of Hawaii at Mānoa's John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) Assistant Professor Michelle Matter and her colleagues in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology and the Center for Cardiovascular Research have discovered a molecular pathway that may help reduce the damaging effects of an enlarged heart, caused by hypertension or a heart attack. Enlargement of the heart, called cardiac hypertrophy, stretches...

Is the mood around your workplace becoming more tense? The problem may be more than daily work pressures. Elaine Hatfield, a psychologist from the University of Hawaii has discovered that stress can be contagious and that second-hand anxiety is easily passed from person to person, Deborah Arthurs of the Daily Mail reports. “People seem to be capable of mimicking others’ facial, vocal, and postural expressions with stunning rapidity,” Hatfield told Arthurs. “As a consequence, they...

An estimated 5 million to 20 million tons of debris now floating in the ocean following Japan's massive tsunami is due to hit the shores Hawaii by early next year, before reaching the U.S. West coast sometime in 2014, according to estimates by University of Hawaii scientists. The projections have been validated by a Russian training ship, which spotted the debris in the Pacific Ocean where the scientists from the university's International Pacific Research Center predicted it would be....

Scientists at University of Hawaii – Manoa have projected an increased frequency of heavy rainfall events but a decrease in rainfall intensity during the next 30 years (2011-2040) for the southern shoreline of Oahu, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Chase Norton, a Meteorology Research Assistant at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at UH - Manoa, and colleagues (Professors Pao-Shin Chu and Thomas Schroeder) used a...

The Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), an organized research unit in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology announced the launch of their new website showcasing the science from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Research Partnership. HONOLULU, HI (TODAY) – The Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology’s (HIMB) new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Research Partnership website [www.hawaii.edu/himb/nwhi] goes live today. The website...

  Global warming is the most likely cause of a growing number of king crabs that have been marching along the sea floor toward West Antarctica, according to a report by biologists on Wednesday. The intruder, 'Neolithodes yaldwyni Ahyong and Dawson', a bright-red deep-sea predator that had previously been spotted only in the Ross Sea, on the other side of West Antarctica, is now living and reproducing in abundance on the western edge of the icy continent. Writing in the journal...

  A new study by scientists from the Census of Marine Life has placed the number of species of animals on planet Earth to about 8.7 million, a number based on a validated analytical technique that narrows the range much more than the previous estimate of between 3 million and 100 million. The scientists also noted that only about a quarter of all species on the planet have been discovered, and they say that many could exist in our own backyard. So far, only 1.9 million species have...

Billions of years ago, an astounding evolutionary event occurred: certain bacteria became obliged to live inside other cells, thus starting a chain of events that resulted in what is now the mitochondria, an organelle found in all eukaryotic cells. A recent study by researchers at the University of Hawaii "“ Manoa (UHM) and the Oregon State University (OSU) provides strong evidence that mitochondria share a common evolutionary ancestor with a lineage of marine bacteria known as SAR11,...

The huge tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maximenko has developed a model based on the behavior of drifting buoys deployed over years in the ocean for scientific purposes.The debris first spreads out eastward...

Over 50 percent of the population in the United States and over 60 percent in the world live in coastal areas. Rapidly growing human populations near the ocean have massively altered coastal water ecosystems.  One of the most extensive human stressors is the discharge of chemicals and pollutants into the ocean. In the Southern California Bight, more than 60 sewage and urban runoff sources discharge over 1 billion gallons of liquid on a dry day with the two largest sources of contaminants...