Vol. 38, No. 18

1-4-2006
By: Research Communications staff

Discoveries briefs 1/05/06

GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES
San Andreas Fault surveyed in detail
Researchers have completed the most meticulous survey ever made of the San Andreas Fault, and they've found detailed features that nobody could have seen before. Michael Bevis, Ohio Eminent Scholar in geodynamics and professor of geological sciences, recently unveiled the first images from the ambitious new survey. His team will spend the next year processing the rest of the survey data, which they gathered using ultra-high-resolution global positioning system technology and a radar-like system called lidar.

Short for "light detection and ranging," lidar measures the time it takes for light to reflect off the surface of an object. The combined GPS and lidar technologies enabled the researchers to map the surface of the San Andreas Fault with 5-centimeter (1.97 inches) vertical resolution.

Scientists know more or less what happens away from a fault line during an earthquake, Bevis said. But what happens near or in the fault, or how an earthquake starts - these things are not well known and are frequently debated among scientists. "By having this high-resolution image of before and after a quake, we should be able to resolve some of these debates," Bevis said.
www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/faultgps.htm

NURSING/ECONOMICS
Pre-pregnancy obesity linked to childhood weight problems
A child's weight may be influenced by his mother even before he is actually born, according to new research. Results of the study, which included more than 3,000 children, suggest that a child is far more likely to be overweight at a very young age - at 2 or 3 years old - if his mother was overweight or obese before she became pregnant. A child is also at greater risk of becoming overweight if he is born to a black or Hispanic mother, or to a mother who smoked during her pregnancy. And there's a good chance that an overweight child will stay overweight for the rest of his life.

"Weight persists with time, so a child who is overweight by her second birthday is more likely to be overweight at a later age," said Pamela Salsberry, the study's lead author and an associate professor of nursing. "Prevention of childhood obesity needs to begin before a woman ever gets pregnant." Salsberry conducted the study with Patricia Reagan, a professor of economics.

The researchers analyzed the data for 3,022 children included in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's Child-Mother file. Results showed that if a woman was overweight before she became pregnant, her child was as much as three times more likely to be overweight by age 7 compared to a child whose mother was not overweight or obese.

www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/babyfat.htm

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