NASA to Los Angeles: Get ready for 5.0 quake - USA TODAY

NASA to Los Angeles: Get ready for 5.0 quake

Evann Gastaldo, Newser October 22, 2015  USA TODAY


(Photo: Kirby Lee, Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)

(NEWSER) – NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is out with a study predicting that Los Angeles has a 99.9% chance of experiencing an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 or greater within the next two and a half years.

"There’s enough energy stored to produce about a magnitude 6.1 to 6.3 earthquake" with an epicenter in La Habra, which was hit by a quake in 2014, says a JPL geophysicist, per CBS LA. Earthquake scientists used information from the La Habra quake to make their predictions, and found that there's a 35% chance of an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

But other experts aren't convinced; KPCC goes so far as to call the JPL study "controversial."

As the US Geological Survey notes, "the accepted random chance of a (magnitude 5.0) or greater in this area in three years is 85%, independent of the analysis in this paper." Plus, JPL's research "has not yet been examined by the long-established committees that evaluate earthquake forecasts and predictions made by scientists," the USGS says, per LA Weekly. "The lack of details on the method of analysis makes a critical assessment of this approach very difficult."

And, as one Caltech seismologist who read the study notes, "As far as I’m concerned there has never been a successful earthquake prediction, and a scientific breakthrough would be required for us to make a scientifically based prediction." But, he adds, since earthquakes tend to cluster, it's not much of a stretch to assume there will be another one in La Habra. (Only a single survivor remains from another California earthquake.)

This story originally appeared on Newser.

Doctor says mother's prayer restarted dead boy's heart - Newser

Doctor says mother's prayer restarted dead boy's heart

By Arden Dier  

Published February 06, 2015  

Newser

Members of the Dubuque Fire Department perform an ice-rescue training on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, in Dubuque, Iowa. (AP Photo/The Telegraph Herald, Jessica Reilly)

When rescuers arrived to Missouri's Lake Sainte Louise on Jan. 19 after reports that three 14-year-old boys had fallen through the ice, John Smith had already been underwater for 15 minutes.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports he was taken to a hospital with no pulse, and while his companions were treated for hypothermia, staff performed CPR on John for 27 minutes.

"He was dead for 45 minutes," Dr. Kent Sutterer tells KSDK. There was a "very poor chance of survival." But when the doctor called John's mom into the room, "she started praying loudly," he says.

Adds Joyce Smith, "I don't remember what all I said. But I remember, 'Holy God, please send your Holy Spirit to save my son.' ... All of a sudden I heard them saying, 'We got a pulse, we got a pulse.'" Today, John's brain function is normal and he's at home walking and talking like any other teenager, KSDK reports.

He's getting physical therapy to regain some movement in his hands, but otherwise he's only battling a cough. "After listening to what the paramedics and doctors said I'm pretty surprised at the outcome," John says.

Dr. Sutterer, who says John's heart started within "a minute or two" of his mom's prayers, later wrote a note to make sense of the experience.

"His heart was jump started by the Holy Spirit listening to the request of his praying mother," it reads. Another doctor adds that "it's a bona fide miracle." John's rescuers from Lake St.

Louis Fire and Emergency had practiced ice rescues just days before he was saved. (A 2-year-old recently survived a night outside in freezing temperatures.)

This article originally appeared on Newser: Doctor: Mom's Prayer Restarted Dead Boy's Heart