Tropical Storm Colin: Florida declares state of emergency
Miami (AFP) June 6, 2016 -
Tropical Storm Colin strengthened Monday as it approached the west coast of Florida, where officials declared a state of emergency under threat from high winds, heavy rain and possible tornadoes.
Colin, which formed Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico, is expected to cross the southern state with maximum sustained winds reaching 50 miles (85 kilometers) per hour, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) ...
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Cleaning up decades of phosphorus pollution in lakes
Oxford, UK (SPX) Jun 07, 2016 -
Phosphorus is the biggest cause of water quality degradation worldwide, causing 'dead zones', toxic algal blooms, a loss of biodiversity and increased health risks for the plants, animals and humans that come in contact with polluted waters. This threatens the loss of economic and social benefits from freshwaters upon which society relies. In a series of studies published in a special issue of W ...
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Mapping that sinking feeling
Paris (ESA) Jun 07, 2016 -
For a low-lying, densely populated country like the Netherlands, monitoring subsidence is critical. Until recently, tiny displacements in the ground beneath our feet couldn't be mapped nationally but, thanks to the Sentinel-1 mission, this is now possible.
Focusing on the Netherlands and Denmark, scientists have been using radar images from the Sentinel-1A satellite to pinpoint where the g ...
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A protective shield against the heavy metal uranium
Dresden, Germany (SPX) Jun 07, 2016 -
Microorganisms can better withstand the heavy metal uranium when glutathione is present, a molecule composed of three amino acids. Scientists from the German based Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Bern in Switzerland have now proven this resilience by closely examining cell heat balance. They discovered that glutathione is an effective decontamination agent. The ...
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Lucy had neighbors: A review of African fossils
Cleveland OH (SPX) Jun 07, 2016 -
If "Lucy" wasn't alone, who else was in her neighborhood? Key fossil discoveries over the last few decades in Africa indicate that multiple early human ancestor species lived at the same time more than 3 million years ago. A new review of fossil evidence from the last few decades examines four identified hominin species that co-existed between 3.8 and 3.3 million years ago during the middle Plio ...
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New support for human evolution in grasslands
New York NY (SPX) Jun 07, 2016 -
Buried deep in seabed sediments off east Africa, scientists have uncovered a 24-million-year record of vegetation trends in the region where humans evolved. The authors say the record lends weight to the idea that we developed key traits - flexible diets, large brains, complex social structures and the ability to walk and run on two legs - while adapting to the spread of open grasslands. The stu ...
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Early farmers from across Europe were direct descendants of Aegeans
Mainz, Germany (SPX) Jun 07, 2016 -
For most of the last 45,000 years Europe was inhabited solely by hunter-gatherers. About 8,500 years ago a new form of subsistence - farming - started to spread across the continent from modern-day Turkey, reaching central Europe by 7,500 years ago and Britain by 6,100 years ago.
This new subsistence strategy led to profound changes in society, including greater population density, new dis ...
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