Greatest mass extinction driven by acidic oceans, study finds
Edinburgh UK (SPX) Apr 10, 2015 -
Changes to the Earth's oceans, caused by extreme volcanic activity, triggered the greatest extinction of all time, a study suggests.
The event, which took place 252 million years ago, wiped out more than 90 per cent of marine species and more than two-thirds of the animals living on land.
It happened when Earth's oceans absorbed huge amounts of carbon dioxide from volcanic eruptions, ...
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More food, low pollution effort gains traction
Frostburg, MD (SPX) Apr 10, 2015 -
Nitrogen fertilizers make it possible to feed more people in the world than ever before. However, too much of it can also harm the environment. Professor Eric Davidson, director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Appalachian Laboratory, has been leading a group of scientists, economists, social scientists, and agriculture experts in figuring out how to produce more ...
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Ancient human fossils from Laos reveal early diversity
Champaign IL (SPX) Apr 10, 2015 -
An ancient human skull and a jawbone found a few meters away in a cave in northern Laos add to the evidence that early modern humans were physically quite diverse, researchers report in PLOS ONE.
The skull, found in 2009 in a cave known as Tam Pa Ling in the Annamite Mountains of present-day Laos, and reported in 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the oldest mo ...
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Dynamic dead zones alter fish catches in Lake Erie
Washington DC (SPX) Apr 10, 2015 -
New research shows that Lake Erie's dead zones are actually quite active, greatly affecting fish distributions, catch rates and the effectiveness of fishing gear.
Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey, the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and partners recently found that dead zones caused by hypoxia, the depletion of oxygen in water, are unexpectedly variable in Lake Erie, sometimes disappe ...
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Gradual, prolonged permafrost greenhouse gas emissions forecast
Fairbanks AK (SPX) Apr 10, 2015 -
A new scientific synthesis suggests a gradual, prolonged release of greenhouse gases from permafrost soils in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, which may afford society more time to adapt to environmental changes, say scientists in an April 9 paper published in Nature.
"Twenty years ago there was very little research about the possible rate of permafrost carbon release," said co-author A. Dav ...
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Ferromanganese crusts record past climates
Munich, Germany (SPX) Apr 10, 2015 -
In the past decades ferromanganese crusts have been the focus of interest due to their resource potential of valuable metals such as cobalt, nickel or rare earth elements, which are highly enriched in these crusts. For the moment, however, the cost of underwater mining outweighs their cost of recovery. Future price development will change this and deep-sea mining may one day become profitable. I ...
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Bush v. Gore; Cruz v. Constitution
Washington DC (UPI) Apr 08, 2015 -
Remember the 2000 presidential elections? Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote. But for thirty-one days after the election, no one knew whether he or Texas Governor George W. Bush had prevailed in Florida winning the needed electoral votes that would determine the nation's 43rd president. "Hanging chads" and the spectacular hair-do of Florida's Secretary of State Kathleen Harris domina ...
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