Rehovot, Israel (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Some sea creatures cover themselves with hard shells and spines, while vertebrates build skeletons out of the same minerals. How do these animals get the calcium they need to build these strong mineral structures?
Professors Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Structural Biology Department asked this question about sea urchins, which need to extract quite a f ...
more
Leeds, UK (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
The way in which man-made acids in the atmosphere interact with the dust that nourishes our oceans has been quantified by scientists for the first time. In the international study led by the University of Leeds, researchers have pinpointed how much phosphate "fertiliser" is released from dust depending on atmospheric acid levels. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for all life, and when it fall ...
moreScientists shed light on the climate-changing desert dust fertilizing our oceans
Leeds, UK (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
The way in which man-made acids in the atmosphere interact with the dust that nourishes our oceans has been quantified by scientists for the first time. In the international study led by the University of Leeds, researchers have pinpointed how much phosphate "fertiliser" is released from dust depending on atmospheric acid levels. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for all life, and when it fall ...
more | |
Making spines from sea water
Rehovot, Israel (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Some sea creatures cover themselves with hard shells and spines, while vertebrates build skeletons out of the same minerals. How do these animals get the calcium they need to build these strong mineral structures?
Professors Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Structural Biology Department asked this question about sea urchins, which need to extract quite a f ...
more | |
Santa Barbara CA (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Whether building organs or maintaining healthy adult tissues, cells use biochemical and mechanical cues from their environment to make important decisions, such as becoming a neuron, a skin cell or a heart cell. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a powerful new technique that reveals for the first time the mechanical environment that cells perceive in living tissues - their natural, u ...
more
Oslo, Norway (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Tectonic plates, big sections of Earth's crust and blocks underneath them, are constantly moving. The areas where these sections meet and interact are called faults. They appear as scars on the outermost layer of the Earth. A lot is going on along the largest of faults: mountains can grow, volcanoes can erupt, continents can separate and earthquakes happen.
Also more discrete events are co ...
more
Boulder CO (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
At century's end, the number of summertime storms that produce extreme downpours could increase by more than 400 percent across parts of the United States - including sections of the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast, and the Southwest - according to a new study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, also fi ...
more
Odense M, Denmark (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Large areas of the global ocean, so called marine "dead zones" contain no oxygen and support microbial processes that remove vast amounts of nitrogen from the global ocean. Nitrogen is a key nutrient for life. These dead zones are well known off the western coasts of North and South America, off the coast of Namibia and off the west coast of India in the Arabian Sea.
New research published ...
more
Stanford CA (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
The Syrian civil war and subsequent refugee migration caused sudden changes in the area's land use and freshwater resources, according to satellite data analyzed by Stanford researchers.
The findings, published in the Dec. 5 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the first to demonstrate detailed water management practices in an active war zone. Using satellite image ...
more
New York NY (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
The Arctic's frozen ground contains large stores of organic carbon that have been locked in the permafrost for thousands of years. As global temperatures rise, that permafrost is starting to melt, raising concerns about the impact on the climate as organic carbon becomes exposed. A new study is shedding light on what that could mean for the future by providing the first direct physical evidence ...
more
Austin TX (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Researchers with The University of Texas at Austin have found that incorporating snow data collected from space into computer climate models can significantly improve seasonal temperature predictions. The findings, published in November in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, could help farmers, water providers, power companies and others that use season ...
more
Berkeley CA (SPX) Dec 06, 2016 -
Following Earth's last ice age, which peaked 20,000 years ago, the Antarctic warmed between two and three times the average temperature increase worldwide, according to a new study by a team of American geophysicists. The disparity - Antarctica warmed about 11 degrees Celsius, nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit, between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, while the average temperature worldwide rose on ...
more
Ithaca NY (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
Cornell University researchers have discovered a biological mechanism that helps convert nitrogen-based fertilizer into nitrous oxide, an ozone-depleting greenhouse gas. The paper was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The first key to plugging a leak is finding the leak," said Kyle Lancaster, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, and ...
more
Arlington VA (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
To better predict tropical cyclone intensity, scientists sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to gather atmospheric data from storms that formed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2016.
Fully developed tropical cyclones - variously called hurricanes, typhoons o ...
moreHulking hurricanes: Seeking greater accuracy in predicting storm strength
Arlington VA (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
To better predict tropical cyclone intensity, scientists sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) recently worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to gather atmospheric data from storms that formed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2016.
Fully developed tropical cyclones - variously called hurricanes, typhoons o ...
more | |
Bacterial mechanism converts nitrogen to greenhouse gas
Ithaca NY (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
Cornell University researchers have discovered a biological mechanism that helps convert nitrogen-based fertilizer into nitrous oxide, an ozone-depleting greenhouse gas. The paper was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The first key to plugging a leak is finding the leak," said Kyle Lancaster, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, and ...
more | |
Oak Ridge TN (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
As part of an effort to develop drought-resistant food and bioenergy crops, scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have uncovered the genetic and metabolic mechanisms that allow certain plants to conserve water and thrive in semi-arid climates.
Semi-arid plants such as agave have adapted to survive in areas with little rainfall by developing a specialized mo ...
more
University Park PA (SPX) Dec 02, 2016 -
Donald Trump's election is generating much speculation about how his administration may or may not reshape the federal government. On space issues, a senior Trump advisor, former Pennsylvania Rep. Bob Walker, has called for ending NASA earth science research, including work related to climate change. Walker contends that NASA's proper role is deep-space research and exploration, not "politically ...
more
Cardiff, UK (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
A study of the longest-living animal on Earth, the quahog clam, has provided researchers with an unprecedented insight into the history of the oceans. By studying the chemistry of growth rings in the shells of the quahog clam, an international team led by experts from Cardiff University and Bangor University have pieced together the history of the North Atlantic Ocean over the past 1000 years an ...
more
Jerusalem, Israel (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
A tiny grape pip (scale 1mm), left on the ground some 780,000 years ago, is one of more than 9,000 remains of edible plants discovered in an old Stone Age site in Israel on the shoreline of Lake Hula in the northern Jordan valley, dating back to the Acheulian culture from 1.75-0.25 million years ago. The floral collection provides rich testimony of the plant-based diet of our prehistoric ancesto ...
more
Chicago IL (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
A team of University of Illinois researchers has discovered the existence of hot atomic hydrogen (H) atoms in an upper layer of Earth's atmosphere known as the thermosphere. This finding, which the authors report in Nature Communications, significantly changes current understanding of the H distribution and its interaction with other atmospheric constituents.
Because H atoms are very light ...
more
Reno NV (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
An earthquake much more powerful and damaging than last year's 7.8 magnitude quake could rock Katmandu and the Himalayan Frontal Fault, an international team of seismic experts has concluded. The unsettling news comes after field research and analysis in the year following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, which killed 9,000 people and destroyed 600,000 structures throughout the region.
Geophysi ...
more
Hamilton, Canada (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
An analysis of 2,000-year-old human remains from several regions across the Italian peninsula has confirmed the presence of malaria during the Roman Empire, addressing a longstanding debate about its pervasiveness in this ancient civilization. The answer is in mitochondrial genomic evidence of malaria, coaxed from the teeth of bodies buried in three Italian cemeteries, dating back to the Imperia ...
more
Santa Fe NM (SPX) Dec 07, 2016 -
At two miles long and five inches in diameter, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS) ice core is a tangible record of the last 68,000 years of our planet's climate. Completed in 2011, the core is packed with information, but it's also packed with noise and error, making the climate story hard to read. Figuring out whether blips in the data are evidence of humans spewing carbon into the atmo ...
more