NAIROBI, KENYA (12 SEPTEMBER 2011) – Restoring and preserving dryland forests and planting more trees to provide food, fodder and fertilizer on small farms are critical steps toward preventing the recurrence of the famine now threatening millions of people in the Horn of Africa, according to forestry experts from the CGIAR Consortium.
Earth
It has long been known that roots alter the soil in their immediate vicinity, where other microorganisms live and the chemical composition is altered compared to that further away from the roots. An international research team has now demonstrated in experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institute that the soil in the vicinity of roots also contains more water – contrary to the earlier belief that there must be less water in this region, as the plant takes up water from the soil.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Did an ancient crocodile relative give the world's largest snake a run for its money?
Washington, DC. — Scientists have long debated about the impact on global climate of water evaporated from vegetation. New research from Carnegie's Global Ecology department concludes that evaporated water helps cool the earth as a whole, not just the local area of evaporation, demonstrating that evaporation of water from trees and lakes could have a cooling effect on the entire atmosphere. These findings, published September 14 in Environmental Research Letters, have major implications for land-use decision making.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Humanity's relationship to fire –– including wildfires, burning of fossil fuels, controlled burns, and human-caused fire –– is the focus of a report by an international team of scientists. The team was organized by UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS).
The eruption of giant masses of magma in Siberia 250 million years ago led to the Permo-Triassic mass extinction when more than 90 % of all species became extinct. An international team including geodynamic modelers from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences together with geochemists from the J.
Despite recent news reports questioning the long-term viability of daily deal companies, a new study from researchers at Rice University and Cornell University shows that the companies are more popular than ever among consumers.
"The key finding is that there is no evidence of waning interest among consumers of daily deal promotions," said Rice University's Utpal Dholakia, co-author of "Daily Deal Fatigue or Unabated Enthusiasm?" "In fact, the more deals purchased by an individual, the more enthusiastic they seem to be."
Vats of blue-green algae could one day replace oil wells in producing raw materials for the chemical industry, a UC Davis chemist predicts.
Shota Atsumi, an assistant professor of chemistry, is using "synthetic biology" to create cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, that convert carbon dioxide in the air into complex hydrocarbons, all powered by sunlight.
Cyanobacteria are single-celled organisms that, like green plants, can use sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars and other carbohydrates.
No, this isn't Jurassic Park. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with help from an amateur fossil hunter in College Park, Md., have described the fossil of an armored dinosaur hatchling. It is the youngest nodosaur ever discovered, and a founder of a new genus and species that lived approximately 110 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Era. Nodosaurs have been found in diverse locations worldwide, but they've rarely been found in the United States.The findings are published in the September 9 issue of the Journal of Paleontology.
Personal interviews with Alaska Natives in the Yukon River Basin provide unique insights on climate change and its impacts, helping develop adaptation strategies for these local communities.
The USGS coordinated interviews with Yup'ik hunters and elders in the villages of St. Mary's and Pitka's Point, Alaska, to document their observations of climate change. They expressed concerns ranging from safety, such as unpredictable weather patterns and dangerous ice conditions, to changes in plants and animals as well as decreased availability of firewood.
Europeans face greater risk of illness, property damage and job losses because of the impacts of climate change on the seas around them.
Worried citizens, whose biggest related top-of-mind concerns are sea level rise and coastal erosion, are taking personal actions to reduce carbon emissions. However, they largely blame climate change on other groups of people or nations and assign governments and industry responsibility for mitigating the problem (though they perceive government and industry as ineffective on the issue).
Is it possible to make valid climate predictions that go beyond weeks, months, even a year? UCLA atmospheric scientists report they have now made long-term climate forecasts that are among the best ever — predicting climate up to 16 months in advance, nearly twice the length of time previously achieved by climate scientists.
New evidence of sea-level oscillations during a warm period that started about 125,000 years ago raises the possibility of a similar scenario if the planet continues its more recent warming trend, says a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Preliminary research on Fusarium, a group of fungi that includes devastating pathogens of plants and animals, shows how these microbes travel through the air. Researchers now believe that with improvements on this preliminary research, there will be a better understanding about crop security, disease spread, and climate change.
MIAMI – September 9, 2011 -- Scientists at the University of Miami's (UM's) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science have found an intriguing relationship between hurricane tracks and climate variability. Angela Colbert, a graduate student in Meteorology & Physical Oceanography, with the collaboration of Professor and Associate Dean for Professional Masters, Dr. Brian Soden, studied data from the Atlantic gathered between 1950-2010, unlocking some noteworthy results, which appear in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.