Earth

Survey shows Aussies' love and concern for Great Barrier Reef

A James Cook University researcher has found more than three quarters of Australians regard the Great Barrier Reef as part of their national identity and nearly 90 per cent believe it is under threat from climate change.

JCU's Jeremy Goldberg commissioned two professional surveys of around 1,000 people each as part of his PhD, conducted at JCU and CSIRO.

He said the survey's results were surprising. "We expected people to care about the Reef, but the strength of that connection was a revelation."

Seaweed offers the solution to transporting stem cells and wound treatment

Publishing in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine Professor Che Connon and Dr Stephen Swioklo describe the low-cost seaweed solution.

Che Connon, Professor of Tissue Engineering at Newcastle University explains: "The stem cells are surrounded by an alginate gel which protects them from the environment -- a bit like frogspawn. We found them unchanged even after three days at room temperature.

The strain allows to control the magnetic properties of individual iron atom

The iron Fe2+ atom embedded in a semiconductor exhibits a single non-degenerate ground state of zero magnetic moment. A team of scientists from the University of Warsaw has just shown that by using sufficiently large strain it is possible to tailor the energy spectrum of the iron atom to obtain doubly degenerate (magnetic) ground state. Such a state can be utilized for storage and processing of the quantum information. [T. Smolenski..., Nature Commun. 7,10484(2016)].

CU-Boulder study: Ancient extinction of giant Australian bird points to humans

Ancient extinction of giant Australian bird points to humans

The first direct evidence that humans played a substantial role in the extinction of the huge, wondrous beasts inhabiting Australia some 50,000 years ago -- in this case a 500-pound bird -- has been discovered by a University of Colorado Boulder-led team.

Recent summer temperatures in Europe are likely the warmest of the last 2 millennia

Most of Europe has experienced strong summer warming over the course of the past several decades, accompanied by severe heat waves in 2003, 2010 and 2015. New research now puts the current warmth in a 2100-year historical context using tree-ring information and historical documentary evidence to derive a new European summer temperature reconstruction.

The work was published today (Friday 29th January) in the journal of Environmental Research Letters by a group of 45 scientists from 13 countries.

Wildlife win when cash takes edge off 'park vs. people' conservation conflict

Conserving wildlife habitat sounds noble, but when it comes down to work or sacrifice, cold hard cash - a decent amount of it - goes a long way.

Researchers at Michigan State University and their colleagues took on the task of definitively determining if conservation programs that compensate citizens for changing habitat-damaging behavior really works. They examined a sweeping program in China that aims to restore forests and habitat for the endangered giant panda, but their unique analysis holds promise to evaluate such programs across the globe.

Heavy fermions get nuclear boost on way to superconductivity

HOUSTON -- (Jan. 28, 2016) -- In a surprising find, physicists from the United States, Germany and China have discovered that nuclear effects help bring about superconductivity in ytterbium dirhodium disilicide (YRS), one of the most-studied materials in a class of quantum critical compounds known as "heavy fermions."

Researchers develop completely new kind of polymer

Imagine a polymer with removable parts that can deliver something to the environment and then be chemically regenerated to function again. Or a polymer that can lift weights, contracting and expanding the way muscles do.

Landscape pattern analysis reveals global loss of interior forest

Between 2000 and 2012, the world lost more forest area than it gained, according to U.S. Forest Service researchers and partners who estimated a global net loss of 1.71 million square kilometers of forest -- an area about two and a half times the size of Texas. Furthermore, when researchers analyzed patterns of remaining forest, they found a global loss of interior forest -- core areas that, when intact, maintain critical habitat and ecological functions.

Intact nature offers best defense against climate change

Many climate adaptation strategies such as sea wall construction and new agricultural practices do more harm than goodNative forests reduce the frequency and severity of floodsCoral reefs can reduce wave energy by an average of 97 per cent, providing a more cost-effective defense from storm surges than engineered structuresThe cost of adaptation to climate change could reach 100 billion per year

Small is different

In the production of margarine millions of tons of unsaturated fatty acids are converted from vegetable oils using hydrogen. While searching for improved catalysts for these so-called hydrogenation reactions, a German-American research team made a discovery that puts a 50-year old rule in question: In catalytic particles comprising only a few atoms, shape and size influence reactivity much more strongly then previously thought.

For this nanocatalyst reaction, one atom makes a big difference

Combining experimental investigations and theoretical simulations, researchers have explained why platinum nanoclusters of a specific size range facilitate the hydrogenation reaction used to produce ethane from ethylene. The research offers new insights into the role of cluster shapes in catalyzing reactions at the nanoscale, and could help materials scientists optimize nanocatalysts for a broad class of other reactions.

With climate, fertilizing oceans could be zero-sum game

Scientists plumbing the depths of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean have found ancient sediments suggesting that one proposed way to mitigate climate warming--fertilizing the oceans with iron to produce more carbon-eating algae--may not necessarily work as envisioned.

Imaged 'jets' reveal cerium's post-shock inner strength

Recent synchrotron advances and the development of dynamic compression platforms have created the ability to investigate extreme states of matter on short timescales at X-ray beamlines using shock waves generated by impact systems. That's how scientists learned that surface protrusions called "jets," formed after shock waves passed through cerium metal, could provide insight into the yield stress of cerium in its post-shock state. Yield stress is the stress level at which a metal or other material ceases to behave elastically and, thus, becomes permanently damaged.

New record in nanoelectronics at ultralow temperatures

The first ever measurement of the temperature of electrons in a nanoelectronic device a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero was demonstrated in a joint research project performed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Lancaster University, and Aivon Ltd. The team managed to make the electrons in a circuit on a silicon chip colder than had previously been achieved.