Earth

Closing the high seas to fishing could increase fish catches in coastal waters by 10 per cent, helping people, especially the most vulnerable, cope with the expected losses of fish due to climate change, new UBC research finds.

Vast quantities of gold could be salvaged from old mobile phones using a simple chemical method, a study shows.

Current methods for extracting gold from old gadgets are inefficient and can be hazardous to health, as they often use toxic chemicals such as cyanide, researchers say.

Electrical waste - including old mobile phones, televisions and computers - is thought to contain as much as seven per cent of all the world's gold. The precious metal is a key component of the printed circuit boards found inside electrical devices.

New York, NY--August 30, 2016--A team led by Nanfang Yu, assistant professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, has discovered a new phase-transition optical material and demonstrated novel devices that dynamically control light over a much broader wavelength range and with larger modulation amplitude than what has currently been possible.

The general aim of this work was to contribute to traffic safety by understanding the differences in traffic culture in countries worldwide. Furthermore, we sought to explore and understand the needs and beliefs concerning traffic safety in different countries worldwide and the implications for the objective traffic safety situation (Traffic Safety Index - TSI) and for the stage of the economic development of the country (Gross Domestic Product - GDP). A simple questionnaire with three questions focused on beliefs and opinions about traffic safety was used.

ASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP and NOAA's GOES satellites showed Tropical Depression 8 nearing the North Carolina coast. An animation of satellite imagery showed the development and movement of the depression toward the coast over a two day period.

At 2:25 p.m. EDT (18:25 UTC) on Aug. 29, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Depression Eight off the North Carolina coast. The depression had a tight concentration of strong thunderstorms around its low-level center of circulation.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Aug. 30, 2016--A new study has found that plants regulate their leaf temperature with some independence from the surrounding air temperature, a trait that increases carbon uptake through photosynthesis. The research offers promise for refining Earth system models that help predict climate change impacts and feedbacks.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30, 2016 -- The sun shines a massive amount of energy onto the Earth's surface every day. What if humans could take a cue from plants and use sunlight to make their own food? From chloroplasts to carbon dioxide, Reactions creates a hypothetical photosynthetic human and gives a quick crash course on the chemistry of photosynthesis. Soak up some sun and some knowledge here: https://youtu.be/z3RGwdJGzOo.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP and NOAA's GOES satellites showed major Hurricane Madeline nearing the Hawaiian Islands. An animation of satellite imagery showed the movement of Madeline and nearby Hurricane Lester over a two day period.

At 7:25 p.m. EDT (23:25 UTC) on Aug. 29, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of major Hurricane Madeline. The storm's eye extended up to 13 nautical miles wide in diameter and Madeline appeared very well organized.

NASA satellites provided forecasters with infrared and visible imagery of Major Hurrricane Lester as it continued to move through the Eastern Pacific Ocean. After peaking as a Category 4 hurricane on Aug. 29, Lester weakened to a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale today, Aug. 30.

New York, NY - A City College of New York led-team headed by physicist Dr. Carlos Meriles has successfully demonstrated charge transport between Nitrogen-Vacancy color centers in diamond. The team developed a novel multi-color scanning microscopy technique to visualize the charge transport. The breakthrough experiment could potentially lead to room-temperature quantum information processing in diamond and optical data storage in three dimensions.

Although the center of Tropical Depression 9 moved away from Cuba and into the southeastern Gulf of Mexico, western Cuba was still getting drenched from the system. A visible image from NOAA's GOES-East satellite showed the reach of the large depression.

The National Hurricane Center said at 11 a.m. EDT that torrential rains continue over western Cuba and that a tropical storm watch likely to be issued for a portion of the Florida Gulf Coast later today, Aug. 30.

WASHINGTON, DC (Aug. 31, 2016) -- Flooding due to rising ocean levels. Debilitating heat waves that last longer and occur more frequently. Rising rates of diseases caused by ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes, such as Lyme disease, Chikungunya, and Zika. Increasing numbers of Emergency Room visits for asthma attacks due to higher levels of ground-level ozone. Impacts of climate change such as these will affect cities across the country.

Researchers at Penn State and the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are pushing the limits of electron microscopy into the tens of picometer scale, a fraction of the size of a hydrogen atom.

A team from the Technical University Munich (TUM) in Germany recently reported an independent analysis of the operation of the Munich Compact Light Source (MuCLS) in the Sept. 2016 issue of the Journal of Synchrotron Radiation. The MuCLS is the first commercial installation of a miniature synchrotron developed and manufactured by Lyncean Technologies, Inc. of Fremont, CA. It is designed to fill the gap in X-ray performance between conventional X-ray sources and stadium-sized synchrotron radiation x-ray facilities.

Historic changes to Antarctic sea ice could be unravelled using a new technique pioneered by scientists at Plymouth University.

It could also potentially be used to demonstrate past alterations to glaciers and ice shelves caused by climatic changes, a study published in Nature Communications suggests.

The new method builds on an existing technique, also developed by Plymouth University over the last 10 years, which identified a means by which scientists could measure changes to sea ice in the Arctic.