Earth | Page 1278 | Science Codex

Extraterrestrial platinum was 'stirred' into the Earth

A research program aimed at using platinum as an exploration guide for nickel has for the first time been able to put a time scale on the planet's large-scale convection processes.

The research is reported in a Nature paper titled "Progressive mixing of meteoritic veneer into the early Earth's deep mantle".

Report author CSIRO Minerals Down Under Flagship researcher Dr Stephen Barnes said the study group collected a large body of data on the platinum content of lava flows called komatiites, which host some of the world's major nickel deposits.

New equation redefines seawater health

One of the world's leading ocean science bodies, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO's) and Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) adopted the new international thermodynamic equation of state for seawater called TEOS-10. A complex, dynamic mixture of dissolved minerals, salts, and organic material, seawater has historically presented difficulties in terms of determining its physical chemical properties.

Afghanistan and Asain wheat under attack from new disease

Scientists are racing to arm Afghanistan against a new invader--a deadly, airborne wheat rust disease that threatens wheat production and food security. The disease threatens the nation and the region that stretches east across neighboring Pakistan and into India.

Efforts to curb overfishing starting to show results

A two-year study, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington and including an international team of 19 co-authors, shows that steps taken to curb overfishing are beginning to succeed in five of the ten large marine ecosystems that they examined. The paper, which appears in the journal Science, provides new hope for rebuilding troubled fisheries.

Summer heat increases risk of amniotic fluid level deficiency, Ben-Gurion University study reveals

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL -- July 30, 2009 – Pregnant women have a higher incidence of insufficient amniotic fluid levels (oligohydramnios) in the summer months due to dehydration, according to a study conducted by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU).

Bare-faced Bulbul: Bizarre bald bird discovered

An odd songbird with a bald head living in a rugged region in Laos has been discovered by scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and University of Melbourne, as part of a project funded and managed by the mining company MMG (Minerals and Metals Group) that operates the Sepon copper and gold project in the region..

The ocean mixes up sea life, but the sea lifes mixes back.

"The perspective we usually take is how the ocean--by its currents, temperature, and chemistry--is affecting animals," says John Dabiri, a Caltech bioengineer who, along with graduate student Kakani Katija, discovered the new mechanism. "But there have been increasing suggestions that the inverse is also important, how the animals themselves, via swimming, might impact the ocean environment."

Dabiri's and Katija's findings show this inverse to be true, and are published in the journal Nature.

Overconfidence among teenage students can stunt crucial reading skills

Source:

Large trees declining in Yosemite, scientists allege climate change to blame

Large trees have declined in Yosemite National Park during the 20th century, and warmer climate conditions may play a role.

The number of large-diameter trees in the park declined 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s. U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932� to the most recent records from 1988�.

Geologists uncover Amazon River’s 11 million-year history

LIVERPOOL, UK – 29 July 2009: Researchers at the University of Liverpool have discovered that the Amazon river, and its transcontinental drainage, is around 11 million years old and took its present shape about 2.4 million years ago.

University of Liverpool researchers, in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam and Petrobras, the national oil company of Brazil, analysed sedimentary material taken from two boreholes near the mouth of the river to calculate the age of the Amazon river and the Amazon deep sea fan.

Man-made carbon emissions changing world’s oceans for the worst

Mounting evidence that human activity is changing the world's oceans in profound and damaging ways is outlined in a new scientific discussion paper released today.

Man-made carbon emissions "are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security," the study by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland, warns.

Forest and CO2 research FACEs the end

The Department of Energy-sponsored free air carbon dioxide enrichment experiment, known as FACE, has come to a close. The expiriment consisted of three plots of sweetgum trees that were the control sites and two plots of sweetgums that were exposed to increased carbon dioxide levels. The atmosphere were at 550 parts per million, the concentration that is projected to occur in about 2050 if current trends continue. This trend is due to the burning of fossil fuels and global land use change.

Wildfires expected to increase with climate temperature

Atmospheric scientists at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and their colleagues expect the frequency of wildfires to increase in the future. The spike in the number of fires could adversely affect air quality, caused by the presence of more smoke.

New satellite takes its first pictures of Earth

The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-14, provided its first visible full disk image of Earth on July 27, at 2:00 p.m. EDT. The prime instrument on GOES, called the Imager, is taking images of Earth with a 1 kilometer (km) or 0.62 mile resolution from an altitude of 36,000 km (22,240 miles) above Earth's surface, equivalent to taking a picture of a dime from a distance of seven football fields.

Modest temperature increase may lead to disastrous forest fires, say climate scientists

The area of forest burnt by wildfires in the United States is set to increase by over 50% by 2050, according to research by climate scientists.

The study predicts that the worst affected areas will be the forests in the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains, where the area of forest destroyed by wildfire is predicted to increase by 78% and 175% respectively.

The research is based on a conservative temperature increase of 1.6 degrees Celsius over the next 40 years.