Earth | Page 1166 | Science Codex

US farmers dodge the impacts of global warming -- at least for now

Global warming is likely already taking a toll on world wheat and corn production, according to a new study led by Stanford University researchers. But the United States, Canada and northern Mexico have largely escaped the trend.

"It appears as if farmers in North America got a pass on the first round of global warming," said David Lobell, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University. "That was surprising, given how fast we see weather has been changing in agricultural areas around the world as a whole."

University of Toronto chemistry technology promises more effective prescription drug therapies

TORONTO, ON – Scientists at the University of Toronto, Stanford and Columbia Universities have developed a way to measure the action and function of candidate prescription drugs on human cells, including the response of individual cells, more quickly and on a larger scale than ever before.

New evidence that caffeine is a healthful antioxidant in coffee

Scientists are reporting an in-depth analysis of how the caffeine in coffee, tea, and other foods seems to protect against conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and heart disease on the most fundamental levels. The report, which describes the chemistry behind caffeine's antioxidant effects, appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

A new research report shows effects of climate change in the Arctic are more extensive than expected

Together with Terry Callaghan, a researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Margareta is the editor of the two chapters on snow and permafrost.

"The changes we see are dramatic. And they are not coincidental. The trends are unequivocal and deviate from the norm when compared with a longer term perspective", she says.

Undergraduate institutions should play larger research role

A group of 12 biology educators at US colleges and universities that teach mostly undergraduates argues in the May issue of BioScience for coordinating networks to expand the study and teaching of ecology conducted at these institutions. The group, which has launched a network dedicated to continental-scale observations, argues that better coordination of current research efforts will allow "transformative contributions" cost-effectively, while also providing valuable educational experiences for undergraduates.

Study helps explain behavior of latest high-temp superconductors

HOUSTON -- (May 3, 2011) -- A Rice University-led team of physicists this week offered up one of the first theoretical explanations of how two dissimilar types of high-temperature superconductors behave in similar ways.

First rainforests arose when plants solved plumbing problem

A team of scientists, including several from the Smithsonian Institution, discovered that leaves of flowering plants in the world's first rainforests had more veins per unit area than leaves ever had before. They suggest that this increased the amount of water available to the leaves, making it possible for plants to capture more carbon and grow larger. A better plumbing system may also have radically altered water and carbon movement through forests, driving environmental change.

Climate change analysis predicts increased fatalities from heat waves

Global climate change is anticipated to bring more extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves that could impact human health in the coming decades. An analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated that the city of Chicago could experience between 166 and 2,217 excess deaths per year attributable to heat waves using three different climate change scenarios for the final decades of the 21st century. The study was published May 1 edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Succulent plants waited for cool, dry Earth to make their mark

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The cactus, stalwart of the desert, has quite a story to tell about the evolution of plant communities found the world over.

Nature of bonding determines thermal conductivity

Jülich/Aachen, 3 May 2011 - Optical data carriers such as DVDs, Blu-rays and CD-RWs store data in layers of so-called "phase change materials". In the future, these materials will enable the development of fast, non-volatile and energy-saving main memories. A prerequisite for this is a low thermal conductivity. Phase change materials display a surprisingly low thermal conductivity even in the crystalline state.

World's smallest atomic clock on sale

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A matchbook-sized atomic clock 100 times smaller than its commercial predecessors has been created by a team of researchers at Symmetricom Inc. Draper Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The portable Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) — only about 1.5 inches on a side and less than a half-inch in depth — also requires 100 times less power than its predecessors.

What lies beneath the seafloor?

MIAMI – May 3, 2011 – An international team of scientists report on the first observatory experiment to study the dynamic microbial life of an ever-changing environment inside Earth's crust. University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor Keir Becker contributed the deep-sea technology required to make long-term scientific observations of life beneath the seafloor.

Global warming won't harm wind energy production, climate models predict

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The production of wind energy in the U.S. over the next 30-50 years will be largely unaffected by upward changes in global temperature, say a pair of Indiana University Bloomington scientists who analyzed output from several regional climate models to assess future wind patterns in America's lower 48 states.

Their report -- the first analysis of long-term stability of wind over the U.S. -- appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

Single atom stores quantum information

A data memory can hardly be any smaller: researchers working with Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have stored quantum information in a single atom. The researchers wrote the quantum state of single photons, i.e. particles of light, into a rubidium atom and read it out again after a certain storage time. This technique can be used in principle to design powerful quantum computers and to network them with each other across large distances.

Smoke-exposed children with flu more likely to need ICU care

Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke are more likely to need intensive care and intubation when hospitalized with influenza, according to new research by the University of Rochester Medical Center presented today at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Denver. The children also had longer hospital stays.