DURHAM, N.H. -- Warmer temperatures due to climate change could cause soils to release additional carbon into the atmosphere, thereby enhancing climate change – but that effect diminishes over the long term, finds a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Earth
With more than 40 million people living under exceptional drought conditions in East Africa, the ability to make accurate predictions of drought has never been more important. In the aftermath of widespread famine and a humanitarian crisis caused by the 2010-2011 drought in the Horn of Africa—possibly the worst drought in 60 years— researchers are striving to determine whether drying trends will continue.
Washington, D.C.— Researchers still have much to learn about the volcanism that shaped our planet's early history. New evidence from a team led by Carnegie's Frances Jenner demonstrates that some of the tectonic processes driving volcanic activity, such as those taking place today, were occurring as early as 3.8 billion years ago. Their work is published in Geology.
Volcanic eruptions have the potential to cause loss of life, disrupt air traffic, impact climate, and significantly alter the surrounding landscape. Knowledge of the past behaviours of volcanoes is key to producing risk assessments of the hazards of modern explosive events.
The open access database of Large Magnitude Explosive Eruptions (LaMEVE) will provide this crucial information to researchers, civil authorities and the general public alike.
ANN ARBOR—In the coming decades, climate change will lead to more frequent and more intense Midwest heat waves while degrading air and water quality and threatening public health. Intense rainstorms and floods will become more common, and existing risks to the Great Lakes will be exacerbated.
INDIANAPOLIS -- More than 2,000 former football players are suing the National Football League, saying the league should have taken action earlier to deal with injuries related to concussions more seriously.
But if a lack of speed in tackling concussions warrants criticism, the NFL isn't the only player deserving a penalty, according to a study co-authored by health care and law expert David Orentlicher, who teaches at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis.
Gas separation is crucial for many industrial processes including obtaining nitrogen or oxygen from air and purifying natural gas or hydrogen. Currently, the most energy efficient method for separating gases involves polymer membranes, however, most polymers either let gases pass through slowly (i.e. have low permeability) or are not selective towards one gas over another. Gas separation would be cheaper and use less energy if polymer membranes could be made both highly permeable and selective.
When it comes to camouflage, ground-nesting Japanese quail are experts. That's based on new evidence published online on January 17 in Current Biology that mother quail "know" the patterning of their own eggs and choose laying spots to hide them best.
"Not only are the eggs camouflaged, but the birds choose to lay their eggs on a substrate that maximizes camouflage," said P. George Lovell of Abertay University and the University of St Andrews. "Furthermore, the maximization seems specific to individual birds."
(Jena) The planet Earth will die – if not before, then when the Sun collapses. This is going to happen in approximately seven billion years. In the universe however the death of suns and planets is an everyday occurance and our solar system partly consists of their remnants.
WASHINGTON, D.C.—January 17, 2013— A recently released report, entitled "Social and Economic Impact Review on Neglected Tropical Diseases," highlights links between neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and socio-economic prosperity.
Exceptionally warm spring weather in 2010 and 2012 resulted in the earliest flowering times known in 161 years of recorded history at two sites in the eastern US, according to research published January 16 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Elizabeth Ellwood of Boston University and colleagues.
For the last ten years, theoretical physicists have shown that the intense connections generated between particles as established in the quantum law of 'entanglement' may hold the key to eventual teleportation of quantum information.
Now, for the first time, researchers have worked out how entanglement could be 'recycled' to increase the efficiency of these connections. Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the result could conceivably take us a step closer to sci-fi style teleportation in the future, although this research is purely theoretical in nature.
A virtual heart, developed at The University of Manchester, is revealing new information about one of the world's most common heart conditions.
Researchers at the School of Physics and Astronomy used cutting edge technology to build an advanced computational model of an anatomically correct sheep's heart. It was made by taking a series of very thin slices of the heart, imaging them in 2D and then using a computer programme to render them into a 3D model.
NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.
In addition to causing smoggy skies and chronic coughs, soot – or black carbon – turns out to be the number two contributor to global warming. It's second only to carbon dioxide, according to a four-year assessment by an international panel.
The new study concludes that black carbon, the soot particles in smoke and smog, contributes about twice as much to global warming as previously estimated, even by the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.