Earth

New data provides the strongest evidence to date that the world's biggest mud volcano, which killed 13 people in 2006 and displaced thirty thousand people in East Java, Indonesia, was not caused by an earthquake, according to an international scientific team that includes researchers from Durham University and the University of California, Berkeley.

Depicting a cause-and-effect scenario that spans thousands of miles, a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California - San Diego and his collaborators discovered that ocean waves originating along the Pacific coasts of North and South America impact Antarctic ice shelves and could play a role in their catastrophic collapse.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Eating chocolate may lower your risk of having a stroke, according to an analysis of available research that will be released today and presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 62nd Annual Meeting in Toronto April 10 to April 17, 2010. Another study found that eating chocolate may lower the risk of death after suffering a stroke.

The analysis involved reviewing three studies on chocolate and stroke.

BOULDER, Colo.— Physicists at JILA have for the first time observed chemical reactions near absolute zero, demonstrating that chemistry is possible at ultralow temperatures and that reaction rates can be controlled using quantum mechanics, the peculiar rules of submicroscopic physics.

Their work is the first comprehensive geochemical study of the Doushantuo Formation to investigate the structure of the ocean going from shallow to deep water environments. It is also one of the most comprehensive studies for any Precambrian interval. (The Precambrian refers to a stretch of time spanning from the inception of the Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago to about 540 million years ago.

UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic "gene" that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels and the increased acidity of oceans.

The research appears in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Physicists may have glimpsed a particle that is a leading candidate for mysterious dark matter but say conclusive evidence remains elusive.

A team of mathematicians from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) has developed a computer application that estimates the magnitude of natural disasters and helps NGOs in the decision making process. The researchers have also presented an on-site humanitarian aid distribution model. Both could have been applied in the case of the recent Haiti earthquake.

Social interaction between neighbours, work colleagues and other communities and social groups makes voluntary vaccination programs for epidemics such as Swine Flu, SARS or Bird Flu a surprisingly effective method of disease control.

New research published today, Thursday 11 February, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), shows that contact with others can positively influence individuals to choose voluntary vaccination when considering the pros and cons.

Contradictions and puzzles surround the giant fossil Prototaxites. The fossils resemble tree trunks, and yet they are from a time before trees existed. The stable carbon isotope values are similar to those of fungi, but the fossils do not display structures usually found in fungi. Plant-like polymers have been found in the fossils, but nutritional evidence supports heterotrophy, which is not commonly found in plants. These are a few of the confounding factors surrounding the identification of Prototaxites fossils.

RICHLAND, Wash. -- An international team of climate scientists will take a new approach to modeling the Earth's climate future, according to a paper in 11 February Nature. The next set of models will include, for the first time, tightly linked analyses of greenhouse gas emissions, projections of the Earth's climate, impacts of climate change, and human decision-making.

A new University of California, Davis, study by a top ecologicalforecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict whensudden shifts in Earth's natural systems will occur -- a worrisomefinding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points thatcould push climate change into an irreparable global disaster.

An exotic form of carbon has been found to have an extra large nucleus, dwarfing even the nuclei of much heavier elements like copper and zinc, in experiments performed in a particle accelerator in Japan. The discovery is reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters and highlighted with a Viewpoint by Kirby Kemper and Paul Cottle of Florida State University in the February 8 issue of Physics (http://physics.aps.org.)

Virginia Key, Florida--Scientists at the University of Miami have analyzed images based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) observations taken before and just after Haiti's earthquake, on January 12. The images reveal surprising new details.

The images were obtained using data from Japan's ALOS satellite and made available to the scientific community through the efforts of the European Space Agency (ESA) and GEO, the Group of Earth Observation, an umbrella consortium of countries that promotes the exchange of satellite data to efficiently observe our planet.

Some animals, it seems, are going on a diet, while others have expanding waistlines.

It's likely these are reactions to rapidly rising temperatures due to global climate change, speculates Prof. Yoram Yom-Tov of Tel Aviv University's Department of Zoology, who has been measuring the evolving body sizes of birds and animals in areas where climate change is most extreme.