Earth

The world's oldest known submerged town has been revealed through the discovery of late Neolithic pottery. The finds were made during an archaeological survey of Pavlopetri, off the southern Laconia coast of Greece.

Marine geo-archaeologist Dr Nic Flemming of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton said: "The discovery of Neolithic pottery is incredible! It means that we are looking at a port city which may be 5000-6000 years old, with trade goods and wrecks nearby showing some of the very earliest days of seafaring trade in the Mediterranean."

Diverting sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River below New Orleans could generate new land in the river's delta in the next century.

The land would equal almost half the acreage otherwise expected to disappear during that period, a new study shows.

For decades, sea-level rise, land subsidence, and a decrease in river sediment have caused vast swaths of the Mississippi Delta to vanish into the sea.

Boulder, CO, USA - Seismologists have found a new way to piece together the history of hurricanes in the North Atlantic—by looking back through records of the planet's seismic noise. It's an entirely new way to tap into the rich trove of seismic records, and the strategy might help establish a link between global warming and the frequency or intensity of hurricanes.

"Looking for something like hurricane records in seismology doesn't occur to anybody," said Carl Ebeling, of Northwestern University in Evanston. "It's a strange and wondrous combination."

CLEMSON — Algae, not asteroids, were the key to the end of the dinosaurs, say two Clemson University researchers. Geologist James W. Castle and ecotoxicologist John H. Rodgers have published findings that toxin producing algae were a deadly factor in mass extinctions millions of years ago. The research not only provides new insights into the past but also offers a caution about the future. The scientists say that current environmental conditions show significant similarity to times when previous mass extinctions occurred.

Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale, and colleagues have found that women without mutations of the HOXA13 gene do not need to be subjected to x-rays and other tests for a rare condition called hand-foot genital syndrome. The research is presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) scientific meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, October 17-21.

Princeton, New Jersey. October 19th, 2009 ~Not that long ago – the blink of a geologic eye – global temperatures were so warm that ice on Greenland could have been hard to come by. Today, the largest island in the world is covered with ice 1.6 miles thick. Even so, Greenland has become a hot spot for climate scientists. Why? Because tiny bubbles trapped in the ice layers may help resolve a fundamental question about global warming: how fast and how much will ice sheets melt?

UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a novel enzyme responsible for the formation of suberin — the woody, waxy, cell-wall substance found in cork. While effective at keeping wine inside a bottle, suberin's most important function in plants is to control water and nutrient transportation and keep pathogens out. Adjusting the permeability of plant tissues by genetically manipulating the expression of this enzyme could lead to easier agricultural production of crops used for biofuels.

An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Global warming in the next century could cause a significant increase in the productivity of high-elevation forests of the Pacific Northwest, a new study suggests. However, forests at lower elevations – which in recent years have accounted for more than 80 percent of the region's timber harvest – could face a decline in growth.

New ground measurements made by the West Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN) project, composed of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, The Ohio State University, and The University of Memphis, suggest the rate of ice loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet has been slightly overestimated.

Rogue waves—giant waves that spring up suddenly and tower over the seas around them—have inspired physicists to look for an analogue in light. These high-intensity pulses can cross large distances without losing information. Now a team of physicists have identified one set of conditions that produces optical rogue waves. Their findings are reported in Physical Review A and highlighted with in the October 19 issue of Physics (physics.aps.org).

CSIRO scientists have produced the first preliminary predictions of the potential impact of climate change on the Australian seabed.

The results of the five-year study predict potential high-risk areas due to seabed movement, erosion and changes in reef growth.

According to CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship project leader Dr Cedric Griffiths, the interaction between the ocean and the seabed is poorly understood.

Drugs made using unusual metals could form an effective treatment against colon and ovarian cancer, including cancerous cells that have developed immunity to other drugs, according to research at the University of Warwick and the University of Leeds.

The study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, showed that a range of compounds containing the two transition metals Ruthenium and Osmium, which are found in the same part of the periodic table as precious metals like platinum and gold, cause significant cell death in ovarian and colon cancer cells.

TORONTO, ON – According to a new study by geologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Maryland, the wealth of some minerals that lie in the rock beneath the Earth's surface may be extraterrestrial in origin.

"The extreme temperature at which the Earth's core formed more than four billion years ago would have completely stripped any precious metals from the rocky crust and deposited them in the core," says James Brenan of the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study published in Nature Geoscience on October 18.

GRIMSBY, ONTARIO, CANADA – When Tony Garchinski heard a loud crash just after 9 p.m. on Friday, September 25 he didn't think much of it. That is, until he awoke the next morning to find the windshield of his mom's Nissan Pathfinder with a huge crack in it. Making note of the 'unusual' rocks he later found on the car's hood, Garchinski chalked the incident up to vandalism and filed a police report.