Earth

Tasmania's east coast is recording its highest-ever winter water temperatures of more than 13ºC – up to 1.5ºC above normal – due to a strengthening of an ocean current originating north of Australia.

Satellites have given oceanographers an insight into a remarkable phenomenon. It is a significant extension of the Leeuwin Current curling around the southern tip of Tasmania and reaching as far north as St Helens.

Keeping certain poisonous houseplants, such as Dieffenbachia (dumbcane), Philodendron, peace lily, and pothos, away from pets is common knowledge, but the reason is not. For houseplants like these, the problem may not just be a poison, but the presence of tiny crystals throughout the plant.

When Alaska's Kasatochi Volcano erupted on Aug. 7, 2008, it virtually sterilized Kasatochi Island, covering the small Aleutian island with a layer of ash and other volcanic material several meters thick. The eruption also provided a rare research opportunity: the chance to see how an ecosystem develops from the very first species to colonize the island.

PASADENA, Calif.—A previously unrecognized player in the process by which gases produced by trees and other plants become aerosols—microscopically small particles in the atmosphere—has been discovered by a research team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Their research on the creation and effects of these chemicals, called epoxides, is being featured in this week's issue of the journal Science.

Orchids are famous for their deceptions. Most of those with nothing of value to offer their pollinators lure them instead with the scents of more rewarding flowers or potential mates. Now, a report published online on August 6th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveals for the first time that a species of orchid, which lives on the Chinese island of Hainan, fools its hornet pollinator by issuing a chemical that honeybees use to send an alarm.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A period of global warming from 53 million to 47 million years ago strongly influenced plants and animals, spurring a biodiversity boom in western North America, researchers from three research museums report in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The detectors will become part of the Advanced Gamma Tracking Array (AGATA) experiment, currently based in Italy, which aims to create a 'fingerprint' of the inside of the atomic nucleus to understand the structure of all matter in the Universe, including human beings and the stars.

The burning of fossil fuels has released tremendous amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, significantly impacting global climate. Were it not for the absorption of CO2 by the oceans, the alarming growth of atmospheric CO2 concentration would be substantially greater than it is. However, this beneficial role of the oceans as a CO2 "scrubber" does not come without undesired consequences. When dissolved, CO2 acts as an acid, and lowers seawater pH.

Geoengineering techniques aim to slow global warming through the use of human-made changes to the Earth's land, seas or atmosphere. But new research shows that the use of geoengineering to do environmental good may cause other environmental harm. In a symposium at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting, ecologists discuss the viability of geoengineering, concluding that it is potentially dangerous at the global scale, where the risks outweigh the benefits.

In a deadly game of heads or tails venomous sea snakes in the Pacific and Indian Oceans deceive their predators into believing they have two heads, claims research published today in Marine Ecology.

The discovery, made by Dr Arne Redsted Rasmussen and Dr Johan Elmberg, showed that Yellow-lipped Sea Kraits (Laticauda colubrina) use skin markings and behaviour patterns to fool predators into thinking their tail is a second head, complete with lethal venom.

Temple University biologist Erik Cordes and a team of researchers are developing a means for protecting vital coral communities from an expanding frontier of thousands of oil platforms pushing deeper into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Stories of ships mysteriously sent to watery graves by sudden, giant waves have long puzzled scientists and sailors. New research by San Francisco State professor Tim Janssen suggests that changes in water depth and currents, which are common in coastal areas, may significantly increase the likelihood of these extreme waves.

URBANA - In a little over seven hours, University of Illinois weed scientist Patrick Tranel got more genetic information about waterhemp than in two years time in a lab. The genetic information was obtained using pyrosequencing technology in the Keck Center at the U of I. The genetic sequence will allow scientists to study herbicide resistance in waterhemp.

The Naval Research Laboratory's satellite suite, the Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment 2 (ANDE-2), was deployed from NASA's Space Shuttle Endeavour on July 30, 2009.

The ANDE-2 satellite suite consists of two nearly perfectly spherical micro-satellites with instrumentation to perform two interrelated mission objectives. The first objective is to monitor the total atmospheric density along the orbit for improved orbit determination of resident space objects. The second is to provide a test object for both radar and optical U.S. Space Surveillance Network sensors.