Earth

TORONTO, ON – University of Toronto quantum physicists Jeff Lundeen and Aephraim Steinberg have shown that Hardy's paradox, a proposal that has confounded physicists for over a decade, can be confirmed and ultimately resolved, a task which had seemingly been impossible to perform.

Recent sequence stratigraphy, facies distribution, and tectonic study of 92 remnant basins in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau reveals the Cenozoic evolutionary history of the plateau. During the Paleocene-Eocene (65－34 million years BP), the southern Tibet and the Yecheng area in Xinjiang were parts of the Neo-Tethys remnant sea where coastal plain fluvial facies dominated the hinterland of the plateau. The Sunpa-Ganzi and eastern Tibet uplifting zone shrank easterly, and tectonic uplifting took place primarily along the Bangor and the Kunlun- Altyn Tagh zone on the NE margin of the plateau.

University of Oklahoma researchers believe newer, more environmentally friendly fuels produced from biomass could create alternative energy solutions and alleviate dependence on foreign oil without requiring changes to current fuel infrastructure systems. According to Lance Lobban, director of the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, the development of "green" fuels is an important part of the world's, and Oklahoma's, energy future.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The job of one University of Missouri researcher could chill to the bone, but his research could make weather predicting more accurate. Patrick Market, associate professor of atmospheric science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, is chasing storms in the dead of winter in order to release weather balloons that will produce data about the little-known phenomenon of thundersnow.

"One of the things we don't understand is how the cloud becomes electrified," Market said. "We hope to determine how the atmosphere is becoming unstable."

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – January 13, 2009 – The water level in the Great Lakes has varied by only about two meters during the last century, helping them to play a vital role in the region's shipping, fishing, recreation and power generation industries.

But new evidence by scientists from the University of Rhode Island and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, published last month in the journal Eos, indicates that the water level in the lake system is highly sensitive to climate changes.

Auburn, AL – U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) Ecologist Jim Miller, Ph.D., one of the foremost authorities on nonnative plants in the South, today identified the invasive plant species he believes pose the biggest threats to southern forest ecosystems in 2009.

Stanford, CA— Human impact on tropical forest ecosystems has reached a "tsunami" stage, say scientists, and will require a new generation of sophisticated remote-sensing technology to monitor the changes. Speaking at a January 12, 2009 symposium "Will the Rainforests Survive?

Boulder, CO, USA - BULLETIN papers examine carbon-14 dating of marine mud fossils in Ireland that suggests high ice-sheet sensitivity to small climate changes; formation of Valles Marineris, Mars; a buried fossil forest in the Gold Hill Loess, Alaska; a 20-meter-high salt pillar near the Dead Sea; how shrimp affect groundwater flow in the Biscayne aquifer; a possible emerging natural gas play in the Appalachian Basin; and banded iron formations exposed by the Agouron South African Drilling Project.

Madison, WI, January 12, 2009 – Following the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 and 1990 acidic deposition in North America has declined significantly since its peak in 1973. Consequently, research has shifted from studying the effects of acidic deposition to the recovery of these aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

MADISON, WI, JANUARY 12, 2009 - With recent increase in the cost of energy and subsequent explorations into alternative energy sources, the increased harvest of corn residue for cellulosic ethanol production is likely in the future. This may be especially true in fields where corn is grown continuously, in part because perennially high residue amounts favor annual harvests, and also because corn residue left on the soil surface is a source of inoculum for corn diseases.

MADISON, WI, JANUARY 12, 2009 – Geologists, archeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, engineers, and natural resource managers routinely use National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS) data across field sciences. Researchers at Iowa State University decided to test the reliability of this data as applied in geology, and sought to create the best possible Quaternary geology map of the Des Moines Lobe solely using NCSS data.

Recent years have seen the rapid emergence of minimally invasive surgery procedures in operating theatres. However, the training of surgeons in this field still leaves much to be desired. Researcher Magdalena Chmarra has changed this state of affairs by developing a realistic training system which records and analyses the surgeon's movements. As a result there is now, for the first time, an objective benchmark for measuring a surgeon's basic skills in the field of minimally invasive surgery.

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Soot from pollution causes winter snowpacks to warm, shrink and warm some more. This continuous cycle sends snowmelt streaming down mountains as much as a month early, a new study finds. How pollution affects a mountain range's natural water reservoirs is important for water resource managers in the western United States and Canada who plan for hydroelectricity generation, fisheries and farming.

Rapidly warming climate is likely to seriously alter crop yields in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century and, without adaptation, will leave half the world's population facing serious food shortages, new research shows.

To compound matters, the population of this equatorial belt – from about 35 degrees north latitude to 35 degrees south latitude – is among the poorest on Earth and is growing faster than anywhere else.

Priceless treasure from the bottom of the sea is locked away at Texas A&M University, stacked on floor-to-ceiling racks and kept secure in 15,000 square feet of refrigerated space.

Although it's not gold bullion or precious gems, this treasure dazzles oceanographers, geologists, geophysicists and other geoscientists who come from around the world to College Station to sample it. One piece is even on permanent display at the Smithsonian.