Earth

Uncertainty about how much the climate is changing is not a reason to delay preparing for the harmful impacts of climate change says Professor Jim Hall of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and colleagues at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, writing today in Nature Climate Change.

The effects of storm surge and sea-level rise have become topics of everyday conversation in the days and weeks following Hurricane Sandy's catastrophic landfall along the mid-Atlantic coast.

Ongoing research by professor John Brubaker of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is throwing light on another, less-familiar component of sea-level variability—the "intra-seasonal" changes that occupy the middle ground between rapid, storm-related surges in sea level and the long-term increase in sea level due to global climate change.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories' one-of-a-kind multiphase shock tube began with a hallway conversation that led to what engineer Justin Wagner describes as the only shock tube in the world that can look at how shock waves interact with dense particle fields.

The machine is considered multiphase because it can study shock wave propagation through a mixture of gas and solid particles.

Fairbanks, Alaska—University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Vladimir Romanovsky is one of four scientists who authored a report released today by the United Nations Environmental Programme.

The wetting model is a classical problem in surface science and biomimetic science. Professor LIU Jianlin and his collaborators from China University of Petroleum, Wuhan University and Fourth Military Medical University approached this old and classical problem from a new direction. They stressed that it is the triple contact line and not the contact area of the droplet/solid interface that determines the macroscopic contact angle.

The stems of shrubs have given researchers a window into a glacier's past, potentially allowing them to more accurately assess how they're set to change in the future.

Their findings have been published today, 27 November, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, and show how a glacier's history of melting can be extended way past the instrumental record.

RENO – This week a pioneering study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and co-authored by Dr. Alison Murray and Dr. Christian Fritsen of Nevada's Desert Research Institute (DRI) reveals, for the first time, a viable community of bacteria that survives and ekes out a living in a dark, salty and subfreezing environment beneath nearly 20 meters of ice in one of Antarctica's most isolated lakes.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new University at Buffalo study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters examines maar craters, which resemble the bowl-like cavities formed by meteorites but are in some ways more mysterious.

Scientists often can discern pertinent details about meteorites -- when they struck, how large they were, the angle they approached Earth and other information -- by measuring the diameter and volume of the impact crater.

Cambridge, Mass. - November 26, 2012 - Now you see it, now you don't.

A new device invented at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) can absorb 99.75% of infrared light that shines on it. When activated, it appears black to infrared cameras.

Composed of just a 180-nanometer-thick layer of vanadium dioxide (VO2) on top of a sheet of sapphire, the device reacts to temperature changes by reflecting dramatically more or less infrared light.

A large number of friends on Facebook may appear impressive but, according to a new report, the more social circles a person is linked to online the more likely social media will be a source of stress.

A report from the University of Edinburgh Business School has found that the more groups of people in someone's Facebook friends, the greater potential to cause offence. In particular, adding employers or parents resulted in the greatest increase in anxiety.

New research shows that concerns about governmental failure to act effectively and fairly in the aftermath of extreme weather events can affect the degree to which residents are willing to protect themselves.

Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the findings of a team led by scientists at the University of Exeter could prove key to establishing how society should evolve to cope with more turbulent weather and more frequent mega storms.

Among the most important techniques developed in atomic physics over the past few years are methods that enable the storage and cooling of atoms and ions at temperatures just above absolute zero. Scientists from Bangalore and Mainz have now demonstrated in an experiment that captured ions can also be cooled through contact with cold atoms and may thus be stored in so-called ion traps in a stable condition for longer periods of time. This finding runs counter to predictions that ions would actually be heated through collisions with atoms.

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- The key to motivation in physical activity may be feeling inadequate. One Kansas State University researcher found that those who exercised with a teammate whom they perceived to be better increased their workout time and intensity by as much as 200 percent.

Brandon Irwin, assistant professor of kinesiology, was the principle investigator in a study that tested whether individuals engage in more intense physical activity when alone, with a virtual partner or competing against a teammate.

In nature processes such as the movement of fluids, the intensity of electromagnetic signals, chemical compositions, etc., are subject to random fluctuations which normally are called 'noise'. This noise is a source of energy and its utilisation for undertaking a task is a paradigm that nature has shown to be possible in certain cases.

Drained wetlands in Sweden account for the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as Swedish industry. This is shown by a summary of research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

Forests and agricultural fields on drained previous wetlands make up between five and ten percent of Sweden's surface area. When these wetlands are drained, they become a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.