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Scientists braved ticks and a tiger - what people in Panama call 'home' - to discover how human activities have perturbed the nitrogen cycle in tropical forests. By perturbed, pollution has helped, according to studies at two remote Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory sites in Panama and Thailand.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Two new species of owls have been discovered in the Philippines, and a Michigan State University researcher played a key role in confirming their existence.

The discovery, which is featured in the current issue of Forktail, the Journal of Asian Ornithology, took years to confirm, but it was well worth the effort, said the paper's lead author Pam Rasmussen, MSU assistant professor of zoology and assistant curator of mammalogy and ornithology at the MSU Museum.

Whether a material conducts electricity without losses is not least a question of the right temperature.

In the future it may be possible to make a more reliable prediction for high-temperature superconductors. These materials lose their resistance if they are cooled with liquid nitrogen, which is relatively easy to handle.

The 2012 Marine Climate Change in Australia Report Card shows climate change is having significant impacts on Australia's marine ecosystems.

The report card provides information about the current and predicted-future state of Australia's marine climate and its impact on our marine biodiversity. The report card also outlines actions that are underway to help our marine ecosystems adapt to climate change.

"Australia has some of the world's most unique marine ecosystems," project leader CSIRO's Dr Elvira Poloczanska said.

Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt's Nile Delta document the region's ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt's Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time.

The growth of high topography on the Tibetan Plateau in Sichuan, China, began much earlier than previously thought, according to an international team of geologists who looked at mountain ranges along the eastern edge of the plateau.

The Indian tectonic plate began its collision with Asia between 55 and 50 million years ago, but "significant topographic relief existed adjacent to the Sichuan Basin prior to the Indo-Asian collision," the researchers report online in Nature Geoscience.

Quantum computers promise to reach computation speeds far beyond that of today's computers. As they would use quantum effects, however, they would also be susceptible to external interferences. Information flow into and out of the system is a critical point. Researchers from KIT with partners from Grenoble and Strasbourg have now read out the quantum state of an atom directly by using electrodes. In the Nature journal, it is reported about the stable interface between classical and quantum world. (DOI: 10.1038/nature11341)

Many studies have found that problem drinking is related to subsequent unemployment; however, the reverse association is unclear. Some studies have found that unemployment can increase total drinking, alcohol disorders, and/or problem drinking while others have found that unemployment can decrease drinking or have no effect at all. An analysis of binge drinking as either a predictor or outcome of unemployment has found that binge drinking among women seems to have a significant association with long-term unemployment.

Melting over the Greenland ice sheet shattered the seasonal record on August 8 – a full four weeks before the close of the melting season, reports Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York.

The melting season in Greenland usually lasts from June – when the first puddles of meltwater appear – to early-September, when temperatures cool. This year, cumulative melting in the first week in August had already exceeded the record of 2010, taken over a full season, according to Professor Tedesco's ongoing analysis.

A new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and Emory University has uncovered fundamental details about the hexamer structures that make up the tiniest droplets of water, the key component of life – and one that scientists still don't fully understand.

Two tropical cyclones were spotted from NOAA's GOES-15 satellite today, August 15. Tropical Storm Hector continues to weaken in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, while the remnants of the Atlantic Ocean's Tropical Depression 7 are moving over Central America. NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., uses the GOES-15 satellite data to create images and animations from the satellite. The NOAA GOES-15 satellite sits in a fixed orbit over the eastern U.S. and provides infrared and visible imagery of the Eastern Pacific Ocean basin continuously.

Taking oral contraceptives continuously, rather than as traditionally prescribed for each cycle, provides earlier relief for moderate to severe menstrual cramps -- dysmenorrhea -- according to researchers at Penn State College of Medicine.

Dysmenorrhea occurs during menstruation, resulting from abnormal uterine contractions, increased sensitivity to pain and added pressure in the pelvic area. It is often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache and fatigue.

DURHAM, N.H., August 15, 2012 – A new report by U.S. and Canadian scientists analyzes decades of research and concludes that the climate of the Northeast has changed and is likely to change more. The report outlines the effects of climate change on multiple aspects of forests in the northeastern corner of the United States and eastern Canada and concludes with recommendations on adaptive and mitigating strategies for dealing with future effects.

NOAA-led paper published today in the journal Conservation Biology, high levels of background noise, mainly due to ships, have reduced the ability of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales to communicate with each other by about two-thirds.