Earth

An international team that includes scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has published a reconstruction of the climate in northern Europe over the last 2,000 years based on the information provided by tree-rings. Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC.

AMHERST, Mass. – Physicists Benjamin Brau, Carlo Dallapiccola and Stephane Willocq at the University of Massachusetts Amherst were instrumental in this week's preliminary observation of a new particle, possibly the long-sought Higgs boson, announced by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) particle physics laboratory.

Lyding and graduate student Scott Schmucker purchased an inexpensive ion gun and tested Lyding's idea. It worked beautifully. STM tips with a starting radius of 100 nanometers were honed to a sharp 1-nanometer point, yielding extremely high resolution. In addition, the sputtering process works with any electrically conductive material.

On this July 4th week, U.S. beachgoers are thronging their way to seaside resorts and parks to celebrate with holiday fireworks.

Across the horizon and miles out to sea toward the north, the Atlantic Ocean's own spring and summer ritual is unfolding: the blooming of countless microscopic plant plankton, or phytoplankton.

In what's known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into color, first "greening" then "whitening" the sea as one species follows another.

July 4, 2012, was an historic day in science with researchers at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announcing the discovery of a new particle that is "consistent with the Higgs boson." It was also an historic day for the University of Rochester. Not only was one of its faculty members an originator of the theory for the Higgs mechanism and the Higgs boson, three of its scientists worked on one of the experiments that led to the CERN discovery.

PASADENA, Calif.—Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, have discovered a new particle that may be the long-sought Higgs boson, the fundamental particle that is thought to endow elementary particles with mass.

"This is a momentous time in the history of particle physics and in scientific exploration—the implications are profound," says Harvey Newman, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). "This is experimental science at its best."

Cambridge, Mass. - July 6, 2012 - Atmospheric scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Nanjing University have produced the first "bottom-up" estimates of China's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for 2005 to 2009, and the first statistically rigorous estimates of the uncertainties surrounding China's CO2 emissions.

Professor Ian Simmonds from the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences co-authored the study and said the new information showed this combined effect at both ground and atmospheric level played a key role in increasing the rate of warming in the Arctic.

"Loss of sea ice contributes to ground level warming while global warming intensifies atmospheric circulation and contributes to increased temperatures higher in the Arctic atmosphere," Professor Simmonds said.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the particle physics laboratory on the border of Switzerland and France, announced yesterday (July 4) that they have observed a new particle.

July 4, 2012 - Physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced today that they have observed a new particle. Whether the particle has the properties of the predicted Higgs boson remains to be seen.

University of Oklahoma high-energy physicists were among the 1,700 U.S. scientists from 89 American universities who collaborated on the international effort in the search for the Higgs boson. Results announced this week from CERN indicate discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson.

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Climate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years. The reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a period of dramatic swings in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

On this July 4th week, U.S. beachgoers are thronging their way to seaside resorts and parks to celebrate with holiday fireworks. But across the horizon and miles out to sea toward the north, the Atlantic Ocean's own spring and summer ritual unfolds. It entails the blooming of countless microscopic plants, or phytoplankton.

In what's known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first "greening," then "whitening" the sea as one or more species take the place of others.

A University of Saskatchewan-led international research team has discovered that aerosols from relatively small volcanic eruptions can be boosted into the high atmosphere by weather systems such as monsoons, where they can affect global temperatures. The research appears in the July 6 issue of the journal Science.

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite, which watches the movement of weather systems in the eastern half of the U.S., captured the expansion and movement of the derecho from its birthplace in Illinois. The satellite data was compiled and animated by the NASA GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.