Earth

MADISON –- Though worries about "nuclear winter" have faded since the end of the Cold War, existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still hold the potential for devastating global impacts.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Rutgers University have found that the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan would greatly reduce yields of staple crops, even in distant countries.

After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy's Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. Squeezing the last bit of information out of 500 trillion collisions produced by the Tevatron for each experiment since March 2001, the final analysis of the data does not settle the question of whether the Higgs particle exists, but gets closer to an answer.

Tiny 'bone-devouring worms', known to both eat and inhabit dead whale skeletons and other bones on the sea floor, have a unique ability to release bone-melting acid, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego have recently discovered. The work is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology's 2012 meeting in Salzburg, Austria.

In this month's Physics World, Steve Haake, director of the Centre for Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, reveals that the men's 100 m sprint will be one event not to miss this summer.

Haake has developed something called the "performance-improvement index", which uses very simple physics to compare the relative improvement of top athletes in different sports over the last 100 years.

PHILADELPHIA (July 1, 2012)—For eastern Pacific populations of leatherback turtles, the 21st century could be the last. New research suggests that climate change could exacerbate existing threats and nearly wipe out the population. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by a research team from Drexel University, Princeton University, other institutions and government agencies.

WASHINGTON - Don't let the hobbling, wobbling, and blubber fool you into thinking elephantseals are merely sluggish sun bathers. In fact, scientists are benefiting from these seals'surprisingly lengthy migrations to determine critical information about Antarctic melting andfuture sea level rise.

In an effort to save the dwindling honeybee population researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas are looking to viruses to help treat one of the most destructive and widespread bee brood diseases in the United States. They report their findings today at the 2012 General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

300 million years ago, the Earth's production of coal suddenly, which marked the end of the Carboniferous period, during the Paleozoic Era that had started 60 million years before. This period was characterized by the successive formation of large carbon beds arising from accumulation and burial of ancient trees growing up in vast marshy forests.

Boulder, Colorado, USA – Mountain belts on Earth are most commonly formed by collision of one or more tectonic plates. The process of collision, uplift, and subsequent erosion of long mountain belts often produces profound global effects, including changes in regional and global climates, as well as the formation of important economic resources, including oil and gas reservoirs and ore deposits. Understanding the formation of mountain belts is thus a very important element of earth science research.

Boulder, Colo., USA – Topics in this new batch of Geology papers posted online 29 June include ecospace utilization; Little Bahama Bank; climatic asynchrony; oceanic crust; sand budgets; the Alpine fault's seismic hazard to New Zealand; volcano behavior; gravity oscillations; chemical weathering in the Critical Zone; giant wave ripples; the location of high peaks as a function of drainage network; and soils as ledgers recording transactions of energy and material between Earth's plants, rocks, water, and atmosphere.

Seismic risk not only depends on the magnitude of the tremor itself but also on the resistance of buildings and the social characteristics of its population. A team of Spanish scientists have presented a new method for calculating seismic risk incorporating aspects like social fragility and the chances of collective recovery.

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) will be adding a leap second at 00:59 BST on 1st July to its atomic clocks, to ensure UK time remains synchronised with international time.

LIVERMORE, Calif.—A team of nanomaterials researchers at Sandia National Laboratories has developed a new technique for radiation detection that could make radiation detection in cargo and baggage more effective and less costly for homeland security inspectors.

A new study to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting on 30th June has shown that caffeine boosts power in older muscles, suggesting the stimulant could aid elderly people to maintain their strength, reducing the incidence of falls and injuries.

For adults in their prime, caffeine helps muscles to produce more force. But as we age, our muscles naturally change and become weaker.

Scientists convening at the largest-ever meeting of tropical biologists congratulated Brazil for its global leadership on environment and science, but warned that recent developments could jeopardize that position, undermining progress on reducing deforestation, protecting indigenous lands, and safeguarding ecosystems outside the Amazon rainforest.