Earth

SELFOSS, ICELAND – Giant volcanic eruptions in Nicaragua over the past 70,000 years could have injected enough gases into the atmosphere to temporarily thin the ozone layer, according to new research. And, if it happened today, a similar explosive eruption could do the same, releasing more than twice the amount of ozone-depleting halogen gases currently in stratosphere due to manmade emissions.

The success rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures still remains relatively low, at only around 30%. The high emotional, health and financial costs associated with having to undergo the procedure multiple times has driven the need to develop more efficient methods of assessing the development potential of embryos to ensure that only those with the highest potential are selected for IVF treatment.

A novel porous material that has unique carbon dioxide retention properties has been developed through research led by the University of Nottingham.

The findings, published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature Materials, form part of ongoing efforts to develop new materials for gas storage applications and could have an impact in the advancement of new carbon capture products for reducing emissions from fossil fuel processes.

What's good news in one setting might spell disaster in another. In cancer for instance, when a certain cell is commanded to grow and divide without restraint, it's a welcome message for the cell itself but a tragedy for the person who harbors this cell in his or her body. Weizmann Institute scientists have managed to decipher and block one type of molecular message that prompts unbridled cellular growth.

DARIEN, IL – Coaches, owners and fantasy-league traders take note: Sleep researcher W. Christopher Winter, MD, has uncovered a link between a pro athlete's longevity and the degree of sleepiness experienced in the daytime.

Hard lessons from around the American West and Australia could help improve groundwater management and protect ecosystems in California, Stanford University researchers find.

To successfully reduce the United States' dependence on fuels from outside North America, the government must pursue policies that foster the diversion of Canadian oil sands crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, according to a new study by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Cambridge, Mass. – June 11, 2012 – A team of researchers from Harvard University have invented a way to keep any metal surface free of ice and frost. The treated surfaces quickly shed even tiny, incipient condensation droplets or frost simply through gravity. The technology prevents ice sheets from developing on surfaces—and any ice that does form, slides off effortlessly.

Recent years' warming in the Arctic has caused local changes in vegetation, reveals new research by biologists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and elsewhere published in the prestigious journals Nature Climate Change and Ecology Letters.

The results show that most plants in the Arctic have grown taller, and the proportion of bare ground has decreased. Above all, there has been an increase in evergreen shrubs.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Although it's long been suspected that human activity has greatly contributed to environmental stress, it's only recently that science has begun to show just how great a role that activity is playing.

In an article published in the journal Nature Climate Change, Michigan State University's Thomas Dietz and his colleague, Eugene Rosa of Washington State University, take a critical look at the various factors that have long been prime climate-change suspects. One in particular: The role of population growth.

Matter exhibits weird properties at very cold temperatures. Take superfluids, for example: discovered in 1937, they can flow without resistance forever, spookily climbing the walls of a container and dripping onto the floor.

In the past 100 years, 11 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to nearly two dozen people for the discovery or theoretical explanation of such cold materials – superconductors and Bose–Einstein condensates, to name two – yet a unifying theory of these extreme behaviors has eluded theorists.

NEWPORT, Ore. – A team of scientists that last year created waves by correctly forecasting the 2011 eruption of Axial Seamount years in advance now says that the undersea volcano located some 250 miles off the Oregon coast gave off clear signals hours before its impending eruption.

In Switzerland, more than 20,000 people (37% of all deaths) die of cardiovascular disease caused by atherosclerosis each year. Treatment options are currently available to people who suffer from the disease but no drug can target solely the diseased areas, often leading to generalized side effects. Intravenous injection of a vasodilator (a substance that dilates blood vessels), such as nitroglycerin, dilates both the diseased vessels and the rest of our arteries.

7 June 2012: Element Six, the world leader in synthetic diamond supermaterials, working in partnership with academics in Harvard University, California Institute of Technology and Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, has used its Element Six single crystal synthetic diamond grown by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) to demonstrate the capability of quantum bit memory to exceed one second at room temperature.

The data from the AIRS instrument is also used to create an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, all of which are helpful to forecasters.