Earth

Washington, D.C.— Seawater circulation pumps hydrogen and boron into the oceanic plates that make up the seafloor, and some of this seawater remains trapped as the plates descend into the mantle at areas called subduction zones. By analyzing samples of submarine volcanic glass near one of these areas, scientists found unexpected changes in isotopes of hydrogen and boron from the deep mantle. They expected to see the isotope "fingerprint" of seawater.

Most people attempt to reduce the little uncertainties of life by carrying umbrellas on cloudy days, purchasing automobile insurance or hiring inspectors to evaluate homes they might consider purchasing. For scientists, reducing uncertainty is a no less important goal, though in the weird realm of quantum physics, the term has a more specific meaning.

Boulder, CO, USA - New GSA BULLETIN science published online 24 Feb. includes work on the Chugach Metamorphic Complex of southern Alaska; news and data from the first non-Russian science team to make a helicopter over-flight of Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka, Russia, after its large 2005 eruption; and a study by a team from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory that proposes a new calibration model for the Eocene segment of the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale (GPTS).

In the crash-car derby between heavy and light isotopes vying for the coolest spots as magma turns to solid rock, weightier isotopes have an edge, research led by Case Western Reserve University shows.

This tiny detail may offer clues to how igneous rocks form.

As molten rock cools along a gradient, atoms want to move towards the cool end. This happens because hotter atoms move faster than cooler atoms and, therefore, hotter atoms move to the cool region faster than the cooler atoms move to the hot region.

When Sifrhippus sandae, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale.

It weighed in at around 12 pounds--and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia.

Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

Researchers at the NanoScience Center of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, and at Harvard University, US, have discovered a novel way to make nanomaterials. Using computer simulations, the researchers have been able to predict that long and narrow graphene nanoribbons can be rolled into carbon nanotubes by means of twisting. The research has received funding from the Academy of Finland.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered the means by which a polymer known as PVDF enables capacitors to store and release large amounts of energy quickly. Their findings could lead to much more powerful and efficient electric cars.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the nanoscale and the ever-elusive quantum computer are among the advancements edging closer toward the realm of possibility, and a new study co-authored by a UC Santa Barbara researcher may give both an extra nudge. The findings appear today in Science Express, an online version of the journal Science.

When Sifrhippus, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale. It weighed in at around 12 pounds -- and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia.

Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, caused by the release of vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- As scientists continue developing climate change projection models, paleontologists studying an extreme short-term global warming event have discovered direct evidence about how mammals respond to rising temperatures.

A new study reports that the disintegration of the Maya Civilization may have been related to relatively modest reductions in rainfall.

The study was led by Professors Martín Medina-Elizalde of the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico and Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton in the UK. Professor Rohling says:

WASHINGTON, February 23, 2012—The Council of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) unanimously issued two resolutions at its February meeting in response to the suspension of the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District No. 1 (TUSD). The resolutions addressed specifically the suspension of such courses and urged also the repeal of Arizona HB2281, which amended the Arizona Revised Statutes Relating to School Curriculum and led to the questioning of such courses.

As the Earth's climate changes, the worst inundations from hurricanes and tropical storms could become far more common in low-lying coastal areas, a new study suggests. Researchers from Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that regions such as the New York City metropolitan area that currently experience a disastrous flood every century could instead become submerged every one or two decades.

San Diego, Calif. – Beyond the personal tragedy of chronic alcoholism there is heartbreak in the biological sense, too. Scientists know severe alcoholism stresses the heart and that mitochondria, the cellular energy factories, are especially vulnerable to dysfunction. But they don't know the precise mechanism.

In an exclusive interview with Physics World, astronaut Drew Feustel gives a vivid account of his two missions into space and recalls his determination to make his childhood ambition – space flight – come true.

In the video, Feustel discusses his two missions – his maiden flight in 2009, as part of a team sent to repair the Hubble Space telescope, and his return to space in 2011 as the lead spacewalker on Endeavour's final mission to the International Space Station.