Earth

PULLMAN, Wash.—Since the dawn of science, scientists have been using models to visualize and explain the workings of the world. But where the earliest ideas might have been conveyed in something as simple as a cave painting, modern-day scientists are wrestling with phenomena as big and complicated as intercontinental air pollution, desertification and global warming.

The scale of such inquiries recently set Howard Grimes to thinking, well, big.

Professor Stephen Sheppard will present at the symposium Beyond Climate Models: Rethinking How to Envision the Future with Climate Change Friday, February 17, 1:30-4:30 p.m. at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in Vancouver.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Phoenix, the sixth largest U.S. city, is vulnerable to water shortages even without climate change because of heavy outdoor water use and fragmented governance, according to research conducted at the Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) at Arizona State University.

"Scientists, decision-makers and the general public have different perceptions of Phoenix's water problems," said Patricia Gober, a geographer and Senior Sustainability Scientist at ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability.

A Simon Fraser University researcher known for his expertise on naturally occurring hazards will participate Friday in a shake down of the truth about a new form of human-induced earthquakes.

John Clague, an earth sciences professor, will discuss documented connections between shale gas development and earthquakes at a symposium during the 2012 American Association for the Advance of Science (AAAS) conference in Vancouver.

The conference is Feb. 16-20 at the Vancouver Convention Centre (VCC).

A presentation at the world's largest science fair by a Simon Fraser University earth sciences professor promises to make the skin crawl of even the most ardent disbelievers of the predicted impacts of climate change.

John Clague will explain the impact of climate change on historical sea level changes off the Pacific Northwest in his talk Impacts of Rising Seas on the British Columbia Coast in the 21st Century.

It's not a take on climate change we often hear about. But Mark Collard, a Simon Fraser University Canada Research Chair and professor of archaeology, will talk about how climate change impacts human evolution at the world's largest science fair.

The 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference runs Feb. 16 to 20 at the Vancouver Convention Centre in downtown Vancouver.

Climate warming caused by greenhouse gases is very likely to increase the variability of summertime temperatures around the world by the end of this century, a University of Washington climate scientist said Friday. The findings have major implications for food production.

Current climate models do not adequately reflect feedbacks from the relationship between the atmosphere and soil, which causes them to underestimate the increase of variability in summertime temperatures, said David Battisti, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

When it comes to predicting climate change, researchers need to take into account the effects of particles in the air.

That's the message presented by University of Iowa researcher Vicki Grassian Friday, Feb. 17, at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Marcel Babin, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Remote Sensing of Canada's New Arctic Frontier at the Université Laval, will be discussing his research on the effects of environmental changes in the Arctic as part of an upcoming press breakfast panel discussion. The February 17 Canada Press Breakfast on the Arctic and oceans will be part of the 178th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to be held in Vancouver, and will feature a variety of prominent researchers.

VANCOUVER -- Indigenous people around the world are among the most vulnerable to climate change and are increasingly susceptible to the pathogen loads found in potable water after heavy rainfall or rapid snow melt.

These are the preliminary findings of Sherilee Harper, a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar in Aboriginal People's Health at the University of Guelph, who says that there has been a significant increase in the incidence of diarrhea and vomiting following these weather events.

Phytoplankton Key to a Healthy Planet says Canada Research Chair at the Forefront of Phytoplankton Research

Maria (Maite) Maldonado, Canada Research Chair in Phytoplankton Trace Metal Physiology at The University of British Columbia, has made understanding the intricacies of marine phytoplankton her life's work. These tiny, single-celled algae, which act as a natural sponge for carbon dioxide and are a critical part of the global carbon cycle, may play a key role in ensuring the health of the planet.

Researchers from the University of York are pioneering the development of electron microscopes which will allow scientists to examine a greater variety of materials in new revolutionary ways.

The team, headed by Professor Jun Yuan and Professor Mohamed Babiker, from the University's Department of Physics has created electron beams with orbital angular momentum – electron vortex beams – which will open the way to many novel applications including the more efficient examining of magnetic materials.

Vancouver, B.C. — February 15, 2012 — We are on the cusp of a new information revolution — a quantum leap in technology — and the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo is leading the way. With the world's largest concentration of researchers working to harness the forces of quantum mechanics, the institute stands to transform computing, communications and other technologies.

Ghost imaging (GI), and its even more oddly named cousin virtual ghost imaging (VGI), seem to contradict conventional wisdom by being able to image an object by simply counting photons in a "light bucket." This non-intuitive technique, however, can lead to better images when conditions are less than ideal. In a first-of-its-kind demonstration, a team of researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Adelphi, Md., and the University of Maryland in Baltimore, captured reflected photons from a highly specialized laser beam to create a VGI image of a remote target.

"Perhaps the earliest public demonstration of an electric motor," writes a team of researchers from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, "involved the automatic rotation of a turkey on a spit over a fire" at a party put on by Benjamin Franklin in 1749. Franklin's electrostatic motor was self-commutating, meaning that it was able to provide a continuous torque while it turned without requiring external electronics to control its progress.