Earth

The ability to accurately measure a second in time is at the heart of many essential technologies; the most recognizable may be the Global Positioning System (GPS). In a paper accepted for publication in the AIP's journal Review of Scientific Instruments, a researcher at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder discusses how achieving a stable and coordinated global measure of time requires more than just the world's most accurate timepieces; it also requires approximately 400 atomic clocks working as an ensemble.

Blooms, or proliferation, of jellyfish have shown a substantial, visible impact on coastal populations – clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants – and recent media reports have created a perception that the world's oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overharvesting of fish. Now, a new global and collaborative study questions claims that jellyfish are increasing worldwide and suggests claims are not supported with any hard evidence or scientific analyses to date.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Blooms, or proliferation, of jellyfish have shown a substantial, visible impact on coastal populations — clogged nets for fishermen, stinging waters for tourists, even choked intake lines for power plants — and recent media reports have created a perception that the world's oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overharvesting of fish.

BOULDER, Colo. – Physicists at JILA have created the first "frequency comb" in the extreme ultraviolet band of the spectrum, high-energy light less than 100 nanometers (nm) in wavelength. Laser-generated frequency combs are the most accurate method available for precisely measuring frequencies, or colors, of light. In reaching the new band of the spectrum, the JILA experiments demonstrated for the first time a very fine mini-comb-like structure within each subunit, or harmonic, of the larger comb, drastically sharpening the measurement tool.

WASHINGTON -- The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "">Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast series puts forth the reassuring finding that concerns about global warming having a domino effect — unleashing 600 billion tons of carbon in vast expanses of peat in the Northern hemisphere and accelerating warming to disastrous proportions — may be less justified than previously thought.

World fuel consumption is shifting more and more to diesel at the expense of gasoline. A recently published article in Nature Chemistry by a research team at Stockholm University and the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain presents a new porous material that evinces unique properties for converting gasoline directly into diesel. The material has a tremendously complex atomic structure that could only be determined with the aid of transmission electron microscopy.

Tropical cyclones will cause $109 billion in damages by 2100, according to Yale and MIT researchers in a paper published in Nature Climate Change.

That figure represents an increased vulnerability from population and especially economic growth, as well as the effects of climate change. Greater vulnerability to cyclones is expected to increase global tropical damage to $56 billion by 2100—double the current damage—from the current rate of $26 billion per year if the present climate remains stable.

New research reveals how the arrival of the first plants 470 million years ago triggered a series of ice ages. Led by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford, the study is published today (1 February 2012) in Nature Geoscience.

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Teun Bousema of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK and colleagues argue that targeting malaria "hotspots," small groups of households at a substantially increased risk of malaria transmission, is a highly efficient way to reduce malaria transmission at all levels of transmission intensity.

(NEW YORK, NY, January 31, 2012) – Although women over age 50 who become pregnant via egg donation are at an elevated risk for developing obstetrical complications, their complication rates are similar to those of younger recipients, according to a study by Columbia University Medical Center researchers to be published in the February 2012 issue of the American Journal of Perinatology.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Atomic-level defects in graphene could be a path forward to smaller and faster electronic devices, according to a study led by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

There are an estimated 150 million works of art in the market today – in museums, public spaces and in the holdings of private collectors. Not only because of their material value, but also because of their intangible value they deserve to be handled carefully. However, neither artists nor museums or collectors want to protect artwork from detrimental influences by keeping it in a climate-controlled safe. Art needs the public.

Researchers at Rice University are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and non-invasive medical imaging systems as well as fundamental studies of low-dimensional condensed matter systems.

Two decades after the United Nations established the Framework Convention on Climate Change in order to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” the Arctic shows the first signs of a dangerous climate change. A team of researchers led by CSIC assures so in an article published on the latest number of the Nature Climate Change magazine.

(Photo Credit: CSIC Communications Department)

BEER-SHEVA, Israel -- An international team of researchers including Dr. Bertrand Boeken of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev suggest in a new study that plant biodiversity preservation is crucial to buffer negative effects of climate change and desertification in drylands.