Earth

A new paper published today in Nature reveals that human land use activity has begun to change the regional water and energy cycles-the interplay of air coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, water transpiration by the forest, and solar radiation-of parts of the Amazon basin. In addition, it shows that ongoing interactions between deforestation, fire, and climate change have the potential to alter carbon storage, rainfall patterns and river discharge on an even larger basin-wide scale.

Engineering our way out of global climate warming may not be as easy as simply reducing the incoming solar energy, according to a team of University of Bristol and Penn State climate scientists. Designing the approach to control both sea level rise and rates of surface air temperature changes requires a balancing act to accommodate the diverging needs of different locations.

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Many tropical forests are extremely rich in nitrogen even when there are no farms or industries nearby, says Montana State University researcher Jack Brookshire.

It's because of biological interactions that occur naturally in the forests, Brookshire and four colleagues said in a paper they published Jan. 15 in the online version of the journal Nature Geoscience.

AMHERST, Mass. – Geoscientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Minnesota this week published the first evidence that warm-cold climate oscillations well known in the Northern Hemisphere over the most recent glacial period also appear as tropical rainfall variations in the Amazon Basin of South America. It is the first clear expression of these cycles in the Southern Hemisphere.

Lead sulfide (PbS) forms when an equal number of lead and sulfur atoms exchange electrons and bond together in cubic crystals. Now scientists have determined that a structure comprising 32 lead-sulfur pairs is the smallest possible cubic arrangement that exhibits the same coordination as bulk lead sulfide. (The coordination number is the number of nearest neighbors each atom in the crystal has.)

Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the company Dioxide Materials have demonstrated that randomly stacked graphene flakes can make an effective chemical sensor.

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- By looking at the stability of the atmosphere, wind farm operators could gain greater insight into the amount of power generated at any given time.

Power generated by a wind turbine largely depends on the wind speed. In a wind farm in which the turbines experience the same wind speeds but different shapes (such as turbulence) to the wind profile, a turbine will produce different amounts of power.

To better understand the fundamental behavior of molecules at surfaces, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combining the powers of neutron scattering with chemical analysis.

Scientists have a fundamental interest in how molecules behave at solid surfaces because surface interactions influence chemistry, such as in materials for catalysis, drug delivery and carbon sequestration. Understanding these interactions allows researchers to tailor materials for a specific desirable outcome.

How liquid can a fluid be? This is a question particle physicists at the Vienna University of Technology have been working on. The "most perfect liquid" is nothing like water, but the extremely hot quark-gluon-plasma which is produced in heavy-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. New theoretical results at Vienna UT show that this quark-gluon plasma could be even less viscous than was deemed possible by previous theories. The results were published in Physical Review Letters and highlighted as an "editors' selection".

Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness. Nearly 4 million Americans have the disorder, which affects 70 million worldwide. There is no cure and no early symptoms. Once vision is lost, it's permanent.

New findings at Georgia Tech, published in January during Glaucoma Awareness Month, explore one of the many molecular origins of glaucoma and advance research dedicated to fighting the disease.

It could be called the wingman theory or the Barney Stinson principle (after the character played by Neil Patrick Harris on hit TV show How I Met Your Mother). A University of Alberta researcher says that – like Barney, who spends much of his time trying to find his single friend a mate – people are generally willing to help a friend protect or enhance his reputation or help him otherwise save face in a social situation.

Researchers have devised a proposal for the first conclusive experimental test of a phenomenon known as 'Bell's nonlocality.' This test is designed to reveal correlations that are stronger than any classical correlations, and do so between high-energy particles that do not consist of ordinary matter and light. These results are relevant to the so-called 'CP violation' principle, which is used to explain the dominance of matter over antimatter.

There is an increasing trend towards nimbyism -- people welcome developments in principle, so long as they are "not in my backyard." But just how big is a backyard? The answer depends on a number of factors and Guenther Schauberger of the University of Veterinary Medicine, has now developed a mathematical model to calculate appropriate distances from residential areas for livestock building to be sited. The model is published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.

Nitrogen is both an essential nutrient and a pollutant, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion and a fertilizer that feeds billions, a benefit and a hazard, depending on form, location, and quantity. Agriculture, industry and transportation have spread nitrogen liberally around the planet, say sixteen scientists in the latest edition of ESA's Issues in Ecology series, "Excess Nitrogen in the U.S.