Earth

Parasitic worms that infect fish, and have a devastating effect on fish reproduction, grow four times faster at higher temperatures – providing some of the first evidence that global warming affects the interactions between parasites and their hosts.

The study from the University of Leicester revealed that global warming had the potential to change the balance between parasite and host - with potentially serious implications for fish populations.

With current news of additional radioactive leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the impact on the ocean of releases of radioactivity from the plants remains unclear.

But a new study by U.S. and Japanese researchers analyzes the levels of radioactivity discharged in the first four months after the accident.

It draws some basic conclusions about the history of contaminant releases to the ocean.

The science behind counting fish in the ocean to measure their abundance has never been simple. A new scientific paper authored by NOAA Fisheries biologist Eric Prince, Ph.D., and eight other scientists shows that expanding ocean dead zones – driven by climate change – have added a new wrinkle to that science.

MIAMI -- A new study examining the complex and dynamic interactions between white sharks and Cape fur seals in False Bay, South Africa, offers new insights on the physical conditions and biological factors underlying predator-prey interactions in the marine environment.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Roberto R. Gil and Rongchao Jin have successfully used NMR to analyze the structure of infinitesimal gold nanoparticles, which could advance the development and use of the tiny particles in drug development.

New research into the Earth's paleoclimate history by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James E. Hansen suggests the potential for rapid climate changes this century, including multiple meters of sea level rise, if global warming is not abated.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have found a way to manipulate atoms' internal states with lasers that dramatically influences their interactions in specific ways. Such light-tweaked atoms can be used as proxies to study important phenomena that would be difficult or impossible to study in other contexts. Their most recent work, appearing in Science,* demonstrates a new class of interactions thought to be important to the physics of superconductors that could be used for quantum computation.

Scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have for the first time engineered and detected the presence of high angular momentum collisions between atoms at temperatures close to absolute zero. Previous experiments with ultracold atoms featured essentially head-on collisions. The JQI experiment, by contrast, is able to create more complicated collisions between atoms using only lasers. This innovation may facilitate the creation of exotic quantum states that can be exploited for practical applications like quantum computing.

SAN FRANCISCO – Dec. 8, 2011 – A groundbreaking study led by University of Miami (UM) scientist Shimon Wdowinski shows that earthquakes, including the recent 2010 temblors in Haiti and Taiwan, may be triggered by tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). Wdowinski will discuss his findings during a presentation at the 2011 AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Graphene's star is rising as a material that could become essential to efficient, environmentally sound oil production. Rice University researchers are taking advantage of graphene's outstanding strength, light weight and solubility to enhance fluids used to drill oil wells.

The Rice University lab of chemist James Tour and scientists at M-I SWACO, a Texas-based supplier of drilling fluids and subsidiary of oil-services provider Schlumberger, have produced functionalized graphene oxide to alleviate the clogging of oil-producing pores in newly drilled wells.

Which factors increase the risk for armed conflict and war? What circumstances make conflict resolution more likely to be successful? If work for peace is to bear fruit; these questions needs to be answered. Today, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) releases a new dataset which opens up new possibilities for the study of armed conflict. Using these data, useful findings relating to climate change and armed conflict have already been made.

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA (8 December 2011) — With climate change posing a threat to food production around the world, scientists are developing a form of virtual time travel that can offer farmers in many countries a glimpse of their future by identifying regions where growing conditions today match those that will exist 20 years from now, according to a new report from the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

Stress in the second and third months of pregnancy can shorten pregnancies, increase the risk of pre-term births and may affect the ratio of boys to girls being born, leading to a decline in male babies. These are the conclusions of a study that investigated the effect on pregnant women of the stress caused by the 2005 Tarapaca earthquake in Chile.

A team of scientists, led by Guillaume Gervais from McGill's Physics Department and Mike Lilly from Sandia National Laboratories, has engineered one of the world's smallest electronic circuits. It is formed by two wires separated by only about 150 atoms or 15 nanometers (nm). This discovery, published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, could have a significant effect on the speed and power of the ever smaller integrated circuits of the future in everything from smartphones to desktop computers, televisions and GPS systems.

In another illustration of the contributions older people make to society, an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN) describes how older scientists are winning Nobel prizes more often these days than in the past. C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.