Earth

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases and the increase of its abundance in the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning is the main cause of future global warming. In past times, during the transition between an ice age and a warm period, atmospheric CO2 concentrations changed by some 100 parts per million (ppm) – from an ice age value of 180 ppm to about 280 ppm during warm periods.

A new study led by University of British Columbia researchers reveals how the effect of climate change can further impact the economic viability of current fisheries practices.

"Fisheries are already providing fewer fish and making less money than they could if we curbed overfishing," says Rashid Sumaila, principal investigator of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC and lead author of the study. "We could be earning interest, but instead we're fishing away the capital. Climate change is likely to cause more losses unless we choose to act."

JUPITER, FL -- Inspired by natural products, scientists on the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute have created a new class of small molecules with the potential to serve as a rich foundation for drug discovery.

In a significant finding in the search for life beyond Earth, scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere have discovered what appears to be a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great Lakes locked inside the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa.

The water could represent a potential habitat for life, and many more such lakes might exist throughout the shallow regions of Europa's shell, lead author Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics, writes in the journal Nature.

Scientists at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in creating light from vacuum – observing an effect first predicted over 40 years ago. The results is published tomorrow (Wednesday) in the journal Nature. In an innovative experiment, the scientists have managed to capture some of the photons that are constantly appearing and disappearing in the vacuum.

A detonation wave is a chemical reaction wave propagating at the velocity of a shock wave along the explosive charge. There is great demand for a detonation model that can accurately simulate the detonation process, which would provide a theoretical basis for highly efficient military destruction, the initiation of an atomic bomb, and calculations relating to the supernova SN Ia explosion. Detonation is complicated in that it involves mechanics, chemistry and thermodynamics simultaneously.

The mention of lemmings usually evokes images of small rodents throwing themselves off the top of cliffs in acts of mass suicide; however, their reputations might no longer be determined by hearsay as a new report suggests they could be having an intricate effect on the Earth's climate.

The study, published today, 18 November, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that lemmings may be maintaining the biomass of certain plants in the Arctic at a time when the greening of this vast area is becoming more noticeable.

Researchers the world over are seeking reliable ways to predict earthquakes, focusing on identifying seismic precursors that, if detected early enough, could serve as early warnings.

New research, published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters, suggests that ozone gas emitted from fracturing rocks could serve as an indicator of impending earthquakes. Ozone is a natural gas, a byproduct of electrical discharges into the air from several sources, such as from lightning, or, according to the new research, from rocks breaking under pressure.

It's well known that Earth's most severe mass extinction occurred about 250 million years ago. What's not well known is the specific time when the extinctions occurred. A team of researchers from North America and China have published a paper in Science this week which explicitly provides the date and rate of extinction.

Menlo Park, Calif., Nov. 17, 2011 — If we could make plant food from nitrogen the way nature does, we'd have a much greener method for manufacturing fertilizer – a process that requires such high temperatures and pressures that it consumes about 1.5 percent of the world's energy.

Now scientists working at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have taken an important step towards understanding how nature performs this trick, by identifying a key atom that researchers had sought for more than a decade.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Like a shadowy character just hidden from view, a mystery atom in the middle of a complex enzyme called nitrogenase had long hindered scientists' ability to study the enzyme fully.

But now an international team of scientists led by Serena DeBeer, Cornell assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, has pulled back the curtain using powerful synchrotron spectroscopy and computational modeling to reveal carbon as the once-elusive atom.

The research was published online Nov. 17 in the journal Science.

Although scientists have known for centuries that many bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide (H2S) it was thought to be simply a toxic by-product of cellular activity. Now, researchers at NYU School of Medicine have discovered H2S in fact plays a major role in protecting bacteria from the effects of numerous different antibiotics.

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- In order to separate human-caused global warming from the "noise" of purely natural climate fluctuations, temperature records must be at least 17 years long, according to climate scientists.

To address criticism of the reliability of thermometer records of surface warming, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists analyzed satellite measurements of the temperature of the lower troposphere (the region of the atmosphere from the surface to roughly five miles above) and saw a clear signal of human-induced warming of the planet.

Stocks of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), which have been steadily declining for the past few decades, are facing new challenges in the Gulf of Maine, where changing spring wind patterns, warming sea surface temperatures and new predators along altered migration routes are affecting their survival.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17, 2011 -- The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, today released a series of audio podcasts highlighting the science and cutting-edge technology behind solar power. The podcasts, available without charge at http://www.acs.org/chemmatters, tell the story of how scientists and students are making progress in harnessing the abundant energy of the sun.