Earth

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. The study appears this week in the Springer journal Climatic Change Letters.

BOULDER--A three-year series of research flights from the Arctic to the Antarctic has successfully produced an unprecedented portrait of greenhouse gases and particles in the atmosphere, scientists announced today. The far-reaching field project, known as HIPPO, is enabling researchers to generate the first detailed mapping of the global distribution of gases and particles that affect Earth's climate.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Over the last half a billion years, the ocean has mostly been full of oxygen and teeming with animal life. But earlier, before animals had evolved, oxygen was harder to come by. Now a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside reveals that the ancient deep ocean was not only devoid of oxygen but also rich in iron, a key biological nutrient, for nearly a billion years longer than previously thought -- right through a key evolutionary interval that culminated in the first rise of animals.

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have measured the lifetime of an extremely stable energy level of magnesium atoms with great precision. Magnesium atoms are used in research with ultra-precise atomic clocks. The new measurements show a lifetime of 2050 seconds, which corresponds to approximately ½ hour. This is the longest lifetime ever measured in a laboratory. The results have been published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

In several sub-Saharan African countries, the rapid, widespread implementation of insecticide treated nets (often referred to as ITNs—which can prevent malaria by protecting those sleeping under them from the bites of night-flying, malaria parasite-carrying mosquitoes) has been accompanied by significant reductions in child deaths, real life findings that reflect the results of clinical trials and support continued efforts to scale-up and maintain ITN coverage in sub-Saharan Africa.

Clouds only amplify climate change, says Andrew Dessler, atmospheric sciences professor at Texas A&M University - they are a root cause of climate change.

Dessler, considered one of the nation's experts on climate variations, says decades of data support the mainstream and long-held view that clouds are primarily acting as a so-called "feedback" that amplifies warming from human activity. His work is published today in the American Geophysical Union's peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters.

They were always mysterious. 26 years had to pass before the prediction of theoretical physics was confirmed and the existence of neutrinos was finally proven experimentally in 1956. The reason for this ordeal: Neutrinos only interact by the weak interaction with other particles of matter. When a cosmic neutrino approaches the earth, it has the best chance of passing through the whole globe unhindered. It is correspondingly difficult to find direct evidence of neutrinos with the help of a detector. Further decades passed in the discussion about their masses: None or small but finite mass?

A group of scientists has quantified dust and iron fluxes deposited in the Antarctic Ocean during the past 4 million years and it shows the close relation between the maximum contributions of dust to this ocean and climate changes occurring in the most intense glaciation periods of the Pleistocene period, some 1.25 million years ago. Data confirms the role of iron in the increase in phytoplankton levels during glacial periods, intensifying the function of this ocean as a CO2 sink.

Long-wavelength terahertz light is invisible – it's at the farthest end of the far infrared – but it's useful for everything from detecting explosives at the airport to designing drugs to diagnosing skin cancer. Now, for the first time, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated a microscale device made of graphene – the remarkable form of carbon that's only one atom thick – whose strong response to light at terahertz frequencies can be tuned with exquisite precision.

Alexandria, VA – The eyewitness accounts, written in columns from right to left, top to bottom, testify that there was no warning of the tsunami, no shaking to drive villagers to high ground before the wave hit, drowning rice paddies and swamping a castle moat. The entries, written by merchants, peasants and samurai, all clearly mark the time and date: just after midnight on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 1700.

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Child welfare professionals know that children are safer and healthier when the adults in their lives have healthy relationships, but most social workers are not trained to educate couples about strong relationships and marriages. Researchers at the University of Missouri are working to train child welfare professionals and future social workers to help individuals and families strengthen their relationships.

Warming streams could spell the end of spring-run Chinook salmon in California by the end of the century, according to a study by scientists at UC Davis, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

An international team of scientists has developed a novel X-ray technique for imaging atomic displacements in materials with unprecedented accuracy. They have applied their technique to determine how a recently discovered class of exotic materials – multiferroics – can be simultaneously both magnetically and electrically ordered. Multiferroics are also candidate materials for new classes of electronic devices. The discovery, a major breakthrough in understanding multiferroics, is published in Science dated 2 September 2011.

In parts of the world still rich in biodiversity, separating natural habitats from high-yielding farmland could be a more effective way to conserve wild species than trying to grow crops and conserve nature on the same land, according to a new study published today (2 September 2011) in the journal Science.

ITHACA, N.Y. – In things thick and thin: Cornell physicists explain how fluids – such as paint or paste - behave by observing how micron-sized suspended particles dance in real time. Using high-speed microscopy, the scientists unveil how these particles are responding to fluid flows from shear – a specific way of stirring. (Science, Sept. 2).

Observations by Xiang Cheng, Cornell post-doctoral researcher in physics and Itai Cohen, Cornell associate professor of physics, are the first to link direct imaging of the particle motions with changes in liquid viscosity.