Earth

Climate change is likely to make plants more vulnerable to infectious disease, which will threaten crop yield and impact on the price and availability of food. Dr Adrian Newton, presenting his work at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate, explains how exploiting diversity in crops is the best option to improve food security in a changing climate.

A major new study finds that nitrogen pollution is costing each person in Europe around £130 - £650 (€150 – €740 Euros) a year. The first European Nitrogen Assessment (ENA) is launched at a conference today in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The study, carried out by 200 experts from 21 countries and 89 organizations, estimates that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen across Europe is £60 - £280 billion (€70 -320 billion), more than double the extra income gained from using nitrogen fertilizers in European agriculture.

SALT LAKE CITY, April 11, 2011 – University of Utah geophysicists made the first large-scale picture of the electrical conductivity of the gigantic underground plume of hot and partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. The image suggests the plume is even bigger than it appears in earlier images made with earthquake waves.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - The University of Maryland Solar Decathlon Team has unveiled its entry in the U.S. Department of Energy competition - a high-tech structure they call WaterShed, because it integrates a unique array of sustainable features designed to protect and make the most of the Chesapeake Bay.

In a new study performed in humans, researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet have determined the age of atherosclerotic plaques by taking advantage of Carbon-14 (14C) residues in the atmosphere, prevailing after the extensive atomic bomb tests in the 50ties and 60ties. The findings, published in the scientific online journal PLoS ONE, suggest that in most people plaque formation occurs during a relatively short and late time period in life of 3-5 years.

This tip sheet highlights presentations at the upcoming international meeting of SSA, which is an international scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and its applications in understanding and mitigating earthquake hazards and in imaging the structure of the Earth.

These summaries reflect submitted abstracts and the actual presentations will include additional data and analysis. We are available to assist you should need to contact speakers at the annual meeting, located at the Marriott Downtown Memphis.

By studying fossilized mollusks from some 3.5 million years ago, UCLA geoscientists and colleagues have been able to construct an ancient climate record that holds clues about the long-term effects of Earth's current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global climate change.

Searching for magnetic fields produced by plants may sound as wacky as trying to prove the existence of telekinesis or extrasensory perception, but physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, are seriously looking for biomagnetism in plants using some of the most sensitive magnetic detectors available.

BOULDER—Cities worldwide are failing to take necessary steps to protect residents from the likely impacts of climate change, even though billions of urban dwellers are vulnerable to heat waves, sea level rise, and other changes associated with warming temperatures.

CORAL GABLES (April 7, 2011) -- Climate change is already widely recognized to be negatively affecting coral reef ecosystems around the world, yet the long-term effects are difficult to predict. University of Miami (UM) scientists are using the geologic record of Caribbean corals to understand how reef ecosystems might respond to climate change expected for this century. The findings are published in the current issue of the journal Geology.

A research team, led by the University of Extremadura, has for the first time analysed the frequency of rainfall over the whole of the Iberian Peninsula from 1903 to 2003. The results show that the number of rainy days increased over the 20th Century, except in the area of the Gulf of Cádiz and in western Portugal. However, rainfall has become less and less intense, except in these two regions.

Cities worldwide are failing to take necessary steps to protect residents from the likely impacts of climate change, even though billions of urban dwellers are vulnerable to heat waves, sea level rise and other changes associated with warming temperatures.

Washington, D.C. — Although its name may make many people think of flowers, the element germanium is part of a frequently studied group of elements, called IVa, which could have applications for next-generation computer architecture as well as implications for fundamental condensed matter physics.

PASADENA, Calif.—For many years, most scientists studying Tibet have thought that a very hot and very weak lower and middle crust underlies its plateau, flowing like a fluid. Now, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is questioning this long-held belief and proposing that an entirely different mechanism is at play.

College Park, Md. (April 6, 2011) -- A new drug delivery device designed and constructed by Jie Chen, Thomas Cesario and Peter Rentzepis promises to unlock the potential of photosensitive chemicals to kill drug-resistant infections and perhaps cancer tumors as well.

Photosensitive chemicals are molecules that release single oxygen atoms and chemical radicals when illuminated. These radicals are very active chemically, and can rip apart and destroy bacteria, said Peter Rentzepis, a professor of chemistry at University of California, Irvine.