Earth

For the first time, chemists have succeeded in plugging a metal atom into a methane gas molecule, thereby creating a new compound that could be a key in opening up new production processes for the chemical industry, especially for the synthesis of organic compounds, which in turn might have implications for drug development.

Nuclear magnetic moment provides a highly sensitive probe into the single-particle structure and serves as a stringent test of nuclear models. In recent decades, the facilities with radioactive ion beam models to study nuclear magnetic moments make it possible to measure the magnetic moments of neutron-rich and proton-rich nuclei with high precision. On the theoretical side, many nuclear structure models, including advanced shell models, and self-consistent mean-field theories, have succeeded analyzing many nuclear structure properties.

Billfish and tuna, important commercial and recreational fish species, may be more vulnerable to fishing pressure because of shrinking habitat, according to a new study published by scientists from NOAA, The Billfish Foundation, and University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 22, 2010 -- What can scientists learn from watching a group of people sitting around, chatting, playing movies, reading, and happily making new friends? Quite a lot, says University of Melbourne, Australia acoustician Adam Vogel, who carefully observed this sort of group in a fatigue management study he and his colleagues describe this month in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

About 50 miles from Bethlehem, a drilling project is determining the climate and earthquake activity of the Holy Land. Scientists from eight nations are examining the ground below the Dead Sea, by placing a borehole in this deepest basin in the world. The International Continental Scientific Drilling Program ICDP brings together research teams from Israel, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the USA and Germany. Particularly noteworthy: Researchers from Jordan and Palestine are also involved.

DURHAM, N.H. – In a study published December 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences (PNAS), a team of researchers including University of New Hampshire scientists Wilfred Wollheim, William McDowell, and Jody Potter details findings that show emissions of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from global rivers and streams are three times previous estimates used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the leading international body for the assessment of climate change.

The Whitworth Meteorological Observatory is a fully-automated, state of the art meteorological facility, replacing the original observatory set up and located in Whitworth Park in August 1892.

The new site, funded by the legacy of Sir Joseph Whitworth, will fulfil his wish to maintain the original observatory as a source of data for scientific, education and popular interest following the demise of the original in 1958.

Data from the new observatory will be used in support of scientific research projects focusing on urban climatology.

A new study of local sea-level trends by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) brings both good and bad news to localities concerned with coastal inundation and flooding along the shores of Chesapeake Bay.

Dr. John Boon, the study's lead author, says the good news is that "absolute sea level in Chesapeake Bay is rising only about half as fast as the global average rise rate." The bad news, says Boon, is that "local subsidence more than makes up for it."

Rodents get a bad rap as vermin and pests because they seem to thrive everywhere. They have been one of the most common mammals in Africa for the past 50 million years.

GALVESTON, December 17, 2010 – Fasting glucose and insulin levels remain within normal range for women using injectable or oral contraception, with only slight increases among women using depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), commonly known as the birth control shot, according to new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB Health) in Galveston.

What goes in must come out, a truism that now may be applied to global river networks.

Human-caused nitrogen loading to river networks is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone destruction.

It happens via a microbial process called denitrification, which converts nitrogen to nitrous oxide and an inert gas called dinitrogen.

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University professor is part of a national research team that discovered that streams and rivers produce three times more greenhouse gas emissions than estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Jake Beaulieu, a postdoctoral researcher the Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, who earned his doctorate at the University of Notre Dame, and Jennifer Tank, Galla Professor of Biological Sciences at the University, are lead authors of new paper demonstrating that streams and rivers receiving nitrogen inputs from urban and agricultural land uses are a significant source of nitrous oxide to the atmosphere.

50 million years ago, mountains began popping up in southern British Columbia. Over the next 22 million years, a wave of mountain building swept (geologically speaking) down western North America as far south as Mexico and as far east as Nebraska, according to Stanford geochemists. Their findings help put to rest the idea that the mountains mostly developed from a vast, Tibet-like plateau that rose up across most of the western U.S. roughly simultaneously and then subsequently collapsed and eroded into what we see today.