Earth

ST. LOUIS -- Recent recommendations by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) call for women who are overweight or obese to gain more weight than they should, a Saint Louis University obstetrician wrote in a January commentary for Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Why do we chew our food? Research has shown that it is not, as has long been presumed, to make chunks of food small enough to swallow without choking. Biomechanics, who have modelled the cohesive strength of food after a certain amount of chewing, have shown that we actually chew our food to ensure it is in a firm blob and, therefore, safe to swallow.

Scientists say buried volcanic rocks along the heavily populated coasts of New York, New Jersey and New England, as well as further south, might be ideal reservoirs to lock away carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and other industrial sources. A study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines formations on land as well as offshore, where scientists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory say the best potential sites may lie.

There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future.

Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago). This period is characterized by warm temperatures similar to those projected for the end of this century, and is used as an analog to understand future conditions.

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December Highlights:

LEADS: (top news in natural science)

An Eruption of Volcano Monitoring Improvements

Transforming lead into gold is an impossible feat, but a similar type of "alchemy" is not only possible, but cost-effective too. Three Penn State researchers have shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements. According to the team's leader A.

The faint tug of the sun and moon on the San Andreas Fault stimulates tremors deep underground, suggesting that the rock 15 miles below is lubricated with highly pressurized water that allows the rock to slip with little effort, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, seismologists.

New Rochelle, NY, December 22, 2009—Global warming, pollution, and the environmental consequences of energy production impose a greater burden on low-income, disadvantaged communities, and strategies to prevent these inequities are urgently needed. A provocative collection of articles on climate justice presents the global implications of climate change and its effects on human health and the environment in a special issue of Environmental Justice, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Using a technique that provides detailed images of nanoscale structures, researchers at the University of Michigan and Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital have discovered changes in the collagen component of bone that directly relate to bone health.

Their findings, published online Dec. 16 in the journal Bone, could lead to new methods of diagnosing osteoporosis and other diseases affecting collagen-containing tissues.

The air in some school classrooms may contain higher levels of extremely small particles of pollutants — easily inhaled deep into the lungs — than polluted outdoor air, scientists in Australia and Germany are reporting in an article in ACS' semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.

A major analysis of the climate debate concludes that the majority of scientists agree that global warming is primarily man-made, although a vocal minority of skeptics is holding onto the idea that Mother Nature is the cause. The cover story of current issue Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine, appears at the conclusion of the much-publicized United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. That conference sought to seal a comprehensive international agreement on dealing with global warming.

WASHINGTON – Catch share programs result in more consistent and predictable fisheries but do not necessarily improve ecological conditions, according to a new study published online this week by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A study of the structure and evolution of the Gulf of Corinth rift in central Greece will increase scientific understanding of rifted margin development and the tectonic mechanisms underlying seafloor spreading and deformation of the Earth's crust.