Earth

UK researchers have unearthed ancient fossil forests, thought to be partly responsible for one of the most dramatic shifts in the Earth's climate in the past 400 million years.

The fossil forests, with tree stumps preserved in place, were found in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago situated in the Arctic Ocean. They were identified and described by Dr Chris Berry of Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Science.

Prof John Marshall, of Southampton University, has accurately dated the forests to 380 million years.

As world leaders prepare to meet in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, UK health professionals have formed an alliance of doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals to advocate for stronger measures to tackle climate change.

UPTON, NY--In certain nanomaterials, electrons are able to race through custom-built roadways just one atom wide. To achieve excellent efficiency, these one-dimensional paths must be paved with absolute perfection--a single errant atom can stop racing electrons in their tracks or even launch it backwards. Unfortunately, such imperfections are inevitable.

Stone tools, cooked animal and plant remains and fire pits found at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile provide greater interdisciplinary evidence that the earliest known Americans--a nomadic people adapted to a cold, ice-age environment--were established deep in South America more than 15,000 years ago. The research, led by Tom Dillehay, Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, appears in the Nov. 18 issue of PLOS ONE.

NOAA's GOES-West satellite provided images of the birth of the latest tropical depression in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Tropical Depression 21E formed well southwest of the Coast of Mexico.

On Nov. 18 at 1500 UTC (10:00 a.m. EST), the NOAA's GOES-West satellite saw the Tropical Depression 21E form well southwest of the western Mexican coast. The storm appeared rounded in GOES imagery, but the storm was being affected by wind shear.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new study has found a link between abrupt ocean warming at the end of the last ice age and the sudden onset of low-oxygen, or hypoxic conditions that led to vast marine dead zones.

Results of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, are being published this week in the journal Nature.

A new study by scientists in the UK and France has found that Antarctic ice sheet collapse will have serious consequences for sea level rise over the next two hundred years, though not as much as some have suggested.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - When faced with adversity, humans make meaning of their experiences through storytelling. Scholars also have found that women, in particular, express their emotions through 'narrative sense-making' and relate to and support each other by telling stories in everyday contexts. This is especially true when it comes to mothers and daughters. Now, a recent study from a University of Missouri professor has found that daughters 're-author' stories about adversity over time, often increasing the positivity of those stories through narrative.

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Penn. (Nov. 18, 2015) - With 63 percent of the state forested, New York may be nearing a peak in forest land. In a comprehensive inventory of the state's forests conducted between 2008 and 2012, researchers with the USDA Forest Service's Forest Inventory & Analysis (FIA) program found that while the amount of forested land continues to increase, the rate of that increase is slowing while fragmentation and damaging invasive insects are taking a greater toll on forests.

Tropical Storm 27W intensified into a typhoon near Micronesia in the western North Pacific Ocean as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead providing visible and infrared data to forecasters.

On Nov. 18 Tropical Storm 27W intensified quickly to typhoon strength. A typhoon warning was posted for Chuuk Lagoon, Losap and Fananu in Chuuk State. A tropical storm warning was posted for Ulul and Lukunor in Chuuk State, and a tropical storm watch was put into effect for Ulul in Chuuk State.

As anyone who has experienced turbulence knows, its onset and departure are abrupt, and how long it lasts seems to be unpredictable. Fast flowing fluids are always turbulent, but at slower speeds the flow transitions to smooth and predictable (laminar) with intermittent patches of turbulence. In the human body, transitional turbulence can be deadly. Near the transition to turbulence, violent oscillations between laminar and turbulent blood flow can lead to aneurisms that rupture the arteries in the heart.

Graphene, a single atomic layer of graphite with a carbon-layered structure, has been drawing much attention because of its abundant electronic properties and the possibilities of application due to its unique electronic structure. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov extracted single-atom-thick crystallites from bulk graphite in 2004 for the first time. This results earned them the Nobel Prize in physics 2010.

Shrinking glaciers could lead to increasing numbers of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) in East Antarctica, according to research published in the open access journal, BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The study shows that in the last 14,000 years the population of Adélie penguins has seen a 135-fold increase, as additional breeding sites become exposed by retreating glaciers. This population explosion suggests that current environmental conditions are more favorable for Adélie penguins than they were at the end of the last ice age.

To do effective climate change research, scientists need to collaborate with local participants.

And a new U of T study argues that those participants should be rewarded for the valuable input they provide.

"If we value their knowledge and want them to engage in climate change research to the extent that's required, we need to compensate stakeholders more than we have," says Nicole Klenk, an assistant professor in U of T Scarborough's Department of Physical and Environmental Science.

MIT chemists have created a new material that combines the flexibility of polymer gels with the rigid structure provided by metal-based clusters. The new gels could be well-suited for a range of possible functions, including drug release, gas storage, or water filtration, the researchers say.