Earth

It is well known that an earthquake in one part of the world can trigger others thousands of kilometers away.

But in a paper published in the journal Science Advances, researchers reveal that these triggered earthquakes are just one outward sign of far more widespread changes taking place below the Earth's surface.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2015 -- Go to any paint store or nail-polish shelf and you'll see a dozen or so variations of the color black. Even inside a crayon box, there are a lot of shades. But what is the blackest black out there? This week, in honor of the 2015 National Chemistry Week theme of "Chemistry Colors Our World," Reactions looks for the blackest black material. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/dRvr_deTGrU.

Researchers from James Cook University have found that ocean acidification may not be all bad news for one important sea-dwelling plant.

A JCU team led by Dr Catherine Collier studied seagrass growing near underwater volcanic vents in PNG. Carbon dioxide from the vents increases the acidity of nearby water.

The researchers found that the more acidic the water was, the more the plant grew.

A new research study by a team of climate researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa explains for the first time the source of near-annual pressure and wind changes discovered previously in the Southeast Asian Monsoon system.

An animation of imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite over several days showed Hurricane Olaf become a major hurricane on Monday, October 19, 2015. NASA's GOES Project created the animation that compiled three days of GOES data.

The 35 second animation of infrared and visible imagery runs from October 16 through October 19. On October 19, Olaf had strengthened into a major hurricane. That's a Category three hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. At the end of the animation on October 19, a small eye formed.

WACO, Texas (Oct. 19, 2015) -- As part of an multi-disciplinary study, a team of Baylor researchers found that climatic changes, an increase in agricultural land use and population growth in the Himalaya Mountain basins could have negative impacts on water availability, further stressing a region plagued by natural disasters and food insecurity.

MONTRÉAL (October 19, 2015)-- Researchers from Duke University and Durham Veteran Affairs Medical Center have found that nearly 77 percent of pulmonary clinical trials registered with ClinicalTrials.gov failed to report race and ethnicity data, and biologic-related studies had even lower odds of reporting race and ethnicity data when compared with drug trials.

In 2011, satellite images of the African savannas revealed a mystery: these rolling grasslands, with their heavy rainfalls and spells of drought, were home to significantly fewer trees than researchers had expected. Scientists supposed that the ecosystem's high annual precipitation would result in greater tree growth. Yet a 2011 study found that the more instances of heavy rainfall a savanna received, the fewer trees it had.

For centuries, scientists have been working to unravel the many mysteries of bird migration, studying where birds go, how they find their way, and how much of the information they need is inherited and how much is learned.

Electrons are so 20th century. In the 21st century, photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly, will enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But there's a step needed before optical connections can be integrated into telecommunications systems and computers: researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new analysis of fire activity in Alaska's Yukon Flats finds that so many forest fires are occurring there that the area has become a net exporter of carbon to the atmosphere. This is worrisome, the researchers say, because arctic and subarctic boreal forests like those of the Yukon Flats contain roughly one-third of the Earth's terrestrial carbon stores.

The research is reported in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Scientists at UCL have identified a new and potentially faster way of moving molecules across the surfaces of certain materials.

The team carried out sophisticated computer simulations of tiny droplets of water as they interact with graphene surfaces. These simulations reveal that the molecules can "surf" across the surface whilst being carried by the moving ripples of graphene.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 19, 2015--Engines, laptops and power plants generate waste heat. Thermoelectric materials, which convert temperature gradients to electricity and vice versa, can recover some of that heat and improve energy efficiency. A team of scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory explored the fundamental physics of the world's best thermoelectric material--tin selenide--using neutron scattering and computer simulations.

A new study published in the journal Global Environmental Change projects that carbon sequestration in European cropland could store between 9 and 38 megatons of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) per year in the soil, or as much as 7% of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in the European Union, at a price of carbon of 100 $/tCO2.

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), recently used as a power source for households in Japan, have several drawbacks such as high-cost, material degradation and long start-up time derived from high operating temperatures up to 750°C.

Lowering the operating temperature to an "intermediate" range of 300-500°C would, in effect, enable the use of low-cost materials and allow for a quicker start-up which, in turn, could lead to wider commercial use and application to a mobile power source.