Earth

Scientists have discovered that climbing vines are upsetting the carbon balance of tropical forests by crowding out and killing trees.

Rainforests play a vital role in the global carbon cycle. We depend on the trees found in these tropical areas to take up some of the carbon dioxide that we are emitting, so not all of our emissions end up in the atmosphere.

For decades, scientists have been looking for so-called "glueballs". Now it seems they have been found at last. A glueball is an exotic particle, made up entirely of gluons - the "sticky" particles that keep nuclear particles together. Glueballs are unstable and can only be detected indirectly, by analysing their decay. This decay process, however, is not yet fully understood.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in an experiment where they get an artificial atom to survive ten times longer than normal by positioning the atom in front of a mirror. The findings were recently published in the journal Nature Physics.

Using computational modeling, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Colorado School of Mines and the University of California, Davis have come up with a design for a better liposome. Their findings, while theoretical, could provide the basis for efficiently constructing new vehicles for nanodrug delivery.

A team of theoretical high-energy physicists in the Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations has published a new high-precision calculation that could significantly advance the indirect search for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). The calculation applies to a particularly rare decay of the B meson (a subatomic particle), which is sometimes also called a "penguin decay" process.

Three leading Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) experts on the threats of climate change in the Arctic will urge France's President Hollande and other political leaders to address the threat posed by thawing permafrost in the Arctic at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 15. WHRC scientists Scott Goetz, Max Holmes and Susan Natali, who advised the State Department and helped to inform President Obama's strong remarks at the GLACIER conference in Alaska last month, will present research on permafrost thaw and other serious threats caused by climate change.

New NOAA-led research maps the distribution of aragonite saturation state in both surface and subsurface waters of the global ocean and provides further evidence that ocean acidification is happening on a global scale. The study identifies the Arctic and Antarctic oceans, and the upwelling ocean waters off the west coasts of North America, South America and Africa as regions that are especially vulnerable to ocean acidification.

Tropical Storm Nora's cloud top temperatures appeared to be warming up on infrared imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite. Warming cloud top temperatures means less uplift in the air and a weaker storm. Nora is on a weakening trend according to NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center as wind shear continues to batter the storm.

2015 has been an active year for tropical cyclones in the northwestern Pacific Ocean as NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite spotted the twenty-fifth tropical depression.

Visible data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite saw Tropical Depression 25W on October 13 at 0325 (Oct. 12 at 11:25 p.m. EDT). The VIIRS image showed thunderstorms wrapped around the low-level center of circulation and in a band to the south of the center.

Pioneering new research sheds light on the impact of climate change on subglacial lakes found under the Greenland ice sheet.

A team of experts, led by Dr Steven Palmer from the University of Exeter, has studied the water flow paths from one such subglacial lake, which drained beneath the ice sheet in 2011.

The study shows, for the first time, how water drained from the lake - via a subglacial tunnel. Significantly, the authors present satellite observations that show that a similar event happened in 1995, suggesting that this lake fills and drains periodically.

By meticulously examining sediments in China's Yellow River, a Swedish-Chinese research group are showing that the history of tectonic and climate evolution on Earth may need to be rewritten. Their findings are published today in the highly reputed journal Nature Communications.

"Imagine I could send an ecologist to Europe back tens of millions of years ago. Then, ask them to look at the ants and to tell me where they think they have landed... They would say South East Asia" explains Prof. Evan Economo of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). His team compared a database of modern ants with a database of fossil ants. The analysis has shown in which locations fossilized ants are more related to the ants now living in the same area of the world.

Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite showed Hurricane Joaquin weakening over cooler waters and transitioning into a post-tropical cyclone.An infrared image of Hurricane Joaquin was taken from the AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite on Oct. 7 at 15:41 UTC (11:41 a.m. EDT). The infrared data, which shows temperature, showed the highest, coldest clouds and the bulk of cold clouds were being pushed from the center to northeast of the center by westerly winds.

Infrared data from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed Tropical Storm Oho weakening over cool waters and transitioning into an extra-tropical cyclone while being battered by strong wind shear.

While the cleaning of car exhausts is among the best known applications of catalytic processes, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Practically the entire chemical industry relies on catalytic reactions. Therefore, catalyst design plays a key role in improving these processes. An international team of scientists has now developed a concept, that elegantly correlates geometric and adsorption properties. They validated their approach by designing a new platinum-based catalyst for fuel cell applications.