Earth

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers who analyzed a history of tsunamis along the Pacific coast of Japan's Tohoku region have learned that seawalls higher than 5 meters reduce damage and death, while coastal forests also play an important role in protecting the public.

The analysis was performed by researchers at Tohoku University, Maryland Institute College of Art, the University of Michigan and Purdue University. The researchers studied data from tsunamis in 1896, 1933, 1960, and 2011.

Health researchers predict that the transmission of dengue could decrease in a future warmer climate, countering previous projections that climate change would cause the potentially lethal virus to spread more easily.

Hundreds of millions of people are infected with dengue each year, with some children dying in severe cases, and this research helps to address this significant global health problem.

What really did come first--the chicken or the egg? Birds' reproductive biology is dramatically different from that of any other living vertebrates, and ornithologists and paleontologists have long wondered how and when the unique features of bird reproduction originated. A new Review in The Auk: Ornithological Advances examines answers from three sources--modern birds, fossils of primitive birds, and fossils of the dinosaurs from which birds are descended--to shed new light on the subject.

BOULDER, Colo. -- Greenhouse gases are already having an accelerating effect on sea level rise, but the impact has so far been masked by the cataclysmic 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 9, 2016 -- Controlling bubbles is a difficult process and one that many of us experienced in a simplistic form as young children wielding a bubble wand, trying to create bigger bubbles without popping them. A research team in CINaM-CNRS Aix-Marseille Université in France has turned child's play into serious business.

Wherever ecosystems rich in species develop on the rocky shores of the Baltic Sea, the bladder wrack Fucus vesiculosus has provided perfect groundwork. By colonizing pebbles and rocks, it creates habitats for many other species. Other algae grow on the seaweed to be grazed by snails, isopods and amphipods. Crustaceans, mussels and predatory fish as well as many smaller organisms that are important for the Baltic Sea ecosystem thrive in submarine Fucus forests.

As it is a basic building material used across the world, cement is subjected to a vast range of conditions, both physiological and meteorological, no matter whether they are caused by extreme temperatures and humidity, pressure, etc. It is possible to find conditions ranging from -80 ºC, in places such as the scientific bases in the Antarctic, to several hundreds of degrees in infrastructures close to heat sources or in the case of fires, for example.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 9, 2016 -- Freshly caught fish is delicious. But with every passing day, the nice filet in your fridge smells a little fishier, thanks to a stinky molecule known as trimethylamine. Is there any hope? This week, Reactions helps make fish taste and smell less fishy with chemistry. Learn about the amino acids that give fresh fish its sweet and savory flavor, and get three chemistry-backed tricks to cut down the fishy taste and smell.

Buzzing through space, through our bodies, virtually everywhere, are billions upon billions of neutrinos. Behind only photons as the most abundant fundamental particle in the universe, neutrinos are enjoying a popular heyday. The subject of a recent Nobel Prize and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, neutrinos have hundreds of scientists all over the world, including several at Colorado State University, working to unlock all their mysteries.

Platelets are small anucleated blood cells responsible for stopping bleeding. They detect blood vessel damage and agglutinate, creating aggregates and stopping the blood loss. This process is called hemostasis (from the Greek "haimatos" -- blood, "stasis" -- stop). Platelets become able to aggregate and plug the wound upon activation. Scientists consider that the platelet is one of the simplest cells in the human body, because the goal of its life is to decide whether activate or not. But despite this relative simplicity, numerous questions remain about the mechanisms of its functioning.

In the past few years, optical atomic clocks have made spectacular progress, becoming 100 times more precise than the best caesium clocks. So far, their precision has been available only locally, since frequency transfer via satellite cannot provide sufficient resolution. This has recently changed thanks to a new direct optical connection between France and Germany, established by joint work of Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig, Systèmes de Référence Temps-Espace (LNE-SYRTE) in Paris, and Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers (LPL) in Villetaneuse.

Whether growing along the rim of the Grand Canyon or living in the mist with California's coastal redwoods, Douglas fir trees are consistently sensitive to drought conditions that occur throughout the species' range in the United States, according to a study led by a researcher at the University of California, Davis.

The study, published Aug. 8 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides direct evidence of the negative impact of water stress on forest ecosystems. It also pinpointed which conditions are causing low growth among Douglas fir trees.

MADISON, Wis. -- In an effort to fill in the blanks of the Standard Model of particle physics, science has been conducting a diligent search for a hypothesized particle known as the "sterile neutrino."

Now, with the latest results from an icy particle detector at the South Pole, scientists are almost certain that there is no such particle.

In a new study researchers from Sweden and Italy show what happens when magma meets limestone on its way up to the surface. Magma-limestone interaction might help explain why volcanoes like Vesuvius in Italy and Merapi in Indonesia are particularly explosive and, moreover, it helps us to understand another source of natural carbon released to the atmosphere by volcanoes.

MIAMI--An international team that includes University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researchers found behavioral evidence that tiger sharks prefer to opportunistically scavenge on dead or weakened green turtles rather than actively hunting healthy individuals despite more opportunities to do so. The study, conducted off the coast of Australia during the turtle nesting season, also found the behavior of healthy green turtles suggests that they do not perceive tiger sharks as a major threat during nesting season.