Earth

The lowering of the ocean's pH is making it harder for corals to grow their skeletons and also easier for bio-eroding organisms to tear them down. Erosion rates increase tenfold in areas where corals are also exposed to high levels of nutrients, according to a study published in Geology. As sea level rises, these reefs may have a harder time growing toward the ocean surface, where they get sunlight they need to survive.

Automated cameras make it possible to broadcast even minor events, but the result often looks...well, robotic. Now scientists at Disney Research have made it possible for robotic cameras to learn from human operators how to better frame shots of a basketball game.

Every several years, workers apply a clay mask to India's iconic but yellowing Taj Mahal to remove layers of grime and reveal the white marble underneath. Now scientists are getting to the bottom of what kinds of pollutants are discoloring one of the world's celebrated wonders. Their findings, published in Environmental Science & Technology, could help inform efforts to protect the mausoleum and other surfaces from pollution.

Disney researchers have developed a video technique for automatically detecting unusual behaviors of giraffes at night, providing naturalists with an improved tool for monitoring the health and safety of the animals in the wild and under human care.

Horses cool off during an Adelaide heatwave in January 2014. AAP Image/David Mariuz

By James Whitmore, The Conversation

2014 has been confirmed as Australia’s third-hottest year, capping off a record-breaking decade, according to the Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement, released today.

Lake Erie has experienced harmful algal blooms and severe oxygen-depleted "dead zones" for years and the widespread drought in 2012 added to that, bringing with it the largest dead zone since the mid-1980s.

A new study suggests pharmaceuticals and chemicals from personal care products end up in swimming pools, possibly interacting with chlorine to produce disinfection byproducts with unknown properties and health effects. And that's without all of the urine.

For fruit crops such as apples, compromised skin appearance results in reduced market value. Identifying causes of fruit disorders and diseases can help producers modify growing strategies and increase profits and so researchers in Germany recently released a study of "skin spot", a disorder found in 'Elstar' and occasionally in 'Golden Delicious' apples. It is characterized by patches of small brownish dots that usually appear on the apples' skin after the fruit is moved from storage.

The song of the swamp sparrow, a grey-breasted bird found in wetlands throughout much of North America, is a simple melodious trill, repeated over and over again.

"It's kind of like a harmonious police whistle," said biologist Stephen Nowicki.

But according to a new study by Nowicki and Robert Lachlan, swamp sparrows are capable of processing the notes that make up their simple songs in more sophisticated ways than previously realized -- an ability that may help researchers better understand the perceptual building blocks that enable language in humans.

How might you make a new Earth? Our Terran "test kitchen" has given us a detailed recipe, it just wasn't clear how transposable it was in other areas, the same way a recipe in Los Angeles might not work as well in Denver. Now, astronomers have found evidence that the recipe for Earth also applies to terrestrial exoplanets orbiting distant stars.

"Our solar system is not as unique as we might have thought," says lead author Courtney Dressing of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "It looks like rocky exoplanets use the same basic ingredients."

Scientists have developed a detailed explanation of how white-nose syndrome (WNS) is killing millions of bats in North America, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Wisconsin. The scientists created a model for how the disease progresses from initial infection to death in bats during hibernation.

Controlled-release fertilizers (CRFs) are a widely used method of delivering nutrients to nursery container crops. The fertilizers contain encapsulated solid mineral nutrients that dissolve slowly in water, and are then released into substrates over an extended period of time. Although the use of CRFs is an accepted practice, growers and researchers are always looking for ways to decrease fertilizer and irrigation expenses and reduce the impact of nutrient leaching into the environment.

As competition for fresh water increases and fertilizer prices rise, the horticulture industry is looking to reclaimed wastewater as a valuable resource for supplying irrigation and necessary nutrients for urban landscapes.

A new study links the March 2014 earthquakes in Poland Township, Ohio to hydraulic fracturing that activated a previously unknown fault. The induced seismic sequence included a rare felt earthquake of magnitude 3.0, according to the paper. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method for extracting gas and oil from shale rock by injecting a high-pressure water mixture directed at the rock to release the oil and gas trapped inside. The process of fracturing the rocks normally results in micro-earthquakes much smaller than humans can feel.

The ice on Greenland could only form due to processes in the deep Earth interior. Large-scale glaciations in the Arctic only began about 2.7 million years ago; before that, the northern hemisphere was largely free of ice for more than 500 million years. Scientists at the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ, Utrecht University, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) and the University of Oslo could now explain why the conditions for the glaciation of Greenland only developed so recently on a geological time scale.