Earth

Princeton University researchers have uncovered a previously unknown, and possibly substantial, source of the greenhouse gas methane to the Earth's atmosphere.

UCL scientists have shown how advanced computer simulations can be used to design new composite materials. Nanocomposites, which are widely used in industry, are revolutionary materials in which microscopic particles are dispersed through plastics. But their development until now has been largely by trial and error.

This news release is available in German.

Animals that regulate their body temperature through the external environment may be resilient to some climate change but not keep pace with rapid change leading to potentially disastrous outcomes for biodiversity.

A study by the University of Sydney and University of Queensland showed many animals can modify the function of their cells and organs to compensate for changes in the climate and have done so in the past, but the researchers warn that the current rate of climate change will outpace animals' capacity for compensation (or acclimation).

Off the West Coast of the United States, methane gas is trapped in frozen layers below the seafloor. New research from the University of Washington shows that water at intermediate depths is warming enough to cause these carbon deposits to melt, releasing methane into the sediments and surrounding water.

• Nidelric pugio fossil dates to half a billion years ago and teaches us about the diversity of life in Earth's ancient seas
• In life the animal was a 'balloon' shape and was covered in spines, but the squashed fossil resembles a bird's nest
• Named in honour of Professor Richard Aldridge from the University of Leicester

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In the most comprehensive look yet at the safety of abortion, researchers at UC San Francisco have concluded that major complications are rare, occurring less than a quarter of a percent of the time, about the same frequency as colonoscopies.

The study, published online on Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, in Obstetrics & Gynecology, analyzed data from more than 50,000 women enrolled in the Medi-Cal fee-for-service program who obtained abortions from 2009 to 2010, and looked for complications that occurred within six weeks of the procedure.

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According to a new NOAA-sponsored study, natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns are the primary drivers behind California's ongoing drought. A high pressure ridge off the West Coast (typical of historic droughts) prevailed for three winters, blocking important wet season storms, with ocean surface temperature patterns making such a ridge much more likely. Typically, the winter season in California provides the state with a majority of its annual snow and rainfall that replenish water supplies for communities and ecosystems.

Alexandria, Va. -- Methane is often found naturally leaking from the seafloor, particularly in petroleum basins like the Gulf of Mexico or along tectonically active continental margins like the U.S. West Coast, but such plumes were not expected along passive margins, like the East Coast of North America. Now, however, the discovery of hundreds of methane seeps on the seafloor along the U.S. East Coast suggests that such reservoirs may be more common along passive margins than previously thought.

MIAMI - A new study on tropical shallow-water soft corals, known as gorgonians, found that the species were able to calcify and grow under elevated carbon dioxide concentrations. These results suggest that Caribbean gorgonian corals may be more resilient to the ocean acidification levels projected by the end of the 21st century than previously thought.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 2014 -- There's probably a box of it in your fridge or cupboard, and it has a million uses: baking soda. Reactions is back with volume four of its popular Chemistry Life Hacks series, with tips on how to de-skunk your dog, clean your kitchen and supercharge your washing machine. Check out the latest in the series that's one-part MacGyver, one-part Mendeleev here: http://youtu.be/85diRmuk-ow.

Insects are full of marvels - and this is certainly the case with a beetle from the Tenebrionind family, found in the extreme conditions of the Namib desert. Now, a team of scientists has demonstrated that such insects can collect dew on their backs - and not just fog as previously thought. This is made possible by the wax nanostructure on the surface of the beetle's elytra. These findings by José Guadarrama-Cetina, then working at ESPCI ParisTech, France - on leave from the University of Navarra, in Spain - and colleagues were recently published in EPJ E.

Gallium nitride (GaN) based devices are attractive for harsh environment electronics because of their high chemical and the mechanical stability of GaN itself that has a higher atomic displacement energy than other semiconductor materials.

However, degradation mechanisms of GaN device under radiation environments is not clear mainly because devices consist of many different types of semiconductors, such as p-type and n-type layers in light emitting diode (LED), and each layer has different hardness to radiation.