Earth

The rapid warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, which occurred from the early-1950s to the late 1990s, has paused. Stabilisation of the ozone hole along with natural climate variability were significant in bringing about the change. Together these influences have now caused the peninsula to enter a temporary cooling phase. Temperatures remain higher than measured during the middle of the 20th Century and glacial retreat is still taking place.

Facial performance capture, a key component of visual effects for movies and computer games, can be obtained using just a single camera with a new methodology developed by Disney Research.

By creating a model that takes the underlying facial anatomy and skin thickness into account, the single-camera method is able to capture facial expressions with the robustness of traditional multi-view methods.

New Haven, Conn. - Yale University scientists have reached a milestone in their efforts to extend the durability and dependability of quantum information.

In an unprecedented evolutionary experiment, scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel and the Thünen Institute of Fisheries Ecology demonstrated that the most important single-celled calcifying alga of world's oceans, Emiliania huxleyi, is only able to adapt to ocean acidification to a certain extent. The proof of principle for evolutionary adaptation was provided by GEOMAR scientists already in 2012. But four years after the start of the experiment, the growth rates of the calcifying alga have only made little progress.

Friction and drag are commonplace in nature. You experience these phenomena when riding in an airplane, pairing electrical wiring, or rubbing pieces of sandpaper together.

Friction and drag also exist at the quantum level, the realm of atoms and molecules invisible to the naked eye. But how these forces interact across materials and energy sources remain in doubt.

TORONTO, ON - High ocean temperatures and poor timing of parasite management likely led to an epidemic of sea lice in 2015 throughout salmon farms in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Strait, a University of Toronto-led study has found.

The sea lice spread to migrating juvenile wild salmon, resulting in the highest numbers of sea lice observed on wild salmon in a decade.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Rocks formed beneath the ocean floor by fast-spreading tectonic plates may be a large and previously overlooked source of free hydrogen gas (H2), a new Duke University study suggests.

The finding could have far-ranging implications since scientists believe H2 might be the fuel source responsible for triggering life on Earth. And, if it were found in large enough quantities, some experts speculate that it could be used as a clean-burning substitute for fossil fuels today because it gives off high amounts of energy when burned but emits only water, not carbon.

Hurricane Darby weakened to a tropical storm as it approached the Central Pacific Ocean on July 20. NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an infrared image of the storm.

Once a tropical cyclone crosses the 140 degree west longitude line headed west, it enters the Central Pacific Ocean region and the forecasts are generated by NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC). Darby is expected to move into the Central Pacific later on July 20.

Titanium is the leading material for artificial knee and hip joints because it's strong, wear-resistant and nontoxic, but an unexpected discovery by Rice University physicists shows that the gold standard for artificial joints can be improved with the addition of some actual gold.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 19, 2016 -- When scaling down robots to the micrometer scale for tiny tasks such as incising tissue and puncturing retinal veins, minimalism is key. To make smaller, simpler microrobots, researchers at Drexel University have developed a fabrication method which utilizes the minimum geometric requirements for fluid motion -- consisting of just two conjoined microparticles coated with bits of magnetic debris.

Today, a negative correlation is observed in the amount of rainfall in north-western Africa and north-western Europe. If a humid winter climate prevails in north-western Europe, the climate in north-western Africa is dry. Due to melting ice sheets, this correlation was reversed in the early Holocene period; this resulted in both regions being humid respectively dry at the same time. Radical climate change occurred. The researchers have published their report in the current edition of Nature Geoscience.

Climate determined by opposing atmospheric pressures

An unprecedented record of erosion rates dating back millions of years shows a significant time-lag between tectonic uplift and maximum erosion rates in the Argentine Precordillera mountains. According to a new study by an international team of scientists, tectonic shortening and exhumation of rocks peaked between twelve and nine million years ago whereas the maximum erosional response is detected roughly seven million years ago, i.e. two million years later.

Chronic liver disease (CLD) and cirrhosis are serious liver conditions but little is known about how they affect ethnic minority populations in the United States. When researchers examined CLD and cirrhosis among different groups, they found that the prevalence of CLD ranged from 3.9 percent in African Americans and Native Hawaiians to 4.1 percent in whites, 6.7 percent in Latinos, and 6.9 percent in Japanese.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington have demonstrated that electrical conductivity can be an effective means to precisely measure the amount of blood present in dry blood spot analysis, providing a new alternative to the current preferred approach of measuring sodium levels.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have demonstrated how to control the "electron spin" of a nanodiamond while it is levitated with lasers in a vacuum, an advance that could find applications in quantum information processing, sensors and studies into the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics.

Electrons can be thought of as having two distinct spin states, "up" or "down." The researchers were able to detect and control the electron spin resonance, or its change from one state to the other.