Earth

NOAA scientists have developed a new high-resolution climate model that shows southwestern Australia's long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall is caused by increases in manmade greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience.

ANN ARBOR – Biophysics researchers at the University of Michigan have used short pulses of light to peer into the mechanics of photosynthesis and illuminate the role that molecule vibrations play in the energy conversion process that powers life on our planet.

The findings could potentially help engineers make more efficient solar cells and energy storage systems. They also inject new evidence into an ongoing "quantum biology" debate over exactly how photosynthesis manages to be so efficient.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Brown University) -- The discovery 30 years ago of soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecules called buckyballs helped to spur an explosion of nanotechnology research. Now, there appears to be a new ball on the pitch.

Researchers from Brown University, Shanxi University and Tsinghua University in China have shown that a cluster of 40 boron atoms forms a hollow molecular cage similar to a carbon buckyball. It's the first experimental evidence that a boron cage structure—previously only a matter of speculation—does indeed exist.

VERNON – It's no secret groundwater levels have declined across the state over the past eight decades, and that the primary reason was the onset of irrigation in agriculture and population growth. But a recent Texas A&M AgriLife Research study has identified other factors having an impact.

The groundwater declines have been most severe in the past four decades, but the news isn't all bad, according to Dr. Srinivasulu Ale, AgriLife Research geospatial hydrology assistant professor in Vernon.

A new pressure cell invented by UC Davis researchers makes it possible to simulate chemical reactions deep in the Earth's crust. The cell allows researchers to perform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements on as little as 10 microliters of liquid at pressures up to 20 kiloBar.

"NMR is our window into the chemical world," said Brent Pautler, a postdoctoral researcher in chemistry at UC Davis and first author on the paper published July 2 in the online edition of the journal Angewandte Chemie. "It lets us see chemical reactions as they are happening."

Researchers from Umeå University, Sweden, have explored two different ways that allow unprecedented experimental insights into the reaction sequence leading to the formation of oxygen molecules in photosynthesis. The two studies have been published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Haus and colleagues will conduct further studies on hurricane intensity prediction in the new, one-of-a-kind Alfred C. Glassell, Jr., SUSTAIN research facility located at the UM Rosenstiel School. The SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction laboratory is the only facility capable of creating category-5 level hurricanes in a controlled, seawater laboratory.

The controversy centres around a family of enzymes known as heme enzymes, due to the presence of a heme group in their active site. At the centre of the heme cofactor is an iron (Fe) atom, which becomes oxidised (ferryl) when a reacting heme is in an intermediate state called Compound I. The question that has remained unanswered for decades is whether this oxidation involves just an oxygen atom (O), or a hydroxyl group (OH). Resolving this fundamental question has implications for understanding oxidative processes within living cells, which is critically important for drug development.

As the Northwestern Pacific is bidding goodbye to Tropical Cyclone Neoguri, another tropical depression has formed. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Depression 09W (TD09W) and captured infrared data on the storm indicating some powerful thunderstorms within.

Because TD09W is close to land areas, watches are already in effect. On July 10, a tropical storm watch is in force for Guam, Rota, Tinian and Saipan.

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Leicester, has solved a long-standing mystery in biology, by identifying the molecular structure of a vital biological chemical. The debate – which has raged within the scientific community for years – boils down to something as simple as a hydrogen atom: is it there, or is it not?

Scientists at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a way to estimate uncertainties in computer calculations that are widely used to speed the search for new materials for industry, electronics, energy, drug design and a host of other applications. The technique, reported in the July 11 issue of Science, should quickly be adopted in studies that produce some 30,000 scientific papers per year.

As scientists learn more about earthquakes that rupture at fault zones near the planet's surface—and the mechanisms that trigger them—an even more intriguing earthquake mystery lies deeper in the planet.

NOAA and its research partners predict that western Lake Erie will have a significant bloom of cyanobacteria, a toxic blue-green algae, during the 2014 bloom season in late summer. However, the predicted bloom is expected to be smaller than last year's intense bloom, and considerably less than the record-setting 2011 bloom.

Bloom impacts will vary across the lake's western basin and are classified by an estimate of both its concentration and how far it spreads.

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Diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) have received much attention due to their potential application in spintronics, or the storage and transfer of information by using an electron's spin state, its magnetic moment and its charge.