Earth

PITTSBURGH—British mathematician Alan Turing's accomplishments in computer science are well known—he's the man who cracked the German Enigma code, expediting the Allies' victory in World War II. He also had a tremendous impact on biology and chemistry. In his only paper in biology, Turing proposed a theory of morphogenesis, or how identical copies of a single cell differentiate, for example, into an organism with arms and legs, a head and tail.

Will one-atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide, a compound that occurs naturally in rocks, prove to be better than graphene for electronic applications? There are many signs that might prove to be the case. But physicists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw have shown that the nature of the phenomena occurring in layered materials are still ill-understood and require further research.

Policies aimed at effectively mitigating climate change through a reduction in economic growth and consumption of fossil fuels would have a monetary impact on the economy, but also an impact on the wellbeing and happiness of individuals. Researchers at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the UAB have taken advantage of the current economic crisis to analyse the impact this situation would have.

Boston and Baltimore. Miami and Minneapolis. Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Fanned across the United States and in locations from coast to prairie to desert, what do these cities have in common?

How their human residents manage that icon of America, the urban lawn, or so hypothesized a team of scientists. However, when they conducted a study comparing residential landscapes in these six cities, they discovered that lawn care practices had fewer similarities than they expected.

Poisoning of dingoes - the top predators in the Australian bush - has a deleterious effect on small native mammals such as marsupial mice, bandicoots and native rodents, a UNSW-led study shows.

The research, in forested National Parks in NSW, found that loss of dingoes after baiting is associated with greater activity by foxes, which prey on small marsupials and native rodents.

A unique method to collect rain water samples during Hurricane Sandy has revealed the storm's chemical "signature" with a new level of detail. The technique may also lead to weather model advances that will ultimately improve storm prediction, say researchers at the University of Utah whose study was published online today in PLOS ONE.

A new NASA study shows Earth's climate likely will continue to warm during this century on track with previous estimates, despite the recent slowdown in the rate of global warming.

Boulder, Colo., USA – On 27 Feb. and 6 Mar. 2014, GSA Bulletin published 11 articles online ahead of print, including two that are open access: "O2 constraints from Paleoproterozoic detrital pyrite and uraninite" and "Sediment transfer and deposition in slope channels: Deciphering the record of enigmatic deep-sea processes from outcrop." Other articles cover geological features in the Alps; the Appalachians; Death Valley; India; the Himalaya; the Columbia River Basalt Province; San Simeon, California; Kaua'i, Hawai'i; and artic Canada.

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (JGR-D), and Journal of Geophysical Research-Earth Surface (JGR-F).

In this release:

SAN FRANCISCO, March 11, 2014 -- In the global aftershock zone that followed the major April 2012 Indian Ocean earthquake, seismologists noticed an unusual pattern – a dynamic "stress shadow," or period of seismic silence when some faults near failure were temporarily rendered incapable of a large rupture.

This news release is available in French and Spanish.

WASHINGTON D.C., March 11, 2014 -- How exactly does Twitter, with its 241 million users tweeting out 500 million messages daily, shape public opinion?

This news release is available in German.

NEW ORLEANS─New research presented today at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) found no greater injury risk for athletes playing on artificial playing surfaces.

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