Earth

Members of the public have a negative view of climate engineering, the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the environment to counteract climate change, according to a new study.

The results are from researchers from the University of Southampton and Massey University (New Zealand) who have undertaken the first systematic large-scale evaluation of the public reaction to climate engineering.

The work is published in Nature Climate Change this week (12 January 2014).

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Scientists studying the atmosphere above Barrow, Alaska, have discovered unprecedented levels of molecular chlorine in the air, a new study reports.

Molecular chlorine, from sea salt released by melting sea ice, reacts with sunlight to produce chlorine atoms. These chlorine atoms are highly reactive and can oxidize many constituents of the atmosphere including methane and elemental mercury, as well activate bromine chemistry, which is an even stronger oxidant of elemental mercury. Oxidized mercury is more reactive and can be deposited to the Arctic ecosystem.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Jan. 9, 2014 -- Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville have pioneered a new technique for forming a two-dimensional, single-atom sheet of two different materials with a seamless boundary.

The study, published in the journal Science, could enable the use of new types of 2-D hybrid materials in technological applications and fundamental research.

Power plants that use natural gas and a new technology to squeeze more energy from the fuel release far less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide than coal-fired power plants do, according to a new analysis accepted for publication Jan. 8 in Earth's Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The so-called "combined cycle" natural gas power plants also release significantly less nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which can worsen air quality.

As Europe is battered by storms, new research reminds us of the other side of the coin. By the end of this century, droughts in Europe are expected to be more frequent and intense due to climate change and increased water use. These results, by researchers from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the University of Kassel in Germany, are published today in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

Light-gathering macromolecules in plant cells transfer energy by taking advantage of molecular vibrations whose physical descriptions have no equivalents in classical physics, according to the first unambiguous theoretical evidence of quantum effects in photosynthesis published today in the journal Nature Communications.

Volcanic rock dating suggests the painting of a Çatalhöyük mural may have overlapped with an eruption in Turkey according to results published January 8, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Axel Schmitt from the University of California Los Angeles and colleagues from other institutions.

From stretchy electronics to Martian chemistry, the most notable advances in the chemical world in 2013 appear in the year-in-review issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. The issue also provides a look back at the business of chemistry and the politics affecting it, as well as an update on discoveries that a decade ago promised great things.

TALLAHASSEE – Florida State University researchers have spearheaded a major review of fisheries research that examines the domino effect that occurs when too many fish are harvested from one habitat.

The loss of a major species from an ecosystem can have unintended consequences because of the connections between that species and others in the system. Moreover, these changes often occur rapidly and unexpectedly, and are difficult to reverse.

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and Water Resources Research (WRR).

In this release:

Boulder, Colorado, USA – Landslides are one of the most hazardous aspects of our planet, causing billions of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths each year. Most large landslides strike with little warning -- and thus geologists do not often have the ability to collect important data that can be used to better understand the behavior of these dangerous events. The 10 April 2013 collapse at Kennecott's Bingham Canyon open-pit copper mine in Utah is an important exception.

Understanding forest biodiversity and how carbon dioxide is stored within trees is an important area of ecological research. The bigger the tree, the more carbon it stores and a study in New Phytologist explores global variance in tree height, identifying temperature as the most important factor behind the tallest species.

Height gives canopy trees, the focus of much forest carbon research, a competitive advantage as they can place leaves at higher light levels while suppressing their competitors. Height also allows for wind-dispersed pollen and fruits to travel further.

In the study by Toulany et al., it was demonstrated for the first time that long term treatment with inhibitors of PI3K (as it is performed clinically) results in a reactivation of the major survival component Akt through a so far unknown regulatory loop via ERK1/2. This reactivation of Akt limits quite efficiently the response of the tested tumor cell lines presenting constitutively active K-Ras activity (both through K-RAS mutation or over-expression of K-RAS wildtype) to antagonistic strategies directed against PI3K.

Sea snails that leap to escape their predators may soon lose their extraordinary jumping ability because of rising human carbon dioxide emissions, a team of international scientists has discovered.

Lead author of the study published today, Dr Sue-Ann Watson from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) and James Cook University observed that the conch snail, which uses a strong foot to leap away from approaching predators, either stops jumping, or takes longer to jump, when exposed to the levels of carbon dioxide projected for the end of this century.