Earth

Boulder, Colorado, USA - Although most people do not regularly appreciate it, geologic maps have been and remain a critical foundation of industrial society. They are used for myriad purposes, from locating and developing natural resources, to identifying and preparing for natural hazards, to building and maintaining infrastructure.

MIAMI--As Louisiana's wetlands continue to disappear at an alarming rate, a new study has pinpointed the man-made structures that disrupt the natural water flow and threaten these important ecosystems. The findings have important implications for New Orleans and other coastal cities that rely on coastal wetlands to serve as buffer from destructive extreme weather events.

Crucial peatlands carbon-sink vulnerable to rising sea levels, research shows

Rising sea-levels linked to global warming could pose a significant threat to the effectiveness of the world's peatland areas as carbon sinks, a new study has shown.

The pioneering new study, carried out by Geographers at the University of Exeter, examined the impact that salt found in sea water has on how successfully peatland ecosystems accumulate carbon from the atmosphere.

The permafrost regions in the Arctic are among those areas of the world in which the temperature is rising particularly fast due to climate change. However, biologists are currently observing that the tree vegetation is only minimally adapting to these changes. In those areas where pine and spruce trees should be growing according to the air temperature, the Siberian larch is still thriving.

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2016 -- As Independence Day approaches, people across the country are getting ready to celebrate with fireworks. Sparklers are a classic crowd-pleaser, and this week Reactions looks at the chemistry of these July 4th mainstays in super slow-motion. Watch as the special chemical composition of sparklers creates a prolonged, magical experience. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWBcnlMHhHQ.

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2016 -- The Speaking of Chemistry summer road trip continues through the Golden State. Now at Stanford, Matt Davenport and Noel Waghorn interview chemical engineer Zhenan Bao, Ph.D., and her team, who are working on materials for the future of electronics. In this video, the Stanford innovators show how they've collaborated to develop an electronic skin with applications in wearable technology and prosthetics. Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/caQ3kRmQwg8

Researchers have developed systematic search methods to discover one of the world's biggest helium gas fields, associated with volcanoes in the Tanzanian Rift Valley. This is the first time that helium has been found intentionally -previous finds were by accident- and opens the way for further large finds. This work is reported at the Goldschmidt conference in Yokohama, Japan.

A new approach to gas exploration has discovered a huge helium gas field, which could address the increasingly critical shortage of this vital yet rare element.

Helium doesn't just make your voice squeaky - it is critical to many things we take for granted, including MRI scanners in medicine, welding, industrial leak detection and nuclear energy. However, known reserves are quickly running out. Until now helium has never been found intentionally - being accidentally discovered in small quantities during oil and gas drilling.

In Vancouver, heat exposure and social vulnerability can be a lethal combination.

New research from the University of British Columbia shows a higher risk of mortality during extreme heat events in neighbourhoods that tend to get hotter and where people tend to be poorer.

Washington, DC-- It turns out that forests in the Andean and western Amazonian regions of South America break long-understood rules about how ecosystems are put together, according to new research led by Carnegie's Greg Asner and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their findings could help scientists understand how tropical forests will respond to global climate change.

Antarctic sea ice is constantly on the move as powerful winds blow it away from the coast and out toward the open ocean. A new study shows how that ice migration may be more important for the global ocean circulation than anyone realized.

The era of quantum computers is one step closer as a result of research published in the current issue of the journal Science. The research team has devised and demonstrated a new way to pack a lot more quantum computing power into a much smaller space and with much greater control than ever before. The research advance, using a 3-dimensional array of atoms in quantum states called quantum bits -- or qubits -- was made by David S. Weiss, professor of physics at Penn State University, and three students on his lab team.

New research shows that most of the radioactive fallout which landed on downtown Tokyo a few days after the Fukushima accident was concentrated and deposited in non-soluble glass microparticles, as a type of 'glassy soot'. This meant that most of the radioactive material was not dissolved in rain and running water, and probably stayed in the environment until removed by direct washing or physical removal. The particles also concentrated the radioactive caesium (Cs), meaning that in some cases dose effects of the fallout are still unclear.

The potential evolutionary link between hairs in mammals, feathers in birds and scales in reptiles has been debated for decades. Today, researchers of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland, demonstrate that all these skin appendages are homologous: they share a common ancestry. On the basis of new analyses of embryonic development, the Swiss biologists evidenced molecular and micro-anatomical signatures that are identical between hairs, feathers and scales at their early developmental stages.

Insects have evolved diverse types of camouflage that have played an important role in their evolutionary success. Debris-carrying, a behavior of actively harvesting and carrying exogenous materials, is among the most fascinating and complex behaviors because it requires not only an ability to recognize, collect, and carry materials, but also evolutionary adaptations in related morphological characteristics.