Earth

(Ulsan, South Korea 18 Dec. 2013): Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) announced a method for the mass production of boron/nitrogen co-doped graphene nanoplatelets, which led to the fabrication of a graphene-based field -effect transistor (FET) with semiconducting nature. This opens up opportunities for practical use in electronic devices.

Leipzig, Germany. Pollen reflects more sunlight than previously known, and makes up to one third of the total amount of aerosol particles in the atmosphere. Aerosol particles influence optical depth which provides a measure of the opacity of the atmosphere. These results, reported by scientists of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in Korea and the Leibniz-Institute of Tropospheric Research (TROPOS), are published in the research journal Atmospheric Environment.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Halomonas are a hardy breed of bacteria. They can withstand heat, high salinity, low oxygen, utter darkness and pressures that would kill most other organisms. These traits enable these microbes to eke out a living in deep sandstone formations that also happen to be useful for hydrocarbon extraction and carbon sequestration, researchers report in a new study.

WASHINGTON - Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Michael L. Connor released the Lower Rio Grande Basin Study that evaluated the impacts of climate change on water demand and supply imbalances along the Rio Grande along the United States/Mexico border from Fort Quitman, Tex., to the Gulf of Mexico.

Hacking the Earth's climate to counteract global warming – a subject that elicits strong reactions from both sides – is the topic of a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change. A dozen research papers include the most detailed description yet of the proposed Oxford Principles to govern geoengineering research, as well as surveys on the technical hurdles, ethics and regulatory issues related to deliberately manipulating the planet's climate.

Phenylalanine pairs capable of forming a molecular switch are also present in many other signaling proteins, including receptors in human cells, making it an attractive target for drug design and biotechnology applications.

However, using Anton, researchers were able to simulate only a small part of the chemoreceptor containing the Phe396 pair known as a dimer, meaning two identical molecules. But these two molecules do not work alone.

Emperor penguins maintain the tight huddle that protects them from the harsh conditions of an Antarctic winter with stop-and-go movements like cars in a traffic jam, a new study has shown.

By using a mathematical model that recreated the positions, movements and interactions of individual penguins in a huddle, researchers have revealed that an individual penguin only needs to move 2 cm in any direction for its neighbour to react and also perform a step to stay close to it.

Six in ten 13-year-old girls, compared to four in 10 boys the same age, are afraid of gaining weight or getting fat according to new research on eating disorders from the UCL Institute of Child Health (UK) in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK).

Latest climate and biosphere modelling suggests that the length of time carbon remains in vegetation during the global carbon cycle - known as 'residence time' - is the key "uncertainty" in predicting how Earth's terrestrial plant life - and consequently almost all life - will respond to higher CO2 levels and global warming, say researchers.

Water scarcity impacts people's lives in many countries already today. Future population growth will increase the demand for freshwater even further. Yet in addition to this, on the supply side, water resources will be affected by projected changes in rainfall and evaporation. Climate change due to unabated greenhouse-gas emissions within our century is likely to put 40 percent more people at risk of absolute water scarcity than would be without climate change, a new study shows by using an unprecedented number of impact models.

A pioneering collaboration within the international scientific community has provided comprehensive projections of climate change effects, ranging from water scarcity to risks to crop yields. This interdisciplinary effort, employing extensive model inter-comparisons, allows research gaps to be identified, whilst producing the most robust possible findings. The results provide crucial insights for decision-making regarding mitigation efforts in the face of potential impact cascades.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ancestor who roamed the earth in East Africa approximately 1.42 million years ago. They suspect the bone belonged to the early human species, Homo erectus.

Drought frequency may increase by more than 20% in some regions of the globe by the end of the 21st century, but it is difficult to be more precise as we don't know yet how changes in climate will impact on the world's rivers.

Thirty research teams in 12 different countries have systematically compared state-of-the-art computer simulations of climate change impact to assess how climate change might influence global drought, water scarcity and river flooding in the future. What they found was:

New research indicates that for loggerhead sea turtles in the Northwest Atlantic, the number of returning nesting females in the population and favorable climate conditions in the year or two prior to the nesting year are strongly related to the number of nests produced by these animals in a given year. Also, in what may be good news for loggerheads, nesting increases since 2008 may be a recovery response in this threatened population. The study published December 5 in the journal PLOS ONE.