Earth

Vast energy sources are slumbering below big cities. Sustaina-ble energies for heating in winter and cooling in summer may be extracted from heated groundwater aquifers. Researchers from KIT and ETH Zurich developed an analytical heat flux model and found that increasing heat in the underground is mainly caused by an increase in surface temperatures and heat release from buildings. Work of the scientists is now reported in the renowned journal "Environmental Science and Technology" (DOI: 10.1021/es401546u).

A new approach to analyzing paleo-climate reconstructions of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon resolves disagreements and reveals that ENSO activity during the 20th century has been unusually high compared to the past 600 years. The results are published in Climate of the Past by a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales, the University of Hawaii International Pacific Research Center and the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

Boulder, Colo., USA - Fracking is in the headlines a lot these days, and everyone has an opinion about it. But how much do we really know for certain about the oil and gas extraction technique and its health effects? And how do we find out the truth among all the shouted opinions? To help cut through the static, several scientists have put together a multidisciplinary session on fracking and health at the meeting of The Geological Society of America (GSA) in Denver on Sunday.

BOULDER -- Scientists have fingerprinted a distinctive atmospheric wave pattern high above the Northern Hemisphere that can foreshadow the emergence of summertime heat waves in the United States more than two weeks in advance.

The new research, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), could potentially enable forecasts of the likelihood of U.S. heat waves 15-20 days out, giving society more time to prepare for these often-deadly events.

Boulder, CO, USA — As the U.S. makes new plans for disposing of spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste deep underground, geologists are key to identifying safe burial sites and techniques. Scientists at The Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting in Denver will describe the potential of shale formations; challenges of deep borehole disposal; and their progress in building a computer model to help improve understanding of the geologic processes that are important for safe disposal of high-level waste.

Boulder, CO, USA - Just days before Hurricane Sandy hit the New York and New Jersey coastline on 29 October 2012, scientists from the City University of New York's (CUNY) College of Staten Island had produced the most detailed model to date of the region's potential for damage from big storms. So naturally, the morning after the floods receded from Staten Island, CUNY geology professor Alan I. Benimoff was out mapping the high-water marks in the flooded neighborhoods. There he discovered that his team's pre-Sandy model had been right on the money.

Boulder, CO, USA - U.S. National Parks are not just beautiful vistas and great family vacation destinations; they are also key scientific field laboratories and rich repositories of the record of Earth's history. Some recent discoveries to emerge from scientists working in U.S. National Parks will be presented in two sessions, Geology in the National Parks: Research, Mapping, and Resource Management I and II, at the 125th Anniversary meeting of The Geological Society of America in Denver next week.

Some abstracts of interest include:

Did you know that crystals form the basis for the penetrating icy blue glare of car headlights and could be fundamental to the future in solar energy technology?

Crystals are at the heart of diodes. Not the kind you might find in quartz, formed naturally, but manufactured to form alloys, such as indium gallium nitride or InGaN. This alloy forms the light emitting region of LEDs, for illumination in the visible range, and of laser diodes (LDs) in the blue-UV range.

The beating of flagella is one of the basic principles of movement in the cellular cosmos. However, up to now, scientists were unsure as to how the movements of several of these small cellular appendages are synchronised. Dresden-based researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and the MPI for the Physics of Complex Systems have now succeeded in demonstrating how the green alga Chlamydomonas synchronises the movements of its two flagella using a resourceful rocking movement.

Climate changes from millions of years ago are recorded at daily rate in ancient sea shells, new research shows.

A huge X-ray microscope has revealed growth bands in plankton shells that show how shell chemistry records the sea temperature.

The results could allow scientists to chart short timescale changes in ocean temperatures hundreds of millions of years ago.

Plankton shells show features like tree rings, recording historical climate.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers from the Universities of York and St Andrews, has developed a new method to increase the efficiency of solar cells.

The new approach achieves highly efficient broad-band light trapping in thin films, with more light captured in the film in order to maximise absorption and electricity generation.

Theoretical physicist Frank Wilhelm-Mauch and his research team at Saarland University have developed a mathematical model for a type of microscopic test lab that could provide new and deeper insight into the world of quantum particles.

The new test system will enable the simultaneous study of one hundred light quanta (photons) and their complex quantum mechanical relationships ("quantum entanglement") – a far greater number than was previously possible. The researchers hope to gain new insights that will be of relevance to the development of quantum computers.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Nutrient enrichment and climate change are posing yet another concern of growing importance: an apparent increase in the toxicity of some algal blooms in freshwater lakes and estuaries around the world, which threatens aquatic organisms, ecosystem health and human drinking water safety.

As this nutrient enrichment, or "eutrophication" increases, so will the proportion of toxin-producing strains of cyanobacteria in harmful algal blooms, scientists said.

Making hydrogen easily and cheaply is a dream goal for clean, sustainable energy. Bacteria have been doing exactly that for billions of years, and now chemists at the University of California, Davis, and Stanford University are revealing how they do it, and perhaps opening ways to imitate them.

A study published Oct. 25 in the journal Science describes a key step in assembling the hydrogen-generating catalyst.

Discovered in the 19th century, thermoelectric materials have the remarkable property that heating them creates a small electrical current. But enhancing this current to a level compatible with the needs of modern technologies has revealed an extraordinary challenge for scientists of the last decades, despite important theoretical and experimental efforts. Now a novel approach could lead to substantial progress. At ETH Zurich the quantum optics group of Tilman Esslinger has created a key model to better understand the fundamental phenomena – "a thermoelectric material emulator".