Earth

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (July 29, 2013) – A new, computationally-inspired approach has led a team of Boston College chemists to re-conceptualize a highly valued catalytic process, dramatically increasing the efficiency of a chemical transformation that selectively produces chiral, or handed, molecules valued for medical and life sciences research, the team reports in the current online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry.

Albert Einstein's assertion that there's an ultimate speed limit – the speed of light – has withstood countless tests over the past 100 years, but that didn't stop University of California, Berkeley, postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from checking whether some particles break this law.

Fossils of the Precambrian Ediacara Biota hold the key to understanding the origin and evolution of early animal life on this planet. Abundant fossils of these soft-bodied organisms occur globally and span 40 million years.

These fossils have traditionally been loosely grouped into three associations interpreted to have temporal significance -- with certain fossils representing older rocks and others representative of younger times.

Earthquakes occur even in places where no deformation related to horizontal tectonic plate motion is expected.

Among the regions where no present-day horizontal deformation can be quantified to the level of accuracy of GPS measurements (i.e., 0.3 mm/yr), the Alps and the Pyrenees mountain ranges (Western Europe) or the New Madrid area (USA) can be cited.

New research findings from the Centre for Permafrost (CENPERM) at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, document that permafrost during thawing may result in a substantial release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that the future water content in the soil is crucial to predict the effect of permafrost thawing. The findings may lead to more accurate climate models in the future.

In 2011 a powerful drought gripped East Africa. The failure of both the 2010 fall rains and the 2011 spring rains caused a drought that, stacked on an already unstable political climate, caused a famine that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Whenever an extreme weather event strikes a population—a drought, a hurricane, or a powerful flood—questions arise as to whether ongoing global climate change is complicit.

Around 1,840 million years ago, a widespread transition to euxinia occurred along productive continental margins.

At certain depths in Earth's mantle, the increasing pressure causes minerals to undergo phase changes, transforming to different crystal structures. Seismic waves change speed at these discontinuities, so analyzing seismic waves gives scientists information about the structure of the mantle.

The Cryogenian Period (800-635 million years ago) represents a time of profound and interrelated global tectonic, climatic, and biologic changes, involving the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia, extreme glaciations, and a drastic turnover in the diversity and morphology of life on Earth.

Sea level lies at the intersection of Earth's solid, liquid, and gaseous components, and thus forms a fundamental boundary on our planet that affects both biology and geology.

Human society must adjust to changes in this boundary, which is now rising 2-3 mm per year. Although climatological factors such as seawater warming and glacial melting are major contributors to sea level rise, deformation of the solid earth also exerts an important, and often dominating, influence on sea level.

Recently, climate change, including global warming, has been a "hot" news item as many regions of the world have experienced increasingly intense weather patterns, such as powerful hurricanes and extended floods or droughts. Often the emphasis is on how such extreme weather impacts humans, from daily heat index warnings to regulating CO2 emissions.

WASHINGTON D.C. -- The mineral molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which, when solid, behaves in many ways like grease, has semiconducting properties that make it a promising alternative to silicon or graphene in electronic devices. It also strongly absorbs visible light, and so it has been widely employed in light-sensing photodetectors, which are used in a wide range of technologies, such as environmental sensing, process control in factories, and optical communication devices.

Constraining landscape history and glacial erosivity using paired cosmogenic nuclides in Upernavik, northwest Greenland

The evolution of landscapes in the high Arctic is a complex process that takes place over long timescales and by multiple mechanisms.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new report projects that by the middle of this century there will be an average 56 percent drop in the amount of water stored in peak snowpack in the McKenzie River watershed of the Oregon Cascade Range - and that similar impacts may be found on low-elevation maritime snow packs around the world.

As the world's best athletes descend on London today to take part in the Olympic Anniversary Games, a group of researchers from Mexico has provided an insight into the physics of one of the greatest athletic performances of all time.

In a new paper published today, 26 July, in IOP Publishing's European Journal of Physics, the researchers have put forward a mathematical model that accurately depicts the truly extraordinary feats of Usain Bolt during his 100 metre world record sprint at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.