Earth

Every chemist's dream, to snap an atomic-scale picture of a chemical before and after it reacts, has now come true, thanks to a new technique developed by chemists and physicists at the University of California, Berkeley.

Using a state-of-the-art atomic force microscope, the scientists have taken the first atom-by-atom pictures – including images of the chemical bonds between atoms – clearly depicting how a molecule's structure changed during a reaction. Until now, scientists have only been able to infer this type of information from spectroscopic analysis.

South American rainforests thrived during three extreme global warming events in the past, say paleontologists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in a new report published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science. No tropical forests in South America currently experience average yearly temperatures of more than 84 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius). But by the end of this century, average global temperatures are likely to rise by another 1 F (0.6 C), leading some scientists to predict the demise of the world's most diverse terrestrial ecosystem.

WATERLOO, Ont. (Thursday, May 30, 2013) - Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week.

CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Leading world climate change experts have thrown cold water on the idea that planting trees can offset carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.

Professor Brendan Mackey of Griffith University Climate Change Response Program is the lead author of an international study involving researchers from Australia and the U.K. Their findings are reported in "Untangling the confusion around land carbon science and climate change mitigation policy", published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

Charles H. Hennekens, MD, DrPH, the first Sir Richard Doll professor and senior academic advisor to the dean in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida Atlantic University has published in the current issue of the Lancet the most comprehensive analyses of the benefits and risks of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), which include cyclo-oxygenase-2 inhibitors (coxibs).

Global use of nuclear power has prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and release of 64 billion tons of greenhouse gases that would have resulted from burning coal and other fossil fuels, a new study concludes. It appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.

WASHINGTON--Geochemistry analysis conducted by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory of fossil sediment injection structures off the New Zealand coast in February and March, reveal no presence of modern day expulsions of methane gas, a potential contributor to global 'greenhouse effect' warming.

The main focus of this most recent expedition was to investigate the geological origin of seafloor anomalies discovered during a 2007 marine-life survey on the Chatham Rise.

For the first time, a new kind of so-called Klein tunnelling—representing the quantum equivalent of crossing an energy wall— has been presented in a model of two interacting particles. This work by Stefano Longhi and Giuseppe Della Valle from the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnology in Milan, Italy, is about to be published in EPJ B.

Hurricane Sandy caught the public and policymakers off guard when it hit the United States' Atlantic Coast last fall. Because much of the storm's devastation was wrought by flooding in the aftermath, researchers have been paying attention to how climate change and sea-level rise may have played a role in the disaster and how those factors may impact the shoreline in the future.

What may be the ultimate heat sink is only possible because of yet another astounding capability of graphene. The one-atom-thick form of carbon can act as a go-between that allows vertically aligned carbon nanotubes to grow on nearly anything.

That includes diamonds. A diamond film/graphene/nanotube structure was one result of new research carried out by scientists at Rice University and the Honda Research Institute USA, reported today in Nature's online journal Scientific Reports.

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Lawrence Livermore scientists have discovered and demonstrated a new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide while generating carbon-negative hydrogen and producing alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification.

A new study highlights the 'parasitism by theft' of bumblebees that invade birds' nests and claim them as their own. Their warning buzz helps bumblebees to "scare" the bird away from the nest. The work by Piotr Jablonski and colleagues, from the Laboratory of Behavioral Ecology and Evolution at Seoul National University in South Korea, is published online in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology.

Entanglement is a property in quantum mechanics that seemed so unbelievable and so lacking in detail that, 66 years ago this spring, Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance."

But a mathematician at Case Western Reserve University and two of his recent PhD graduates show entanglement is actually prevalent in large quantum systems and have identified the threshold at which it occurs.

As ash dieback disease continues to threaten common ash trees across Europe, new research in the Journal of Quaternary Science explores the historic impact of forest diseases to discover if diseases played a significant factor in vegetation change.

The study explores how large-scale pathogen outbreaks were much more infrequent in the past, which suggests the human role in transporting pathogens to new locations, such as the international seed trade, is a major factor.

There is growing recognition that reductions in Arctic sea ice levels will influence patterns of atmospheric circulation both within and beyond the Arctic. New research in the International Journal of Climatology explores the impact of 2007 ice conditions, the second lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the satellite era, on atmospheric circulation and surface temperatures.