Earth

Climate change will affect farmers' bottom line

URBANA, Ill. - Over the next 70 to 100 years, our climate is projected to change dramatically, with major impacts on a wide variety of economic sectors. But the sector that is most likely to be affected by these changes is agriculture. A number of studies support this assertion, but relatively few look at the effect of climate change on agriculture from a comprehensive economic perspective.

An interdisciplinary team from the University of Illinois recently investigated the effects of climate change on farmland values in the Southwestern United States.

New cheap method of surveying landscapes can capture environmental change

Cheap cameras on drones can be used to measure environmental change which affects billions of people around the world, new research from the University of Exeter shows.

Experts have developed a new way of surveying vegetation which greatly advances the tools available to ecologists and land managers seeking understand dryland ecosystems.

ORNL research finds magnetic material could host wily Weyl fermions

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 7, 2016--An elusive massless particle could exist in a magnetic crystal structure, revealed by neutron and X-ray research from a team of scientists led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee.

US counties could gain $1 million in annual health benefits from a power plant carbon standard

Boston, MA - Nearly all U.S. regions stand to gain economic benefits from power plant carbon standards that set moderately stringent emission targets and allow a high level of compliance flexibility, according to a new study by scientists from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Syracuse University, Resources for the Future, and the Harvard Forest, Harvard University as a project of the Science Policy Exchange.

Researchers take prints of storms on the ocean floor

Human fingerprints are unique identifiers. The wiggles, curves and ripples cannot be copied or duplicated and provide a distinct signature that represents an individual.

In the same way, strong storms -- such as Superstorm Sandy -- can leave a signature in the form of ripples on the seafloor.

Landscape ecology's role in policymaking

The BioScience Talks podcast features discussions of topical issues related to the biological sciences.

Models make predictions on Olympic medals

How many medals will each country win in Rio at this Summer's Olympic Games? Researchers who derived predictions from two different models anticipate that the USA, China, Russia, and the UK will retain their top positions in the medals ranking, but Brazil and Japan are expected to make the biggest gains.

As described in a new Significance article, the first model primarily describes a country's medals as a function of the number of medals won at the previous Olympic Games, and the second model includes additional socio-economic variables.

At the LHC, charmed twins will soon be more common than singles

Krakow, June 08, 2016 - In the range of energies penetrated by the LHC accelerator, a new mechanism of the creation of particles is becoming more prominent, say scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. The comparison between theoretical predictions and test data leaves no doubt: the energy in collisions is now so great that some of the elementary particles, mesons containing charm quarks, are beginning to emerge in pairs as often as single ones -- and even more often.

Danger from extreme storms and high seas to rise

Storms that battered Australia's east coast are a harbinger of things to come and a stark reminder of the need for a national effort to monitor the growing threat from climate change, UNSW coastal researchers warn.

"The damage we've seen is a harbinger of what's to come," said Ian Turner, Director of the Water Research Laboratory at the University of New South Wales. "Climate change is not only raising the oceans and threatening foreshores, but making our coastlines much more vulnerable to storm damage. What are king high tides today will be the norm within decades."

New molecular design to get hydrogen-powered cars motoring

A radical new process that allows hydrogen to be efficiently sourced from liquid formic acid could be one step forward in making the dream of hydrogen-powered cars an economic reality.

Using formic acid to produce hydrogen has never been considered viable because it requires high temperatures to decompose and also produces waste by-products.

Scientists use silver to make lights shine brightly

The toxic and expensive phosphors used widely in fluorescent lighting could be eliminated thanks to a new study conducted by a materials scientist at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

Writing in the journal Nature Materials, the international group of scientists modified a mineral called zeolite, more commonly found in washing powder, to incorporate tiny clusters of silver atoms.

At this very small scale (less than 10 atoms), the silver clusters act very differently and can even emit light.

Pandas don't like it hot: Temperature, not food is biggest concern for conservation

Although a new Drexel study found that the metabolism of giant pandas is higher than previously reported, there is more than enough bamboo in nature to keep pandas healthy and happy for years.

That is, until rising global temperatures kill the plants off.

Physicists predict novel phenomena in exotic materials

Discovered just five years ago, topological semimetals are materials with unusual physical properties that could make them useful for future electronics.

In the latest issue of Nature Physics, MIT researchers report a new theoretical characterization of topological semimetals' electrical properties that accurately describes all known topological semimetals and predicts several new ones.

World Oceans Day: Bring the seas into your home, exploration is one click away

In the years after the HMS Challenger set sail from Portsmouth, England, in 1872, researchers made discoveries that laid the foundation of the science of oceanography. These scientists couldn't have imagined that more than a century later, almost anyone can discover secrets of the sea -- even if he or she lives thousands of miles from a coastline.

A new approach to chemical synthesis

CAMBRIDGE, MA - MIT chemists have devised a new way to synthesize a complex molecular structure that is shared by a group of fungal compounds with potential as anticancer agents. Known as communesins, these compounds have shown particular promise against leukemia cells but may be able to kill other cancer cells as well.