Earth

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 19, 2013 – University of Utah researchers ran computer simulations to show that the snow-producing "lake effect" isn't always enough to cause heavy snowfall, but that mountains or other surrounding topography sometimes are necessary too.

Most of the highly productive habitat for salmon occurs in low gradient streams with broad valleys, yet there is limited understanding of what controls the width of valleys in mountainous landscapes.

C. May and colleagues used high-resolution topographic data in the Oregon Coast Range to explore controls on valley width and couple these findings with models of salmon habitat potential.

New research by an international team of scientists led by the University of Saskatchewan has revealed novel information about the most important transition in the history of life: the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary.

The Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary (about 541 million years ago) represents a major divide in the history of the biosphere. Ediacaran biotas were dominated by soft-bodied organisms that are now considered for the most part to be unrelated to modern metazoans.

Tracking the origin of driftwood samples could help scientists to reconstruct past currents in the Arctic Ocean, a new study suggests. Arctic currents are likely to be affected by changing climate, but there are few observations that provide evidence on past current dynamics.

Each year, the powerful southwest monsoon ramps up in midsummer, bringing life-giving rains to the Indian subcontinent. The monsoon winds also drive dramatic changes in the regional ocean currents, including a reversal in the circulation of the Arabian Sea, an energetic eddy field, and strong coastal upwelling. Off the east coast of Somalia, a large (300 to 550 kilometer wide, or 186 to 342 mile wide) anticyclone appears—known since 1876 as the Great Whirl—with surface currents as strong as 2.5 meters per second (8.2 feet per second).

Redoubt Volcano erupted for 3 months in 2009, generating spectacular ash clouds and producing a large lava dome that remains in place today. Both this eruption and the last eruption in 1989 were preceded by bursts of earthquake activity -- known as earthquake swarms-- that provided scientists with early warning of the imminent eruption.

When more earthquake swarms occurred around the vent in the year after the eruption, the alert levels were raised in anticipation of eruptive activity.

Most volcanism on Earth reflects plate-tectonic processes, occurring along the boundaries between the moving plates.

Volcanism occurring within plate interiors is instead typically explained by deep-rooted "plumes" that transport hot material upward to feed stationary "hotspots" of volcanism.

As the plate moves above them, these hotspots produce chains of volcanoes, such as the Hawaiian Islands. One volcano chain, with the exotic name "Pukapuka," submerged beneath the southeastern Pacific, lacks a characteristic hotspot feature: Its source of volcanism is not stationary.

Niklas Heinemann and colleagues examine a natural rock that has held carbon dioxide for millions of years, and discover that only 11% plus or minus 8% of the total carbon dioxide has reacted with the host rock.

As only a low percentage has reacted after millions of years, then it is likely that very little reaction will occur in the thousands of years of storage which are needed for reduce anthropogenic climate change.

The Permian-Triassic mass extinction is the largest in Earth's history. In the United States, the record of this critical geobiologic interval was long thought to be absent at a major sedimentary hiatus.

Matthew R. Saltzman and Alexa R.C. Sedlacek present new evidence that a more continuous record of the Permian-Triassic boundary extinction event in shallow marine, Bahamas-like carbonate platform deposits of the Confusion Range in western Utah that represent the ancient western margin of Pangaea.

A possible Higgs boson of cancer and steps to give natural biodiversity a fighting chance will be among the topics Princeton University researchers will discuss during the 2013 AAAS annual meeting. Below are summaries, arranged chronologically, of the research to be presented. All information is embargoed until the beginning of the respective session.

* Virtual water trade helps cope with climate changeIgnacio Rodriguez-Iturbe, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Civil and Environmental EngineeringFriday, Feb. 15, 8 a.m., Room 203

For most people, the sea is a deep, dark mystery. That is changing, though, as scientists find innovative ways to track the movements of ocean-going creatures.

Stanford marine sciences professor and Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellow Barbara Block is using technology to enable live feeds of animal movements relayed by a series of "ocean WiFi hotspots." This could help protect marine ecosystems by revolutionizing how we understand their function, population structure, fisheries management and species' physiological and evolutionary constraints.

RICHLAND, Wash. -- To make fuel cells more economical, engineers want a fast and efficient iron-based molecule that splits hydrogen gas to make electricity. Online Feb. 17 at Nature Chemistry, researchers report such a catalyst. It is the first iron-based catalyst that converts hydrogen directly to electricity. The result moves chemists and engineers one step closer to widely affordable fuel cells.

The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, is now the first and only place in Europe where pathogens requiring Containment Level 3 – including serious viruses such as those responsible for AIDS, Hepatitis and some types of flu – can be analysed at atomic and molecular level using synchrotron light. This special light allows scientists to study virus structures at intense levels of detail and this new facility extends that capability to many viruses that have a major global impact on human and animal health.

UPTON, NY - Over the last quarter century, scientists have discovered a handful of materials that can be converted from magnetic insulators or metals into "superconductors" able to carry electrical current with no energy loss-an enormously promising idea for new types of zero-resistance electronics and energy-storage and transmission systems. At present, a key step to achieving superconductivity (in addition to keeping the materials very cold) is to substitute a different kind of atom into some positions of the "parent" material's crystal framework.

In the blink of an eye, more attoseconds have expired than the age of Earth measured in – minutes. A lot more. To be precise, an attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second. The attosecond timescale is where you must go to study the electron action that is the starting point of all of chemistry. Not surprisingly, chemists are most eager to explore it with X-rays, the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that can probe the core electrons of atoms, the electrons that uniquely identify atomic species.