Earth

February 17, 2013 - Boston, MA – Northern communities are in the midst of a period of intense and rapid change brought on by modernization, industrialization and the realities of climate change. From preserving the means to hunt caribou to protecting stocks of arctic char - balancing development with a respect and preservation of traditional means of sustainability may be key to improving standards of living in the North.

The news sounds grim: mounting scientific evidence indicates climate change will lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather that affects larger areas and lasts longer.

However, we can reduce the risk of weather-related disasters with a variety of measures, according to Stanford Woods Institute Senior Fellow Chris Field.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. -- Just as ice sheets slide slowly and steadily into the ocean, researchers are returning from each trip to the Arctic and Antarctic with more data about climate change, including information that will help improve current models on how climate change will affect life on the earth, according to a Penn State geologist.

Scientists around the world have crossed a threshold into a promising and challenging new era in the quest for fusion energy. So says physicist George "Hutch" Neilson, director of advanced projects at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, in remarks prepared for the 2013 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.

BOSTON—An Ohio State University statistician says that the natural human difficulty with grasping probabilities is preventing Americans from dealing with climate change.

In a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on Feb. 15, Mark Berliner said that an aversion to statistical thinking and probability is a significant reason that we haven't enacted strategies to deal with climate change right now.

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. -- Statistics is an important tool in sorting through information on how human activities are affecting the climate system, as well as how climate change affects natural and human systems, according to a Penn State statistician.

"One key aspect of climate change is risk," said Murali Haran, associate professor of statistics. "Without the language of statistics and probability, you can't talk about risk."

Where to play and spend money while on vacation depends on characteristics of the environment. To correctly value ecosystems, researchers must account for outdoor recreational opportunities and understand how changes in the environment lead to changes in visitation rates.

But that information is costly and hard to get because site-specific data are necessary to predict how changes in the environment will lead to changes in visitation rates. In most places, particularly developing countries, scientists lack data on where people go.

When it comes to healing the terrible wounds of war, success may hinge on the first blood clot – the one that begins forming on the battlefield right after an injury.

In our ongoing quest for alternative energy sources, researchers are looking more to plants that grow in the wild for use in biofuels, plants such as switchgrass.

However, attempts to "domesticate" wild-growing plants have a downside, as it could make the plants more susceptible to any number of plant viruses.

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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Throughout 2012, the United States was battered by severe weather events such as hurricanes and droughts that affected both pocketbooks and livelihoods. Research suggests that in the coming years, U.S. five-day forecasts will show greater numbers of extreme weather events, a trend linked to human-driven climate change.

DAKAR, SENEGAL (15 February 2013)—Scientists at the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and partners have developed specialized graphs that map out fire behavior, known as nomographs, for landscape managers in Africa's savannas. The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Arid Environments, pinpoints the optimal conditions for setting early-season prescribed fires—a process that when executed and timed properly, reduces the risk and impact of late dry season bushfires in increasingly fragile ecosystems, both of which are exacerbated by climate change.

Menlo Park, Calif. — A new study confirms what scientists have long suspected: Cosmic rays – energetic particles that pelt Earth from all directions – are born in the violent aftermath of supernovas, exploding stars throughout the galaxy.

A research team led by scientists at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory sifted through four years of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to find the first unambiguous evidence of how cosmic rays are born.

Opening a new window on the way plants generate the oxygen we breathe, researchers used an X-ray laser at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to simultaneously look at the structure and chemical behavior of a natural catalyst involved in photosynthesis for the first time.