Earth

• The more radiant the burst, the better the egg
• Zinc content predicts egg's ability to develop into embryo
• Tool being developed to help doctors see zinc fireworks in clinic

CHICAGO --- A stunning explosion of zinc fireworks occurs when a human egg is activated by a sperm enzyme, and the size of these "sparks" is a direct measure of the quality of the egg and its ability to develop into an embryo, according to new research from Northwestern Medicine.

In the US, spring 2012 was the warmest on record. The subsequent summer was dryer and hotter than any summer since the 1930s, a period that became known in the history books as the 'Dust Bowl'. In 2012, drought and heat afflicted almost the entire contiguous United States.

Athens, Ga. - Over the past several decades, scientists have observed a significant increase in the melting of glacial land ice on the island of Greenland, spurring concerns about global sea level rise and the long-term effects of atmospheric warming. What has been less clear, however, is what happens to this meltwater once it enters the ocean.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was the major driver behind the global climatic shifts that occurred between 53 and 34 million years ago, according to new research led by the University of Southampton.

The study, which was published today in Nature, is the first to resolve the relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate during the period known as the 'Eocene epoch' when global temperatures were around 14 oC warmer than today. This is an important step in understanding ancient climate and thus helping scientists better predict future climate change.

Tiny units of matter and chemistry that they are, atoms constitute the entire universe. Some rare atoms can store quantum information, an important phenomenon for scientists in their ongoing quest for a quantum Internet.

New research from UC Santa Barbara scientists and their Dutch colleagues exploits a system that has the potential to transfer optical quantum information to a locally stored solid-state quantum format, a requirement of quantum communication. The team's findings appear in the journal Nature Photonics.

BOSTON -- An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries has just published a study titled "Greening of the Earth and its Drivers" in the journal Nature Climate Change showing significant greening of a quarter to one-half of the Earth's vegetated lands using data from the NASA-MODIS and NOAA-AVHRR satellite sensors of the past 33 years. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees.

With apologies to Isaac Asimov, the most exciting phase to hear in science isn't "Eureka," but "That's funny..."

A "that's funny" moment in a Colorado State University physics lab has led to a fundamental discovery that could play a key role in next-generation microelectronics.

Ever since Kepler's observation in the 17th century that sunlight is one of the reasons that the tails of comets to always face away from the sun, it has been understood that light exerts pressure in the direction it propagates. Radiation pressure is produced by the momentum carried by light, and it plays a crucial role in a variety of systems, from atomic to astronomical scales.

As global leaders convened at the UN last week to sign on to the Paris climate agreement, they committed to a wide range of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Expectations are particularly high for two of the most widely recognized solutions to climate change: energy efficiency and renewable energy. But how much do we know about the environmental impacts of a large-deployment of these technologies -- including the benefits or costs from a life-cycle perspective?

Researchers have used 'network theory' for the first time to visually depict the movement of dinosaurs around the world during the Mesozoic Era - including a curious exodus from Europe.

The research, published today in the Journal of Biogeography, also reaffirms previous studies that have found that dinosaurs continued to migrate to all parts of the world after the 'supercontinent' Pangaea split into land masses that are separated by oceans.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., April 22, 2016 - Neutron scattering and computational modeling have revealed unique and unexpected behavior of water molecules under extreme confinement that is unmatched by any known gas, liquid or solid states.

Researchers have figured out what makes certain chemicals accumulate to toxic levels in aquatic food webs. And, scientists have developed a screening technique to determine which chemicals pose the greatest risk to the environment.

According to the study led by the U.S. Geological Survey, two traits were identified that indicate how chemicals can build up and reach toxic levels: how easily a chemical is broken down or metabolized by an organism and the chemical’s ability to dissolve in water.

A new study has found that the very corals responsible for establishing today's reefs are now some of the most threatened coral species due to climate change and other man-made stressors.

With the aid of terahertz radiation, Munich physicists have developed a method for generating and controlling ultrashort electron pulses. With further improvements, this technique should be capable of capturing even electrons in motion.

Our experience of space-time is that of a continuous object, without gaps or discontinuities, just as it is described by classical physics. For some quantum gravity models however, the texture of space-time is "granular" at tiny scales (below the so-called Planck scale, 10-33 cm), as if it were a variable mesh of solids and voids (or a complex foam). One of the great problems of physics today is to understand the passage from a continuous to a discrete description of spacetime: is there an abrupt change or is there gradual transition? Where does the change occur?