Earth

A new research, affiliated with UNIST has been featured as a 'Hot Article' on the front cover of the March issue of Chemistry: A European Journal. This study has been regarded as "very important" because it offers a new framework for understanding reactions in organic chemistry.

The beautiful title "Siberian unicorn" belongs to Elasmotherium sibiricum - an elasmotherium Siberian rhinoceros, which as previously thought became extinct 350,000 years ago. Nowadays the researchers of Tomsk State University (TSU) figured out that the "unicorn" found his last refuge "only" 29,000 years ago in Kazakhstan. The article, describing the new location of the fossil mammals in the Pavlodar Irtysh, was published in February 2016 in the American Journal of Applied Science.

Washington, DC-- A new study, based on the most-extensive set of measurements ever made in tide pools, suggests that ocean acidification will increasingly put many marine organisms at risk by exacerbating normal changes in ocean chemistry that occur overnight. Conducted along California's rocky coastline, the study from Carnegie's Ken Caldeira and Lester Kwiatkowski shows that the most-vulnerable organisms are likely to be those with calcium carbonate shells or skeletons. It is published by Scientific Reports.

A recent BioScience paper provides the first comprehensive inventory of the world's biological field stations. Its authors report 1,268 stations are operating in 120 countries -- from the tropics to the tundra, monitoring terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.Long-term data collected by biological field stations are essential for underpinning environmental research, assessing environmental policies, and advancing conservation goals.

Boulder, Colo., USA: The most studied battleground from the American Civil War, from a geological perspective, is the rolling terrain surrounding Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Here, the mixture of harder igneous and softer sedimentary rocks produced famous landform features such as Cemetery Hill and Little Round Top that provided strong defensive positions for the Union Army.

Another even more common type of rock -- carbonates such as limestone -- provided similarly formidable defensive positions at numerous other battlefields in both the eastern and western theaters of conflict.

When it comes to Earth's climate, what happens in the tropical Pacific Ocean has an outsize influence. The climate state of the vast equatorial Pacific, which covers half the planet, affects weather patterns around the globe.

A JRC-led research published in Climatic Change investigated the benefits of four adaptation measures to reduce the increasing flood risk in Europe under state-of-the-art global warming projections under a high-end climate scenario. Adaptation measures include the rise of flood protections, reduction of the peak flows through water retention, reduction of vulnerability and relocation to safer areas.

Molecules are composed of atoms that maintain specific intervals and angles between one another. However, the shape of a molecule can change, for example, through proximity to other molecules, external forces and excitations, and also when a molecule makes a chemical connection with another molecule, for instance in a chemical reaction. A very useful concept in describing the changes that are possible in molecules is the use of what are called "potential surfaces" or energy landscapes. However, these are not actual surfaces in real space.

In an article published in Nature today, researchers at Lund University in Sweden show how different arrangements of atoms can be combined into nanowires as they grow. Researchers learning to control the properties of materials this way can lead the way to more efficient electronic devices.

Nanowires are believed to be important elements in several different areas, such as in future generations of transistors, energy efficient light emitting diodes (LEDs) and solar cells.

New Monash University research published this week in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Nanoscale has found a simple and effective way of capturing graphenes and the toxins and contaminants they attract from water by using light. The findings could have significant implications for large-scale water purification.

MINNEAPOLIS/ST.PAUL (3/16/2016) - Plants speed up their respiratory metabolism as temperatures rise, leading to a long-held concern that as climate warms the elevated carbon release from a ramped-up metabolism could flip global forests from a long-term carbon sink to a carbon source, further accelerating climate change.

During a test dive last week, the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) recovered the bronze bell from the I-400 - a World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, lost since 1946 when it was intentionally sunk by U.S. forces after its capture.

Longer than a football field at 400 feet, the I-400 was known as a "Sen-Toku" class submarine --the largest submarine ever built until the introduction of nuclear-powered subs in the 1960s. The I-400 is now protected under the Sunken Military Craft Act and managed by the Department of the Navy.

New Haven, Conn. - The Tully Monster, an oddly configured sea creature with teeth at the end of a narrow, trunk-like extension of its head and eyes that perch on either side of a long, rigid bar, has finally been identified.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - According to a new study from Oregon State University, restoration of wetlands in the Midwest has the potential to significantly reduce peak river flows during floods -- not only now, but also in the future if heavy rains continue to increase in intensity.

Wetland restoration could also provide a small step toward a hydrologic regime in this region that more closely resembles its historic nature, before roads and cities were constructed, forests were lost, and millions of acres tile-drained to increase agricultural production.

For two University of Washington researchers, the real test came as they walked across a barren-looking field.

They were on the Columbia Plateau with two state wetland ecologists, searching for a 1-acre body of water identified and mapped for the first time using a new method they developed. But when the group arrived at the expected coordinates, map in hand, the soil was dry and cracked and there wasn't a wetland in sight.