Earth

Irvine, Calif., March 7, 2016 -- On a cool, fog-shrouded mountain of Costa Rica, University of California, Irvine biologist Caitlin Looby is finding that warming temperatures are becoming an increasing problem for one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth.

Agriculture in parts of sub-Saharan Africa must undergo significant transformation if it is to continue to produce key food crops, according to a new study published today in Nature Climate Change.

The study shows that maize, beans and bananas are most at risk from climate change.

The research is the first to allocate timeframes for changes in policy and practice in order to maintain production levels and avoid placing food security and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers at risk.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- One of the most critical questions surrounding climate change is how it might affect the food supply for a growing global population. A new study by researchers from Brown and Tufts universities suggests that researchers have been overlooking how two key human responses to climate -- how much land people choose to farm, and the number of crops they plant -- will impact food production in the future.

New light has been shed on the processes by which ocean water enters the solid Earth during continental breakup.

Research led by geoscientists at the University of Southampton, and published in Nature Geoscience this week, is the first to show a direct link on geological timescales between fault activity and the amount of water entering the Earth's mantle along faults.

When water and carbon is transferred from the ocean to the mantle it reacts with a dry rock called peridotite, which makes up most of the mantle beneath the crust, to form serpentinite.

Scientists developing fusion energy experiments have solved a puzzle of why their million-degree heating beams sometimes fail, and instead destabilise the fusion experiments before energy is generated.

The solution used a new theory based on fluid flow and will help scientists in the quest to create gases with temperatures over a hundred million degrees and harness them to create clean, endless, carbon-free energy with nuclear fusion.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Supervolcanoes capable of unleashing hundreds of times the amount of magma that was expelled during the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 are found in populated areas around the world, including the western United States.

A new study is providing insight into what may happen when one of these colossal entities explodes.

Orlando, FL - Shoulder and elbow injuries in adolescent pitchers are becoming more and more prevalent each year. Researchers presenting their work today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Specialty Day, highlight how fatigue can affect pitching mechanics and potentially result in injuries.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Superconductivity - a quantum phenomenon in which metals below a certain temperature develop flow of current with no loss or resistance - is one of the most exciting problems in physics, which has resulted in investments worldwide of enormous brain power and resources since its discovery a little over a century ago. Many prominent theorists, Nobel laureates among them, have proposed theories for new classes of superconducting materials discovered several decades later, followed by teams of experimentalists working furiously to provide solid evidence for these theories.

Corporate social responsibility, or CSR -- a name for the actions companies take to advance social good, above and beyond that which is required by law -- continues to draw interest from practitioners and academics alike. One question that practitioners have is whether CSR impacts their firm's performance.

Since it produces almost no friction at all, it could drastically reduce energy loss in machines when used as a coating, as the researchers report in the journal Science.

DURHAM, N.H. - University of New Hampshire scientists have conducted the first study of oyster farming-nitrogen dynamics in New Hampshire, providing the first solid research on the state's oyster farming industry and the role oyster farms play with nitrogen removal. The research, which was funded in part by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, contributes to a growing body of research on how oysters affect the nitrogen content of estuaries such as Great Bay.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- The twin birth rate in the U.S. has surged over the last 30 years, mostly because of reproductive technologies including in vitro fertilization. Though it's partly the cause, IVF could also be the most promising solution to reducing unintended twin births, argues Dr. Eli Adashi in a new editorial in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Climate mitigation efforts in the energy system could lead to increasing pressure on water resources, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Yet increased energy efficiency and a focus on wind and solar power, which require less water, or the switch to more water efficient cooling technologies could help avoid this problem, the study shows.

Rao Kotamarthi and Jiali Wang spend their days looking at a future Earth.

At the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the two scientists work on simulations and techniques to project what the climate will look like 100 years from now.

Last year, they completed the highest-resolution climate forecast ever done for North America, dividing the continent into squares just over seven miles on a side--far more detailed than the standard 30 to 60 miles.

What are the prime factors, or multipliers, for the number 15? Most grade school students know the answer -- 3 and 5 -- by memory. A larger number, such as 91, may take some pen and paper. An even larger number, say with 232 digits, can (and has) taken scientists two years to factor, using hundreds of classical computers operating in parallel.