Earth

Seagrasses provide the foundation of highly productive ecosystems present along the coasts of all continents except Antarctica, where they rival tropical rain forests and coral reefs in ecosystem services. In colonizing sedimentary shorelines of the world's oceans, seagrasses found a vast new habitat free of terrestrial competitors and insect pests, but had to adapt to cope with new structural and physiological challenges related to full marine conditions.

By developing this method, the international team of researchers has been able to map which areas are most sensitive to climate variability across the world.

"Based on the satellite data gathered, we can identify areas that, over the past 14 years, have shown high sensitivity to climate variability," says researcher Alistair Seddon at the Department of Biology at the University of Bergen (UiB).

Seddon is first author of the paper Sensitivity of global terrestrial ecosystems to climate variability, which has just been published in the journal Nature.

New research from the University of Copenhagen points to an entirely new approach for designing insulin-based pharmaceuticals. The approach could open the door for more personalized medications with fewer side effects for Type 1 Diabetes patients.

The sources of the high-energy cosmic neutrinos that are detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory buried in the Antarctic ice may be hidden from observations of high-energy gamma rays, new research reveals. These high-energy cosmic neutrinos, which are likely to come from beyond our Milky Way Galaxy, may originate in incredibly dense and powerful objects in space that prevent the escape of the high-energy gamma rays that accompany the production of neutrinos.

HOUSTON -- (Feb. 18, 2016) -- In a new study that provides clues about how Antarctica's nation-sized Ross Ice Shelf might respond to a warming climate, U.S. and Japanese oceanographers have shown that a 100,000-square-mile section of the ice shelf broke apart within 1,500 years during a warming period after the last ice age.

The Ross Ice Shelf is the world's largest ice shelf, a vast floating extension of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is about the size of France. But at the end of the last ice age, it extended much farther north and covered the entire Ross Sea.

By 2050 climate change will increase the groundwater deficit even more for four economically important aquifers in the western U.S., reports a University of Arizona-led team of scientists.

The new report is the first to integrate scientists' knowledge about groundwater in the U.S. West with scientific models that show how climate change will affect the region.

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have demonstrated the use of the world's first ultrafast optical microscope, allowing them to probe and visualize matter at the atomic level with mind-bending speed.

If there is one thing to avoid when trying to lose or maintain a healthy weight, it's a restrictive diet! Instead, simple routine behaviors may be key.

To shed light on the health behaviors of those who maintain a healthy weight, Cornell Food and Brand Lab researchers developed an online Global Healthy Weight Registry (formerly named the Slim by Design Registry). Adults of healthy weight were invited to sign up for the registry and then answer questions about diet, exercise, and daily routines (see the infographic for more details about registry participants).

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In recent years, climate scientists have grown increasingly concerned that massive rivers of ice flowing into the ocean from Greenland and Antarctica could accelerate as the planet warms, leading to a catastrophic collapse of Earth's ice sheets.

This grim scenario would cause the world's oceans to rise rapidly, putting many island nations and coastal communities around the world under water.

Carbon capture and storage could be used to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and thus ameliorate their impact on climate change. The focus of this technology is on the large-scale reduction of carbon emissions from fossil-fuelled power plants.

Research published in the International Journal of Decision Support Systems investigates the pros and cons, assesses the risks associated with carbon capture and provides a new framework for assessing the necessary technology.

Stanford scientists have found that chronically low levels of oxygen throughout the oceans hampered the recovery of life after the Permian-Triassic extinction, the most catastrophic die-off in our planet's history. Also known as the "Great Dying," global ecosystems collapsed as some 90 percent of species perished in this extinction event 250 million years ago.

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 17, 2016 - Higher pollution levels were linked to a higher total number of strokes, and researchers said it reaffirmed the growing evidence that climate change and overall air quality contributes to cardiovascular disease, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2016.

DURHAM, N.C. -- A law of physics explaining why larger animals live longer and travel further also extends to the simplest forms of mass migration on the planet -- like rolling stones and turbulent eddies in water and air currents, according to research at Duke University.

The finding demonstrates that evolution doesn't apply only to biological things, but any physical system in motion, says Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke.

Grandmas play a very important role in the long-term success of an elephant herd, reveals University of Stirling research.

Phyllis Lee, Behavioural Psychologist at the University of Stirling, led a study analysing data from 834 female elephants in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Researchers have been watching more than 3000 elephants in Amboseli for more than four decades.

Phyllis Lee, Behavioural Psychologist at the University of Stirling, said:

The research group of Professor Hideo Ohno and Associate Professor Shunsuke Fukami of Tohoku University has studied the control of magnetization using a current applied to heterostructures comprising an antiferromagnet. They found that the current gives rise to a flow of electron spin in the antiferromagnet, which induces magnetization switching in a neighboring ferromagnet.

The obtained results shed light on a new physics of antiferromagnet and also open various pathways toward ultralow-power integrated circuits and other novel applications such as neuromorphic computing.