Earth

COLUMBUS, Ohio—A study has pinpointed the likely source of most natural gas contamination in drinking-water wells associated with hydraulic fracturing, and it's not the source many people may have feared.

What's more, the problem may be fixable: improved construction standards for cement well linings and casings at hydraulic fracturing sites.

The image of the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the two storms was taken at 8 a.m. EDT (5 a.m. PDT) on September 12. It shows that Tropical Depression 16E (TD16E) is about 10 times smaller in comparison to Tropical Storm Odile, located to its east. NOAA manages the GOES-West satellite but the image was created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The National Hurricane Center noted that TD16E is unable to intensify because of its close proximity to Tropical Storm Odile.

A strange thing happened on the way to dealing with climate change: Advances in hydraulic fracturing put trillions of dollars' worth of previously unreachable oil and natural gas within humanity's grasp.

Richard Feynman famously posed the question in 1959: is it possible to see and manipulate individual atoms in materials? For a time his vision seemed more science fiction than science, but starting with groundbreaking experiments in the late 1980s and more recent developments in electron microscopy instrumentation it has become scientific reality. However, damage caused by the electron beam is often an issue in such experiments.

Astronomers searching the atmospheres of alien worlds for gases that might be produced by life can't rely on the detection of just one type, such as oxygen, ozone, or methane, because in some cases these gases can be produced non-biologically, according to extensive simulations by researchers in the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Virtual Planetary Laboratory.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology are first to show the use of sound to communicate with an artificial atom. They can thereby demonstrate phenomena from quantum physics with sound taking on the role of light. The results will be published in the journal Science.

WASHINGTON (Sept. 11, 2014)—Scientists today unveiled what appears to be the first truly semiaquatic dinosaur, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. New fossils of the massive Cretaceous-era predator reveal it adapted to life in the water some 95 million years ago, providing the most compelling evidence to date of a dinosaur able to live and hunt in an aquatic environment. The fossils also indicate that Spinosaurus was the largest known predatory dinosaur to roam the Earth, measuring more than 9 feet longer than the world's largest Tyrannosaurus rex specimen.

The sixth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season formed in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean and NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured it.

A visible image of Tropical Depression 6 was taken by NOAA's GOES-East satellite at 7:45 a.m. EDT on September 11 as it developed. The image was created by NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

One third of men in academic science are willing to scale back their careers to focus on family life, according to researchers.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – As youth obesity levels in America remain at record high levels, health professionals and policymakers continue to search for solutions to this national health issue. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Minnesota have found that local governments can help reduce youth obesity levels by increasing the amount and type of public lands available for recreation.

A hiatus in global warming ongoing since 2001 is due to a combination of a natural cooling phase, known as multidecadal variability (MDV) and a downturn of the secular warming trend. The exact causes of the latter, unique in the entire observational record going back to 1850, are still to be identified, according to an article by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC).