A new study reports that the disintegration of the Maya Civilization may have been related to relatively modest reductions in rainfall.
The study was led by Professors Martín Medina-Elizalde of the Yucatan Center for Scientific Research in Mexico and Eelco Rohling of the University of Southampton in the UK. Professor Rohling says:
WASHINGTON, February 23, 2012—The Council of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) unanimously issued two resolutions at its February meeting in response to the suspension of the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District No. 1 (TUSD). The resolutions addressed specifically the suspension of such courses and urged also the repeal of Arizona HB2281, which amended the Arizona Revised Statutes Relating to School Curriculum and led to the questioning of such courses.
As the Earth's climate changes, the worst inundations from hurricanes and tropical storms could become far more common in low-lying coastal areas, a new study suggests. Researchers from Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that regions such as the New York City metropolitan area that currently experience a disastrous flood every century could instead become submerged every one or two decades.
San Diego, Calif. – Beyond the personal tragedy of chronic alcoholism there is heartbreak in the biological sense, too. Scientists know severe alcoholism stresses the heart and that mitochondria, the cellular energy factories, are especially vulnerable to dysfunction. But they don't know the precise mechanism.
In an exclusive interview with Physics World, astronaut Drew Feustel gives a vivid account of his two missions into space and recalls his determination to make his childhood ambition – space flight – come true.
In the video, Feustel discusses his two missions – his maiden flight in 2009, as part of a team sent to repair the Hubble Space telescope, and his return to space in 2011 as the lead spacewalker on Endeavour's final mission to the International Space Station.
More than 300 eminent scientists from 21 other countries around the world today urged the Australian Federal Government to create the world's largest no-take marine reserve in the Coral Sea.
As scientists warn that the Earth is on the brink of a period of mass extinctions, they are struggling to identify ecosystem responses to environmental change. But to truly understand these responses, more information is needed about how the Earth's staggering diversity of species originated.
Curiously, a vexing modeling mystery has stymied research on this topic: mathematical models have told us that complex ecosystems, such as jungles, deserts and coral reefs, in which species coexist and interact with another, cannot persist--even though they obviously do.
Washington, D.C. — Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in certain materials at low temperatures, or can be induced under chemical and high external pressure conditions. Research to create superconductors at higher temperatures has been ongoing for two decades with the promise of significant impact on electrical transmission.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The first anniversary is approaching of the March, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that devastated Fukushima, Japan, and later this year debris from that event should begin to wash up on U.S. shores – and one question many have asked is whether that will pose a radiation risk.
The simple answer is, no.
New research has established the "miracle material" called graphene as the world's thinnest known coating for protecting metals against corrosion. Their study on this potential new use of graphene appears in ACS Nano.
A mysterious cycle of booms and busts in marine biodiversity over the past 500 million years could be tied to a periodic uplifting of the world's continents, scientists report in the March issue of The Journal of Geology.
Deep-diving ocean "gliders" have revealed the journey of Bass Strait water from the Tasman Sea to the Indian Ocean.
Deployed in 2010 and 2011, the gliders have also profiled a 200-metre tall wall of water at the core of long-lived ocean eddies formed from the East Australian Current.The study, by University of Technology Sydney and CSIRO oceanographers, revealed the value of new sensors being deployed by Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System.
MMV and partners have completed the first-ever comparative analysis of all currently available and in-development antimalarials in terms of the steps they target in the parasite's lifecycle. This information provides the missing pieces of the puzzle needed to develop future medicines able to block transmission of the parasite from person to person.
RENO, Nev. – The March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake is a grim reminder of the potential for another strong-motion mega-earthquake along the Pacific Northwest coast, geophysicist John Anderson of the University of Nevada, Reno told members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in a lecture at their annual conference in Vancouver, B.C. Sunday.
Three years ago Professor Christian Pfleiderer and his team from the physics department at the TUM discovered an entirely new magnetic structure in a silicon manganese crystal – a grid of magnetic eddies. Together with the team of Professor Achim Rosch from the University of Cologne, he studied the properties of these eddies, so-called skyrmions, named after the British physicist Tony Skyrme, who predicted their existence 50 years ago.