Similar to humans, the bacteria and tiny plants living in the ocean need iron for energy and growth. But their situation is quite different than ours — for one, they can't exactly turn to natural iron sources like leafy greens or red meat for a pick-me-up.
So where does their iron come from? New research published by "Nature Geoscience" points to a source on the seafloor: minute particles (called nanoparticles) of pyrite, or fool's gold, from hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean.
Researchers have discovered that an evolutionary change from 65 million years ago may have set the pace for the rapid growth rate of present-day flowering plants.
Taylor Feild, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in collaboration with a group of other researchers from around the world, have determined the precise dates that angiosperms, or flowering plants, experienced two surges in growth during the Cretaceous period.
DURHAM, N.C. – A study by Duke University researchers has found high levels of leaked methane in well water collected near shale-gas drilling and hydrofracking sites. The scientists collected and analyzed water samples from 68 private groundwater wells across five counties in northeastern Pennsylvania and New York.
"At least some of the homeowners who claim that their wells were contaminated by shale-gas extraction appear to be right," says Robert B. Jackson, Nicholas Professor of Global Environmental Change and director of Duke's Center on Global Change.
EUGENE, Ore. -- (May 9, 2011) -- High in the sky, water in clouds can act as a temptress to lure airborne pollutants such as sulfur dioxide into reactive aqueous particulates. Although this behavior is not incorporated into today's climate-modeling scenarios, emerging research from the University of Oregon provides evidence that it should be.
The researchers published their results in the coming issue of the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Physical Society has released a new assessment — Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Chemicals — to better inform the scientific community on the technical aspects of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are unlikely to offer an economically feasible way to slow human-driven climate change for several decades, according to a report issued by the American Physical Society and led by Princeton engineer Robert Socolow.
"We humans should not kid ourselves that we can pour all the carbon dioxide we wish into the atmosphere right now and pull it out later at little cost," said Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Flying the EU flag on public buildings on Europe Day (Monday, 9th May) has no impact on public attitudes to the EU. But EU symbols used in practical ways such as at airport passport controls can polarise attitudes to the EU amongst the Scots and Welsh, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Strathclyde, but have little impact on people in England.
As far back as the 1990s, long before anyone had actually isolated graphene – a honeycomb lattice of carbon just one atom thick – theorists were predicting extraordinary properties at the edges of graphene nanoribbons. Now physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and their colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, and other institutions, have made the first precise measurements of the "edge states" of well-ordered nanoribbons.
The region east of the central Andes Mountains has the potential for larger scale earthquakes than previously expected, according to a new study posted online in the May 8th edition of Nature Geoscience. Previous research had set the maximum expected earthquake size to be magnitude 7.5, based on the relatively quiet history of seismicity in that area. This new study by researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) and colleagues contradicts that limit and instead suggests that the region could see quakes with magnitudes 8.7 to 8.9.
The presence of even a simple chemical reaction can delay or prevent the spreading of stored carbon dioxide in underground aquifers, new research from the University of Cambridge has revealed.
The findings may have implications for carbon sequestration in saline aquifers – one of the many methods being explored to mitigate rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Depending on the strength of the reaction between dissolved CO2 and porous rock, the new research shows that distinct scenarios of CO2 transport may occur in deep saline rock formations.
A panel of some of the world's leading climate and glacier scientists co-chaired by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego researcher issued a report today commissioned by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences citing the moral imperative before society to properly address climate change.
EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again.
These flowers are not roses, tulips or columbines. They will be nanoflowers seeded from nano-sized particles of metals that grow, or self assemble, in a natural process -- diffusion limited aggregation. They will be fractals that mimic and communicate efficiently with neurons.
Global warming is likely already taking a toll on world wheat and corn production, according to a new study led by Stanford University researchers. But the United States, Canada and northern Mexico have largely escaped the trend.
"It appears as if farmers in North America got a pass on the first round of global warming," said David Lobell, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University. "That was surprising, given how fast we see weather has been changing in agricultural areas around the world as a whole."
TORONTO, ON – Scientists at the University of Toronto, Stanford and Columbia Universities have developed a way to measure the action and function of candidate prescription drugs on human cells, including the response of individual cells, more quickly and on a larger scale than ever before.