Earth

Low elevations hold climate surprises

Contrary to expectations, climate change has had a significant effecton mountain plants at low elevations, says a new study led by a UCDavis researcher.

The information could guide future conservation efforts at localscales by helping decision makers anticipate biological responses toclimate changes, said lead author Susan Harrison, a UC Davisprofessor of environmental science and policy.

In a research paper published online Saturday in the Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans, a publication of the American Geological Union (AGU), scientists reported the southern Baffin Bay off West Greenland has continued warming since wintertime ocean temperatures were last effectively measured there in the early 2000s.

Researchers at the University of Bristol reveal today in the journal Nature that they have developed a seismological 'speed gun' for the inside of the Earth. Using this technique they will be able to measure the way the Earth's deep interior slowly moves around. This mantle motion is what controls the location of our continents and oceans, and where the tectonic plates collide to shake the surface we live on.

Berkeley, CA—A team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has detected six isotopes, never seen before, of the superheavy elements 104 through 114. Starting with the creation of a new isotope of the yet-to-be-named element 114, the researchers observed successive emissions of alpha particles that yielded new isotopes of copernicium (element 112), darmstadtium (element 110), hassium (element 108), seaborgium (element 106), and rutherfordium (element 104). Rutherfordium ended the chain when it decayed by spontaneous fission.

Purdue-led research team finds Haiti quake caused by unknown fault

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers found a previously unmapped fault was responsible for the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti and that the originally blamed fault remains ready to produce a large earthquake.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — New University of Florida research puts to rest the mystery of where old carbon was stored during the last glacial period. It turns out it ended up in the icy waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica.

The findings have implications for modern-day global warming, said Ellen Martin, a UF geological sciences professor and an author of the paper, which is published in this week's journal Nature Geoscience.

Quakes don't completely shake China's environmental gains, thanks to conservation programs

EAST LANSING, Mich. – The impact of China's devastating 2008 earthquake was substantially lessened by environmental conservation programs for some of the country's most fragile habitats, according to research published in a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science this week.

Producing tightly focused beams of high energy X-rays, to examine everything from molecular structures to the integrity of aircraft wings, could become simpler and cheaper according to new research.

Today, in Nature Physics, researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Michigan and Instituto Superior Téchnico Lisbon describe a tabletop instrument that produces synchrotron X-rays, whose energy and quality rivals that produced by some of the largest X-ray facilities in the world.

 Paper details influenza's structure for future drug targeting

Beating the flu has always been tough, but it has gotten even more difficult in recent years. Two of the four antiviral drugs used to treat a nasty case of the influenza A virus no longer work.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 21, 2010 -- Tin may seem like the most unassuming of elements, but experiments performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are yielding surprising properties in extremely short-lived isotopes near tin-100's "doubly magic" nucleus.

Plants play larger role than thought in cleaning up air pollution

Vegetation plays an unexpectedly large role in cleansing the atmosphere, a new study finds.

Iowa State, Ames Lab chemists discover proton mechanism used by flu virus to infect cells

AMES, Iowa – The flu virus uses a shuttle mechanism to relay protons through a channel in a process necessary for the virus to infect a host cell, according to a research project led by Mei Hong of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory.

 Detailing influenza's structure for drug targeting

Beating the flu is already tough, but it has become even harder in recent years – the influenza A virus has mutated so that two antiviral drugs don't slow it down anymore.