Plants, like people, breathe, and when it gets hotter, they breathe harder. One product of respiration is the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Thus, researchers predict that as the planet is warmed by human-produced CO2, plants may add to the emissions, and amplify the warming. Now, the most comprehensive global study of its kind yet suggests that this effect has limits, and that increases in plant respiration may not be as big as previously estimated. It shows that rates of increase slow in an easily predictable way as temperatures mount, in every region of earth, from tropics to tundra.
Earth
Heatwaves from Europe to China are likely to be more intense and result in maximum temperatures that are 3°C to 5°C warmer than previously estimated by the middle of the century - all because of the way plants on the ground respond to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone Emeraude on March 21 as it continued weakening in the Southern Indian Ocean.
The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Emeraude at 0819 UTC (4:19 a.m. EDT) that showed the storm had become slightly elongated.
A new study from NASA and Harvard University finds that climate change is diminishing an important link between droughts and the timing of wine grape harvests in France and Switzerland.
Materials scientists and physicists at Lehigh University have demonstrated a new method of making single crystals that could enable a wider range of materials to be used in microelectronics, solar energy devices and other high-technology applications.
The researchers reported their discovery Friday, March 18, in Scientific Reports, a Nature journal, in an article titled "Demonstration of single crystal growth via solid-solid transformation of a glass."
Researchers from CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with ICFO and Graphenea, have demonstrated how infrared light can be captured by nanostructures made of graphene. This happens when light couples to charge oscillations in the graphene. The resulting mixture of light and charge oscillations - called plasmon - can be squeezed into record-small volumes - millions times smaller than in conventional dielectric optical cavities. This process has been visualized by the researchers now, for the first time, with the help of a state-of the-art near-field microscope and explained by theory.
A word of advice, oenophiles - start stocking up now.
In recent years, French vintners have produced a number of exceptional vintages, and Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Elizabeth Wolkovich says climate change is part of the reason why. As climate change continues to drive temperatures higher, however, that winning streak could soon come to an end.
Many factors go into making good wine: grape variety, harvesting practices, a vineyard's slope and aspect, soil, climate and so on--that unique combination that adds up to a wine's terroir. Year-to-year weather also matters greatly. In much of France and Switzerland, the best years are traditionally those with abundant spring rains followed by an exceptionally hot summer and late-season drought. This drives vines to put forth robust, fast-maturing fruit, and brings an early harvest.
The earliest instrumental records of Earth's climate, as measured by thermometers and other tools, start in the 1850s. To look further back in time, scientists investigate air bubbles trapped in ice cores, which expands the window to less than a million years. But to study Earth's history over tens to hundreds of millions of years, researchers examine the chemical and biological signatures of deep sea sediment archives.
Who doesn't know the brown colour of a sliced apple or overripe fruit? Annette Rompel, Head of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Vienna, knows this phenomenon very well. Since more than 20 years, she has studied the tyrosinase, an enzyme that does not only exist in plants but also makes the human skin become brown.
Unknown role of the enzyme
Drug resistant bacteria are fast becoming one of the big worries of the 21 century. Now researchers at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a previously unknown weakness; an "Achilles heel", of bacteria. Their discovery, a crucial step in bacteria's energy metabolism, may be the first step in developing an entirely novel form of antibiotics.
Deep below the ocean's surface are hydrothermal vent fields, or submarine hot springs that can reach temperatures of up to 400 °C. These fields are surrounded by a unique set of animals, including vent crabs and eyeless vent shrimp, that survive off of the chemicals emitted from the hydrothermal vents. Recently, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) researchers and collaborators have computed the dispersal of larvae from these hydrothermal vent ecosystems to understand and safeguard the animals found there.
With enough computing effort most contemporary security systems will be broken. But a research team at the University of Sydney has made a major breakthrough in generating single photons (light particles), as carriers of quantum information in security systems.
The collaboration involving physicists at the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), an ARC Centre of Excellence headquartered in the School of Physics, and electrical engineers from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, has been published today in Nature Communications.
Research from the University of Adelaide hopes to provide advances in the planning for flood risk, thanks to a new, faster method of assessing the highly complex factors that cause floods in a specific location.
New Haven, Conn. - Researchers at Yale and the Smithsonian Institution say it's time to settle a very old food fight.
In a study published March 18 in the journal Ecology and Evolution, authors Matt Davis and Silvia Pineda-Munoz argue that scientists need to focus as much on "when" animals eat as they do "what" animals eat. Without the proper time context, they say, an animal's diet can tell very different stories.