Earth | Page 905 | Science Codex

There's gold in them thar Eucalyptus trees (but don't go prospecting just yet)

Eucalyptus trees, or gum trees as they are known in some part of the world, are drawing up gold particles from the earth via their root system and depositing it their leaves and branches.

The discovery is unlikely to start an old-time gold rush – the "nuggets" are about one-fifth the diameter of a human hair. However, it could provide a golden opportunity for mineral exploration, as the leaves or soil underneath the trees could indicate gold ore deposits buried up to tens of metres underground and under sediments that are up to 60 million years old.

CU-Boulder researchers develop 4-D printing technology for composite materials

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have successfully added a fourth dimension to their printing technology, opening up exciting possibilities for the creation and use of adaptive, composite materials in manufacturing, packaging and biomedical applications.

Shifting winds in turbine arrays

WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 22, 2013 -- Researchers modeling how changes in air flow patterns affect wind turbines' output power have found that the wind can supply energy from an unexpected direction: below.

According to the researchers, who report their results in the journal Physics of Fluids, many wind turbine array studies overlook the fact that important airflow changes occur inside the array.

How climate change affects microbial life below the seafloor

Traces of past microbial life in sediments off the coast of Peru document how the microbial ecosystem under the seafloor has responded to climate change over hundreds of thousands of years. For more a decade scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology and their colleagues at MARUM and the University of Aarhus have investigated microbial life from this habitat. This "Deep Biosphere", reaching several hundred metres below the seafloor, is exclusively inhabited by microbes and is generally considered as stable.

Climate change increased the number of deaths

The increased temperatures caused by ongoing climate change in Stockholm, Sweden between 1980 and 2009 caused 300 more premature deaths than if the temperature increase did not take place. In Sweden as a whole, it would mean about 1,500 more premature deaths, according to a study from researchers at Umeå University published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A fresh solution for the lindane problem

For many years two companies located in Bizkaia, Bilbao Chemicals (Barakaldo 1947-1987) and Nexana (Erandio 1952-1982), had been manufacturing lindane and dumping it into the environment with no control whatsoever. Today we have become aware of the need to solve the problems caused by this dumping and the difficulty in achieving this since there is no viable process that will safely destroy the lindane mixed with the soil.

Quake-triggered landslides pose significant hazard for Seattle, new study details potential damage

SAN FRANCISCO -- SAN FRANCISCO -- A new study suggests the next big quake on the Seattle fault may cause devastating damage from landslides, greater than previously thought and beyond the areas currently defined as prone to landslides. Published online Oct. 22 by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA), the research offers a framework for simulating hundreds of earthquake scenarios for the Seattle area.

UC San Diego researchers advance explanation for star formation

A newly published paper by three UC San Diego astrophysics researchers for the first time provides an explanation for the origin of three observed correlations between various properties of molecular clouds in the Milky Way galaxy known as Larson's Laws.

Risk of Amazon rainforest dieback is higher than IPCC projects

A new study suggests the southern portion of the Amazon rainforest is at a much higher risk of dieback due to stronger seasonal drying than projections made by the climate models used in the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If severe enough, the loss of rainforest could cause the release of large volumes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It could also disrupt plant and animal communities in one of the regions of highest biodiversity in the world.

Poorly camouflaged insects can kick off a cascade of ecological impacts, new CU-Boulder study finds

A California walking stick insect that has evolved to produce individuals with two distinct appearances—an all-green form that camouflages well with broader leaves and a form with a white stripe running down its back that blends better with needle-like leaves—can markedly affect its broader ecological community when the appearance of the bug is mismatched with the plant it's living on.

The new findings, based on research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder, illustrate the ability of rapid evolution to cause a cascade of ecological impacts.

Cheap metals can be used to make products from petroleum

The ancient alchemists sought to transform base metals, like lead, into precious gold. Now a new process developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago suggests that base metals may be worth more than their weight in gold -- as catalysts in the manufacture of countless products made from petroleum-based raw materials.

Topological light: Living on the edge

Topology -- the understanding of how things are connected -- remains abstract, even with the popular example of doughnuts and coffee cups. This concept, esoteric as it appears, is also neat because it is the basis for creating ultrastable quantum “playgrounds.” In topological systems, certain quantum behaviors can be carefully probed and even harnessed for all kinds of practical applications—from metrology to electronics.

Solar panels can be used to provide heating and air conditioning

They may still be few, but a number of shopping centres and major stations, such as Atocha Train Station in Madrid, house trigeneration systems responsable for the production of electricity, cool air and heat. A gas engine generates electricity and, in winter, the residual heat produced is used directly for the heating circuit whilst in summer, this heat powers an absorption machine which cools the water used to provide air conditioning.

Delayed gratification hurts climate change cooperation

Time is a huge impediment when it comes to working together to halt the effects of climate change, new research suggests.

A study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change reveals that groups cooperate less for climate change mitigation when the rewards of cooperation lay in the future, especially if they stretch into future generations.

Glacial buzz-saws, gold in fool's gold, fingerprints in sea water, and fluvial iron

Boulder, Colo., USA – New article postings for Geology cover glacial erosion and glacial slip; the work of marine organisms in changing the face of Earth; collisional shortening in the Central Alps; changes in sediment transport in Taiwan after typhoon Morakot in 2009; a new type of iron formation, dubbed "fluvial iron formation"; kimberlites in South Africa; using fossil marine plankton records in 70-million-year-old sediments as indicators of sea ice formation and retreat; and Greenland Ice Sheet behavior.