Earth | Page 937 | Science Codex

New research shows that temperature influences tropical flowering

Tropical trees and hanging vines burst into flower, showering the ground below with bright blossoms. Temperature, rather than cloud cover, may be key to the timing of tropical flowering events according to research at two sites in the Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory Network published online in Nature Climate Change.

Scientists discovered a significant increase in flower production—about 3 percent more flowers produced on average per year since 1987—on Barro Colorado Island's Forest Dynamics Plot in Panama.

Imaging electron pairing in a simple magnetic superconductor

UPTON, NY-In the search for understanding how some magnetic materials can be transformed to carry electric current with no energy loss, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cornell University, and collaborators have made an important advance: Using an experimental technique they developed to measure the energy required for electrons to pair up and how that energy varies with direction, they've identified the factors needed for magnetically mediated superconductivity-as well as those that aren't.

Some volcanoes 'scream' at ever-higher pitches until they blow their tops

It is not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption. They can reach a point of such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor that resembles sound made by various types of musical instruments, though at frequencies much lower than humans can hear.

A new analysis of an eruption sequence at Alaska's Redoubt Volcano in March 2009 shows that the harmonic tremor glided to substantially higher frequencies and then stopped abruptly just before six of the eruptions, five of them coming in succession.

Scientists solve a 14,000-year-old ocean mystery

At the end of the last Ice Age, as the world began to warm, a swath of the North Pacific Ocean came to life. During a brief pulse of biological productivity 14,000 years ago, this stretch of the sea teemed with phytoplankton, amoeba-like foraminifera and other tiny creatures, who thrived in large numbers until the productivity ended—as mysteriously as it began—just a few hundred years later.

Corn syrup model splits Yellowstone's mantle plume in 2

Alexandria, VA – One of the greatest controversies in science is what's underneath the Yellowstone supervolcano. The controversy surrounds a unique relationship between a mantle plume (like the one that powers Hawaiian volcanoes) and the subduction zone off the Washington-Oregon coast. Cutting-edge research using a common kitchen ingredient is explored in the latest issue of EARTH Magazine.

An Ecosystem Services Approach to Assessing the Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

NJIT Professor Michel Boufadel, is a co-author of a new expert report on the effects of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) Mississippi Canyon-252 oil spill on ecosystem services in the Gulf of Mexico.

Monsoon-driven hydrological changes in peat and stalagmite records and their impacts on prehistoric culture in China

Drought and flooding exert important impacts on anthropogenic activities in modern days or in ancient times. However, in comparison with the paleo-temperature, we know much less about the variation of hydrological conditions in ancient times.

This is primarily due to the difficulty in the reconstruction of rainfall amount, resulting from the restricted proxies. Two new independent proxy records from peatland and stalagmite archives were proposed to trace monsoon-driven hydrological changes occurring since the last deglaciation in a broad region of middle Yangtze area of China.

Link between quantum physics and game theory found

While research tends to become very specialized and entire communities of scientists can work on specific topics with only a little overlap between them, physicist Dr Nicolas Brunner and mathematician Professor Noah Linden worked together to uncover a deep and unexpected connection between their two fields of expertise: game theory and quantum physics.

York Nanocentre researchers image individual atoms in a living catalytic reaction

Groundbreaking new electron microscopy technology developed at the York JEOL Nanocentre at the University of York is allowing researchers to observe and analyse single atoms, small clusters and nanoparticles in dynamic in-situ experiments for the first time.

The influential work being carried out at York is opening up striking new opportunities for observing and understanding the role of atoms in reactions in many areas of the physical sciences. It also has important implications for new medicines and new energy sources.

How to build your gate

It's a parent's nightmare: opening a Lego set and being faced with 500 pieces, but no instructions on how to assemble them into the majestic castle shown on the box. Thanks to a new approach by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, researchers studying large sets of molecules with vital roles inside our cells can now overcome a similar problem.

50-year-old assumptions about strength muscled aside

LEMONT, Ill. – Doctors have a new way of thinking about how to treat heart and skeletal muscle diseases. Body builders have a new way of thinking about how they maximize their power. Both owe their new insight to high-energy X-rays, a moth and cloud computing.

The understanding of how muscles get their power has been greatly expanded with new results published online July 10 in the Royal Society journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The Royal Society is the U.K.'s national academy of sciences.

Researchers estimate over 2 million deaths annually from air pollution

Over two million deaths occur each year as a direct result of human-caused outdoor air pollution, a new study has found.

In addition, while it has been suggested that a changing climate can exacerbate the effects of air pollution and increase death rates, the study shows that this has a minimal effect and only accounts for a small proportion of current deaths related to air pollution.

Insect discovery sheds light on climate change

Simon Fraser University biologists have discovered a new, extinct family of insects that will help scientists better understand how some animals responded to global climate change and the evolution of communities.

The Eocene Apex of Panorpoid Family Diversity, a paper by SFU's Bruce Archibald and Rolf Mathewes, plus David Greenwood from Brandon University, was recently published in the Journal of Paleontology.

Geothermal power facility induces earthquakes, study finds

An analysis of earthquakes in the area around the Salton Sea Geothermal Field in southern California has found a strong correlation between seismic activity and operations for production of geothermal power, which involve pumping water into and out of an underground reservoir.

Distant quakes trigger tremors at US waste-injection sites, says study

Large earthquakes from distant parts of the globe are setting off tremors around waste-fluid injection wells in the central United States, says a new study. Furthermore, such triggering of minor quakes by distant events could be precursors to larger events at sites where pressure from waste injection has pushed faults close to failure, say researchers.