Over the past two decades, ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet increased four-fold contributing to one-quarter of global sea level rise. However, the chain of events and physical processes that contributed to it has remained elusive. One likely trigger for the speed up and retreat of glaciers that contributed to this ice loss is ocean warming.
Heavens
Similar to wings and fins with self-adaptive flaps, the feathers on a diving peregrine falcon's feathers may pop-up during high speed dives, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 5, 2014 by Benjamin Ponitz from the Institute of Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics in Germany and colleagues.
MISSOULA – University of Montana researchers examined the impact that converting natural land to cropland has on global vegetation growth, as measured by satellite-derived net primary production, or NPP. They found that measures of terrestrial vegetation growth actually decrease with agricultural conversion, which has important implications for terrestrial carbon storage.
Ab initio: "From the beginning."
It's a term used in science to describe calculations that rely on established mathematical laws of nature, or "first principles," without additional assumptions or special models.
But when it comes to the phenomena that Milos Milosavljevic is interested in calculating, we're talking really ab initio, as in from the beginning of time onward.
A new study from Tel Aviv University reveals that black holes, formed from the first stars in our universe, heated the gas throughout space later than previously thought. They also imprinted a clear signature in radio waves which astronomers can now search for. The work is a major new finding about the origins of the universe.
In a Nature Commentary he proposes a community effort to collect economic data on the new website zeean.net. The aim is to better understand economic flows and to thereby induce a transformation of our supply chains into a stable, climate-smart network that renders our societies less vulnerable to future climate impacts.
The thirteenth tropical cyclone of the Southern Pacific Ocean season formed into a tropical storm named Edilson on February 5 shortly before NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead. Edilson is threatening several land areas.
A Class I Cyclone Warning is now in effect for Rodrigues Island and a Class II Cyclone Warning is in effect for Mauritius. Edilson formed to the northern of Mauritius and is moving south.
NASA's Aqua satellite captured two low pressure areas from different ocean basins in one infrared image. Aqua saw System 94P or Fletcher in the Gulf of Carpentaria and western Queensland and low pressure System 95S in the Northern Territory.
Using very precise ground-based observations, Stephen Lowry (University of Kent, UK) and colleagues have measured the speed at which the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa spins and how that spin rate is changing over time. They have combined these delicate observations with new theoretical work on how asteroids radiate heat.
ENERGY – LEDs to light UT arena . . .
Boulder, Colorado, USA – In the February issue of GSA Today, Lorena Moscardelli of the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences documents evidence in support for the existence of a martian ocean during the late Hesperian–early Amazonian by showcasing a new terrestrial, deep-water analogy.
PITTSBURGH—Facebook, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, is a proven success in what the late Nobel laureate Herbert Simon called "the marketplace of attention." A new model devised at Carnegie Mellon University assesses the viability of websites and social networks in this new attention economy to predict which sites are sustainable and which are not.
The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, beginning at 11:57 p.m. EST on Feb. 3, 2014, and peaking at midnight EST. NASA released images of the flare as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
The global economic crisis has wrought havoc to economies on both sides of the Atlantic, but new research in Social Science Quarterly suggests it has also made both North Americans and Europeans more reluctant to seek out routine medical care.
"The global economic crisis, weakened national economies and household finances globally," said Dr. Annamaria Lusardi from George Washington University. "These economic conditions can have effects in many areas, including health."
Cambridge, UK, February 4, 2014 - A recent prospective study published in Reproductive BioMedicine Online comparing conventional IVF with a novel simplified laboratory method of culturing embryos suggested that fertilization and implantation rates were similar for the simplified system when compared with those reported by conventional IVF programs. Sixteen healthy babies have already been born with this new method. According to the results of this study, IVF may be offered at a more reasonable price and made available to a larger part of the world population.