Cambridge, Mass. -- Environmental researchers at Harvard University have published evidence that significant reductions in mercury emissions will be necessary just to stabilize current levels of the toxic element in the environment. So much mercury persists in surface reservoirs (soil, air, and water) from past pollution, going back thousands of years, that it will continue to persist in the ocean and accumulate in fish for decades to centuries, they report.
Heavens
A normally staid University of Chicago scientist has stunned many of his colleagues with his radical solution to a 135-year-old mystery in cosmochemistry. "I'm a fairly sober guy. People didn't know what to think all of a sudden," said Lawrence Grossman, professor in geophysical sciences.
Green spaces, trees and bodies of water are must-have design features for future development in Sydney's suburbs after researchers found that by 2050 global warming combined with Sydney's urban heat island effect could increase temperatures by up to 3.7°C.
The researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science found new urban developments, such as the multitude of new estates on Sydney edges expected to house more than 100,000 residents, were prone to the greatest temperature increases.
CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope has detected brief flashes of radio emission from the distant Universe. Their origin is unknown.
CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia has detected mysterious 'flashes' of radio energy from the distant Universe that may open up a whole new area of astrophysics. The surprising finding, made by a team of scientists from ten institutions in Australia, the USA, UK, Germany and Italy, is published in today's issue of the journal Science.
Planets and asteroids, red giants and brown dwarfs -- there are all kinds of objects in our Universe. Debris disks are among them. These are belts consisting of countless dust particles and planetesimals, circling around one central star. "At least one fifth of stars are surrounded by dust belts like these," Prof. Dr. Alexander Krivov from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena explains. "They are the remains of the formation of planets, in which the unused, building materials are collected," the astrophysicist points out.
Antimatter has been detected in solar flares via microwave and magnetic-field data, according to a presentation by NJIT Research Professor of Physics Gregory D. Fleishman and two co-researchers at the 44th meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division. This research sheds light on the puzzling strong asymmetry between matter and antimatter by gathering data on a very large scale using the Sun as a laboratory.
London -- A study performed in Belgium has shown that low-cost IVF for developing and poor resource countries is feasible and effective, with delivery rates not much different from those achieved in conventional IVF programmes. This proof-of-principle study, say the investigators, suggests that infertility care may now be "universally accessible"."We showed that the IVF methodology can be significantly simplified and result in successful outcomes at levels that compare favourably to those obtained in high resource programs," they note.
Alfonso F. Davila and colleagues analyzed images and topographic data from the Aeolis Mensae region of Mars.
Their analyses indicate that these terrains were eroded by glaciers emanating from the Martian dichotomy boundary.
Collectively, they say their observations suggest that glacial activity could have been an important mechanism of modification of equatorial regions on Mars for three billion years.
Alfonso F. Davila et al., SETI Institute, DOI:10.1130/G34201.1.
A recent increase in polar mesospheric clouds could be due to a recent increase in space traffic, a new study suggests.
Polar mesospheric clouds are diffuse collections of water ice crystals in the mesosphere near the poles at altitudes of about 80 kilometers (50 miles). The number and brightness of polar mesosphericice clouds is expected to decrease when the incoming flux of solar ultraviolet radiation increases. Increases in solar radiation both heat and dry out the atmosphere slightly, leading to a decrease in ice cloud formation.
There are two tropical cyclones in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on July 5 and one is powering up and one is powering down. NOAA's GOES-15 satellite captured Tropical Depression Dalila and Tropical Storm Erick, both off the western coast of Mexico. Because Erick is strengthening and is close to the coast, tropical storm warnings have gone into effect for Mexico.
NASA's Aqua satellite captured multiple images of fire and smoke from Canadian wildfires on July 4, 2013. The images were stitched together to form a visual quilt.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured the images. MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots (fires), which appear red in the image. Plumes of smoke from various wildfires can be seen blowing across many of the Canadian provinces and out over the Atlantic Ocean.
SYDNEY: An international team led by the University of New South Wales has studied a distant star where gravity is more than 30,000 times greater than on Earth to test its controversial theory that one of the constants of Nature is not a constant.
Dr Julian Berengut and his colleagues used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force – known as alpha – on a white dwarf star.
The surface of Mercury is rather different from those of well-known rocky bodies like the Moon and Mars. Early images from the Mariner 10 spacecraft unveiled a planet covered by smooth plains and cratered plains of unclear origin. A team led by Dr. Simone Marchi, a Fellow of the NASA Lunar Science Institute located at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Boulder, Colo., office, collaborating with the MESSENGER team, including Dr.
A study has shown for the first time that starfish use primitive eyes at the tip of their arms to visually navigate their environment. Research headed by Dr. Anders Garm at the Marine Biological Section of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, showed that starfish eyes are image-forming and could be an essential stage in eye evolution.
First results from the analysis of eight 'hot Jupiter' exoplanets suggest that winds and clouds play an important role in the atmospheric make up of these exotic planets. Catherine Huitson of the University of Exeter will present the results at the National Astronomy Meeting in St Andrews on Friday 5 July.