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5/22/12
| News
The
first global analysis of carbon stored in seagrasses has revealed a
surprising figure. While a typical terrestrial forest stores about
30,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer, most of which is in
the form of wood, coastal seagrasses can account for 83,000 metric tons
of carbon per square kilometer. Their global impact is significant as
well.
May 3 | News
Existing
historical climate records are typically biased to the high latitudes,
where polar ice and ocean sediments lock in the atmosphere’s past. Yet a
main driver of climate variability today is El Niño, which is a
completely tropical phenomenon. Scientists at the California Institute
of Technology believe they have found the ice core of the tropics,
however.
May 3 | News
To
help predict the rate at which plants respond to changing climate
conditions, researchers use experiments that manipulate the temperature
surrounding small plots of plants to gauge how specific plants will
react to higher temperatures. But wild plants are leafing out and
flowering sooner each year than predicted by results from these
experiments, according to data from a major new archive of historical
observations.
20 hours ago | News
A seaweed considered a threat to the healthy growth of coral reefs in Hawaii may possess the ability to produce substances that could one day treat human diseases, a new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego has revealed.
20 hours ago | News
Using
forensic-style chemical analysis, scientists in the U.K. and Germany
have directly linked seismic observations of the deadly 1980 Mount St.
Helens eruption to crystal growth within the magma chamber, the large
underground pool of liquid rock beneath the volcano. Building direct
links between observations at the surface and processes occurring
underground has been an ongoing problem for volcanologists.
May 24 | News
Moving quickly to stem a controversy, President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated an expert on nuclear waste to lead the federal agency that regulates the nation's nuclear power plants.Allison Macfarlane, who served on a presidential commission that studied new strategies to manage nuclear...
May 24 | News
The scientific and technological literature is abuzz with nanotechnology
and its manufacturing and medical applications. But it is in an area
with a
less glitzy aura—plant sciences—where nanotechnology advancements are
contributing dramatically to agriculture. Researchers at Iowa
State University
have now demonstrated the ability to deliver proteins and DNA into plant
cells,
simultaneously.
May 23 | News
The federal government has approved two programs to further test the impact of flooding the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and to help boost the native fish population.Since the 1960s, Glen Canyon Dam near the Arizona-Utah border has blocked 90 percent of sediment from the river from...
May 21 | News
According
to a recent computational study, pollution is warming the atmosphere by
intensifying summer thunderstorm clouds. The effect, say researchers,
outweigh any cooling factors provided by clouds, and global climate
models don't see this effect because thunderstorm clouds simulated in
those models do not include enough detail.
May 21 | News
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are evaluating a system that efficiently eliminates nitrogen from the combustion process, delivering a pure stream of carbon dioxide after removing other combustion byproducts such as water and other gases.
May 18 | News
While many are focusing on atmospheric solutions to reduce greenhouse gases, some researchers are setting their sights on the ground—deep underground. Li Li, an assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State University, is investigating geologic carbon sequestration as a way to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
May 17 | News
Plants
rely on photoreceptors to activate internal chemical processes like
germination and leaf growth. Theorizing that the light-absorbing
component of the photoreceptor may be replaced by a chemically similar
synthetic substance, scientist have for the first time shown that full
growth of plants is possible in the complete absence of light.
