EurekAlert! - Earth Science
Sun Jan 24 11:35:48 EST 2010
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Using supercomputers to explore nuclear energy - (DOE/Argonne National Laboratory) A new computer algorithm developed by researchers at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory allows scientists to view nuclear fission in much finer detail than ever before.

RIT captures Haiti disaster with high-tech imaging system - (Rochester Institute of Technology) Rochester Institute of Technology scientists are surveying the damage in Haiti with high-tech sensors integrated into a small aircraft. They are using the data to produce information maps for relief and recovery agencies. The World Bank is funding the five-day flight.

NASA's TRMM satellite doesn't need 3-D glasses for Magda - (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) People may need 3-D glasses to see life-like images, but rainfall and cloud data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite gives scientists a three-dimensional look at tropical cyclones without the glasses.

NASA's Terra satellite captures cyclone Magda's Australian landfall - (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) When Cyclone Magda made landfall from Collier Bay at around 5 a.m. local time on January 22 in northern Australia, NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of the storm. Magda is now dissipating rapidly over land in northern West Australia.

Congo receives help from space after volcano eruption - (European Space Agency) On Jan. 2, Mount Nyamulagira in the Democratic Republic of Congo erupted, spewing lava from its southern flank and raising concerns that the 100,000 people in the town of Sake could be under threat. Fears were also triggered in Goma as rumors circulated that an eruption was imminent at the nearby Nyiragongo volcano, which devastated the city in 2002.

Water hits and sticks: Findings challenge a century of assumptions about soil hydrology - (Oregon State University) Researchers have discovered that some of the most fundamental assumptions about how water moves through soil in a seasonally dry climate such as the Pacific Northwest are incorrect -- and that a century of research based on those assumptions will have to be reconsidered.

NASA research finds last decade was warmest on record, 2009 one of warmest years - (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) A new analysis of global surface temperatures by NASA scientists finds the past year was tied for the second warmest since 1880. In the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year on record.

Study shows value of sexual reproduction versus asexual reproduction - (University of Iowa) Living organisms have good reason for engaging in sexual, rather than asexual, reproduction according to Maurine Neiman, assistant professor of biology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and researcher in the Roy J. Carver Center for Genomics.

Tropical Storm Magda puts North Western Australian on alert - (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) An area of low pressure in the Southern Indian Ocean, located close to Australia's northwestern coast was being watched for development yesterday. This morning it exploded into Tropical Storm Madga. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite noticed that Magda's outer rainbands were already affecting land today.

Managing Pacific Northwest dams for a changing climate - (University of Washington) Civil engineers at the University of Washington and the US Army Corps of Engineers' Seattle office have taken a first look at how dams in the Columbia River basin, the nation's largest hydropower system, could be managed for a different climate.

AGU journal highlights -- January 21, 2010 - (American Geophysical Union) Featured in this release are research papers on the following topics: "First study to show that seismic imaging detects ocean's internal tides", "Ice is 'rotten' in the Beaufort Sea", "Global warming increases flood risk in mountain areas", "Worldwide nitrogen deficit constrains carbon dioxide uptake by plants", "Upper atmosphere influences weather near Earth's surface" and "New finding on key element of Earth's lower mantle".

Bubble physicist counts bubbles in the ocean to answer questions about climate, sound, light - (University of Rhode Island) A URI bubble scientist is studying how to detect and count ocean bubbles of different sizes to help scientists in other disciplines create more accurate models. Ocean bubbles play a role in cloud formation and climate change, and they are important when studying ocean acoustics.

'Cooling' forests can heat too - (Weizmann Institute of Science) Forests can trap heat as well as carbon. Recent research at the Weizmann Institute shows that in one type of semi-arid forest, it may take years for the effects of carbon capture to override those of heat retention.

New evidence links humans to megafauna demise - (University of Adelaide) A new scientific paper co-authored by a University of Adelaide researcher reports strong evidence that humans, not climate change, caused the demise of Australia's megafauna -- giant marsupials, huge reptiles and flightless birds -- at least 40,000 years ago.

San Andreas Fault study unearths new quake information - (Arizona State University) Recent collaborative studies of stream channel offsets along the San Andreas Fault by researchers at Arizona State University and UC Irvine reveal new information about fault behavior -- affecting how we understand the potential for damaging earthquakes.

Study projects increased conflict and speculation in tropical forests despite Copenhagen Accord - (Burness Communications) As environmental and political leaders struggle to determine how to move forward from the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a new report by an international coalition of top forest organizations warns that the failure to set legal standards and safeguards for a mechanism to transfer funds to forest-rich nations may trigger a sharp rise in speculation and corruption, placing unprecedented pressures on tropical forest lands and the communities that inhabit them.

Can modern-day plants trace their New Zealand ancestry? - (American Journal of Botany) Is the current flora of New Zealand derived from plants that grew on the supercontinent Gondwana before its breakup, or derived from plants that more recently dispersed to New Zealand? Discovery of new macrofossils and/or detailed examinations of fossil pollen combined with evolutionary analyses may help to answer questions of whether the ancestors of current plants coexisted with dinosaurs in New Zealand.

Tropical depression 01W fading over Vietnam and Cambodia - (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Tropical Depression 01W wasn't very well organized when it made landfall earlier today, and is dissipating as it now moves from Vietnam westward into Cambodia.

Cave reveals Southwest's abrupt climate swings during Ice Age - (University of Arizona) Ice Age climate records from an Arizona stalagmite link the Southwest's winter precipitation to temperatures in the North Atlantic, according to new research. The stalagmite yielded an almost continuous, century-by-century climate record spanning 55,000 to 11,000 years ago, a time the Southwest flip-flopped between wet and dry periods. The finding is the first to document that the abrupt changes in Ice Age climate known from Greenland also occurred in the southwestern US.

NSF grant to launch world's first open-source genetic parts production facility - (University of California - Berkeley) Bioengineers from UC Berkeley and Stanford are ramping up efforts to characterize the thousands of control elements critical to the engineering of microbes so that eventually, researchers can mix and match these "DNA parts" in synthetic organisms to produce new drugs, fuels or chemicals. Their new lab, called BIOFAB, was seeded with funds from NSF, and will provide tools, standardized parts, support and legal and ethical guidelines to further the field of synthetic biology.

Study links springtime ozone increases above western North America to emissions from abroad - (University of Colorado at Boulder) Springtime ozone levels above western North America are rising primarily due to air flowing eastward from the Pacific Ocean, a trend that is largest when the air originates in Asia, says a new study spearheaded by NOAA and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Penn biologists explain how organisms can tolerate mutations, yet adapt to environmental change - (University of Pennsylvania) Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania studying the processes of evolution appear to have resolved a longstanding conundrum: how can organisms be robust against the effects of mutations yet simultaneously adaptable when the environment changes?

NAS honors 17 for major contributions to science - (National Academy of Sciences) The National Academy of Sciences will honor 17 individuals with awards in recognition of extraordinary scientific achievements in the areas of biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy and psychology.

Selling the nation's helium reserve - (National Academy of Sciences) "Selling the Nation's Helium Reserve," a new report from the National Research Council, assesses whether selling off the reserve has had any adverse effects on US scientific, technical, biomedical, and national security users of helium.

Gardeners must unite to save Britain's wildlife - (University of Leeds) Householders in the UK should be looking beyond their own garden fence to protect vulnerable British wildlife, according to scientists at the University of Leeds.