EurekAlert! - Earth Science

NJIT receives NSF funding to improve Big Bear Telescope, study solar energy

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(New Jersey Institute of Technology) The National Science Foundation has recently provided support that totals nearly $4.3 million for the diverse efforts of the following investigators under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

International expedition investigates climate change, alternative fuels in Arctic

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Naval Research Laboratory) NRL marine biogeochemistry and geology and geophysics scientists return from Arctic expedition exploring methane hydrate deposits in the Beaufort Sea and spatial variation of sediment contribution to Arctic climate change.

New method to measure snow, vegetation moisture with GPS may benefit farmers, meteorologists

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(University of Colorado at Boulder) A research team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder has found a clever way to use traditional GPS satellite signals to measure snow depth as well as soil and vegetation moisture, a technique expected to benefit meteorologists, water resource managers, climate modelers and farmers.

Just like old times: Generating RNA molecules in water

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors. Now, in a study appearing in this week's JBC, researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.

Lehigh receives grant to reduce cost of carbon capture at coal-fired power plants

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Lehigh University) A US Department of Energy grant will help develop methods of recovering and reusing heat generated by the compression of CO2 in a carbon-capture system. The goal is to facilitate carbon capture and sequestration and limit the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by coal-fired power plants. Unlike other modeling studies, which focus on specific components of the carbon-capture system, the Lehigh researchers will look at the entire power plant.

Flax and yellow flowers can produce bioethanol

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) Surplus biomass from the production of flax sheaves, and generated from Brassica carinata, a yellow-flowered plant related to those which engulf fields in spring, can be used to produce bioethanol. This has been suggested by two studies carried out by Spanish and Dutch researchers and published in the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.

Paleontologists find extinction rates higher in open-ocean settings during mass extinctions

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(University of Cincinnati) Arnie Miller, University of Cincinnati professor of paleontology in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, and co-author Michael Foote of the University of Chicago publish their research in the Nov. 20 issue of Science with their paper, "Epicontinental Seas Versus Open-Ocean Settings: The Kinetics of Mass Extinction and Origination."

ORNL, Los Alamos pioneer new approach to assist scientists, farmers

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Sustainable farming, initially adopted to preserve soil quality for future generations, may also play a role in maintaining a healthy climate, according to researchers at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge and Los Alamos national laboratories.

Microorganism may provide key to combating giant salvinia throughout Louisiana

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Louisiana Tech University) A team of researchers at Louisiana Tech University has found that a naturally occurring microorganism acts as a natural herbicide against giant salvinia.

WHOI'S Bruce A. Warren is awarded Sverdrup Gold Medal

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) Bruce A. Warren -- one of the world's pre-eminent researchers of deep ocean currents and scientist emeritus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution -- is the 2010 winner of the prestigious Sverdrup Gold Medal, awarded by the American Meteorological Society.

SMOS satellite instrument comes alive

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(European Space Agency) The MIRAS instrument on ESA's SMOS satellite, launched earlier this month, has been switched on and is operating normally. MIRAS will map soil moisture and ocean salinity to improve our understanding of the role these two key variables play in regulating Earth's water cycle.

NESCent helps to build a global digital data network for biology and the earth sciences

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)) The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center is now part of a major new digital data initiative that will improve the ability of scientists, policymakers and the public to monitor the status of Earth's biota and the environment. Named DataONE, the initiative aims to provide secure and permanent access to data in biology and the earth sciences, including atmospheric, ecological, evolutionary, hydrological and oceanographic sources.

Reference genome of maize, most important US crop, is published by team co-led by CSHL scientists

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) A four-year, multi-institutional effort co-led by three Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory scientists culminated today in publication of a landmark series of papers in the journal Science revealing in unprecedented detail the DNA sequence of maize. Maize, or corn, as it is commonly called by North American consumers, is one of the world's most important plants and the most valuable agricultural crop grown in the United States, representing $47 billion in annual value.

Public University of Navarre draws up first map of chromosome terminals of higher fungi

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Elhuyar Fundazioa) A doctor in biology from the UPNA, Gúmer Pérez Garrido studied and described for the first time how the telomeres and adjacent sequences of the oyster fungus are organized.

Why Israeli rodents are more cautious than Jordanian ones

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(University of Haifa) A series of studies carried out at the University of Haifa have found that rodent, reptile and ant lion species behave differently on either side of the Israel-Jordan border. "The border line, which is only a demarcation on the map, cannot contain these species, but the line does restrict humans and their diverse impact on nature," says Dr. Uri Shanas.

BoarCroc, RatCroc, DogCroc, DuckCroc and PancakeCroc

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(National Geographic Society) Fossils of five ancient crocs, including one with teeth like boar tusks and another with a snout like a duck's bill, have been discovered in the Sahara by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno. The five crocs, three of them newly named species, were part of the bizarre world of crocs that inhabited the southern land mass known as Gondwana some 100 million years ago.

Mysteriously warm times in Antarctica

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(British Antarctic Survey) A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present day.

'Hobbits' are a new human species -- according to the statistical analysis of fossils

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Wiley-Blackwell) Researchers from Stony Brook University Medical Center in New York have confirmed that Homo floresiensis is a genuine ancient human species and not a descendant of healthy humans dwarfed by disease. Using statistical analysis on skeletal remains of a well-preserved female specimen, researchers determined the "hobbit" to be a distinct species and not a genetically flawed version of modern humans. Details of the study appear in the December issue of Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society, published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Like humans, ants use bacteria to make their gardens grow

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(University of Wisconsin-Madison) Leaf-cutter ants, which cultivate fungus for food, have many remarkable qualities.

After mastodons and mammoths, a transformed landscape

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(University of Wisconsin-Madison) Roughly 15,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, North America's vast assemblage of large animals -- including such iconic creatures as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, ground sloths and giant beavers -- began their precipitous slide to extinction.

Rich ore deposits linked to ancient atmosphere

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Carnegie Institution) Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's. Using geochemical clues from rocks nearly 3 billion years old, a group of scientists including Andrey Bekker and Doug Rumble from the Carnegie Institution have made the surprising discovery that the creation of economically important nickel ore deposits was linked to sulfur in the ancient oxygen-poor atmosphere.

Amaizing: Corn genome decoded

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(Washington University School of Medicine) In recent years, scientists have decoded the DNA of humans and a menagerie of creatures but none with genes as complex as a stalk of corn, the latest genome to be unraveled. A team of scientists led by the Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published the completed corn genome in the Nov. 20 journal Science, an accomplishment that will speed efforts to develop better crop varieties to meet the world's growing demands for food, livestock feed and fuel.

The benefits of stress ... in plants

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(American Journal of Botany) This study finds that certain wild flax plants growing in poor soils have succeeded in balancing the stress in their lives -- these plants are less likely to experience infection from a fungal pathogen. This is the first study to attempt to quantitatively explain how plants have evolved a specialization to serpentine soils and ultimately may help to explain floristic diversity in these unique environments.

Scientists unravel evolution of highly toxic box jellyfish

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center) With thousands of stinging cells that can emit deadly venom from tentacles that can reach ten feet in length, the 50 or so species of box jellyfish have long been of interest to scientists and to the public. Yet little has been known about the evolution of this early branch in the animal tree of life. In a paper published today, researchers have unraveled the evolutionary relationships among the various species of box jellyfish, thereby providing insight into the evolution of their toxicity.

Berkeley Lab lends expertise to India to promote energy efficiency

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

(DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) India may rank only a distant fourth in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, behind China, the United States and Russia, but its rapid economic growth rate coupled with aging and inefficient energy infrastructure suggest dire environmental consequences if "business as usual" continues. That's why experts from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been working to expand collaborations with India on energy efficiency.