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Ancient Beachcombers May Have Travelled Slowly
Published May 9, 2008 - 7:37:18 AM
New evidence, more questions. That's the thumbnail of the first new data reported in 10 years from Monte Verde, the earliest known human settlement in the Americas.
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What's bugging locusts? It could be they're hungry -- for each other
Published May 9, 2008 - 7:35:19 AM
Since ancient times, locust plagues have been viewed as one of the most spectacular events in nature. In seemingly spontaneous fashion, as many as 10 billion critters can suddenly swarm the air and carpet the ground, blazing destructive paths that bring starvation and economic ruin.
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Global Climate Models Both Agree and Disagree with Actual Antarctic Data
Published May 8, 2008 - 9:44:45 AM
Scientists who compared recorded Antarctic temperatures and snowfall accumulation to predictions by major computer models of global climate change offer both good and bad news.
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Platypus Genome Explains Animal's Peculiar Features
Published May 8, 2008 - 9:43:37 AM
The duck-billed platypus: part bird, part reptile, part mammal, and the genome to prove it. An international consortium of scientists, led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has decoded the genome of the platypus, showing that the animal's peculiar mix of features is reflected in its DNA. An analysis of the genome, published today in the journal Nature, can help scientists piece together a more complete picture of the evolution of all mammals, including humans.
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Chilean volcano captured blasting ash
Published May 8, 2008 - 9:38:56 AM
Chile's Chaiten Volcano is shown spewing ash and smoke (centre left of image) into the air for hundreds of km over Argentina's Patagonia Plateau in this Envisat image acquired on 5 May 2008.
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Rainfall and river networks prove accurate predictors of fish biodiversity
Published May 8, 2008 - 9:23:57 AM
Princeton researchers have invented a method for turning simple data about rainfall and river networks into accurate assessments of fish biodiversity, allowing better prediction of the effects of climate change and the ecological impact of man-made structures like dams.
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Stressed seaweed contributes to cloudy coastal skies, study suggests
Published May 8, 2008 - 7:45:59 AM
Scientists at The University of Manchester have helped to identify that the presence of large amounts of seaweed in coastal areas can influence the climate.
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Berkeley Lab Researchers Propose a New Breed of Supercomputers for Improving Global Climate Predictions
Published May 8, 2008 - 7:39:10 AM
Three researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have proposed an innovative way to improve global climate change predictions by using a supercomputer with low-power embedded microprocessors, an approach that would overcome limitations posed by today's conventional supercomputers.
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Chile's Chaiten volcano one of scores of active volcanoes in region, says CU-Boulder professor
Published May 8, 2008 - 7:37:21 AM
The Chaiten volcano now erupting in southern Chile is one of 200 to 300 volcanoes in the "Andean Arc" region of Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia considered active by volcanologists, some of which lie in much more densely populated areas, said a University of Colorado at Boulder geologist who has studied Chaiten.
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Seagulls: Are males the weaker sex?
Published May 8, 2008 - 7:34:50 AM
Male seagulls may be more vulnerable to their environment during embryonic development than females, according to Maria Bogdanova and Ruedi Nager from the University of Glasgow in the UK. Until now, the sex differences in developmental rate and susceptibility to unfavorable conditions during the embryonic stage in birds have received little attention. The paper (1) has just been published in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
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Ponds found to take up carbon like world's oceans
Published May 8, 2008 - 7:34:07 AM
Research led by Iowa State University limnologist, or lake scientist, John Downing finds that ponds around the globe could absorb as much carbon as the world's oceans.
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Climate models overheat Antarctica
Published May 7, 2008 - 9:15:16 AM
Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes a new study. The findings can help scientists improve computer models and determine if the southernmost continent will warm significantly this century, a major research question because of Antarctica's potential impact on global sea-level rise.
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XMM-Newton discovers part of the missing matter in the Universe
Published May 7, 2008 - 7:33:36 AM
Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing the discovery by Dutch and German astronomers [1] of a filament of tenuous hot gas connecting two clusters of galaxies. The existence of this hot gas (with a temperature of 100 000 - 10 000 000 degrees), known as a warm-hot intergalactic medium, was predicted 10 years ago as a possible source for the missing dark matter. Gas at such high temperature and low density is very difficult to detect and many attempts have failed in past years. The team observed a pair of clusters of galaxies (Abell 222 and Abell 223) using the European X-ray satellite XMM-Newton. Their observations (see Fig. 1) clearly show a bridge connecting both clusters. The gas they observed there is probably the hottest and densest part of the diffuse gas in the cosmic web, which would be part of the missing "baryonic" dark matter.
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GIOVE-B transmitting its first signals
Published May 7, 2008 - 7:24:37 AM
Following a successful launch on 27 April, GIOVE-B began transmitting navigation signals today 7th of May. This is a truly historic step for satellite navigation since GIOVE-B is now, for the first time, transmitting the GPS-Galileo common signal using a specific optimised waveform, MBOC (multiplexed binary offset carrier), in accordance with the agreement drawn up in July 2007 by the EU and the US for their respective systems, Galileo and the future GPS III. These GIOVE B signals, locked on-board to a highly stable Passive Hydrogen Maser clock, will provide higher accuracy in challenging environments where multipath and interference are present, and deeper penetration for indoor navigation. It demonstrates that Galileo and GPS are truly compatible and interoperable and that positioning services will benefit all users worldwide.
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Cyclone Nargis and Myanmar floods seen from space
Published May 7, 2008 - 7:21:34 AM
Envisat captured Cyclone Nargis making its way across the Bay of Bengal just south of Myanmar on 1 May 2008. The cyclone hit the coastal region and ripped through the heart of Myanmar on Saturday, devastating the country.
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65-Million-Year-Old Asteroid Impact Triggered a Global Hail of Carbon Beads
Published May 6, 2008 - 8:12:01 AM
The asteroid presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth with such force that carbon deep in the Earth's crust liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet, say scientists from the U.S., U.K., Italy, and New Zealand in this month's Geology.
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Record-Setting Laser May Aid Searches for Earthlike Planets
Published May 6, 2008 - 8:09:16 AM
Scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated an ultrafast laser that offers a record combination of high speed, short pulses and high average power. The same NIST group also has shown that this type of laser, when used as a frequency comb-an ultraprecise technique for measuring different colors of light-could boost the sensitivity of astronomical tools searching for other Earthlike planets as much as 100 fold.
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Chemists measure chilli sauce hotness with nanotubes
Published May 6, 2008 - 7:57:44 AM
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and into the lab - chemists can now use carbon nanotubes to judge the heat of chilli sauces. The technology might soon be available commercially as a cheap, disposable sensor for use in the food industry.
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Ecologists tease out private lives of plants and their pollinators
Published May 6, 2008 - 7:54:05 AM
The quality of pollen a plant produces is closely tied to its sexual habits, ecologists have discovered. As well as helping explain the evolution of such intimate relationships between plants and pollinators, the study – one of the first of its kind and published online in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology – also helps explain the recent dramatic decline in certain bumblebee species found in the shrinking areas of species-rich chalk grasslands and hay meadows across Northern Europe.
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There's a Hole in My Bucket - and in the Data as Well!
Published May 6, 2008 - 7:48:39 AM
Like the popular children's song "There's a Hole in My Bucket," in which Liza and Henry try to patch a leaking pail, researchers with the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego are plugging a hole in the data management process by creating a universally accepted cyberinfrastructure to study our most valuable natural resource - water.
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