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Major Flooding Risk Could Span Decades After Chinese Earthquake
07 09 2008 Up to 20 million people, thousands of whom are already displaced from their homes following the devastating Chinese earthquake, are at increased risk from flooding and major power shortages in the massive Sichuan Basin over the next few decades and possibly centuries. A geographer from Durham University makes the observations on returning from carrying out investigative fieldwork in the China earthquake zone.
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Artificial Meadows And Robot Spiders Reveal Secret Life Of Bees
07 09 2008 Many animals learn to avoid being eaten by predators. Now ecologists have discovered that bumblebees can even learn to outwit color-changing crab spiders. Bumblebees learn to avoid camouflaged predators by sacrificing foraging speed for predator detection, according to new research.
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Bad Sign For Global Warming: Thawing Permafrost Holds Vast Carbon Pool
07 09 2008 Permafrost blanketing the northern hemisphere contains more than twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, making it a potentially mammoth contributor to global climate change depending on how quickly it thaws
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Glaciers In The Pyrenees Will Disappear In Less Than 50 Years, Study Finds
06 09 2008 Much has been said about the situation of the glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, but little is known about those in the high mountain areas of the Iberian Peninsular. A Spanish research study has revealed, for the first time, that now only the Pyrenees has active glaciers. Furthermore, the steady increase in temperature, a total of 0.9°C since 1890, indicates that Pyrenean glaciers will disappear before 2050, according to experts.
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Honest Lovers? Fallow Buck Groans Reveal Their Status And Size During The Rut
06 09 2008 Researchers have show for the first time that sexually selected vocalizations can signal social dominance in mammals other than primates, and reveal that the independent acoustic components -- fundamental frequency (pitch) and formant frequencies -- encode information on dominance status and body size, respectively.
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Biocontrol Insect Exacerbates Invasive Weed
05 09 2008 Biocontrol agents, such as insects, are often released outside of their native ranges to control invasive plants. But scientists in Montana have found that through complex community interactions among deer mice, native plants and seeds, the presence of an introduced fly may exacerbate the effects of the invasive plant it was meant to control.
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Global Sea-rise Levels By 2100 May Be Lower Than Some Predict, Says New Study
05 09 2008 Despite projections by some scientists of global seas rising by 20 feet or more by the end of this century as a result of warming, a new study concludes that global sea rise of much more than 6 feet is a near physical impossibility.
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Complex Ocean Behavior Studied With 'Artificial Upwelling'
04 09 2008 A team of scientists is studying the complex ocean upwelling process by mimicking nature -- pumping cold, nutrient-rich water from deep within the Pacific Ocean and releasing it into surface waters near Hawaii that lack the nitrogen and phosphorous necessary to support high biological production.
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Wolves Would Rather Eat Salmon
04 09 2008 Although most people imagine wolves chasing deer and other hoofed animals, new research suggests that, when they can, wolves actually prefer fishing to hunting. The study shows that when salmon is available, wolves will reduce deer hunting activity and instead focus on seafood.
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Global Warming: Warmer Seas Linked To Strengthening Hurricanes, According to New Research
04 09 2008 The theory that global warming may be contributing to stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past 30 years is bolstered by a new study.
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A Little Nitrogen Can Go A Long Way
04 09 2008 With significant increases in the price of fertilizer and grain, site-specific management -- especially in variable rate nitrogen application -- can have a significant impact on yield and profitability, as reported in the latest issue of Agronomy Journal.
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Hurricane Katrina Increased Mental And Physical Health Problems In New Orleans By Up To Three Times
03 09 2008 Half the residents of New Orleans were suffering from poor mental and physical health more than a year after their homes and community were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, according to new research.
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Biological Invasions Increasing Due To Freshwater Impoundments, Says Study
03 09 2008 The growing number of dams and other impoundments is increasing the number of invasive species and the speed at which they spread, putting natural lakes at risk, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Ecologists Search For Invasive Ladybird’s Weak Spot
03 09 2008 Ecologists have discovered that – as well as being larger, hungrier and more aggressive than most British native ladybirds - the invasive alien harlequin ladybird is also more resistant to fungal disease and a parasitic wasp, two common natural enemies of native ladybirds.
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Artificial Meadows And Robot Spiders Reveal Secret Life Of Bees
03 09 2008 Many animals learn to avoid being eaten by predators. Now ecologists have discovered that bumblebees can even learn to outwit color-changing crab spiders. The ongoing battle between predators and prey has fascinated ecologists for decades, and one Queen Mary, University of London professor is no exception. But instead of studying iconic predators such as lions or tigers, his interests lie closer to home with bumblebees and crab spiders.
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Baltic States Failing To Protect Most Damaged Sea
03 09 2008 Nine Baltic sea states all scored failing grades in an annual WWF evaluation of their performance in protecting and restoring the world's most damaged sea.
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New Methods To Protect Wind Generators During Voltage Dips Developed
03 09 2008 A young researcher has put forward two protection techniques so that wind generators continue to be operative despite breaks in electricity supply.
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Black-footed Ferrets Sired By Dead Males Via Frozen Sperm
03 09 2008 Two black-footed ferrets at the Smithsonian's National Zoo have each given birth to a kit that was sired by males who died in 1999 and 2000. These endangered ferrets were artificially inseminated in May with frozen semen from the two deceased males, each giving birth on June 20 and 21 respectively. Successful inseminations with frozen semen are extremely rare -- until now only three black-footed ferret kits have been born from this method.
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Scientists Grow 'Nanonets' Able To Snare Added Energy Transfer
03 09 2008 Adding to the growing list of novel nanoscale structures, researchers report engineering nanonets, flexible webs of tiny wires that improve the performance of their materials, which are used in microelectronics and clean energy research. The new structure improves material used in microelectronics and water-splitting.
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Earth Has Had Sharp Climatic Shifts In Past: Is Earth Nearing Another Tipping Point?
03 09 2008 In the Earth’s history, periods of relatively stable climate have often been interrupted by sharp transitions to a contrasting state. For instance, glaciation periods typically ended suddenly. About 34 million years ago the Earth’s long lasting tropical state in which most recent life forms evolved, shifted abruptly and irreversibly to a cooler state with ice caps. This shift is known as the "Greenhouse-Icehouse-Transition".
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'Fingerprinting' Helps Make Great Grapes
03 09 2008 At about this time next year, nearly all of the 2,800 wild, rare and domesticated grapes in a unique northern California genebank will have had their "genetic profile" or "fingerprint" taken.
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Person's Geographic Origins Located From DNA
03 09 2008 One day soon, you may be able to pinpoint the geographic origins of your ancestors based on analysis of your DNA. New research uses DNA to predict the geographic origins of individuals from a sample of Europeans, often within a few hundred kilometers of where they were born.
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Global Warming Greatest In Past Decade
02 09 2008 Researchers confirm that surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1300 years, and, if the climate scientists include the somewhat controversial data derived from tree-ring records, the warming is anomalous for at least 1700 years.
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Key Discovered To Cold Tolerance In Corn
02 09 2008 Demand for corn -- the world's number one feed grain and a staple food for many -- is outstripping supply, resulting in large price increases that are forecast to continue over the next several years. If corn's intolerance of low temperatures could be overcome, then the length of the growing season, and yield, could be increased at present sites of cultivation and its range extended into colder regions.
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Thawing Permafrost Likely To Boost Global Warming, New Assessment Concludes
02 09 2008 A new assessment more than doubles previous estimates of the amount of carbon stored in permafrost, and indicates that carbon dioxide emissions from microbial decomposition of organic carbon in thawing permafrost could amount to roughly half those resulting from global land-use change during this century.
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