news 2012

Some grey seal mums adopt risky tactics when it comes to the future of their young, a strategy that can give their pup a real advantage, according to scientists. Researchers from Durham University and the University of St Andrews, looking at grey seal colonies in Scotland, found that some seal mothers are flexible in the parenting style they adopt and 'gamble' on the outcome of their actions, whilst other play it safe and steady.

One year after the MIR submersibles dove into the depths of Lake Geneva, the elemo program is delivering its first scientific results. The operation will be extended with a campaign to make observations above the lake surface from a sensor-packed ultralight aircraft. The same experiments are planned above Lake Baikal in Russia.

A network of integrated greenhouse gas measurements in the UK and Ireland - the first of its kind in Europe - has been established by researchers at the University of Bristol. A network of integrated greenhouse gas measurements in the UK and Ireland - the first of its kind in Europe - has been established by researchers at the University of Bristol.

The recent storms that have battered settlements on the east coast of America may have been much more frequent in the region 450 million years ago, according to scientists. New research pinpointing the positions of the Equator and the landmasses of the USA, Canada and Greenland, during the Ordovician Period 450 million years ago, indicates that the equator ran down the western side of North America with a hurricane belt to the east.

Prenatal and childhood exposure to flame retardant compounds are linked to poorer attention, fine motor coordination and IQ in school-aged children, a finding by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health, that adds to growing health concerns over a chemical prevalent in U.S. households.

Global drought areas have not increased over the past 60 years due to climate change contradicting previous research. The findings are the result of the paper's authors using more realistic calculations based on the underlying physical principles behind droughts.

El Yunque rock is a majestic, anvil-shaped promontory that has been an icon of the island of Puerto Rico since pre-Columbian times. The barren rock, standing 3,412 feet high, protrudes above primary old growth forest and is enshrouded in clouds, swept constantly by the trade winds and frequently stricken by hurricanes.

Intensive rainfall in East Africa can bring widespread flooding but may be instrumental in replenishing vital groundwater supplies. New research by Martin Todd, Professor in Climate Change at the University of Sussex, Richard Taylor (University College London) and colleagues from the Tanzanian government and British Geological Survey in semi-arid Tanzania has found that very heavy rainfall that accompanies the El Niño phenomenon is vital for recharging underground aquifers in the region.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The role of climate change in the development and demise of classic Maya civilization, ranging from AD 300 to 1000, has been controversial for decades because of a lack of well-dated climate and archaeological evidence. But an international team of archaeologists and earth science researchers has compiled a precisely dated, high-resolution climate record of 2,000 years that shows how Maya political systems developed and disintegrated in response to climate change.

The impact of climate science research on society is likely to depend on regular fashion cycles in the public's use of specific keywords relating to climate change, according to new research from the University of Bristol in collaboration with Durham University, published today in PLoS ONE. Alexander Bentley and colleagues found that words commonly used by scientists when discussing climate science - such as 'biodiversity', 'global', and 'isotopes' - follow fashion cycles in public usage as the usage of such words by scientists diffuses into use by non-scientists.

A long-abandoned fermentation process once used to turn starch into explosives can be used to produce renewable diesel fuel to replace the fossil fuels now used in transportation, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have discovered. Campus chemists and chemical engineers teamed up to produce diesel fuel from the products of a bacterial fermentation discovered nearly 100 years ago by the first president of Israel, chemist Chaim Weizmann.

Anyone flying into Melbourne from the east notices the thousands of hectares of dead Mountain Ash trees that were killed in the 2009 Black Saturday fires, which marked the culmination of an extended heatwave. Why the Mountain Ash ( Eucalyptus regnans ) trees in the area that survived the blaze did not die, as expected, from the heatwave is explained by research by the University of Sydney and University of Western Sydney.

ANN ARBOR-The fossilized fangs of saber-toothed cats hold clues to how the extinct mammals shared space and food with other large predators 9 million years ago. Led by the University of Michigan and the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, a team of paleontologists has analyzed the tooth enamel of two species of saber-toothed cats and a bear dog unearthed in geological pits near Madrid.

Is post-war industrial and pre-fab architecture worth preserving and renovating? To answer this question, architects conducted a three-year pioneering study into the restoration of modern buildings.

Research into how fragile dryland ecosystems degrade into deserts has revealed that the transition from grasslands to desert shrubs may be reinforced by the plants themselves. The study, conducted at the University of Bristol, demonstrates for the first time that grass and shrub areas lose very different amounts of nutrients during rainfall events, which may be significant in how desert shrubs persist in these landscapes.

A mass extinction about 65 million years ago wiped out numerous species, most famously the dinosaurs, but a new study finds that latent vulnerabilities in the structure of North American ecosystems made the extinction worse than it might have been. Researchers at the University of Chicago , the California Academy of Sciences and the Field Museum of Natural History published their findings Oct.

First ever family tree for all living birds reveals evolution and diversification The world's first family tree linking all living bids and revealing when and where they evolved and diversified since dinosaurs walked the earth has been created by scientists from the University of Sheffield. Experts used the family tree to map out where the almost 10,000 species of birds live to show where the most diversification has taken place in the world.

Research shows that President Obama may get a bump in the polls from Hurricane Sandy. How might Hurricane Sandy affect the 2012 presidential election? Many political analysts are speculating about the impact of the storm on early voting and the candidates' abilities to campaign in battleground states.

University Home Study into sea level rise due to fossil fuels Study by scientists has found that burning all the Earth's reserves of fossil fuels could cause sea levels to rise by as much as five metres A study by University of Liverpool scientists has found that burning all the Earth's reserves of fossil fuels could cause sea levels to rise by as much as five metres - with levels continuing to rise for typically 500 years after carbon dioxide emissions ceased.

Hydrogen production by solar water splitting in photoelectrochemical cells (PEC) has long been considered the holy grail of sustainable energy research.