news 2017

An international team of scientists, including one from the University of Washington, has announced the discovery of additional remains of a new human species, Homo naledi , in a series of caves northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. The find includes the remains of two adults and a child in the Lesedi Chamber of the Rising Star Cave system, expanding the fossil record originally reported from a different chamber of the cave in 2015.

This graph shows the relative contribution of El Niño (green bars) versus global warming (red bar) for the 15 hottest Aprils on record in mainland Southeast Asia. Kaustubh Thirumalai AUSTIN, Texas â?- Scientists at The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) have found that a devastating combination of global warming and El Niño is responsible for causing extreme temperatures in April 2016 in Southeast Asia.

Scientists have known for over a decade that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been losing mass and contributing to sea level rise. Its eastern neighbour is, however, ten times larger and has the potential to raise global sea level by some 50 metres. Despite its huge size and importance, conflicting results have been published on the recent behaviour of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

More than 90% of Earth's continental crust is made up of silica-rich minerals, such as feldspar and quartz. But where did this silica-enriched material come from? And could it provide a clue in the search for life on other planets? More than 90% of Earth's continental crust is made up of silica-rich minerals, such as feldspar and quartz.

An ancient meteorite that struck Earth 1.85 billion years ago sparked long-lived volcanic eruptions bringing up material from the Earth's depths, a new international study involving a University of Queensland researcher has revealed. Lead author Dr Teresa Ubide from UQ School of Earth and Environmental Sciences said the study of a meteorite strike in Canada found that large impacts, which were more common on the early Earth, were probably more important in shaping our planet than previously thought.

More than 90% of Earthâ?'s continental crust is made up of silica-rich minerals, such as feldspar and quartz. But where did this silica-enriched material come from' And could it provide a clue in the search for life on other planets? Conventional theory holds that all of the early Earthâ?'s crustal ingredients were formed by volcanic activity.

The discovery helps to better reconstruct Earth's history and understand part of the world that has captivated people's imagination. A study led by ANU has solved the 168-year-old mystery of how the world's biggest and most active volcanoes formed in Hawaii. The study found that the volcanoes formed along twin tracks due to a shift in the Pacific plate's direction three million years ago.

Scientists have re-examined an overlooked museum fossil and discovered that it is the earliest member of the titanosauriform family of dinosaurs. The fossil, which the researchers from Imperial College London and their colleagues in Europe have named Vouivria damparisensis , has been identified as a brachiosaurid sauropod dinosaur.

New research shows that a volcano in northeastern Australia last erupted around 7000 years ago - and stories passed down by the Gugu Badhun Aboriginal people suggest they were there to see it happen. In a paper published in the journal Quaternary Geochronology, geologists based in Scotland and Australia outline how they used a sophisticated rock dating technique to determine when the eruption occurred.

Extensive natural flood management such as tree planting could reduce flooding even in extreme events like Storm Desmond, according to a new modelling study. Natural Flood Management (NFM) schemes - which include tree planting, pond creation and peatland restoration - have been proposed as a potential way to offset inland flooding but as yet none of these schemes have been implemented extensively enough to directly demonstrate their effectiveness.

Even small changes in global temperature can trigger a migration of the tropical rain belt. This can also lead to climate change, as described by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich and other universities. The tropical rain belt, also known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), is in a state of constant migration.

New genetic evidence suggests that early mammals had good night-time vision, adding to fossil and behavioral studies suggesting that early mammals were nocturnal. Our earliest mammalian ancestors likely skulked through the dark, using their powerful night-time vision to find food and avoid reptilian predators that hunted by day.

Since 2007, scientists have been searching to find the cause of a sudden and unexpected global rise in atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, following almost a decade in which concentrations had stayed relatively constant. Recent studies have explored a range of possible causes. Suggestions have included a rise in oil and natural gas extraction, increased emissions from tropical wetlands or increases in emissions from growing East Asian economies.

AUSTIN, Texas - Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have identified glaciers in West Greenland that are most susceptible to thinning in the coming decades by analyzing how they're shaped. The research could help predict how much the Greenland Ice Sheet will contribute to future sea-level rise during the next century, a number that currently ranges from inches to feet.

Researchers have found evidence of how ancient Britain separated from Europe, which happened in two stages, they report. Nearly 450,000 years ago, when Earth was in the grip of an ice age, ice stretched right across the North Sea, from Britain to Scandinavia. The low sea levels meant that the entire English Channel was dry land, a frozen tundra landscape, crisscrossed by small rivers.

A team of researchers from the University of Bristol have recently shown that ecosystems created by melting glaciers in the Arctic are sensitive to climate change and human activity. Melting ice is exposing vast landscapes that are colonised by simple forms of microbial life. These microbes in Arctic soils must cope with short cool summers and long freezing winters, as well as starvation from nutrients.

According to the latest research results of a German-Mexican team of geoscientists, the gradual decline of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs presumably came before the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid and the global mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Studies under the direction of Wolfgang Stinnesbeck of Heidelberg University and Eberhard Frey of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe also indicate that bird species spread and diversified at the same time the dinosaurs disappeared.

Iron particles generated by cities and industry are being dissolved by man-made air pollution and washed into the sea - potentially increasing the amount of greenhouse gases that the world's oceans can absorb, a new study suggests. Scientists have long believed that acids formed from human-generated pollution and natural emissions dissolve iron in airborne particles - increasing the amount of iron to the ocean - but have lacked direct evidence to prove this theory.

Scientists have presented the first direct, observational evidence of atmospheric currents - similar to Rossby waves found on Earth - on the sun. The discovery has the potential to help predict solar storms that affect everything from orbiting satellites to telecommunications systems and the energy grid on Earth.

Media releases, information for representatives of the media Media Relations (E) The striking North Face of the Bernese Alps is the result of a steep rise of rocks from the depths following a collision of two tectonic plates.