science wire

An archaeologist studying a remote Pacific island, world famous for its strange stone statues, says outsiders - and not its ancestors - should be blamed for its historic demise hundreds of years ago.

Soot from the burning of fossil fuels and solid biofuels contributes far more to global warming than has been thought, according to a new Stanford study. But, unlike carbon dioxide, soot lingers only a few weeks in the atmosphere, so cutting emissions could have a significant and rapid impact on the climate.

News Release Ramanathan Research Group Nature Geoscience Scripps Homepage ScrippsNews Home Scripps researchers find marked differences between east and south Asian black carbon emissions, enhanced by 2008 games July 27, 2010 By Robert Monroe Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego researchers say carefully balanced mitigation of air pollution is necessary to keep greenhouse effects in check after an analysis of east Asian air sampled during and after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Internationally-renowned dinosaur hunter Dr Phil Manning is setting off to the USA hoping to bag a Triceratops skeleton from the Badlands of South Dakota.

WASHINGTON - NASA personnel are among a group of international researchers who are in the Canadian Arctic assessing concepts for future planetary exploration as part of the Haughton-Mars Project, or HMP-2010.

AUSTIN, Texas — The CO2 emission estimates used for government policy decisions assume unlimited coal and fossil fuel production for the next 100 years, an unrealistic premise which skews climate change models and proposed solutions, according to new research published by Tad Patzek , chair of the Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Austin.

July 23, 2010 Tropical Storm Bonnie, the second named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, moved across the southern Florida peninsula on Friday afternoon, July 23, 2010, and is now taking aim at the Gulf of Mexico.

23 July 2010 Inequalities in premature mortality in Britain The level of inequalities in premature mortality between different areas of Britain has surpassed those seen shortly before the economic cr

PA 187/10 Britain's beer drinkers can serve as role models for the nation as it struggles to emerge from recession, according to an academic study.

News Release American Geophysical Union (AGU) USGS Scripps Homepage ScrippsNews Home New detailed observations of what happens when glaciers float on ocean surface July 14, 2010 By Robert Monroe Scri

A remarkable piece of Neolithic rock art, unlike anything previously found in Eastern England, has been unearthed in the Cambridgeshire village of Over. The hand-sized artefact, which could date back to 2,500 BC, was found by a participant in a geological weekend course which was being run by the University of Cambridge's Institute for Continuing Education.

PASADENA, Calif. NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet.

Out of sight, whales cruise the Gulf of Mexico depths - their hidden world threatened by huge clots of drifting oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well.

WASHINGTON - NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet.

A major conference, organised by scientists at The University of Manchester to showcase vital work on the effect of geographic chemicals begins today.

WASHINGTON - Three NASA aircraft will begin flights to study tropical cyclones on Aug. 15 during the agency's first major U.S.-based hurricane field campaign since 2001. The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, will study the creation and rapid intensification of hurricanes.

PASADENA, Calif. Three NASA aircraft will begin flights to study tropical cyclones on Aug. 15 during the agency's first major U.S.-based hurricane field campaign since 2001.

University Park, Pa.

Archaeologists at the University of Birmingham are heading to Stonehenge to lead the world's biggest-ever virtual excavation.

University of Nottingham scientists are helping to mark a prestigious anniversary — with the help of a volcano built in a laboratory.

Tropical Storm Alex, the first storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, continues to pick up steam as it crosses the western Gulf of Mexico.

PASADENA, Calif. A NASA-led research team has expanded the growing global armada of remote sensing satellites capable of studying carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth's climate. The newest addition is the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument on NASA's Aura spacecraft, launched in 2004.

28 June 2010 When Mars Express set sail for the crater named after Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, it found a windblown plateau and mysterious rocky mounds nearby.

Scientists from Oxford University are introducing visitors to this year's Royal Society's Summer Science Exhibition to the wonders of viruses and tectonic plates.

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society based at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty campus issued its forecast for an "active to extremely active" June to November hurricane season in the

The latest image of Pacific Ocean sea surface heights from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 oceanography satellite, dated June 11, 2010, shows that the tropical Pacific has switched from warm (red) to cold (blue) during the last few months. The blue area in the center of the image depicts the recent appearance of cold water hugging the equator, which the satellite measures as a region of lower-than-normal sea level.

Researchers will fly across Finland to assess how much carbon dioxide is being absorbed by the boreal forest, a band of woodland as big as the Amazon rainforest which surrounds the Arctic Circle.

PASADENA, Calif.—In the summer of 2002, a week of heavy rains in Central Texas caused Canyon Lake—the reservoir of the Canyon Dam—to flood over its spillway and down the Guadalupe River Valley in a planned diversion to save the dam from catastrophic failure. The flood, which continued for six weeks, stripped the valley of mesquite, oak trees, and soil; destroyed a bridge; and plucked meter-wide boulders from the ground.

An international research team has mapped out an accurate chronology of the kings of ancient Egypt using a radiocarbon analysis of short-lived plant remains from the region.

This artist's concept of a Kuiper Belt object found by the Hubble telescope is only 3,200 feet across and a whopping 4.2 billion miles away. Image: NASA CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Until now, astronomers have used telescopes to find Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), moon-sized bodies, and obtain their spectra to determine what types of ices are on their surface.

High oxygen production in thin-film materials could lead to greatly increased power production for fuel cells CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Until now, astronomers have used telescopes to find Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), moon-sized bodies, and obtain their spectra to determine what types of ices are on their surface.

Cambridge, MA - Astronomers announced today that the first Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) telescope, PS1, is fully operational.

A Stanford-based consortium of libraries will keep electronic backups of government documents, according to a new agreement - and that will add "a layer of trust in access to government information.