science wire

"Finding a Caracara nest had been on my bucket list of things to do for almost 20 years," says Mark Bonta, a Penn State Altoona researcher, who is working with locals in Olancho, Honduras, to understand more about a recently discovered Caracara nest. Late last spring, using community ties and lots of patience, a team of Honduran and U.S. researchers found the nest of a rare Central American bird-of-prey.

September 18, 2013 — CORAL GABLES, Fla. — A new online citizen science project called " Plankton Portal " provides a user experience like none other - exploring the open ocean from the comfort of your own home.

Birds originated from a group of small, meat-eating theropod dinosaurs called maniraptorans sometime around 150 million years ago. Recent findings from around the world show that many maniraptorans were very bird-like, with feathers, hollow bones, small body sizes and high metabolic rates. But the question remains, at what point did forelimbs evolve into wings - making it possible to fly?

As a child in the Galicia region of northwestern Spain, Ruben Juanes was already fascinated by science, and that interest was fostered by a science teacher who taught him in the fifth and sixth grades.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Warm ocean water, not warm air, is melting the Pine Island Glacier's floating ice shelf in Antarctica and may be the culprit for increased melting of other ice shelves, according to an international team of researchers.

The brown, smog-filled skies that engulf Beijing have earned China a poor reputation for environmental stewardship.

Volcanoes prone to explosive eruptions exist all over the world, but the warning signs are not well understood.

Scientists from Cambridge University are joining a team of British researchers embarking on an ambitious mission to the Antarctic to learn more about recent ice loss. The research project is important for understanding sea-level rise, a global phenomenon which has major implications for coastal cities and environments around the world.

AUSTIN, Texas - A new reconstruction of climate in the South Pacific during the past 446 years shows rainfall varied much more dramatically before the start of the 20 th  century than after. The finding, based on an analysis of a cave formation called a stalagmite from the island nation of Vanuatu, could force climate modelers to adjust their models.

6 September 2013 Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Australian outback is featured in this image from the Kompsat-2 satellite.

5 September 2013 Exceptional structures deposited and shaped by water and winds adorn these interlocking craters and sculpt radiating patterns in the sands of Mars.

New book explores South Downs scenery A new book by a Sussex geographer explores the geology and scenery of the South Downs National Park, which surrounds the University campus.

ANN ARBOR-Coal soot shrank the Alpine glaciers in mid-19th-century Europe, according to new findings that show how black carbon alone-even without warmer temperatures-can affect ice and snow cover. The research, which involved a University of Michigan atmospheric scientist, provides insights into when the so-called Little Ice Age ended and why European glaciers began to retreat decades before global temperatures rose.

Harvard model predicts wildfire seasons by 2050 will be three weeks longer, up to twice as smoky, and will burn a wider area in the western United States - Research by environmental scientists at the

Global mean temperatures have been flat for 15 years despite the increase in heat-trapping greenhouse gases, but a new Scripps study shows cooling in the equatorial Pacific Ocean explains the discrepancy New research by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego climate scientists attributes the attenuation of a worldwide temperature increase to a cooling of eastern Pacific Ocean waters, one that counteracts the warming effect of greenhouse gases.

Province's natural regions predicted to shift northward in response to climate change over next century.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow are using a new technique known as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to predict natural disasters around the world and manage their impact.

Models provide first-ever simulated glimpse into dispersal and potential effects of climate change August 22, 2013 MIAMI - August 20, 2013 - A new computer simulation conducted at the University of B

UAlberta researchers are exploring the potential of geothermal energy to power the oilsands industry.

Some of Britain's poorest communities have been hit the hardest by the thousands of bank and building society closures happening every day, according to new research by The University of Nottingham.

Reservoirs of silica-rich magma - the kind that causes the most explosive volcanic eruptions - can persist in Earth's upper crust for hundreds of thousands of years without triggering an eruption, according to new University of Washington modeling research. That means an area known to have experienced a massive volcanic eruption in the past, such as Yellowstone National Park, could have a large pool of magma festering beneath it and still not be close to going off as it did 600,000 years ago.

19 Aug 2013 National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) Research Fellow Dr Nick Smith has been awarded a prestigious four-year Industry Fellowship by the Royal Society.

A newly-discovered genus of shark that prowled Earth's oceans 100 million years ago - and is thought to have been the ancestor of the great white - has been named after the Director of Cambridge University's Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Ken McNamara.

A new web tool, created by NERC-funded researchers at the University of Bristol, could pave the way for better management of airspace during volcanic crises.

Earth scientists are laying plans for a two-year study covering a broad area of southwestern Washington to develop a better understanding of how Mount St. Helens gets its supply of volcanic magma.

UAlberta research is challenging basic assumptions about dinosaurs—and greatly expanding the number of known species.

UCL Art museum is proud to announce that Portrait of a Young Woman, a painting from our collection by artist Winifred Knights, will be included in Art Everywhere, a vast exhibition of the nation's fa

Northern Hemisphere terrestrial ecosystems are taking "deeper breaths," according to a multi-agency study Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise and fall annually as plants take up the gas in spring and summer and release it in fall and winter through photosynthesis and respiration. Now the range of that cycle is growing as more CO2 is emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, according to a study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

Northern Hemisphere terrestrial ecosystems are taking "deeper breaths," according to a multi-agency study Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise and fall annually as plants take up the gas in spring and summer and release it in fall and winter through photosynthesis and respiration. Now the range of that cycle is growing as more CO2 is emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, according to a study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

The East African Rift is an area where two tectonic plates are moving apart, making it a region of high geological activity, home to a number of volcanoes. This animation shows how satellite radars - like the one flown on Envisat - can detect surface displacement with centimetre accuracy from an altitude of about 800 km.

If current climate trends follow historical precedent, ocean ecosystems will be in state of flux for next 10,000 years, according to Scripps Oceanography researchers If history's closest analog is an

Penderyn, an award-winning single malt whisky distillery based in the Brecon Beacons, is collaborating with geoenvironmental specialists at Cardiff University to learn more about the distillery's und

A report by experts at The University of Nottingham has shown that the British public is beginning to warm to the idea of shale gas.

Not only is the planet undergoing one of the largest climate changes in the past 65 million years, Stanford climate scientists Noah Diffenbaugh and Chris Field report that it's occurring at a rate 10 times faster than any change in that period.

PA258/13 Image of Bolsover Castle courtesy of English Heritage It may be over two hundred years since the abolition of the British slave trade but now untold stories about the trade's links to statel

AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin are conducting a study that will help a city rebuild after a string of earthquakes, thanks to a boost from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the government of New Zealand. The knowledge gained could one day help set building codes in earthquake-prone areas in the United States and abroad.

1 August 2013 Craters once brim-full with sediments and water have long since drained dry, but traces of their former lives as muddy lakes cling on in the martian desert.

England is building up a large future health problem in the amount of individuals who are physically inactive according to new research published today [31 July]. The study, which examined data on over one million adults in England, reveals nearly 80 per cent of people do not hit national physical activity government targets and finds disparities between inactivity and socioeconomic status.

A royal 13 th century deer park has been identified at Brynkir in Gwynedd, North Wales, following a season of excavations led by Cardiff University.

Human activity is currently a bigger threat to mangroves, and the natural defences they provide against storm surges and other coastal disasters, than rising sea levels, according to a new study.

Santa's workshop at the North Pole is not under water, despite recent reports. A dramatic image captured by a University of Washington monitoring buoy reportedly shows a lake at the North Pole.

AUSTIN, Texas — For the first time, scientists have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost, or ground ice, in a section of Antarctica where the ice had been considered stable.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are now routinely used for high accuracy operations around the globe.

UAlberta geophysicist helped develop technique to monitor effects of "miniature earthquakes" generated by hydraulic fracturing.

Giant fish that could grow up to 16m long roamed the seas 165 million years ago, new research from the University of Bristol suggests. Giant plankton-eating animals first filled the prehistoric seas more than 160 million years ago but they were wiped out in the same event that killed off the dinosaurs, and then replaced by plankton-eating sharks and whales.

Lillie Langlois, Ph.D. candidate in wildlife and fisheries science, is assessing Marcellus Shale drilling's impacts on deep-woods bird communities.

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The Yarlung-Tsangpo River in southern Asia drops rapidly through the Himalaya Mountains on its way to the Bay of Bengal, losing about 7,000 feet of elevation through the precipitously steep Tsangpo Gorge. For the first time, scientists have direct geochemical evidence that the 150-mile long gorge, possibly the world's deepest, was the conduit by which megafloods from glacial lakes, perhaps half the volume of Lake Erie, drained suddenly and catastrophically through the Himalayas when their ice dams failed at times during the last 2 million years.

This ancient thaw may have caused sea levels to rise by approximately 20 metres, scientists report today Geoscience.