science wire

ANN ARBOR-The largest harmful algae bloom in Lake Erie's recorded history was likely caused by the confluence of changing farming practices and weather conditions that are expected to become more common in the future due to climate change.

Citizen-scientists around the world are poring through digital versions of 19 th century logbooks of mariners who sailed from Pacific Northwest and California ports to explore the Arctic and chart the newly acquired Alaskan territories.

A 2011 magnitude 5.7 quake near Prague, Okla., apparently triggered by wastewater injection, buckled U.S. Highway 62.

University of Melbourne Scientists Professor Michael Sandiford and Professor Geoffrey Taylor have been named Fellows of the prestigious Australian Academy of Science.

A wildfire in Lassen National Forest in northern California, where Penn State Professor Alan Taylor studied the impact of fire suppression policy.

A wildfire in Lassen National Forest in northern California, where Penn State Professor Alan Taylor studied the impact of fire suppression policy.

Ewan, from Wickwar, graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2010 with a 1 st class honours degree in Zoology.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool are embarking on a series of research cruises to understand the impact of climate warming on the ecosystems of the seas surrounding North West Europe.

An audio collage which brings new life to the ruins of St. Peter's Seminary and Kilmahew Woods by Cardross in Argyll is set to have its first public airing at an event on Saturday 23 March.

Were dinosaurs really the most exciting and interesting creatures ever to roam the planet? Zoologist Nick Crumpton tells the Cambridge Science Festival that it's high time other prehistoric animals stepped out from the shadows.

Fossils of a creature that lived on the ocean floor 505 million years ago have been identified by scientists as those of a previously-unknown marine worm, now named as  Spartobranchus tenuis .

The graphic shows optimistic and conservative habitable zone boundaries around cool, low mass stars. The numbers indicate the names of known Kepler planet candidates. Yellow color represents candidates with less than 1.4 times Earth-radius. Green color represents planet candidates between 1.4 and 2 Earth radius.

An art exhibition opening this week at UCL brings together six works by artists from Iraq and Britain to explore different experiences of the Iraq war on the 10th anniversary of the invasion.

PA 74/13 Enriching crops by adding a naturally-occurring soil mineral to fertilisers could potentially help to reduce disease and premature death in the African country of Malawi, researchers have said.

Satellites map changes in Earth's surface caused by earthquakes but never before have sound waves from a quake been sensed directly in space - until now. ESA's hyper-sensitive GOCE gravity satellite has added yet another first to its list of successes. Earthquakes not only create seismic waves that travel through Earth's interior, but large quakes also cause the surface of the planet to vibrate like a drum.

Salmon are beginning to swim up the Elwha River for the first time in more than a century. But University of Washington marine geologists are watching what's beginning to flow downstream — sediments from the largest dam-removal project ever undertaken.

A computational approach which links processes deep below a volcano to potential eruptions is described by researchers at the University of Bristol in a paper published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The research could ultimately help scientists to understand magma chamber processes and volcanic eruption timing.

"Even though fossil remains of the tool makers are not commonly preserved, the handaxes clearly archive the evolution of innovation in craftsmanship, acquired intelligence and social behavior in a pre-human community over a million-year interval," said WoldeGabriel.

If you believe that last October's Superstorm Sandy was a freak of nature - the confluence of unusual meteorological, atmospheric and celestial events - think again.

PA 57/13 A new audio walk developed by University of Nottingham researchers is to help walkers at a Cumbrian beauty spot to unlock its rich history and learn about the dramatic climate and weather conditions that shape its landscape.

Geologist Garniss H. Curtis, a professor emeritus of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, whose pioneering use of radioactive isotopes to date relatively young rocks provided the first solid timeline for human evolution, died Dec.

While short-term weather is notoriously volatile, climate is thought to represent a kind of average weather pattern over a long period of time. This dichotomy provides the analytical framework for scientific thinking about atmospheric variability, including climate change. But the weather-climate dichotomy paints an incomplete picture - one that may be complicating efforts to untangle natural variations in climate from man-made effects, according to McGill University physics Shaun Lovejoy.

Particles from the upper atmosphere trapped in a deep pile of Antarctic snow hold clear chemical traces of global meteorological events, a team from the University of California, San Diego and a colleague from France have found.

Sophisticated computer modelling has shown how sea-level rise over the coming century could affect some regions far more than others. The model shows that parts of the Pacific will see the highest rates of rise while some polar regions will actually experience falls in relative sea levels due to the ways sea, land and ice interact globally.

The first firm details of the 15 February asteroid impact in Russia, the largest in more than a century, are becoming clear.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery has mounted a new show that aims to expand the public's understanding of the challenging terrain of conceptual art.

Antarctica's recent summer season was a success for the Penn State researchers who camped out on the ice for nearly two months.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.

University of Sussex geographers have been involved in a short film about an academic project to observe one of the most extreme climates on Earth.

Stanford Report, February 15, 2013 Reducing carbon dioxide emissions may not be enough to curb global warming, say Stanford University scientists.

ANN ARBOR-University of Michigan environmental scientist Joel D. Blum has been awarded the 2013 Clair C. Patterson Award from the Geochemical Society for the development and application

ESA's Mars Express took a high-resolution stereo image on 13 January of the southeast corner of the Amenthes Planum region on Mars, near to Palos crater and the mouth of a well-known sinuous valley, Tinto Vallis.

By Pristine Ong 11 February 2013 Sydney geoscientist Ana Gibbons is helping to shed light on how the Indian Ocean grew to its present size and form.

Satellites show that the recent ozone hole over Antarctica was the smallest seen in the past decade. Long-term observations also reveal that Earth's ozone has been strengthening following international agreements to protect this vital layer of the atmosphere. According to the ozone sensor on Europe's MetOp weather satellite, the hole over Antarctica in 2012 was the smallest in the last 10 years.

The demise of the dinosaurs is the world's ultimate whodunit. Was it a comet or asteroid impact? Volcanic eruptions? Climate change? In an attempt to resolve the issue, an international team of scientists have determined the most precise dates yet for the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago and for the well-known impact that occurred around the same time.

The demise of the dinosaurs is the world's ultimate whodunit. Was it a comet or asteroid impact? Volcanic eruptions? Climate change? In an attempt to resolve the issue, scientists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC), the University of California, Berkeley, and universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have now determined the most precise dates yet for the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago and for the well-known impact that occurred around the same time.

Each year massive economic losses are suffered by farmers and the seed trade alike due to poor seed quality.

New timeline suggests India's size before this collision was much smaller than generally assumed. The peaks of the Himalayas are a modern remnant of massive tectonic forces that fused India with Asia tens of millions of years ago. Previous estimates have suggested this collision occurred about 50 million years ago, as India, moving northward at a rapid pace, crushed up against Eurasia.

Earth's most recent shift to a warm climate began with intense summer sun in the Northern Hemisphere, the first pressure on a seesaw that tossed powerful forces between the planet's poles until greenhouse gases accelerated temperature change on a global scale. Climate scientists, led by a group from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, used computer models to provide the strongest support yet to a case made nearly 90 years ago by mathematician Milutin Milankovitch.

The next advance in weather forecasting may not come from a new satellite or supercomputer, but from a device in your pocket. University of Washington atmospheric scientists are using pressure sensors included in the newest smartphones to develop better weather forecasting techniques. "With this approach we could potentially have tens or hundreds of thousands of additional surface pressure observations, which could significantly improve short-term weather forecasts,” said Cliff Mass , a UW professor of atmospheric sciences.

Jeff Chambers' path to the Amazon forest started 20 years ago in an unlikely place: Livermore, California.

A team of scientists from the University of Sydney have mapped deep-sea canyons and found evidence of large ancient submarine landslides between Fraser Island and Yamba that had the potential to generate a tsunami.

System developed at MIT cleans 'produced water' from natural gas wells, could lead to improved desalination plants for developing countries. Increased natural gas production is seen as a crucial step away from the greenhouse gas emissions of coal plants and toward U.S. energy independence.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa - Water management in the Florida Everglades is the focus of a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Jose Fuentes, professor of meteorology.

The Society recognized Xu as a crystallographer who is equally talented in neutron diffraction, conventional and synchrotron X-ray studies. MSA members who have contributed significantly to the advancement of mineralogy, crystallography, geochemistry, petrology or allied sciences and whose scientific contribution used mineralogical studies or data are elected to the rank of Fellow.