science wire

The combination of melting sea ice and global atmospheric warming are contributing to the high rate of warming in the Arctic, where temperatures are increasing up to four times faster than the global average, a new University of Melbourne study has shown. Professor Ian Simmonds from the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences co-authored the study and said the new information showed this combined effect at both ground and atmospheric level played a key role in increasing the rate of warming in the Arctic.

Stunning colours captured from 120 million year old fossils using cutting edge technology have gone on show. University of Manchester palaeontologists and geochemists are presenting their research at the Royal Society's annual Summer Science Exhibition. The exhibit, Palimpsests, Palaeontology and Particle Physics, features rare fossils including a 120 million year old bird and chemical images of prehistoric life extracted from the sands of time by using the most powerful light sources in the universe.

Scientists on Twitter @ JacquelynGill 's starter list of scientists who are great Twitter communicators: @JohnHawks , John Haws, UW-Madison paleoanthropologist @GlobalEcoGuy , Jonathan Foley, Univers

Most visitors to the Caribbean hope that their stay won't coincide with a major tropical storm. Hyejung Lee hoped for exactly the opposite.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Tree ring and oxygen isotope data from the U.S. Pacific Northwest do not provide the same information on past precipitation, but rather than causing a problem, the differing results are a good thing, according to a team of geologists.

  Princeton researchers working with supercomputers operating at a speed called the "exascale" are aiming to harness the power of this technology to solve a broad range of research problems.

It's been a decade since a swarm of relatively mild earthquakes shook up parts of Spokane. Now, armed with the right tools, scientists want to find out what was at fault.

Scientists at the University of Glasgow, the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Geological Survey (Edinburgh) have used an advanced rock-dating technique to help residents of the remote volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha make better plans to evacuate in the event of an eruption. Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory, located in the South Atlantic Ocean more than 2,800 kilometres from its nearest city Cape Town, is the tip of an undersea volcano with a landmass of 78 square kilometres.

The University of Melbourne has been awarded more than $900,000 in Federal funding to develop Australia's first open source renewable energy model, Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson announced this week.

First analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the terrestrial Arctic and American scientists together with Peter Rosén och Hendrik Vogel at Umeå University.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-A dry spring in portions of the Midwest is expected to result in the second-smallest Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" on record in 2012, according to a University of Michigan forecast released today.

Cambridge academic Robert Macfarlane's new book - The Old Ways - is a remarkable excursion into the many-layered landscape of life and literature with countless stopping points along the route.

Stanford geophysicists say earthquakes triggered by underground CO2 storage, while probably too small to cause major damage, could release stored CO2 into the atmosphere.

First satellite deforestation tracker for whole of Latin America launched at Rio+20 UN environment conference A team of researchers led by Mark Mulligan from the Department of Geography at King's, in

NOAA, NASA, NSF, DOE among the funders of this critical collaboration to help mitigate effects of extreme climate on S. Florida June 18, 2012 MIAMI — Each year, the National Hurricane Center estimates that tropical storm-related flood damage costs billions of dollars.

Over the last decade, a new type of rice has spread across the African continent. With Asia's green revolution in mind, a high-yield rice strain was developed which increased farmers' incomes and improved gender equality in the family.

Scientists will soon have a greater understanding of the dramatically spreading, rifting and faulting boundary of the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, thanks to research from The Australian National University. Professor Richard Arculus from the Research School of Earth Sciences, part of the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, led a research team of geologists on a three-week research voyage over May to June.

Sussex wins funding to bring environmental research back down to earth Geographers at Sussex have been awarded funding by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for two separate projects tha

Delving inside Earth from space ESA astronaut André Kuipers is running experiments on the International Space Station that are shedding light on conditions deep inside Earth. Orbiting some 400 km above us, Geoflow is offering insights into the inner workings of our planet. Descending 3000 km under our feet, Earth's mantle is a semi-solid fluid under our thin outer crust.

An extraordinary type of volcanic eruption in Iceland could inject large quantities of hazardous gases into North Atlantic and European flight corridors for months at a time, a new study suggests. Using computer simulations, researchers are investigating the likely atmospheric effects if a “flood lava” eruption took place in Iceland today.

Southern California residents called on to install mini-sensors that record earthquake data beneficial to science, emergency response and seismic safety WANTED: Members of the public willing to help

The unexpectedly poor performance of modern buildings during recent major earthquakes has demonstrated that revisions to design practices are needed to ensure that future construction is more resilient.

The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans might think.

Motion-activated cameras at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve provide scientists a window into the secret lives of the animals there.

Some of the steepest mountain slopes in the world got that way because of the interplay between terrain uplift associated with plate tectonics and powerful streams cutting into hillsides, leading to erosion in the form of large landslides, new research shows. The work, presented online May 27 , shows that once the angle of a slope exceeds 30 degrees - whether from uplift, a rushing stream carving away the bottom of the slope or a combination of the two - landslide erosion increases significantly until the hillside stabilizes.

Understanding the threat posed by unanticipated earthquakes in continental interiors is the focus of a new study led by the University of Cambridge.

The Namibian desert is home to some vibrant personalities, as TEGAN DOLSTRA discovered. It's 4am, hours before sunrise, well before the parched earth is baked in a suffocating oven, but Alecia Carter is already hot on the trail of her quarry.

Archived data from the Envisat satellite show that the volcanic island of Santorini has recently displayed signs of unrest. Even after the end of its mission, Envisat information continues to be exploited for the long-term monitoring of volcanoes. Santorini is a picturesque Greek island in the south Aegean Sea and the most active volcanic centre in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc.

A research team from the Paul Scherrer Institute has reconstructed the concentration record of lead in the atmosphere in Russia since 1680. As no continuous atmospheric lead measurements had been made, the researchers are able to give the first outline of what the record could have been like. The results demonstrate a significant increase in the atmospheric lead concentrations since the 1930s and a significant reduction since the 1970s.

Harvard study finds circumpolar rivers most responsible for high levels of mercury in the Arctic The Lena River delta.

Professor Paul Young has been reappointed vice-president (research) for the University of Toronto. The three-year term, effective July 2012, was approved by the University's Governing Council today.

Manvendra Dubey has received a J. William Fulbright scholarship to conduct monsoon-related research in India. Los Alamos scientist heads to India for climate-monitoring research LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, May 15, 2012—Manvendra Dubey, a Los Alamos National Laboratory climate scientist, has received a J. William Fulbright scholarship to conduct monsoon-related research in India.

Stephen Hicks is from Somerset, UK, and is studying a PhD in earthquake seismology and geodynamics at the University's School of Environmental Sciences.

When UCLA's Christopher T. Russell looks at the images of the protoplanet Vesta produced by NASA's Dawn mission, he talks about beauty as much as he talks about science.

Southern California Edison (SCE) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego will collaborate on a project to gather seismic data off the coast of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

Terraforming a landscape for a robotic rover Challenged to design a background for a small rover controlled from space, students in Germany have delivered a futuristic cityscape.

ESA's Mars Express has returned images of a region on the Red Planet that appears to have been sculpted in part by flowing liquid. This again adds to the growing evidence that Mars had large volumes of water on its surface in the distant past. On 21 June last year, Mars Express pointed its high-resolution stereo camera at the western part of Acidalia Planitia, a gigantic basin in the planet's northern lowlands, at the interface with Tempe Terra, an older, higher terrain.

There is an old trick for remembering the difference between stalactites and stalagmites in a cave: Stalac tites hold tight to the ceiling while stalag mites might one day grow to reach the ceiling. Now, it seems, stalagmites might also fill a hole in our understanding of Earth's climate system and how that system is likely to respond to the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since preindustrial times.

Linguists are in a race against time and estimate that half of all the world’s languages will be extinct within a century.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a new mission, which includes scientists from UCL, to explore Jupiter and the habitability of its icy moons.

It's official: it was announced today that Oxford University scientists will help to prepare a mission to Jupiter and its icy moons.

A new space mission, involving Oxford University scientists, will explore Jupiter and its icy moons to reveal fresh insights into the habitability of the 'waterworlds' orbiting the giant planets in our solar system and beyond.

Joint issued by Imperial College London, Oxford University, University of Leicester and UCL The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a new mission to explore Jupiter and its icy moons, to reveal

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-It's a message no one wants to hear: To slow down global warming, we'll either have to put the brakes on economic growth or transform the way the world's economies work. That's the implication of an innovative University of Michigan study examining the evolution of atmospheric CO', the most likely cause of global warming.

If you've seen the movie Finding Nemo, you probably recall the depiction of the "EAC," a fast-moving ocean current that the film's surfer-dude sea turtles ride with flair.

First Mars Express gravity results plot volcanic history Five years of Mars Express gravity mapping data are providing unique insights into what lies beneath the Red Planet's largest volcanoes. The results show that the lava grew denser over time and that the thickness of the planet's rigid outer layers varies across the Tharsis region.