May 14, 2008, 8:22 PM CT

Earth impacts to human-caused climate change

A new NASA-led study shows human-caused climate change has made an impact on a wide range of Earth's natural systems, including permafrost thawing, plants blooming earlier across Europe, and lakes declining in productivity in Africa.

Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York and researchers at 10 other institutions have linked physical and biological impacts since 1970 with rises in temperatures during that period. The study, would be published May 15 in the journal Nature, concludes human-caused warming is resulting in a broad range of impacts across the globe.

"This is the first study to link global temperature data sets, climate model results, and observed changes in a broad range of physical and biological systems to show the link between humans, climate, and impacts," said Rosenzweig, lead author of the study.

Rosenzweig and his colleagues also found the link between human-caused climate change and observed impacts on Earth holds true at the scale of individual continents, especially in North America, Europe, and Asia.

To arrive at the link, the authors built and analyzed a database of more than 29,000 data series pertaining to observed impacts on Earth's natural systems. The data were collected from about 80 studies, each with at least 20 years of records between 1970 and 2004......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

May 14, 2008, 7:37 PM CT

Accounting practices ultimately affect global economy

How much a particular hill of beans is worth may depend on whos counting the beans. When it comes to accounting standards in the business world, every bean counts, but the quality of financial reporting differs from country to country. In a recent study, a University of Missouri researcher observed that uniform and strict auditor enforcement may be more important than a countrys accounting standards, and the quality of reporting can affect the whole economy.

To improve the quality of accounting, which improves the flow of capital to the right places in the economy and facilitates economic growth, you must have an environment that includes scrutiny by corporate regulators and independent auditors, said Jere Francis, MU chair of accountancy in the Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business. The auditors job is to be the local policeman on the beat, making sure people arent crossing the line. We need those cops to help good people stay good.

As per Francis, there is a movement toward adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The goal of implementing the IFRS is to establish a single set of globally accepted accounting standards. The concept is rapidly gaining support by key groups such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the World Bank. IFRS are now used for public reporting purposes in more than 100 countries. As per financial services firm Deloitte and Touche, by 2011, almost every country, including the United States, will be using IFRS......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

May 12, 2008, 8:28 PM CT

How Proteins Dissolve and Crystallize

In the late 19th century the Czech scientist Franz Hofmeister found that some salts (ionic compounds) aided the solution of proteins in egg white, some caused the proteins to destabilize and precipitate, and others ranged in activity between these poles.

Hofmeister proceeded to rank "salt-out" (destabilizing) ions versus "salt-in" ions as per the magnitude of their effects. The resulting "Hofmeister series" governs the strengths of ions in inducing protein unfolding, bubble coalescence, and a number of other phenomena, and remains vital to protein chemistry and other biological and chemical studies to this day. But its mechanism has never been properly understood.

A team led by Richard Saykally of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has now used Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source to study how biologically important, positively charged ions (cations) interact with negatively charged groups found in proteins (anions) to form salts. The team's results, which appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lend strong experimental support to a critical part of a proposed new explanation for Hofmeister effects, known as the Law of Matching Water Affinities.

The Law of Matching Water Affinities

"The Law of Matching Water Affinities, recently proposed by Kim Collins, says that the least soluble ion pairs are formed by ions that are closest to each other in their hydration energy - that is, how strongly they hold onto water," says Saykally, who is a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. "This is a classic example of an ion-specific effect: Hofmeister effects depend on the identity of ions rather than just on their concentration."........ Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

May 12, 2008, 8:20 PM CT

Hot climate could shut down plate tectonics

A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet's crust to become locked in place.

"The heat mandatory goes far beyond anything we expect from human-induced climate change, but things like volcanic activity and changes in the sun's luminosity could lead to this level of heating," said lead author Adrian Lenardic, associate professor of Earth science at Rice University. "Our goal was to establish an upper limit of naturally generated climate variation beyond which the entire solid planet would respond".

Lenardic said the research team wanted to better understand the differences between the Earth and Venus and establish the potential range of conditions that could exist on Earth-like planets beyond the solar system. The team includes Lenardic and co-authors Mark Jellinek of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Louis Moresi of Monash University in Clayton, Australia. The research is available online from the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

The findings may explain why Venus evolved differently from Earth. The two planets are close in size and geological makeup, but Venus' carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere is almost 100 times more dense than the Earth's and acts like a blanket. As a result, Venus' surface temperature is hotter than that of even Mercury, which is twice as close to the sun......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

May 12, 2008, 8:05 PM CT

Ancient Beachcombers May Have Travelled Slowly

New evidence, more questions. That's the thumbnail of the first new data reported in 10 years from Monte Verde, the earliest known human settlement in the Americas.

Evidence from the archaeological site in southern Chile confirms Monte Verde is the Americas earliest known settlement and is consistent with the idea that early human migration occurred along the Pacific Coast more than 14,000 years ago, but questions remain about just how rapidly that migration occurred.

"If all the early American groups were following a similar pattern of moving back and forth between inland and coastal areas, then the peopling of the Americas may not have been the blitzkrieg movement to the south that people have presumed, but a much slower and more deliberate process," says Tom Dillehay, professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., who led the study.

The journal Science publishes a report on the findings by Dillehay and team of international researchers in its May 9 issue.

"Monte Verde is an iconic site in New World archaeology and Americanist archaeologists recognize its importance," says John Yellen, program manager at the National Science Foundation, which funded the research. "They also agree that Tom Dillehay has conducted an outstanding program of research there"......... Posted by: William      Read more         Source

May 11, 2008, 10:22 AM CT

Evolution of "gas giants"

By shooting the high-energy Omega laser onto precompressed samples of planetary fluids, researchers are gaining a better understanding of the evolution and internal structure of Jupiter, Saturn and extrasolar giant planets.

The properties of dense helium (He) - which happens to be a principal constituent of giant gas planets like Jupiter - at thermodynamic conditions between those of condensed matter and high-temperature plasmas are theoretically challenging and unexplored experimentally.

Laboratory researchers collaborating with scientists at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, CEA France and UC Berkeley were able to determine the equation of state (EOS) for fluid He at pressures above 100 GPa (one million times more pressure than the Earth's atmosphere - one GPa (gigapascal) equals 10,000 atmospheres).

The only prior high temperature and pressure He EOS data available for constraining planetary models waccording toformed at LLNL by Bill Nellis and his team using a two-stage gas gun. However, those earlier experiments used cryogenic techniques at ambient pressure so their densities were significantly lower than those achieved with the precompressed samples. Also, the final pressures, 16 GPa for a single shock, were significantly lower than the new laser shock data......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

May 11, 2008, 10:18 AM CT

Pressure Effects On Nanomaterials

Transistors, lasers and solar-energy conversion devices may be easier to manipulate because of recent research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists.

The scientists defined the role high pressure plays in precisely tuning the fundamental properties of nanomaterials and, in particular, nanoparticle assemblies that are important for device applications.

The team, made up of LLNL researchers Christian Grant, Jonathan Crowhurst, Sebastien Hamel, Natalia Zaitseva and former LLNL researcher Andrew Williamson (now at Physic Ventures), subjected quantum dot solids (in this case assemblies of cadmium selenide, or CdSe, nanocrystals) to very high static pressures on the order of 70,000 atmospheres and studied in-situ their response using a laser-based luminescence technique. A quantum dot is a semiconductor whose electrons are confined in all three spatial dimensions.

"We closely compared our results with theoretical calculations," Grant said. "These results were completely consistent with our experimental observations".

But when they applied nonuniform pressure, the results were quite different.

It led to large shifts in the energy linked to the very strong fluorescence of CdSe. CdSe, it was found, is extremely sensitive to the local stress state......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source

May 11, 2008, 9:14 AM CT

Designer Isotopes Push the Frontier of Science

Designer labels have a lot of cachet, a principle that's equally true in fashion and physics.

The future of nuclear physics is in designer isotopes--the relatively new power researchers have to make specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies, as per Bradley Sherrill, a University distinguished professor of physics and associate director for research at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University (MSU).

"We have developed a remarkable capability over the last 10 or so years that allows us to build a specific isotope to use in research," Sherrill said. "It is a new tool that promises to allow whole new directions in research to move forward. There are tremendous advances that are possible".

Sherrill outlined some of the possibilities and what it will take to get there in a perspective piece in the May 9 edition of Science magazine.

In that article, he writes nanotechnology is getting a lot of attention for the astonishing possibilities of constructing objects with individual atoms and molecules. Sherrill, however, said that nanotechnology hardly is the last word in small.

The chemical changes that brought about the formation of the elements in the bellies of stars are being recreated in laboratories such as MSU's NSCL. Advances in basic nuclear science already have given way to technologies such as PET (short for positron emission tomography) scans, which are medical procedures that use special isotopes to target specific types of tumors......... Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

May 8, 2008, 8:54 PM CT

Chilean volcano captured blasting ash

Chile's Chaiten Volcano is shown spewing ash and smoke (centre left of image) into the air for hundreds of km over Argentina's Patagonia Plateau in this Envisat image acquired on 5 May 2008.

The 1000 m-high volcano had been dormant for thousands of years before erupting on 2 May, causing the evacuation of thousands. Chaiten Volcano is located in southern Chile 10 km northeast of the town of Chaiten on the Gulf of Corcovado.

Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) instrument processed this image at a resolution of 1200 m.

Satellite data can be used to detect the slight signs of change that may foretell an eruption. Once an eruption begins, optical and radar instruments can capture the lava flows, mudslides, ground fissures and earthquakes.

Atmospheric sensors onboard satellites can also identify the gases and aerosols released by the eruption, as well as quantify their wider environmental impact.

To boost the use of Earth Observation (EO) data at volcanic observatories, ESA has started to monitor volcanoes worldwide within the Agency's Data User Element programme.

The Globvolcano project, started in early 2007, will define, implement and validate information services to support volcanological observatories in their daily work by integration of EO data, with emphasis on observation and early warning......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

May 7, 2008, 7:48 PM CT

High fuel prices could slash US emissions

HIGH gasoline prices could lead to a dramatic saving in US greenhouse-gas emissions. Thats the conclusion of economists in the US, who suggest high fuel prices are turning consumers off SUVs and onto smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Whats more, car owners are predicted to cut back on driving in order to save money. Together, these changes in consumer behaviour could make an important dent in the US contribution to global warming, reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions by tens of millions of tonnes per year. The impact will be dramatic, says Chris Knittel, an economist at the University.

of California, Davis, who was involved in one of the studies.

The changes are being driven by record fuel prices in the US, where, at the end of April, the average price of gasoline stood at $3.65 per gallon, 20 per cent more than in January and treble the price of a decade ago. Until recently, these increases did not seem to be having a consistent effect on the car market and fuel use. Though sales of SUVs in the US have been falling over the past few years, this decline has come on the back of years of rapid growth, and overall gasoline consumption has been increasing every year since 1991.

That could be about to change. Knittel and his colleagues looked at data on 1.4 million car purchases over the past 10 years, comparing sales patterns with gas prices. They observed that sales of the least fuel-efficient cars, such as SUVs and pick-up trucks, fell by 13 per cent for every $1 per gallon increase in the price of gasoline. The biggest SUVs suffered the most, with sales dropping by over 25 per cent for every dollar by which the gas price rose. And for every $1 hike in gas prices there was......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source