West Liberty State College Science and Engineering Fair
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NASA study solves case of Earths missing energy
Where was it going? Or, they wondered, was something wrong with the way researc... -
Cocaine production increases destruction of Colombias rainforests
Dr. Liliana M. Dávalos, professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolu... -
Asteroid served up custom orders of lifes ingredients
In January, 2000, a large meteoroid exploded in the atmosphere over northern ... -
New biofuel sustainability assessment tool and greenhouse gas calculator released
The new tool allows users to perform a self-assessment against the Principles a... -
European Unions DemoCLOCK project to cut cost of capturing CO2
Power generation based on fossil fuels is one of the major contributors to gl... -
Life beyond Earth? Underwater caves in Bahamas could give clues
Tom Iliffe, professor of marine biology at the Texas A&M-Galveston campus, ... -
Channel Island of Sark becomes worlds first dark sky island
Sark has no public street lighting, there are no paved roads and cars, so it do... -
Wind power: Long-term wind speed changes estimated
Some recent international studies have shown a decrease in wind speeds in sever... -
Scientists probe Indian Ocean for clues to worldwide weather patterns
The six-month field campaign, known as DYNAMO or Dynamics of the Madden-Julian ... -
Arctic on the verge of record ozone loss
"Our measurements show that at the relevant altitudes about half of the ozone that...
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The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) has issued a Cyclone Warning for coastal areas from Mardie to Ningaloo including Exmouth and Onslow. ABM has also issued a Cyclone Watch east to Port Hedland and south to Coral Bay. In addition, a Blue Alert has been posted for "People in or near coastal and island communities between Mardie and Coral Bay including the communities of Mardie, Onslow, Exmouth and Coral Bay need to prepare for cyclonic weather." The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spect... -
The amount of solar activity increases approximately every 11 years, and the sun is currently moving toward another solar maximum, likely in 2013. That means more flares will be coming, some small and some big enough to send their radiation all the way to Earth. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has devised categories for the flares and various storms. The biggest flares are known as "X-class flares" based on a classification system that divides solar flares according to... -
Tropical deforestation is considered a major source of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, releasing as much as 1.1 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Based on new data in this study, researchers believe that current models may overestimate the net flux of carbon into the atmosphere due to tropical vegetation loss by 11 to 12 percent. For countries trying to meet their greenhouse gases reporting requirements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Cl... -
NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone Funso on January 27 at 0730 UTC (2:30 a.m. EST). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a true color image of the storm that showed Funso's eye has now filled with clouds and appears ragged. Despite being filled with high clouds, the eye appears on multi-spectral satellite imagery to be 30 miles (48.3 km) in diameter. The MODIS image showed that Funso was moving south past the southern end of Madagasc... -
The study, in the journal Science, tackles a major barrier to the development of more affordable and environmentally sustainable biofuels. Rather than relying on the fermentation of simple sugars in food crops such as corn, beets or sugar cane (which is environmentally costly and threatens the food supply) researchers are looking for better ways to convert the leaves and stems of grasses or woody plants to liquid fuel. These "second-generation" biofuels ideally will be "carbon neutral," ab... -
While atmospheric rivers are responsible for great quantities of rain that can produce flooding, they also contribute to beneficial increases in snowpack. A series of atmospheric rivers fueled the strong winter storms that battered the U.S. West Coast from western Washington to Southern California from Dec. 10 to 22, 2010, producing 28 to 64 centimeters (11 to 25 inches) of rain in certain areas. The atmospheric rivers also contributed to the snowpack in the Sierras, which received 75 percent... -
These results are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The ocean traps around 30% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere through human activity and represents, with the terrestrial biosphere, the main carbon sink. Much research has been devoted to understanding the natural mechanisms that regulate this sink. On the one hand, there is the biological pump: the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water is firstly used for the photosynthesis of phytoplankton, microscopic organ... -
Based on reconstructions of Arctic climate variability in the greenhouse world of the Late Cretaceous, Southampton scientists have concluded that man-made global warming probably would not greatly change the climatic influence associated with natural modes of inter-annual climate variability such as the El Niño -- Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the Arctic Oscillation/ North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/ NAO). "Even in the warm Cretaceous period, the patterns of these climatic oscillations ... -
Tar sands, also known as bituminous sands or oil sands, represent approximately two-thirds of the world's estimated oil reserves. Canada is the world's major producer of unconventional petroleum from sands, and the U.S. imports more than one million barrels of oil per day from Canada, about twice as much as from Saudi Arabia. Much of this oil is produced from the Alberta tar sands. However, the production of petroleum from tar sands causes environmental damage. Part of the damage comes from t... -
Stricter regulations have reduced the use of hazardous chemicals and heavy metals in industrial activities, but their legacy lives on in the environment, notably in polluted soils and sediments. One sector where they present a particular headache is in the shipping and port industry, where dredging routinely turns up sediment contaminated with the likes of carcinogenic PCBs, TBT, cadmium, lead and mercury. Port owners are caught between constraints on dumping sediment at sea, the cheap but po... -
"We kept salmon in completely submerged cages for 17 days," reports Arne Fredheim, Research Manager at CREATE. "The individuals swam somewhat faster than usual but they did not exhibit stress. We also tested the pain threshold for how long salmon can continuously stay below the surface. It took four months for them to become excessively stressed." The centre's researchers believe that submerged cages can be used for extended periods -- as long as the cages are lifted to the surface at regular... -
The discovery was made by an international collaboration coordinated by Romain Amiot of the Laboratoire de géologie de Lyon: terre, planètes et environnement (CNRS/ENS de Lyon/Université Lyon 1). Their work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It has long been thought that the climate of the Mesozoic, the age of the dinosaurs, was generally warm across the planet. However, a recent study challenges this theory. The work focuses on a region... -
The state of Earth's polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice is an important indicator of climate change and plays a key role in regulating global climate. With IceBridge, NASA is pushing ahead with its commitment to keep an eye on changes to polar ice to better understand the effects of climate change. Since 2009, Operation IceBridge has flown annual campaigns over the Arctic starting in March and over Antarctica starting in October. The mission extends the multi-year record of ice elevation ... -
Experts have established a new conservation index to help policy-makers to deal with the effects of climate change on birds in Africa, and it could assist governments across the world to protect wildlife areas and help species as climate change forces them to move to new areas. It is the first categorisation of protected areas to show how conservationists might deal with climate change and the shuffling of the distribution of wildlife species that it will cause. The new tool offers policy-mak... -
Carnegie's George Cody and an international team of scientists discovered relicts of protein-chitin complex in fossils of arthropods from the Paleozoic era. Their findings, published online by Geology, could have major implications for our understanding of the organic fossil record. Among other common features, arthropods have exoskeletons, or cuticles. The outer portions of these cuticles are made up of a composite of chitin fibers, which are embedded in a matrix of protein. It is well known... -
"Some airborne organic compounds -- such as benzene, which increases the risk of cancer -- have been recorded at petrol stations at levels above the average levels for urban areas where traffic is the primary source of emission," Marta Doval, co-author of the study and a researcher at the UM, said. The study, which has been published in the Journal of Environmental Management, shows that the air at petrol stations and in their immediate surroundings is affected by emissions stemming from evap...
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