Showing 20 articles starting at article 61

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Engineering: Biometric, Geoscience: Geology

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Everything is everywhere -- under certain conditions microbial communities can grow and thrive, even in places that are seemingly uninhabitable. This is the case at inactive hydrothermal vents on the sea floor. An international team is presently working to accurately quantify how much inorganic carbon can be bound in these environments.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The period that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars may have been shorter than previously thought. Channel landforms called gullies, previously thought to be formed exclusively by liquid water, can also be formed by the action of evaporating CO2 ice, according to a new study.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Research has found a less expensive and easier to use test to learn more about forensic touch DNA. This research has important implications for forensic investigations and being able to identify DNA from a primary contact -- someone who may have committed the crime -- as well as secondary DNA that was inadvertently and indirectly transferred through touch.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A new study shines a spotlight on sulfur, a chemical element that, while all familiar, has proved surprisingly resistant to scientific efforts in probing its role in the origin of life.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists have used the geological record of the deep sea to discover a connection between the orbits of Earth and Mars, past global warming patterns and the speeding up of deep ocean circulation. The patterns they discover suggest that warming seas could produce deep whirpools in ocean currents.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Sand ripples are symmetrical. Yet wind -- which causes them -- is very much not. Furthermore, sand ripples can be found on Mars and on Earth. They would be even more fascinating if the same effect found on Mars could be found here on Earth as well. What if one unified theory could explain their formation on both planets?

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

In a new study, researchers have used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven climate change.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

For many hundreds of millions of years, the average temperature at the surface of the Earth has varied by not much more than 20 degrees Celsius, facilitating life on our planet. To maintain such stable temperatures, Earth appears to have a 'thermostat' that regulates the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide over geological timescales, influencing global temperatures. The erosion and weathering of rocks are important parts of this 'thermostat.'

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A team has collected dozens of samples from across southeastern Colorado, and their results could help to answer an enduring mystery: What made Colorado's High Plains so high?

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Massive volcanic events in Earth's history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions. A new method to estimate how much and how rapidly carbon was released by the volcanoes could improve our understanding of the climate response, according to an international team.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. A 6.5-mile crack formed in 2012 over 5-and-a-half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter -- though the speed is limited by seawater rushing in. The results help inform large-scale ice sheet models and projections of future sea level rise.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers are revisiting old building practices -- the use of by-products and cast-offs -- as a way to improve building materials and sustainability of the trade. A technique known as rammed earth construction uses materials that are alternatives to cement and are often more readily available in the environment. One such alternative is wood fly ash, a by-product of pulp mills and coal-fired power plants.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event's magnitude. As a result, the research team found that the event 7,300 years ago was the largest volcanic eruption in the Holocene by far.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A cryptographic tag uses terahertz waves to authenticate items by recognizing the unique pattern of microscopic metal particles that are mixed into the glue that sticks the tag to the item's surface.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Our planet's lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to close in what is known as the Wilson cycle.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A new study offers a glimpse into the possible impact of climate change on coastal wetlands 50 years or longer into the future. Scientists are usually forced to rely on computer models to project the long-term effects of rising seas, but an unexpected set of circumstances enabled a real-world experiment along the Gulf Coast.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

This study reports widespread mineral carbonation of mantle rocks in an oceanic transform fueled by magmatic degassing of CO2. The findings describe a previously unknown part of the geological carbon cycle in transform faults that represent one of the three principal plate boundaries on Earth. The confluence of tectonically exhumed mantle rocks and CO2-rich alkaline basalt formed through limited extents of melting characteristic of the St. Paul's transform faults may be a pervasive feature at oceanic transform faults in general. Because transform faults have not been accounted for in previous estimates of global geological CO2 fluxes, the mass transfer of magmatic CO2 to the altered oceanic mantle and seawater may be larger than previously thought.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and dramatically at the end of the Last Ice Age, around eight thousand years ago. The evidence, contained within an ice core, shows that in one location the ice sheet thinned by 450 meters -- that's more than the height of the Empire State Building -- in just under 200 years.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Rocks once buried deep in ancient subduction zones -- where tectonic plates collide -- could help scientists make better predictions of how these zones behave during the years between major earthquakes, according to a research team.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Inspired during field work in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, geoscientists have proposed that all-time low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions triggered a 57-million-year-long global 'Sturtian' ice age.