http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases. http://www.physorg.com/news180530639.html Space & Earth Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:00:06 EST news180530639 The analysis of microfossils found in ocean sediment cores is illuminating the environmental conditions that prevailed at high latitudes during a critical period of Earth history. http://www.physorg.com/news180096839.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:30:01 EST news180096839 Environmental scientists at the University of Pennsylvania and Durham University have employed a novel combination of geological and model reconstructions of wetland environments during a 10,000-year period to address spatial variations in sea-level history and provide quantitative estimates of subsidence along the east coast of England. http://www.physorg.com/news179664698.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:52:28 EST news179664698 In the long term, the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than has previously been estimated, reports a new study published in Nature Geoscience this week. http://www.physorg.com/news179328817.html Space & Earth Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:34:02 EST news179328817 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of environmental scientists led by the University of Pennsylvania has shown that sea-level rise along the Atlantic Coast of the United States was 2 millimeters faster in the 20th century than at any time in the past 4,000 years. http://www.physorg.com/news179082341.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:06:19 EST news179082341 Climatic fluctuations close to the equator show a different pattern to climate change in the Arctic and Antarctic. In the tropics distinct 11500 year fluctuations between wet and dry periods can be clearly identified which do not occur in temperature reconstructions of polar ice cores. http://www.physorg.com/news178990349.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:50:03 EST news178990349 A series of newly discovered pits in the bottom of the Hudson Canyon, 100 miles southeast of New York Harbor, may be a key ingredient for the abundant and diverse marine ecosystem in and around the canyon, according to research by scientists from Rutgers University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.physorg.com/news178903141.html Space & Earth Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:20:30 EST news178903141 Scientists from the Marine Biogeochemistry and Geology and Geophysics sections of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) organized and led a team of university and government scientists on an Arctic expedition to initiate methane hydrate exploration in the Beaufort Sea and determine the spatial variation of sediment contribution to Arctic climate change. http://www.physorg.com/news177948181.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:08:11 EST news177948181 (PhysOrg.com) -- A recently published Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study of a naturally bioreduced sediment sample from a former uranium mill tailings site reveals insights that enhance understanding of the long-term persistence of uranium in groundwater. The study provides the first-ever evidence of a useful pyrite mineral formation within the sample. http://www.physorg.com/news177778022.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:49:17 EST news177778022 Researchers in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering believe they have pinpointed a pathway by which arsenic may be contaminating the drinking water in Bangladesh, a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists, world health agencies and the Bangladeshi government for nearly 30 years. The research suggests that human alteration to the landscape, the construction of villages with ponds, and the adoption of irrigated agriculture are responsible for the current pattern of arsenic concentration underground. http://www.physorg.com/news177515521.html Space & Earth Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:52:45 EST news177515521 (PhysOrg.com) -- The kelp forests off southern California are considered to be some of the most diverse and productive ecosystems on the planet, yet a new study indicates that today's kelp beds are less extensive and lush than those in the recent past. http://www.physorg.com/news177095541.html Biology Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:40:02 EST news177095541 The seriousness of current global warming is underlined by a reconstruction of climate at Maxwell Bay in the South Shetland Islands of the Antarctic Peninsula over approximately the last 14,000 years, which appears to show that the current warming and widespread loss of glacial ice are unprecedented. http://www.physorg.com/news176727651.html Space & Earth Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:30:07 EST news176727651 A Kansas State University geologist and graduate student are finding that the most important tools in their fieldwork on groundwater arsenic pollution are women and children armed with pamphlets and testing kits. http://www.physorg.com/news175430543.html Space & Earth Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:30:04 EST news175430543 Those pristine-looking Alpine glaciers now melting as global warming sets in may explain the mysterious increase in persistent organic pollutants in sediment from certain lakes since the 1990s, despite decreased use of those compounds in pesticides, electric equipment, paints and other products. That's the conclusion of a new study, scheduled for the Nov. 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology. http://www.physorg.com/news175337686.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:55:42 EST news175337686 (PhysOrg.com) -- Diverting sediment-rich water from the Mississippi River below New Orleans could generate new land in the river's delta in the next century. http://www.physorg.com/news175276001.html Space & Earth Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:10:01 EST news175276001 An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. http://www.physorg.com/news175188684.html Space & Earth Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:20:02 EST news175188684 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have identified an unexpected metabolic ability in a symbiotic community of deep-sea microorganisms. It may help solve a lingering mystery about the world's nitrogen cycle. http://www.physorg.com/news174842972.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:30:19 EST news174842972 (PhysOrg.com) -- CSIRO scientists have produced the first preliminary predictions of the potential impact of climate change on the Australian seabed. http://www.physorg.com/news174826577.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:56:48 EST news174826577 French researchers on Tuesday said they had uncovered the biggest dinosaur footprints in the world, left by giant sauropods that may have weighed 40 tonnes or more. http://www.physorg.com/news174052014.html Other Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:20:04 EST news174052014 (PhysOrg.com) -- Sinuous, meandering streams produce diverse and wildlife-rich habitats and are the aim of many river restoration efforts, but until now, the bank, water flow and sediment conditions required to form and maintain meanders have been largely a matter of speculation. http://www.physorg.com/news173984989.html Space & Earth Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:40:01 EST news173984989 (PhysOrg.com) -- More of the fertilizers and pesticides used to grow corn would find their way into nearby water sources if ethanol demands lead to planting more acres in corn, according to a Purdue University study. http://www.physorg.com/news173370301.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:40:07 EST news173370301 A team of scientists led by U of C grad Casey Hubert has detected high numbers of heat loving, or thermophilic, bacteria in subzero sediments in the Arctic Ocean off the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The bacterial spores might provide a unique opportunity to trace seepages of fluids from hot sub-seafloor habitats, possibly pointing towards undiscovered offshore petroleum reservoirs. http://www.physorg.com/news172415681.html Biology Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:00:01 EST news172415681 (AP) -- A federal report says the government is moving so slowly to clean up the most polluted sites in the Great Lakes that it will take 77 more years to finish the job at the current pace. http://www.physorg.com/news172257507.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:40:02 EST news172257507 (AP) -- Joint U.S.-Canada exploration of the Arctic sea floor discovered an unusual underwater mountain and evidence that could boost the two countries' claims that their boundaries extend farther north. For the past two months ships from the countries have ventured north in icy areas of the Arctic where almost no surface ships have been, in an effort to find out how far the continental shelf extends. http://www.physorg.com/news171824277.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:10:02 EST news171824277 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. Once released, that methane gas would speed up global warming by trapping the Earth's heat radiation about 20 times more efficiently than does the better-known greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. http://www.physorg.com/news171116588.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:00:01 EST news171116588 A new 2,000-year-long reconstruction of sea surface temperatures (SST) from the Indo-Pacific warm pool (IPWP) suggests that temperatures in the region may have been as warm during the Medieval Warm Period as they are today. http://www.physorg.com/news170598165.html Space & Earth Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:23:44 EST news170598165 (PhysOrg.com) -- Exposure to dust and river sediment containing toxic metals and radioactivity from a coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority`s Kingston power plant last December could pose risks to local communities and aquatic ecosystems, according to a new study led by Duke University scientists. http://www.physorg.com/news169830622.html Space & Earth Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:10:01 EST news169830622 (PhysOrg.com) -- People often talk about greenhouse gases and their effect on the earth's climate as if those effects were new. But greenhouse gases have been around for hundreds of millennia, playing a key role in the start of the ice ages in the Northern Hemisphere 2.72 million years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news168703415.html Space & Earth Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:50:05 EST news168703415 Researchers at the University of Liverpool have discovered that the Amazon river, and its transcontinental drainage, is around 11 million years old and took its present shape about 2.4 million years ago. http://www.physorg.com/news168084999.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:20:34 EST news168084999 The new research study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego suggests that by improving overall ocean health, corals are better able to recover from bleaching events, which occur when rising sea temperatures force corals to expel their symbiotic algae, known as zooxanthellae. Coral bleaching is a phenomenon that is expected to increase in frequency as global climate change increases ocean temperatures worldwide. http://www.physorg.com/news167458823.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:21:30 EST news167458823