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Categories: Chemistry: Thermodynamics, Offbeat: Earth and Climate

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Most climate models do not yet account for a recent discovery: methane traps a great deal of heat in Earth's atmosphere, but also creates cooling clouds that offset 30% of the heat.

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Researchers have discovered how a South African daisy makes fake lady flies on its petals to trick male flies into pollinating it.

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The impact of multi-story building design considerations on embodied carbon emissions, cost, and operational energy has been revealed.

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Researchers have demonstrated a caterpillar-like soft robot that can move forward, backward and dip under narrow spaces. The caterpillar-bot's movement is driven by a novel pattern of silver nanowires that use heat to control the way the robot bends, allowing users to steer the robot in either direction.

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Beetles are champions at surviving in extremely dry environments. In part, this property is due to their ability to suck water from the air with their rear ends. A new study explains just how. Beyond helping to explain how beetles thrive in environments where few other animals can survive, the knowledge could eventually be used for more targeted and delicate control of global pests such as the grain weevil and red flour beetle.

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Molecular engineers have triggered a domino-like structural transition in an organic semiconductor. The energy- and time-saving phenomenon may enhance the performance of smartwatches, solar cells, and other organic electronics.

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Researchers have built and tested a bushfire safe room that exceeds current Australian standards and could keep people alive or protect valuables when evacuation is no longer an option.

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An increasing number of U.S. interstates are set to try out an invention that could save millions of taxpayer dollars and significantly reduce traffic delays. The invention, a sensor that allows concrete to 'talk,' decreases construction time and how often concrete pavement needs repairs while also improving the road’s sustainability and cutting its carbon footprint. Embedded directly into a concrete pour, the sensor sends engineers more precise and consistent data about the concrete’s strength and need for repair than is possible with currently used tools and methods.

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Compass readings that do not show the direction of true north and interference with the operations of satellites are a few of the problems caused by peculiarities of the Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field radiates around the world and far into space, but it is set by processes that happen deep within the Earth's core, where temperatures exceed 5,000-degrees C. New research from geophysicists suggests that the way this super-hot core is cooled is key to understanding the causes of the peculiarities -- or anomalies, as scientists call them -- of the Earth's magnetic field.

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A new study has found evidence of cheesemaking, using milk from multiple animals in Late Neolithic Poland.

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Thanks to technological advances in microbial DNA analysis, researchers have discovered that mountaineers' boots aren't the only things leaving footprints on the world's tallest mountain. When someone sneezes on Everest, their germs can last for centuries.

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Researchers have engineered a material with the potential to dramatically cut the amount of heat power plants release into the atmosphere.

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Metal organic frameworks, or MOFs, are kind of like plastic building block toys. The pieces are simple to connect, yet they're capable of building highly sophisticated structures.

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Researchers have observed a highly unusual behavior in the endangered freshwater mussel, Unio crassus. The jets disturb the river surface and attract fish. Mussel larvae in the jets can then attach to the gills of the fish and complete their metamorphosis into adults.

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Island-dwelling mammal species often expand or contract in size, becoming giant or dwarf versions of their mainland counterparts. A new Science study from a global team shows that those giants and dwarfs have faced extreme risk of extinction -- an existential threat exacerbated by the arrival of humans.

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A research team has introduced core technology for smart contact lenses that can implement AR-based navigation through a 3D printing process.

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In the first step toward understanding how dogs -- and perhaps humans -- might adapt to intense environmental pressures such as exposure to radiation, heavy metals, or toxic chemicals, researchers found that two groups of dogs living within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone showed significant genetic differences between them. The results indicate that these are two distinct populations that rarely interbreed. While earlier studies focused on the effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster on various species of wildlife, this is the first investigation into the genetic structure of stray dogs living near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

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Doublet Pool's regular thumping is more than just an interesting tourist attraction. A new study shows that the interval between episodes of thumping reflects the amount of energy heating the pool at the bottom, as well as in indication of how much heat is being lost through the surface. Doublet Pool, the authors found, is Yellowstone's thumping thermometer.

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Researchers have developed a new 'camera' that sees the local disorder in materials. Its key feature is a variable shutter speed: because the disordered atomic clusters are moving, when the team used a slow shutter, the dynamic disorder blurred out, but when they used a fast shutter, they could see it. The method uses neutrons to measure atomic positions with a shutter speed of around one picosecond, a trillion times faster than normal camera shutters.

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Researchers have mapped the sparse life hidden away in salt domes, rocks and crystals at Salar de Pajonales at the boundary of the Chilean Atacama Desert and Altiplano. Then they trained a machine learning model to recognize the patterns and rules associated with their distributions so it could learn to predict and find those same distributions in data on which it was not trained. In this case, by combining statistical ecology with AI/ML, the scientists could locate and detect biosignatures up to 87.5 percent of the time and decrease the area needed for search by up to 97 percent.