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Categories: Geoscience: Geochemistry, Space: Astrophysics

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Some bacteria are able to tap into unusual sources of nutrients in the surface water of the oceans. This enables them to increase their primary production and extract more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In doing so, however, they release the potent greenhouse gas methane.

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Twelve countries have the technical ability to sequester over 20% of their current total greenhouse gas emissions by converting crop residues to biochar. Bhutan leads the way with the potential to sequester 68% of its emissions in the form of biochar, followed by India, at 53%.

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Microfossils may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and oceans, according to an international team of scientists.

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AI analysis shows pollution levels, extreme weather events and increasing temperatures devastates biodiversity in freshwater lakes. 

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Almost every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center. An international research team has recently observed the Circinus galaxy, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, with high enough resolution to gain further insights into the gas flows to and from the black hole at its galactic nucleus.

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How can we ensure that an energy policy will achieve its objectives? To find out, scientists and public authorities can rely on computer models of varying degrees of accuracy. However, these models have a number of limitations, including the fact that they are not very effective for generating projections on a regional scale. A team has now designed a super-model to simulate the spread of three green technologies.

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Researchers conducted a study to determine if replacing dietary fats from palm oil, soy and other agricultural crops with fats created synthetically in chemical or biological processes could help reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gases. The researchers' analysis finds a reduction in carbon emissions and other benefits, such the opening of agricultural lands to reforestation which benefits biodiversity and creates a carbon sink.

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Scientists have pioneered a novel approach to water electrolysis catalysts for green hydrogen production.

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As the world warms and ice sheets melt, the ocean continually rises. The greater Boston area can expect to see between one and six feet of sea level rise by 2100, according to recent estimates. To find out what this rise might mean for freshwater supplies, a team of hydrogeologists developed an innovative new model that can not only predict saltwater intrusion over the next 75 years, but also pinpoint the main sources of salt contamination today -- road salt and human development.

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New observations down to light-year scale of the gas flows around a supermassive black hole have successfully detected dense gas inflows and shown that only a small portion (about 3 percent) of the gas flowing towards the black hole is eaten by the black hole. The remainder is ejected and recycled back into the host galaxy.

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An innovative plastic, stronger and stretchier than the current standard type and which can be healed with heat, remembers its shape and partially biodegradable, has been developed. They created it by adding the molecule polyrotaxane to an epoxy resin vitrimer, a type of plastic. Named VPR, the material can hold its form and has strong internal chemical bonds at low temperatures.

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Future missions will be able to find signatures of violating the parity-symmetry in the cosmic microwave background polarization more accurately after a pair of researchers has managed to take into account the gravitational lensing effect, reports a new study.

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Biodegradable waste from plant and animal sources released into freshwater ecosystems is a significant environmental concern. Nonetheless, current methods for assessing water quality seem more or less impractical due to their complexity and high costs. In a promising development, a team of researchers has successfully constructed a self-sustaining and buoyant biosensor using inexpensive carbon-based materials for monitoring water quality at the inlets of freshwater lakes and rivers.

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A new study provides the first characterization of the coral microbiome under hypoxia, insufficient oxygen in the water.

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When massive stars or other stellar objects explode in the Earth's cosmic neighborhood, ejected debris can also reach our solar system. Traces of such events are found on Earth or the Moon and can be detected using accelerator mass spectrometry, or AMS for short.

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A new study takes an important step toward reconstructing a global history of water over the past 2,000 years. Using geologic and biologic evidence preserved in natural archives -- including 759 different paleoclimate records from globally distributed corals, trees, ice, cave formations and sediments -- the researchers showed that the global water cycle has changed during periods of higher and lower temperatures in the recent past.

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Researchers estimated that before humans started pumping mercury into the atmosphere, it contained on average about 580 megagrams of mercury. However, in 2015, independent research that looked at all available atmospheric measurements estimated the atmospheric mercury reservoir was about 4,000 Mg -- nearly 7 times larger than the natural condition estimated in this study.  

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Formic acid, which can be produced electrochemically from carbon dioxide, is a promising energy carrier. A research team has now developed a fast-charging hybrid battery system that combines the electrochemical generation of formic acid as an energy carrier with a microbial fuel cell. This novel, fast-charging biohybrid battery system can be used to monitor the toxicity of drinking water, just one of many potential future applications.

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A new paper revealed that human activities are making Earth's air, soil and freshwater saltier, which could pose an 'existential threat' if current trends continue. Geologic and hydrologic processes bring salts to Earth's surface over time, but human activities such as mining and land development are rapidly accelerating this natural 'salt cycle.'

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Micron-size microplastic debris can be carried by the jet stream across oceans and continents, and their shape plays a crucial role in how far they travel.