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Categories: Chemistry: General, Environmental: Ecosystems

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     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

As the planet warms, animals that breed in the Arctic are at particular risk. But a new study offers some encouraging news: in an apparent reaction to pressures along their former migratory route, a population of Arctic geese has rapidly adjusted, forming a new migration route and breeding location almost 1,000 kilometers from their original stomping grounds.

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Deforestation is resulting in reduced rainfall across large parts of the tropics, according to new research. People living in tropical forest communities have often complained that the climate gets hotter and drier once trees are cleared but until now, scientists have not been able to identify a clear link between the loss of tree cover and a decline in rainfall.

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Quantum effects can play an important role in chemical reactions. Physicists have now observed a quantum mechanical tunneling reaction in experiments. The observation can also be described exactly in theory. The scientists provide an important reference for this fundamental effect in chemistry. It is the slowest reaction with charged particles ever observed.

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Helium -- essential for many medical and industrial processes -- is in critically short supply worldwide. Production is also associated with significant carbon emissions, contributing to climate change. This study provides a new concept in gas field formation to explain why, in rare places, helium accumulates naturally in high concentrations just beneath the Earth's surface. The findings could help locate new reservoirs of carbon-free helium -- and potentially also hydrogen.

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Researchers have developed a method that has now mapped several billion trees and their carbon uptake in Africa's Sahel. In the future, the method could be used to monitor whether climate credit purchases have a positive effect on the number of trees and whether nature restoration is working.

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Hurricanes are becoming more intense due to the climate crisis. Therefore, researchers have studied the wind speeds that different seabird species can withstand. The team was able to show that the individual species are well adapted to the average wind conditions in their breeding grounds, but use different strategies to avoid flying through the storm. Within their research, one behavior of the albatrosses particularly surprised the scientists.

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The honeycomb patterns which are often found in salt deserts in Death Valley, US, and Bolivia, among other places, look like something from another world. Researchers can now explain the origin of the mysterious patterns.

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The demand for vanillin vastly outstrips the natural resources of this flavoring agent. A chemical process is thus used to produce the required large quantities of vanillin from petroleum, which is far less expensive than obtaining the substance from fermented genuine vanilla pods. Another alternative is to make vanillin from lignin, a waste product of the wood pulping industry. A team has now managed to further enhance their method of electrochemical production of vanillin from lignin in that they employ a 'green' oxidation method for this purpose.

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Geoscientists have developed a cheap and environmentally friendly method for the synthesis of cerianite, a rare earth mineral which holds promise for the treatment of diseases associated with inflammation, including cancer.

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Certain diseases, including Alzheimer's, are currently considered 'undruggable' because traditional small molecule drugs can't interfere with the proteins responsible for the illnesses. But a new technique that specifically targets and breaks apart certain proteins -- rather than just interfering with them -- may offer a pathway toward treatment. Researchers have now designed a compound that targets and breaks down a post-translationally modified protein closely associated with Alzheimer's disease.

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A new study finds the Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf Coast of the United States are likely to see significant increases in nutrient loading in coming decades, putting those areas at heightened risk of experiencing harmful algal blooms.

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Ants play a key role in forest regeneration, according to a new article.

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The sustained loss of a once abundant species of sea urchin in the Caribbean could also result in the functional extinction of diverse coral species from the region's reefs, according to new research.

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Researchers have succeeded in producing very special catalysts, known as 'Lewis superacids', which can be used to break strong chemical bonds and speed up reactions. The production of these substances has, until now, proven extremely difficult. The chemists' discovery enables non-biodegradable fluorinated hydrocarbons, similar to Teflon, and possibly even climate-damaging greenhouse gases, such as sulphur hexafluoride, to be converted back into sustainable chemicals.

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Scientists reveal that a warming world is increasing human-wildlife conflicts globally. They show that climate shifts can drive conflicts by altering animal habitats, the timing of events, wildlife behaviors and resource availability. It also showed that people are changing their behaviors and locations in response to climate change in ways that increase conflicts.

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Chaotic behavior is typically known from large systems: for example, from weather, from asteroids in space that are simultaneously attracted by several large celestial bodies, or from swinging pendulums that are coupled together. On the atomic scale, however, one does normally not encounter chaos -- other effects predominate. Now scientists have been able to detect clear indications of chaos on the nanometer scale -- in chemical reactions on tiny rhodium crystals.

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A new form of heterostructure of layered two-dimensional (2D) materials may enable quantum computing to overcome key barriers to its widespread application, according to an international team of researchers.

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Glaciers -- giant blocks of moving ice -- along Antarctica's coastline are flowing faster in the summer because of a combination of melting snow and warmer ocean waters, say researchers. On average, the glaciers travel at around one kilometre a year. But a new study has found a seasonal variation to the speed of the ice flow, which speeded up by up to 22 % in summer when temperatures are warmer. This gives an insight into the way climate change could affect the behaviour of glaciers and the role they could play in raising sea levels.

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Perovskites, a family of materials with unique electric properties, show promise for use in a variety fields, including next-generation solar cells. A team of scientists has now created a new process to fabricate large perovskite devices that is more cost- and time-effective than previously possible and that they said may accelerate future materials discovery.

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A research team has developed one of the world's fastest single-shot laser cameras, which is at least a thousand times faster than today's most modern equipment for combustion diagnostics. The discovery has enormous significance for studying the lightning-fast combustion of hydrocarbons.