…to reveal the expanding footprint of human activity at sea. Study reveals 75 percent of the world’s industrial fishing vessels are hidden from public view. A new study published today in the journal Nature offers an unprecedented view of previously unmapped industrial use of the ocean and how it is changing. The groundbreaking study, led by Global Fishing Watch, uses machine learning and satellite imagery to create the first global map of large vessel traffic and offshore infrastructure, finding a…

Barley seedlings grow on average 50% more when their root system is stimulated electrically through a new cultivation substrate. In a study published in the journal PNAS, researchers from Linköping University have developed an electrically conductive “soil” for soilless cultivation, known as hydroponics.  “The world population is increasing, and we also have climate change. So it’s clear that we won’t be able to cover the food demands of the planet with only the already existing agricultural methods. But with hydroponics…

Using mechanical rather than statistical analysis, the team offers a new framework for understanding the climate system. An international team of scientists has found the first direct evidence linking seemingly random weather systems in the ocean with climate on a global scale. Led by Hussein Aluie, an associate professor in the University of Rochester’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and staff scientist at the University’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the team reported their findings in Science Advances. The ocean has weather…

EU research project MOSMIN to monitor and secure mining-related deposits. Mining remains essential to meet the growing demand for raw materials. But there are potential environmental risks associated with mining, such as the instability of tailings dams or the contamination of soil and water. In order to prevent these risks and optimize the efficiency of resource extraction, twelve international partners within the framework of the European research project MOSMIN have set themselves the task of using Copernicus satellite and ground-based…

In a study that could enhance weather forecasting, Utah researchers discover that how snowflakes move is astonishingly predictable. Tim Garrett has devoted his scientific career to characterizing snowflakes, the protean particles of ice that form in clouds and dramatically change as they fall to Earth. Now the University of Utah atmospheric scientist is unlocking the mystery of how snowflakes move in response to air turbulence that accompanies snowfall using novel instrumentation developed on campus. And after analyzing more than half…

An international team of researchers including the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has produced the first global estimate of mercury emissions from hydrothermal sources at mid-ocean ridges based on measurements. The researchers were able to show that most of the mercury in the ocean comes from human activities – and can therefore be reduced. Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Ten years ago, the United Nations agreed to minimise mercury pollution in the environment…

‘CountShoots’ unveils advanced UAV and AI techniques for precise slash pine shoot counting. In southern China, the genetically improved slash pine (Pinus elliottii) plays a crucial role in timber and resin production, with new shoot density being a key growth trait. Current manual counting methods are inefficient and inaccurate. Emerging technologies such as UAV-based RGB imaging and deep learning (DL) offer promising solutions. However, DL methods face challenges in global feature capture, necessitating additional mechanisms. Innovations like the Vision Transformer and its derivatives (e.g., TransCrowd,…

The word “drought” typically conjures images of parched soil, dust-swept prairies, depleted reservoirs, and dry creek beds, all the result of weeks or seasons of persistently dry atmospheric conditions. In the sun-soaked islands in the Caribbean, however, drought conditions can occur much more rapidly, with warning signs appearing too late for mediation strategies to limit agriculture losses or prevent stresses on infrastructure systems that provide clean water to communities. Such occurrences – known as flash droughts – are the focus…

The Arctic is remote, with often harsh conditions, and its climate is changing rapidly — warming four times faster than the rest of the Earth. This makes studying the Arctic climate both challenging and vital for understanding global climate change. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories are using an existing fiber optic cable off Oliktok Point on the North Slope of Alaska to study the conditions of the Arctic seafloor up to 20 miles from shore. Christian Stanciu, project lead, will…

Researchers at the ITA, the University of Bonn and Heimbach GmbH have developed a new method for removing oil spills from water surfaces in an energy-saving, cost-effective way and without the use of toxic substances. The method is made possible by a technical textile that is integrated into a floating container. A single small device can remove up to 4 liters of diesel within an hour. This corresponds to about 100 m2 of oil film on a water surface. Despite…

Until now, reliably tracing logs to their origin has been difficult to achieve. Researchers at Fraunhofer IPM and their partners have now shown that logs and trunk sections can be identified based on the structure of the cut surfaces. The recent research project developed a marker-free and tamper-proof method. The optical method allows up to 100 percent recognition – even under the rough environment conditions of the timber industry. Hochaufgelöst aufgenommen wird die spezifische Mikrostruktur von Sägeflächen erkennbar. Die Kamera-Aufnahmen…

Prof. Dr. Caroline Gutjahr, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, has been awarded one of the highly prestigious Consolidator Grants from the European Research Council (ERC). In her project “SymbioticExchange”, she will investigate how the close coexistence of plants and friendly fungi in the soil works and how the exchange of nutrients between the symbiotic partners is regulated. Her findings could contribute to a new form of agriculture that considers fungi and plants in…

The ‘burrowing effect’ of foraminifera on marine environments. Impact of single-cell organisms on sediment oxygen levels and bacterial diversity measured for the first time. Dr. Dewi Langlet, a scientist at the Evolution, Cell Biology and Symbiosis Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), studies foraminifera, single-cell organisms with shells made of calcium carbonate. He and his collaborators have shown for the first time that the burrowing of single-celled organisms in marine ecosystems affects oxygen distribution and bacterial diversity in…

Unveiling CO2 absorption dynamics. Magnesium oxide is a promising material for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and injecting it deep underground to limit the effects of climate change. But making the method economical will require discovering the speed at which carbon dioxide is absorbed and how environmental conditions affect the chemical reactions involved. Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory analyzed a set of magnesium oxide crystal samples exposed to the atmosphere for decades, and another for…

New research has shown that methane trapped under the ocean is vulnerable to climate change and could be released into the ocean. An international team of researchers involving experts from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel found that methane, a potent greenhouse gas, released as methane hydrates break down, moves from the deepest parts of the continental slope to the edge of the underwater shelf, and even further inland beyond where methane hydrates are typically found. This means that…

New data analyses allow better evaluation of climate models. Scientists use climate models to simulate past climate, in order to determine how and why it has changed. As a result of man-made climate change it is not possible to apply models directly to the future, because the boundary conditions have changed. “We thus have to simulate the past in order to test the models. Simulations of climate from the Last Glacial Maximum, the LGM, are therefore important in the evaluation…