Ozone depletion has had a direct effect on the geochemical cycle of iodine trapped in Antarctic ice. The ozone hole doesn’t just affect the health of human, terrestrial and marine ecosystems. It also affects environmental chemical processes at the South Pole. This has been demonstrated by an international research team coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR-Isp) and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. They studied for the first time, the effects of ozone depletion…

Purely biological: Researchers identify a new kind of pure carbon production by microorganisms. Life on the Earth is based on carbon. Through the course of evolution, living organisms have learned to form and process large numbers of different carbon compounds. Carbon is the cornerstone of most biologically produced organic compounds such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats and DNA. All of these compounds contain, in addition to carbon, many other elements, including hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. Elemental carbon is formed from organic…

Simple measurements of these obscure organisms can help predict future CO2 emissions for warming ecosystems, study finds. It’s hard to know what climate change will mean for Earth’s interconnected and interdependent webs of life. But one team of researchers at Duke University says we might begin to get a glimpse of the future from just a few ounces of microbial soup. Every drop of pond water and teaspoon of soil is teeming with tens of thousands of tiny unicellular creatures…

Remoteness does not enhance coral reef resilience, according to marine ecologists. There’s a widespread hypothesis that links the resilience of coral reefs with their remoteness from human activities — the farther away they are from people, the more likely corals are to bounce back from disturbances. “The idea is that these coral reefs might serve as arks, that they could harbor biodiversity and intact ecosystems,” said UC Santa Barbara marine ecologist Adrian Stier of these ancient and fragile colonial organisms, most of…

While analyzing some of the world’s oldest coloured gemstones, researchers from the University of Waterloo discovered carbon residue that was once ancient life, encased in a 2.5 billion-year-old ruby. The research team, led by Chris Yakymchuk, professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Waterloo, set out to study the geology of rubies to better understand the conditions necessary for ruby formation. During this research in Greenland, which contains the oldest known deposits of rubies in the world, the team found…

Jellyfish have voracious appetites, and they aren’t considered the most selective eaters. Almost anything that gets stuck to their tentacles winds up in the gelatinous sack that they use to digest their food. This “take what comes” feeding strategy has clouded our understanding of which foods jellyfish survive on and how they fit in food webs. However, new research from the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) used two biochemical tools, stable isotopes and fatty acids, to begin unlocking…

Bayreuth researchers investigate consequences of urbanisation and tourism. Tourism and urban settlement are directly linked to a massive decline in insect species on oceanic islands. Scientists from the University of Bayreuth recently discovered this through research on the Maldives. On urban islands, they documented on average 48 percent fewer insect species than on uninhabited islands, on tourist islands even 66 percent fewer insect species. The research team led by Prof. Dr. Christian Laforsch at the University of Bayreuth reports on…

Multidisciplinary team of materials physicists and geophysicists combine theoretical predictions, simulations, and seismic tomography to find spin transition in the Earth’s mantle. The interior of the Earth is a mystery, especially at greater depths (> 660 km). Researchers only have seismic tomographic images of this region and, to interpret them, they need to calculate seismic (acoustic) velocities in minerals at high pressures and temperatures. With those calculations, they can create 3D velocity maps and figure out the mineralogy and temperature…

… developed by international collaboration. Marine heatwaves, driven by climate change, are becoming more frequent and intense worldwide. Although we know that heatwaves kill marine organisms and have devastating effects on ecosystems, there is currently no way to predict these effects or help ecosystems adapt. An international team of marine scientists from Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada, led by Dr Bayden D RUSSELL (Associate Director of the Swire Institute of Marine Science and Associate Professor from the School of Biological…

Since the Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater on Mars in February, the rover and its team of scientists back on Earth have been hard at work exploring the floor of the crater that once held an ancient lake. Perseverance and the Mars 2020 mission are looking for signs of ancient life on Mars and preparing a returnable cache of samples for later analyses on Earth. Katie Stack Morgan is the Mars 2020 Deputy Project Scientist and a research scientist…

We regularly hear warnings that climate change may lead to ‘tipping points’: irreversible situations where savanna can quickly change into desert, or the warm gulf stream current can simply stop flowing. These cautions often refer to spatial patterns as early-warning signals of tipping points. An international team of ecologists and mathematicians has studied these patterns and come to a surprising conclusion. “Yes, we need to do everything we can to stop climate change”, the authors said in full agreement with…

A warming Arctic presents potential new threats to humans and marine wildlife in the fast-changing region. Changes in the northern Alaskan Arctic ocean environment have reached a point at which a previously rare phenomenon—widespread blooms of toxic algae—could become more commonplace, potentially threatening a wide range of marine wildlife and the people who rely on local marine resources for food. That is the conclusion of a new study about harmful algal blooms (HABs) of the toxic algae Alexandrium catenella being published in…

Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and Leipzig University are currently using a tethered balloon to study the air layers near the ground in the Arctic, which play a major role in climate change in this region. The measurements should help to better understand the particularly strong warming of the Arctic and to map it more precisely in climate models. After the balloon system already proved itself in the summer on the international MOSAiC expedition, it is…

Manufacture, wear, wash, incinerate: This typical life cycle of garments, which pollutes the environment, is to be changed in the future – towards principles of circular economy with recycling at its core. Using an outdoor jacket made from PET bottles and recycled materials, Empa researchers have investigated whether the product actually delivers what the idea promises. At first glance, it’s a normal rain jacket: three layers of polyester, a lining on the inside, a water vapor-permeable membrane on top and…

Studies of the asteroid Vesta provide new findings on the formation of Earth-like planets The largest asteroid in our Solar System – Vesta – was exposed to an extensive series of impacts by large rocky bodies much earlier than previously assumed. Researchers of an international collaboration, including earth scientists of Heidelberg University and Freie Universität Berlin, reached this conclusion based on analyses of Vesta meteorites, numerical simulations, and observations carried out with the space probe Dawn in 2011 and 2012….

Researchers have developed a clean and cost-effective way to upcycle used plastic, transforming it into valuable nanomaterials and high-quality fuel. Key points New tech produces carbon nanotubes and clean liquid fuel from used plastic Smart solution for upcycling plastic and agricultural waste simultaneously Circular economy approach to help turn two massive waste streams into genuine revenue Globally only about 20% of waste plastics are recycled. Boosting that figure remains a challenge as recycling plastic cleanly can be expensive and usually…