While humanity is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the citrus industry is trying to manage its own devastating disease, Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening disease. HLB is the most destructive citrus disease in the world. In the past decade, the disease has annihilated the Florida citrus industry, reducing orange production for juice and other products by 72%. Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) is the microbe associated with the disease. It resides in the phloem of the tree and, like many…

Most of the mangrove forests on the coasts of Oman disappeared about 6,000 years ago. Until now, the reason for this was not entirely clear. A current study of the University of Bonn now sheds light on this: It indicates that the collapse of coastal ecosystems was caused by climatic changes. In contrast, falling sea level or overuse by humans are not likely to be the reasons. The speed of the mangrove extinction was dramatic: Many of the stocks were…

In the future, the Antarctic could become a greener place and be colonised by new species. At the same time, some species will likely disappear. 25 researchers recently presented these and many other findings in a major international project, in which they analysed hundreds of articles on the Antarctic published in the past ten years. By doing so, the team have provided an exceptionally comprehensive assessment of the status quo and future of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean that surrounds…

New Columbia Engineering study–first to investigate the long-term effect of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in drylands–finds that soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on surface water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline. Scientists have thought that global warming will increase the availability of surface water–freshwater resources generated by precipitation minus evapotranspiration–in wet regions, and decrease water availability in dry regions. This expectation is based primarily on atmospheric thermodynamic processes. As air temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the…

Writing in PNAS, scientists from Cologne university present important new constraints showing that plate tectonics started relatively slow, although the early Earth’s interior was much hotter than today. In an international collaboration earth scientists at the University of Cologne discovered that during Earth’s early history mantle convection on, i.e. the internal mixing of our planet, was surprisingly slow and spatially restricted. This finding is unexpected because our planet was much hotter during the first hundreds of million years after its…

Research conducted in the Light-Matter Interactions for Quantum Technologies Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) has revealed the presence of small microplastics in the ocean surrounding Okinawa. The study was published in Science of the Total Environment. “There’s been a considerable amount of research on larger plastic pieces in the ocean,” said Christina Ripken, PhD student in the Unit and lead author of the paper. “But the smaller pieces, those that are less than…

New study published in Geology It took fifteen years of imaging and nearly three years of stitching the pieces together to create the largest image ever made, the 8-trillion-pixel mosaic of Mars’ surface. Now, the first study to utilize the image in its entirety provides unprecedented insight into the ancient river systems that once covered the expansive plains in the planet’s southern hemisphere. These three billion-year-old sedimentary rocks, like those in Earth’s geologic record, could prove valuable targets for future…

Researchers investigate teeth of a small carnivorous mammal that are almost 150 million years old. Paleontologists at the University of Bonn (Germany) have succeeded in reconstructing the chewing motion of an early mammal that lived almost 150 million years ago. This showed that its teeth worked extremely precisely and surprisingly efficiently. Yet it is possible that this very aspect turned out to be a disadvantage in the course of evolution. The study is published in the journal “Scientific Reports“. At…

Seismometers listen to the resonance vibration of the Hochvogel, Allgäu The entire summit of the 2592 metres high Hochvogel is sliced by a five metres wide and thirty metres long fracture. It continues to open up by up to half a centimetre per month. Throughout the years, the southern side of the mountain has already subsided by several meters; and at some point it will fail, releasing up to 260,000 cubic meters of limestone debris down into the Hornbach Valley…

The world is getting warmer and warmer – and many organisms native to lower latitudes or elevations are moving higher. However, novel organisms moving into a new habitat could disturb the ecological balance which has been established over a long period. Plants and herbivores are characterised by long-term co-evolution, shaping both their geographic distribution and the characteristics that they display in their occupied sites. At higher elevations, this is seen in insect herbivores being generally less abundant and plants in…

WSU researchers have developed a sustainable wastewater treatment system that relies on electron-producing microbial communities to clean the water. The work could someday lead to reduced reliance on the energy-intensive processes that are used to move and treat wastewater, which accounts for as much as two percent of the total electrical energy consumption in the United States. Led by Abdelrhman Mohamed, postdoctoral research associate, and Haluk Beyenal, Paul Hohenschuh Distinguished Professor in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical…

Novel approach for the exploration of Rare Earth Elements Rare Earth Elements (REE) are essential resources to ensure the energy transition, e-mobility and future technologies. The use of lightweight unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) provides a unique opportunity to conduct rapid and non-invasive exploration for REE even in ecologically sensitive areas and in relatively inaccessible locations. For the first time scientists from the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have directly identified and mapped REEs…

Compounds discovered on the shores of the Dead Sea. Phosphorus is an element essential for life. It is fundamental to all living organisms, and is a key component of RNA, DNA, and cell membranes. Phosphorus compounds must have been involved in the emergence of primordial life. Importantly though, these compounds were water soluble and reactive so that they could participate in various chemical processes. Only in this case could phosphorus be involved in phosphorylation, which enables the synthesis of complex…

IOW develops new method and successfully applies it to Baltic Sea samples. Glyphosate is one of the world’s most widely used weed killers. The disputed herbicide, which is suspected to be carcinogenic among other things, gets transported from the on-land application areas into rivers, which wash it into the sea. So far it was unclear, however, how much can be found in marine environments, because glyphosate and its metabolite aminomethylphosphonic acid could not be measured in saltwater due to methodological…

Overwintering team sails with Polarstern to the Antarctic Neumayer Station III This year, the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Neumayer Station III has been exclusively supplied by sea. The research vessel Polarstern has transported – as usual – materials and fuel to the Antarctic. However, due to the coronavirus, this season all the staff who will work at the station will also travel to the Southern Continent by ship. Instead of flying from South Africa, this year’s Antarctic expedition participants will set…

Researchers significantly increase fuel efficiency in the real world of road transport. Four research institutes have investigated on behalf of the Research Association for Internal Combustion Engines (FVV) how close we can come to the ultimate system efficiency of combustion engines in hybrid powertrains. Their conclusion: if available prime mover SI engine technologies are optimally matched to each other, more than 40 percent of the energy bound in the fuel can be used in real road transport. Synthetic fuels (e-fuels)…