Once again the time has come to gather around and take a well deserved hiatus from all the politics of the day. Science talk is here. New discoveries, new takes on old knowledge, and other bits of news are all available for the perusing in today's information world. Over the fold are selections from the past week from a few of the many excellent science news sites around the world. Today's tidbits include rising seas will affect major coastal cities by 2100, a new way to estimate global rainfall and track ocean pollution, tick population plummets in the absence of lizard hosts, new material provides greater thermoelectric conversion efficiency, extinction predictor to help protect coral reefs, thawing permafrost will likely accelerate climate change in the future, promiscuity pays in the frog world, and oldest fossils tell story of oxygen in an ancient ocean. Gather yourselves. Pull up that comfy chair and sit by the fire. There is plenty of room for everyone. Get ready for one more session of Dr. Possum's science education and entertainment.
Featured Stories
As climate change continues and ocean levels rise the threat to major coastal cities increases with time.
"With the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the projections are that the global average temperature will be 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present by 2100," said (researcher) Weiss.
"That amount of warming will likely lock us into at least 4 to 6 meters of sea-level rise in subsequent centuries, because parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will slowly melt away like a block of ice on the sidewalk in the summertime."
At 3 meters (almost 10 feet), on average more than 20 percent of land in those cities could be affected. Nine large cities, including Boston and New York, would have more than 10 percent of their current land area threatened. By 6 meters (about 20 feet), about one-third of the land area in U.S. coastal cities could be affected.
As the climate continues to change better and more accurate methods of measuring the changes in global rainfall and pollution are important.
By measuring Beryllium-7 (7Be) isotope concentrations in the ocean, which isfound naturally throughout Earth’s atmosphere, Rosenstiel School scientists David Kadko and Joseph Prospero were able to provide a method to accurately estimate rainfall in remote regions of the ocean. The two-year study measured 7Be deposited in rain collectors at two sites in Bermuda and compared these estimates to those observed in the nearby Sargasso Sea.
“Over vast areas of the oceans the only rainfall data available are those made by using conventional rain collectors placed on islands,” said Prospero, professor of marine and atmospheric chemistry at the UM Rosenstiel School. “However, rainfall on the island is not necessarily representative of that which falls in the surrounding ocean. Our paper shows that properly placed rain collectors on Bermuda do yield rainfall rates that agree with those determined through the 7Be measurements.”
The Western fence lizard has a reputation for helping reduce the incidence of Lyme's disease in humans.
In 1998, a pioneering study led by UC Berkeley entomologist Robert Lane found that a protein in the Western fence lizard’s blood killed Borrelia bacteria, and as a result, Lyme-infected ticks that feed on the lizard’s blood are cleansed of the disease-causing pathogen. Moreover, research has found that up to 90 percent of the juvenile ticks in this species feed on the Western fence lizard, which is prevalent throughout California and neighboring states.
Researchers theorized removal of the lizards would increase the number of Lyme's carrying ticks. In fact 95% of the ticks failed to find another host so the incidence of infected ticks went down. Once again the law of unexpected consequences came into play.
Thermoelectric conversion (the changing of heat energy to electric energy) is a process discovered in 1821. A new material offers a 25% increase in the efficiency of the conversion process.
Despite its use by NASA, the low efficiency of thermoelectric conversion still kept it from being harnessed for more down-to-earth applications – even as research around the world continued in earnest. “Occasionally, you would hear about a large increase in efficiency,” Levin explained. But the claims did not hold up to closer scrutiny.
All that changed in 2010, when the Ames Laboratory researchers found that adding just one percent of the rare-earth elements cerium or ytterbium to a TAGS material was sufficient to boost its performance.
Climate change has widespread effects including major stress to coral reefs.
A new predictive method developed by an international team of marine scientists has found that a third of reef fishes studied across the Indian Ocean are potentially vulnerable to increasing stresses on the reefs due to climate change.
The method also gives coral reef managers vital insights to better protect and manage the world’s coral reefs, by showing that local and regional commitment to conservation and sustainable fisheries management improves prospects for coral recovery and persistence between storms and bleaching events.
The team applied their ‘extinction risk index’ to determine both local and global vulnerability to climate change and human impacts. They tested the method by comparing fish populations before and after the major 1998 El Nino climate event which caused massive coral death and disruption across the Indian Ocean.
In all, 56 of the 134 coral fish species studied were found to be at risk from loss of their habitat, shelter and food sources caused by climate change. Those most in jeopardy were the smaller fishes with specialised eating and sheltering habits. Because most of these species have wide geographic ranges and often quite large local populations, few were at particular risk of global extinction.
As the climate continues to warm surfaces like the permafrost of northern regions begins to melt releasing trapped carbon into the atmosphere.
(Researcher) Schaefer and his team ran multiple Arctic simulations assuming different rates of temperature increases to forecast how much carbon may be released globally from permafrost in the next two centuries. They estimate a release of roughly 190 billion tons of carbon, most of it in the next 100 years. The team used Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios and land-surface models for the study.
"The amount we expect to be released by permafrost is equivalent to half of the amount of carbon released since the dawn of the Industrial Age," said Schaefer. The amount of carbon predicted for release between now and 2200 is about one-fifth of the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere today, according to the study.
For most species the risks of promiscuous mating are too high to make the process valuable. But some species which fertilize externally may gain some genetic benefit from promiscuity.
(Researchers) compared growth (using age and size at metamorphosis as proxies) and survival of offspring produced by females that naturally mated with either one male (monandrous females) or 10–12 males (polyandrous females). Polyandry did not influence size or age at metamorphosis, but offspring from polyandrous matings had significantly higher mean survival.
About 600 million years ago a group of animals and seaweeds lived in a south China ocean. Their death left behind a number of well preserved fossils
The fossils suggest that morphological diversification of macroscopic eukaryotes – the earliest versions of organisms with complex cell structures -- may have occurred only tens of millions of years after the snowball earth event that ended 635 million years ago, just before the Ediacaran Period. And their presence in the highly organic-rich black shale suggests that, despite the overall oxygen-free conditions, brief oxygenation of the oceans did come and go.
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Other Worthy Stories of the Week
NASA's Stardust spacecraft completes comet flyby
Earliest humans not so different from us
More deep sea vents discovered
Don't blame the pill for estrogens in drinking water
Invasive plants can create positive ecological change
Isolating the stellar discs of Andromeda
Two new plants discovered in Spain
X-rays show why van Gogh paintings lose their shine
Gum trees fire up history revision
Ice age drinking mug made from skull
Scientists build world's first anti-laser
Algae clean wastewater then convert to biofuel
World's largest lake sheds light on climate change
Waiter, there's metal in my moon water
Catching space weather in the act
Environmental lithium uptake promotes longevity
New invention can turn your plastic bags into fuel at home
Robot hummingbird passes flight tests With video.
Mutant fish safely store toxins in fat
Ten stunning science visualizations Picture gallery
Super-sharp radio "eye" remeasuring the universe
The world's oldest water?
Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead
For even more science news:
General Science Collectors:
Alpha-Galileo
BBC News Science and Environment
Eureka Science News
LiveScience
New Scientist
PhysOrg.com
SciDev.net
Science/AAAS
Science Alert
Science Centric
Science Daily
Scientific American
Space Daily
Blogs:
A Few Things Ill Considered Techie and Science News
Cantauri Dreams space exploration
Coctail Party Physics Physics with a twist.
Deep Sea News marine biology
Laelaps more vertebrate paleontology
List of Geoscience Blogs
ScienceBlogs
Space Review
Techonology Review
Tetrapod Zoologyvertebrate paleontology
Science Insider
Scientific Blogging.
Space.com
Wired News
Science RSS Feed: Medworm
The Skeptics Guide to the Universe--a combination of hard science and debunking crap
Daily Kos regular series:
This Week in Science by DarkSyde
Overnight News Digest:Science Saturday by Neon Vincent. OND tech Thursday by rfall.
Pique the Geek by Translator Sunday evenings about 9 Eastern time
All diaries with the DK GreenRoots Tag.
All diaries with the eKos Tag
A More Ancient World by matching mole