NewScITech

Scientists have confirmed the existence of protein in soft tissue recovered from the fossil bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old mastodon. Read the rest of this entry »

Did life arrive from space? Rather than developing here, could the first life forms have been catapulted to Earth on a chunk of rock from outer space? Investigations show that microbes are capable of surviving just such a journey. Read the rest of this entry »

Oceanographers have completed an important step in constructing the first deep-sea observatory off the continental United States. Workers in the multi-institution effort laid 32 miles (52 kilometers) of cable along the Monterey Bay sea floor that will provide electrical power to scientific instruments, video cameras, and robots 3,000 feet (900 meters) below the ocean surface. The link will also carry data from the instruments back to shore, for use by scientists and engineers from around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most profound predicted impacts of climate change was discussed in a landmark conference at Oriel College by scientists, conservationists and policymakers from Europe and North and South America. They discussed some key research showing that although intact forests are fairly resistant to climate change, with partial deforestation the entire landscape could become drier and a domino effect could occur producing a ‘tipping point’ affecting the whole forest. Scientists were unwilling to quantify the risk of this happening, but talked about ‘corridors of probability’ with models predicting the risk at between 10 to 40 per cent over the next few decades. Read the rest of this entry »

The theory that Earth once underwent a prolonged time of extreme global freezing has been dealt a blow by new evidence that periods of warmth occurred during this so-called ‘Snowball Earth’ era. Read the rest of this entry »

An international team of American and Chinese paleontologists has discovered a new species of mammal that lived 125 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, in what is now the Hebei Province in China. Read the rest of this entry »

Whip spiders, considered by many to be creepy-crawly, are giving new meaning to the term touchy-feely. In two species of whip spiders, or amblypygids, mothers caress their young with long feelers and siblings stick together in social groups until they reach sexual maturity. This is surprising behavior for these arachnids, long-thought to be purely aggressive and anti-social, according to a Cornell researcher. Read the rest of this entry »

A new understanding of how plants manage their internal calcium levels could lead to modifying plants to avoid damage from acid rain. The pollutant disrupts calcium balance in plants by leaching significant amounts of the mineral from leaves as well as the agricultural and forest soils the plants live in. Read the rest of this entry »

As climate change scientists develop ever more sophisticated climate models to project an expected path of temperature change, it is becoming increasingly important to include the effects of aerosols on clouds, according to Joyce E. Penner, a leading atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan. Read the rest of this entry »

While humans can survive large temperature fluctuations, such species as corals are only comfortable within a 12-degree temperature range. And rising global temperatures appear to be threatening their survival, according to Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. Read the rest of this entry »

The largest climate change in central North America since the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a temperature drop of nearly 15 degrees Fahrenheit, is documented within the fossilized teeth of horses and other plant-eating mammals, a new study reveals. Read the rest of this entry »

A new analysis led by an MIT scientist describes a mechanism for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant and injecting the gas into the ground, where it would be trapped naturally as tiny bubbles and safely stored in briny porous rock. Read the rest of this entry »

The plant with the world’s largest flower - typically a full meter across, with a bud the size of a basketball - evolved from a family of plants whose blossoms are nearly all tiny, botanists write this week in the journal Science. Their genetic analysis of rafflesia reveals that it is closely related to a family that includes poinsettias, castor oil plants, the tropical root crop cassava, and the trees that produce natural rubber. Read the rest of this entry »

While government leaders argue about the practicality of reducing world emissions of carbon dioxide, scientists and engineers are seeking ways to make it happen. Read the rest of this entry »

Brown University engineers and biologists have joined forces to record the fine details of wing and body movement in bat flight – together with the patterns of air movement that generate lift. Similar measurements have been made in insects and some birds, but this is the first such data for bats, which are highly flexible and maneuverable flyers and a potential model for engineered micro air vehicles. Read the rest of this entry »