http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The cactus, stalwart of the desert, has quite a story to tell about the evolution of plant communities found the world over. http://phys.org/news223640343.html Biology Tue, 03 May 2011 12:10:03 EST news223640343 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought, according to evidence from a prehistoric event analyzed by a Purdue University-led team. http://phys.org/news222614717.html Space & Earth Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:25:38 EST news222614717 (PhysOrg.com) -- By studying fossilized mollusks from some 3.5 million years ago, UCLA geoscientists and colleagues have been able to construct an ancient climate record that holds clues about the long-term effects of Earth's current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global climate change. http://phys.org/news221461321.html Space & Earth Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:02:42 EST news221461321 Lignin is the durable biopolymer that gives carrots their fiber and crunch and meat grilled over a campfire its characteristic smoky flavor. Acting as the glue that holds the plant cell wall together, lignin imparts tremendous mechanical strength to the plant. Present in all land plants except mosses, lignin performs three important functions: it allows plants to grow upright as they compete for sunlight, it facilitates the upward movement of water and minerals through the plant's vascular tissue, and it protects plants from pathogens and foraging animals. Lignin also sequesters atmospheric carbon in its tissues and thereby plays an important role in the carbon cycle. Approximately 30% of non-fossil organic carbon is stored in lignin, and, after cellulose, lignin is the most abundant biological polymer on Earth. http://phys.org/news220782604.html Biology Thu, 31 Mar 2011 09:30:33 EST news220782604 Simpson Tacoma Kraft would seem like one of the greener power plants. It boils water by burning sawdust, bark and wood shavings from saw mills and pulp mills, funneling the resulting high-pressure steam into a turbine to generate electricity. http://phys.org/news220552784.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:40:36 EST news220552784 Recent climate modeling has shown that reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would give the Earth a wetter climate in the short term. New research from Carnegie Global Ecology scientists Long Cao and Ken Caldeira offers a novel explanation for why climates are wetter when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations are decreasing. Their findings, published online today by Geophysical Research Letters, show that cutting carbon dioxide concentrations could help prevent droughts caused by global warming. http://phys.org/news220184623.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Mar 2011 11:24:12 EST news220184623 University of Alberta researchers have determined that the influence of northern peatlands on the prehistorical record of climate change has been over estimated, but the vast northern wetlands must still be watched closely as the planet grapples with its current global warming trend. http://phys.org/news219409082.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:59:09 EST news219409082 (PhysOrg.com) -- Rocks on Mars dug from far underground by crater-blasting impacts are providing glimpses of one possible way Mars' atmosphere has become much less dense than it used to be. http://phys.org/news218907987.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:46:57 EST news218907987 Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today's annual demand for gasoline. The Black Death, on the other hand, came and went too quickly for it to cause much of a blip in the global carbon budget. Dwarfing both of these events, however, has been the historical trend towards increasing deforestation, which over centuries has released vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as crop and pasture lands expanded to feed growing human populations. Even Genghis Kahn couldn't stop it for long. http://phys.org/news214750680.html Space & Earth Thu, 20 Jan 2011 12:59:34 EST news214750680 (PhysOrg.com) -- If the house seems dustier than it used to be, it may not be a reflection on your housekeeping skills. The amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere has doubled over the last century, according to a new study; and the dramatic increase is influencing climate and ecology around the world. http://phys.org/news213468297.html Space & Earth Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:49:11 EST news213468297 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming. http://phys.org/news210964986.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:23:21 EST news210964986 (AP) -- Like the warming atmosphere above, a once-taboo idea hangs over the slow, frustrating U.N. talks to curb climate change: the idea to tinker with the atmosphere or the planet itself, pollute the skies to ward off the sun, fill the oceans with gas-eating plankton, do whatever it takes. http://phys.org/news210762601.html Space & Earth Sun, 05 Dec 2010 09:10:15 EST news210762601 Climate models that project future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations should include a coupled nitrogen cycle, a team of researchers led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory has concluded. http://phys.org/news209120991.html Space & Earth Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:10:18 EST news209120991 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new analysis of fossilized grass-pollen grains deposited on ancient European lake and sea bottoms 16-35 million years ago reveals that C4 grasses evolved earlier than previously thought. This new evidence casts doubt on the widely-held belief that the rise of this incredibly productive group of plants was driven by a large drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the Oligocene epoch. http://phys.org/news209059558.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:40:01 EST news209059558 Variations in atmosphere carbon dioxide around 40 million years ago were tightly coupled to changes in global temperature, according to new findings published in the journal Science. The study was led by scientists at Utrecht University, working with colleagues at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Southampton. http://phys.org/news209037998.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:07:47 EST news209037998 The steamiest places on the planet are getting warmer. Conservative estimates suggest that tropical areas can expect temperature increases of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Does global warming spell doom for rainforests? Maybe not. Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and colleagues report in the journal Science that nearly 60 million years ago rainforests prospered at temperatures that were 3-5 degrees higher and at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 2.5 times today's levels. http://phys.org/news208710337.html Space & Earth Thu, 11 Nov 2010 15:05:59 EST news208710337 Variations in atmosphere carbon dioxide around 40 million years ago were tightly coupled to changes in global temperature, according to new findings published in the journal Science. The study was led by scientists at Utrecht University, working with colleagues at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Southampton. http://phys.org/news208622322.html Space & Earth Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:39:02 EST news208622322 (PhysOrg.com) -- A blade of grass destined to be converted into biofuel may join energy efficiency and other big-ticket strategies in the effort to reduce atmospheric carbon -- but not in the way that you might think. http://phys.org/news207321859.html Biology Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:30:20 EST news207321859 The food industry generates a lot of waste products, but one of these, eggshells, could help combat climate change, according to research published in the International Journal of Global Warming this month. http://phys.org/news207310482.html Space & Earth Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:40:01 EST news207310482 Crops responded positively to future levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), but soil tillage practices had little effect on this response, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study. http://phys.org/news203852397.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:40:24 EST news203852397 Cambridge researchers have discovered key plant enzymes that normally make the energy stored in wood, straw, and other non-edible parts of plants difficult to extract. The findings, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can be used to improve the viability of sustainable biofuels that do not adversely affect the food chain. http://phys.org/news203612386.html Biology Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:00:13 EST news203612386 (PhysOrg.com) -- What links sea urchins, limestone and climate change? The common thread is calcium carbonate, one of the most widespread minerals on Earth. UC Davis researchers have now measured the energy changes among different forms of calcium carbonate, from its messy noncrystalline forms to beautiful calcite crystals that could lock away carbon underground for thousands to millions of years. http://phys.org/news202369509.html Space & Earth Mon, 30 Aug 2010 06:45:29 EST news202369509 Imagine loosening the screw-top of a soda bottle and hearing the carbon dioxide begin to escape. Then imagine taking the cap off quickly, and seeing the beverage foam and fizz out of the bottle. Then, imagine the pressure equalizing and the beverage being ready to drink. http://phys.org/news201956899.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:00:10 EST news201956899 Cities are made chiefly of concrete and asphalt, which soak up more sunlight during the day than soil and have a harder time radiating the heat away during the night. Add to that all the energy -- natural gas, electricity, gasoline -- used in high-density places, and cities become hot islands floating in a sea of cooler countryside. http://phys.org/news200304157.html Space & Earth Fri, 06 Aug 2010 09:03:07 EST news200304157 Meteorologists have determined exactly how much carbon dioxide humans can emit into the atmosphere while ensuring that the Earth does not heat up by more than two degrees. http://phys.org/news199972358.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:06:25 EST news199972358 With carbon dioxide in the atmosphere approaching alarming levels, even halting emissions altogether may not be enough to avert catastrophic climate change. Could scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air be a viable solution? A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution suggests that while removing excess carbon dioxide would cool the planet, complexities of the carbon cycle would limit the effectiveness of a one-time effort. To keep carbon dioxide at low levels would require a long-term commitment spanning decades or even centuries. http://phys.org/news197227905.html Space & Earth Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:00:01 EST news197227905 A new study shows the Arctic climate system may be more sensitive to greenhouse warming than previously thought, and that current levels of Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide may be high enough to bring about significant, irreversible shifts in Arctic ecosystems. http://phys.org/news197034597.html Space & Earth Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:20:05 EST news197034597 One proposed emergency fix to halt global warming is to seed clouds over the ocean to make them more reflective, reducing the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth. But the scheme could also change global rainfall patterns, raising concerns of water shortages on land. A new study by the Carnegie Institution, in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science, suggests that altered atmospheric circulation under the scheme in fact could increase monsoonal rains and cause the continents to become wetter, not drier, on average. http://phys.org/news196945435.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:04:22 EST news196945435 (PhysOrg.com) -- The SCIAMACHY sensor on ESA?s Envisat satellite has provided scientists with invaluable data on our planet, allowing them to map global air pollution and the distribution of greenhouse gases. http://phys.org/news196939846.html Space & Earth Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:31:25 EST news196939846 (PhysOrg.com) -- Numerous studies are documenting the growing effects of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world’s oceans. But most of those have studied single, isolated sources of pollution and other influences. http://phys.org/news196007603.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:50:02 EST news196007603