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. Language is formed by giving meaning to sounds and stringing together these meaningful expressions to communicate feelings and ideas. Until recently most linguists believed that the relationship between the structure of language and the natural world was mainly the influence of the environment on vocabulary. Now, a new study published in the June 12 edition of PLOS ONE shows that there is a link between geographical elevation and the way language is spoken. http://phys.org/news290273914.html Other Sciences Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:00:02 EST news290273914 Why Tibetan antelope can live at elevations of 4,000-5,000m on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau? In a collaborative research published in Nature Communications, investigators from Qinghai University, BGI, and other institutes provide evidence that some genetic factors may be associated with the species' adaption to harsh highland environments. The data in this work will also provide implications for studying specific genetic mechanisms and the biology of other ruminant species. http://phys.org/news288007367.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 May 2013 11:04:19 EST news288007367 Stretching from the Persian Gulf up through Turkey, the northwest-southeast running Zagros fold-and-thrust belt is a region of extensive crustal deformation and seismic activity. Near the Zagros Mountains the structure of the Middle Eastern region is the result of the intersection of three tectonic plates, with the Eurasian plate being squished on both sides by the Arabian and Indian plates. Convergence of the plates is driving the formation of the Turkish-Iranian plateau, a high-elevation expanse of relatively smooth terrain reaching in some places more than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) into the sky and lying northeast of the Zagros belt. http://phys.org/news287302604.html Space & Earth Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:02 EST news287302604 (Phys.org) —Scientists at China's Lanzhou University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that dust lifted from the Taklimakan Desert during a dust storm had a significant effect on the regional climate. The 2006 storm was aggravated by a cold front that pushed the dust to the highest level of the atmosphere over the northern Tibetan Plateau in China, affecting the balance of heat in the region's atmosphere. The ability to accurately model such storms will help in understanding the climatic impact of dust. http://phys.org/news287047262.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 May 2013 08:21:13 EST news287047262 (Phys.org) —An exhaustive study conducted by a combined team of Chinese, Japanese, American and Australian researchers has found that the third longest river in the world, the Yangtze, located in China, is at least 23 million years old, but no older than 36.5 million years old. The team describes their research and results in their paper they've had published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://phys.org/news285934348.html Space & Earth Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:30:01 EST news285934348 The Pliocene (5.3–2.6 Million years ago) of Tibet witnessed the drying of the northern Tibetan Plateau and the approach to the Pleistocene Ice Age within the background of intensifying Indian and East Asian monsoons. Yet little is known about Pliocene mammals living on the high Tibetan Plateau despite the fact that fossil mammals elsewhere constitute an important knowledge base for terrestrial environments. An international team documented in detail the mammalian biostratigraphy, chronology, and paleozoogeography based on Zanda (Zhada) Basin fossil mammals collected in nearly four months of field work over five seasons in 2006–07, 2009–10, 2012. The Zanda fossil assemblage fill a critical void in the late Cenozoic, augmenting heretofore limited knowledge of Pliocene vertebrate faunas in southern Tibet and providing a much needed window into the past paleoenvironment and its effect on biological evolution. http://phys.org/news284028142.html Other Sciences Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:01 EST news284028142 Secluded from civilisation and living in a white desert, the crew at the Concordia research base in Antarctica have settled in to their home and are ready for the cold, long winter ahead. http://phys.org/news283424583.html Space & Earth Mon, 25 Mar 2013 10:03:18 EST news283424583 (Phys.org) —The ALMA telescope installation begins delivering images of fresh planets, young stars, and distant galaxies. http://phys.org/news282983133.html Space & Earth Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:10:03 EST news282983133 Ten thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, a species of greenish warblers lived in a forest south of the Tibetan Plateau. As the ice receded, the forest grew to form a ring around the plateau—and so did the songbird's habitat. Two thousand years later, birds living on the eastern edge of the expanding ring once again met those living in the western edge, only now they couldn't mate. Although still members of the same species, something had changed. What led to their genetic incompatibility? http://phys.org/news282308952.html Biology Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:09:19 EST news282308952 In this more than 4,500-year-old pharaonic necropolis, Egypt's modern rituals of the dead are starting to encroach on its ancient ones. Steamrollers flatten the desert sand, and trucks haul in bricks as villagers build rows of tombs in a new cemetery nearly up to the feet of Egypt's first pyramids and one of its oldest temples. http://phys.org/news277403861.html Other Sciences Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:37:48 EST news277403861 (Phys.org)—On the night of Aug. 5, 2010, as residents slept, water began rushing through Leh, an Indian town in a high desert valley in the Himalayas. http://phys.org/news272041947.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:13:26 EST news272041947 (Phys.org)—Snowpack, an essential source of drinking water and agricultural irrigation for billions of people, could shrink significantly within the next 30 years, according to a study led by Stanford climate change researcher Noah Diffenbaugh. http://phys.org/news272011919.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:52:22 EST news272011919 (Phys.org)—Bar-headed geese are star fliers of the bird world. As well as being striking looking creatures, they have become famous for making incredible annual migrations over the world's highest mountain peaks, the Himalayas. This spectacular migration seems even more arduous when you consider that oxygen levels at such high altitudes plummet to less than half their value at sea-level and temperatures are far below freezing. Humans that scale the world's highest mountains without oxygen can usually only take a few steps at a time before needing to recover, while the bar-headed goose was famed to fly on past, honking as it went. http://phys.org/news270969584.html Biology Thu, 01 Nov 2012 06:19:53 EST news270969584 In the Nepalese hamlet of Simen, five days' walk from the nearest town, children pay for schooling with wood or animal dung, and life appears untouched by modernity—but change is coming. http://phys.org/news268977093.html Technology Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:51:44 EST news268977093 Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the world, while glaciers in the western Himalayas are more stable and could be growing, says a new report from the National Research Council. http://phys.org/news266668304.html Space & Earth Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:31:49 EST news266668304 (Phys.org) -- The growth of high topography on the Tibetan Plateau in Sichuan, China, began much earlier than previously thought, according to an international team of geologists who looked at mountain ranges along the eastern edge of the plateau. http://phys.org/news264329322.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:51:33 EST news264329322 Patterns in nature are in everything from ocean currents to a flower's petal. http://phys.org/news263470974.html Biology Mon, 06 Aug 2012 11:23:02 EST news263470974 (Phys.org) -- In both the Earth's Northern and Southern Hemispheres polar mesospheric clouds are at the peak of their visibility, during their respective late spring and early summer seasons. Visible from aircraft in flight, the International Space Station and from the ground at twilight, the clouds typically appear as delicate, shining threads against the darkness of space--hence their other names of noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds. http://phys.org/news260005227.html Space & Earth Wed, 27 Jun 2012 08:40:43 EST news260005227 (Phys.org) -- Another look at a nearly 80-year-old pottery collection at the Arizona State Museum is yielding new information about migrants who abandoned the Four Corners region. http://phys.org/news258015221.html Other Sciences Mon, 04 Jun 2012 07:54:03 EST news258015221 Vicarious travellers and students of history can take a virtual stroll through the vast necropolis build by the ancient Egyptians in the Giza Plateau, thanks to a 3D Internet project launched this week. http://phys.org/news255957261.html Other Sciences Fri, 11 May 2012 12:14:32 EST news255957261 The Tibetan Plateau is the youngest and highest plateau on Earth, and its elevation reaches one-third of the height of the troposphere, with profound dynamic and thermal effects on atmospheric circulation and climate. The uplift of the Tibetan Plateau was an important factor of global climate change during the late Cenozoic and strongly influenced the development of the Asian monsoon system. However, there have been heated debates about the history and process of Tibetan Plateau uplift, especially elevations in different geological ages. http://phys.org/news254475456.html Other Sciences Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:38:24 EST news254475456 Roughly 22 million years ago, at the onset of the Miocene, the Tibetan Plateau started to lift upward. The rising land curbed the flow of moist air from the south, sparking the onset of central Asian desertification. Or, perhaps, the supposedly arid region to the northeast of the Tibetan Plateau harbored shallow lakes or wetlands until as recently as 8 million years ago, at which point the historical desertification was initiated by some other mechanism. The current debate between these two proposals, of either a 22- or 8-million-year-old onset of desertification, hinges, to a sizeable degree, on the history of the fine sediments of the Tianshui Basin in central China. http://phys.org/news254405062.html Space & Earth Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:40:01 EST news254405062 Scientists in Indian-controlled Kashmir have cloned a rare Himalayan goat in hopes of boosting the number of animals famed for their coats of pashmina wool, used to make cashmere. http://phys.org/news251019658.html Biology Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:41:09 EST news251019658 Drought events are largely unknown in Earth's history, because reconstruction of ancient hydrological conditions remains difficult due to lack of proxy. New GEOLOGY research supported by China's NNSF and MS&T uses a microbial lipid proxy of highly alkaline conditions to identify enhanced aridity in Miocene sediments on the Tibetan Plateau. This enhanced aridity is associated with significant uplift of the Tibetan Plateau nine million years ago. http://phys.org/news250354035.html Space & Earth Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:47:23 EST news250354035 The effect of sand layer on the ground temperature of permafrost is one of the unsolved scientific problems in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the sand layers were found to play a key role in the protection of the underlying permafrost by the measured data, and this research work was published in Chinese Science Bulletin. http://phys.org/news250141457.html Space & Earth Mon, 05 Mar 2012 03:44:27 EST news250141457 Fifty million years ago, India slammed into Eurasia, a collision that gave rise to the tallest landforms on the planet, the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. http://phys.org/news249733533.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Feb 2012 13:00:02 EST news249733533 How did early humans learn to live at the highest altitudes on earth? http://phys.org/news248500376.html Biology Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:00:06 EST news248500376 Glaciers are retreating at an unexpectedly fast rate according to research done in Peru's Cordillera Blanca by McGill doctoral student Michel Baraer. They are currently shrinking by about one per cent a year, and that percentage is increasing steadily, according to his calculations. http://phys.org/news243598897.html Space & Earth Tue, 20 Dec 2011 10:21:49 EST news243598897 For many, the story of Pompeii defines what happens when a volcano erupts: It destroys everything in its path and kills everyone who cannot escape. http://phys.org/news242035638.html Space & Earth Fri, 02 Dec 2011 08:20:01 EST news242035638 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of Birmingham and other UK universities describe the evolution and assembly of a stream ecosystem in South East Alaska in new de-glaciated terrain, from early insect and crustacean invaders to the arrival of migrating salmon from the ocean, in a paper published in the journal Ecology this month (October). http://phys.org/news238145447.html Space & Earth Tue, 18 Oct 2011 08:32:34 EST news238145447