Although spending on science has risen worldwide, greater investment is needed in the face of growing crises, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recommended in a new report published. The latest edition of its Science Report, which is published every five years, further reveals that there is …
Clouds have always given climate modelers fits. The clouds in their models are crude at best, and in the real world, researchers struggle to understand how clouds are responding to-and perhaps magnifying-greenhouse warming; But two new studies now show that much of the worry about clouds' role in the warming …
Focus on the whole forest and think big. That's the intent of a bill, introduced in the U.S. Senate, that would direct the Forest Service to fund large, collaborative projects to reduce fire risk, improve forest health and stimulate economic development.
Many a student nightmare originates in chemistry labs. Titration is one of them. It may be a big word but it's a simple process to detect a solution's potency. It requires sucking in acid through a pipette (a thin glass tube) to measure it. A measured amount of a solution …
Pope Benedict XVI called off a visit to a prestigious university in Rome in the face of hostility from some of its academics and students, who accused him of despising science and defending the church's persecution of Galileo. The Pope had been scheduled to make a speech at La Sapienza …
A Dutch project management firm withdrew from the development of a new science park in the southern Netherlands saying its managers were consistently intimidated by animal rights protesters. Weert-based Van der Looy Project Management Bureau was involved in Science Link, a life-science industrial park commissioned by the local and regional …
Investments aimed at improving agricultural adaptation to climate change inevitably favor some crops and regions over others. An analysis of climate risks for crops in 12 food-insecure regions was conducted to identify adaptation priorities, based on statistical crop models and climate projections for 2030 from 20 general circulation models.
Some of the most profound and direct impacts of climate change over the next few decades will be on agricultural and food systems. A research by Lobell et al show that increasing temperatures and declining precipitation over semiarid regions are likely to reduce yields for corn, wheat, rice, and other …
Systems for management of water throughout the developed world have been designed and operated under the assumption of stationarity. Stationarity-the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability-is a foundational concept that permeates training and practice in water-resource engineering.
Global warming is not a uniform process. Mongolia, particularly at the high altitudes around Lake Hovsgol, has been warming more than twice as fast as the global average. Unique ecosystems are feeling the heat. Here at the transition between the steppe grassland and taiga, plants and animals are confronted with …
Fine roots (those with diameters <2.0 mm) serve at least two roles of global importance: They act as conduits transporting carbon (C) into belowground C pools, and they acquire soil resources.
In their policy forum ("The limits of consensus," 14 September 2007, P. 1505), M. Oppenheimer et al, make several misleading statements. They suggest that a premature drive for consensus led Working Group I to understate the risk of large future sea-level rise in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) …
A common assumption is that ecosystem services respond linearly to changes in habitat size. This assumption leads frequently to an "all or none" choice of either preserving coastal habitats or converting them to human use. However, the researchers survey of wave attenuation data from field studies of mangroves, salt marshes, …
As a result of recent infrastructure failures the U.S. Senate passed the National Infrastructure Improvement Act (NIIA), which would create the National Commission on the Infrastructure and its ability to meet current and future demands. Such policy development coincides with ongoing efforts to manage and restore degraded ecosystems.
In the News Focus Story, "Greening the Meeting" (5 October 2007, P. 36), B. Lester compares the fossil fuel energy required to transport scientists to and from a conference by airplane to the energy used by "2250 Honda Civics during a year's worth of normal driving." Another way to put …
The Turonian (93.5 to 89.3 million years ago) was one of the warmest periods of the Phanerozoic eon. It has been argued that there may have been several stages of continental ice growth during the period, reflected in both erosional surfaces and geochemical records associated with possible glaciation-induced sea-level falls.
The forest biome of Amazonia is one of Earth's greatest biological treasures and a major component of the Earth system. This century, it faces the dual threats of deforestation and stress from climate change. In this article, the authors summarize some of the latest findings and thinking on these threats, …
The consequences of global climate change are profound, and the scientific community has an obligation to assess the ramifications of policy options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing CO2 sinks in reservoirs other than the atmosphere. Ocean iron fertilization (OIF), one of several ocean methods proposed for mitigating rising …
A major attempt to streamline-or, critics claim, politicize-the revision of important air-quality standards has run into trouble. One year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overhauled its lengthy process of updating the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), which have far-reaching impacts on many regulations. Some critics feared the …
