Or to put it another way that's 4 to 6 trips from Earth to the Moon and back again with plenty of miles to spare.
Called corn by most people in North america modern variants of the Zea mays plant are among the indispensable food crops that feed billions of the planet's people.
and ultimately after pollination seeds--will provide more physical space for the development of the structures that mature into kernels.
In order to conquer this space and subsequently develop the aquaculture and agriculture--mainly rice cultivation--the coastal swamp areas have been transformed into polders (3). To this end dikes have been built reducing the 1km mangrove strip to just a few dozen metres wide.
These included the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) the University of California at Santa barbara (UCSB) Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC.
and that the burning of fossil fuels is releasing an additional 9 billion metric tons of excess atmosphere-warming carbon each year both the planet and the American economy stand to benefit from a large-scale domestic advanced
Once the leaves come out energy from the sun is used increas ingly to evap o rate water from the leaves rather than to heat up the sur face.
#Shedding light on role of Amazon forests in global carbon cycleearth's forests perform a well-known service to the planet absorbing a great deal of the carbon dioxide pollution emitted into the atmosphere from human activities.
Essentially they found that tree mortality is clustered in both time and space. It's not blowdown
After the masks were washed away graphene was grown via CVD in the open spaces where it bonded edge-to-edge with the h-BN.
and subsequently transported by wind around our planet. Among these chemicals are nitrogen dioxide carbon monoxide and non-methane hydrocarbons.
By combining satellite observations of how much heat ozone absorbs in Earth's atmosphere with a model of how chemicals are transported in the atmosphere the researchers discovered significant regional variability--in some places by more than a factor of 10--in how efficiently ozone trapped heat
National Institute for Space Research Sao Jose dos Campos Sao paulo Brazil; Boston University Mass.;and NASA's Ames Research center Moffett Field Calif. For more on NASA's scatterometry missions visit:
#Photovoltaics beat biofuels at converting suns energy to miles drivenin 2005 President George w bush and American corn farmers saw corn ethanol as a promising fossil fuel substitute that would reduce both
Since the U s. also accounts for 40 percent of the world's corn U s. ethanol production has affected corn prices around the planet.
what if the energy comes from the ultimate clean and renewable source--the sun itself?
The energy source for biofuels is the sun through photosynthesis he says. The energy source for solar power is also the sun
. Which is better? To find out Geyer joined former Brenschool researcher David Stoms and James Kallaos of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology to model the relative efficiencies of the technologies at converting a given amount of sunlight to miles driven.
The results which appear in a paper titled Spatially Explicit Life cycle Assessment of Sun-to-Wheels Transportation Pathways in the U s
and his colleagues examined five prominent sun-to-wheels energy conversion pathways--ethanol from corn
life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and fossil fuel requirements--the researchers identified PV electricity for battery electric vehicles as the superior sun-to-wheels conversion method.
The team concludes that the rapid changes observed by satellites over the last 20 years at Pine Island
#NASA Mars rover preparing to drill into first Martian rocknasa's Mars rover Curiosity is driving toward a flat rock with pale veins that may hold clues to a wet history on the Red planet.
If the rock meets rover engineers'approval when Curiosity rolls up to it in coming days it will become the first to be drilled for a sample during the Mars Science Laboratory mission.
The size of a car Curiosity is inside Mars'Gale Crater investigating whether the planet ever offered an environment favorable for microbial life.
Curiosity landed in the crater five months ago to begin its two-year prime mission. Drilling into a rock to collect a sample will be this mission's most challenging activity
since the landing It has never been done on Mars said Mars Science Laboratory project manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena Calif. The drill hardware interacts energetically with Martian material we don't control.
The rock chosen for drilling is called John Klein in tribute to former Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager John W. Klein who died in 2011.
when we arrived has been a great surprise said Mars Science Laboratory project scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of technology in Pasadena.
Researchers have used the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to examine sedimentary rocks in the area.
All of these are sedimentary rocks telling us Mars had environments actively depositing material here said MAHLI deputy principal investigator Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson Ariz.
JPL a division of Caltech manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
http://www. jpl. nasa. gov/msl http://www. nasa. gov/msl and http://mars. jpl. nasa. gov/msl.
The Oregon Data Trailthe Landsat program has been observing Earth's land surfaces consistently since 1972 when the first Landsat satellite
Since then it has compiled the longest continuous satellite record of change across our planet. But a left over pay for-data policy from the commercialization of the program in the 1980s
Not that long ago the size of an individual Landsat scene would have crippled most desk top computers says Doug Morton a physical scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md. who uses Landsat
and we realize that we're actually starting to see something that we had never been able to see before from space.
NASA and the USGS will continue providing the means to see it with the next satellite in the Landsat series to be called Landsat 8 scheduled to launch in early 2013.
The above story is provided based on materials by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
Those factors play a bigger role than even skin colour and exposure to the sun according to Dr. Jonathon Maguire a researcher and pediatrician at St michael's Hospital.
or when the skin is exposed to the sun's ultraviolet rays. Lighter skin produces more Vitamin d than darker skin colours.
or measures of exposure to the sun. When it comes to maintaining sufficient Vitamin d stores in young children the story is about dietary intake of Vitamin d through Vitamin d supplementation
The mantle is the planet's middle layer a buffer of rock between the crust--the top 5 miles or so--and the core.
This slow but constant convection brings materials from deep within the planet to the surface--and occasionally higher through volcanoes.
Scientists determine the mantle's density by measuring the speed of a seismic wave after an earthquake from its origin to other points on the planet.
This deep melting makes the silicate differentiation of the planet much more efficient than previously thought Dasgupta said.
In Dasgupta's high-pressure lab at Rice volcanic rocks are windows to the planet's interior.
and as a consequence it has the capacity to affect geophysical and geochemical properties of the planet as a whole.
#Exocomets may be as common as exoplanetscomets trailing wispy tails across the night sky are a beautiful byproduct of our solar system's formation icy leftovers from 4. 6 billion years ago
when the planets coalesced from rocky rubble. The discovery by astronomers at the University of California Berkeley and Clarion University in Pennsylvania of six likely comets around distant stars suggests that comets--dubbed exocomets--are just as common in other stellar systems with planets.
Though only one of the 10 stars now thought to harbor comets is known to harbor planets the fact that all these stars have massive surrounding disks of gas
and dust#a signature of exoplanets--makes it highly likely they all do said Barry Welsh a research astronomer at UC Berkeley's Space sciences Laboratory.
We see dust disks--presumably the primordial planet-forming material--around a whole load of stars
and we see planets but we don't see much of the stuff in between: the asteroid-like planetesimals and the comets.
Now I think we have nailed it. These exocomets are more common and easier to detect than people previously thought.
Welsh summarized the current theory of planet formation as interstellar dust under the influence of gravity becomes blobs
and become bigger things--planetesimals and comets--and finally you get planets. Many stars are known to be surrounded by disks of gas
and dust and one of the closest beta-Pictoris (Î-Pic) was reported to have comets in 1987.
In 2009 astronomers found a large planet around Î-Pic about 10 times larger than Jupiter.
Three other stars--one discovered by Welsh in 1998--were subsequently found to have comets.
But then people just lost interest. They decided that exocomets were done a deal and everybody switched to the more exciting thing exoplanets Welsh said.
But I came back to it last year and thought'Four exocomets is not all that many compared to the couple of thousand exoplanets known--perhaps I can improve on that.'
'Detecting comets may sound difficult--after all the snowballs are typically only 5-20 kilometers (3-13 miles) in diameter.
But Welsh said that once comets are knocked out of their parking orbit in the outer reaches of a stellar system
and fall toward a star they heat up and evaporate. The evaporating comet which is what we see with comets such as Halley
and next year's highly anticipated Comet ISON creates a brief telltale absorption line in the spectrum of a star.
The six new exocomet systems were discovered during three five-nightlong observing runs between May 2010
and November 2012 using the 2. 1-meter telescope of the Mcdonald Observatory in Texas. The telescope's high resolution spectrograph revealed weak absorption features that were found to vary from night to night an outcome that Welsh
and Montgomery attributed to large clouds of gas emanating from the nuclei of comets as they neared their central stars.
type A stars which are about 5 million years old because Welsh's detection technique works best with them.
With a higher resolution spectrograph he might be able to detect comets around the older
and yellower G and F stars around which most exoplanets have been found. Nevertheless all evidence suggests that these dusty A stars should have planets
and planets are the only thing that could knock a comet out of its orbit
and make it fall toward its star. If it quacks waddles and has feathers then it's probably a duck he said.
The work was supported by the National aeronautics and space administration. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of California-Berkeley.
#New tree of life traces evolution of a mysterious cotinga birdsthey are some of the brightest loudest oddest-looking least-understood birds on the planet.
but the male sings one of the loudest songs on the planet says Yale's Rick Prum.
The sun's rays are stronger the temperatures rise and there are areas where the wind is provided with a more effective target.
When learning to do math it helps to see that two marbles take up less space than twenty.
Such opportunistic contamination is hard to guard against as most growing takes place in open outdoor spaces with little opportunity for control.
Now researchers at A*STAR have used a process known as friction stir processing (see image) to produce an evenly distributed mix of nanosized aluminum oxide (Al2o3) particles in aluminum1.
and has exciting potential for the car space and defense industries. Current powder metallurgy or liquid processing methods fail to achieve uniform processing says research leader Junfeng Guo who is from the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology.
The above story is provided based on materials by The Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR.
and his team build confidence in greenhouse gas measurements taken from aircraft and satellites which can cover large areas more effectively.
A NASA aircraft soon appears overhead carrying a prototype satellite instrument that records high-resolution images of methane that scientists can use to identify gas plumes.
and buildings with broader denser remote-sensing observations from aircraft mountaintops and satellites. Other instruments track winds and vertical motion of the atmosphere--both of which are key to interpreting the greenhouse gas measurements.
NASA's recently launched Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite is capable of detecting the enhanced levels of carbon dioxide over the world's largest cities
and those resulting from biological influences such as urban green spaces and adjacent forest and croplands
Doing so requires more frequent and dense measurements and the ability to sense multiple species of greenhouse gases from Earth's surface and from space.
These super-sites will provide a link between measurements from the surface instrumentation network and from satellites overhead.
Satellites such as NASA's OCO-2 and Japan's Greenhouse Gases Satellite (GOSAT) periodically sample the air over Los angeles and a subset of other cities around the world.
It may someday serve as part of an international constellation of carbon monitoring satellites providing frequent comprehensive mapping of greenhouse gases across entire cities and broader regions.
and atmospheric moisture future satellites will also use'chemical cameras'to map the distributions of greenhouse gases
the Keck Institute for Space Studies Pasadena California; and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Sacramento California.
Sigma Space Corporation Lanham Maryland; Resources for the Future Washington D c.;and the INFLUX team.
because larger trees require more space hence each stand will have fewer trees explains Pretzsch. The scientists are putting the growth acceleration down to rising temperatures and the extended growing season.
If you think about a mass extinction caused by catastrophic event such as a meteorite impacting Earth you might imagine all species are equally likely to die Blonder said.
Despite the fact that tropical forests are the most biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems on the planet more is known about bellybutton bacteria than bacteria on trees in the tropics.
or FFDAS this new system was used to quantify 15 years of CO2 emissions every hour for the entire planet--down to the city scale.
These maps provide a scientific independent assessment of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions--something policy-makers can use
The research team combined information from space-based nighttime lights a new population database national statistics on fuel use
#Diversified farming practices might preserve evolutionary diversity of wildlifeas humans transform the planet to meet our needs all sorts of wildlife continue to be pushed aside including many species that play key roles in Earth's life-support systems.
and we have the tools for action to try keep temperature increases within 2â°C to give our planet a chance
It is high time the ocean as the primary driver of the planet's climate and attenuator of climate change becomesa central part of climate change discussions said Wendy Watson-Wright Executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO.
which protects us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun. Ocean Acidificationfor the first time this Bulletin contains a section on ocean acidification prepared in collaboration with the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC
The albedo effect refers to the amount of radiation reflected by the surface of the planet.
and heat back into space than darker forests.)Unger says the combined effects of reduced BVOC emissions
Since the mid-19th century the percentage of the planet covered by cropland has doubled more than from 14 percent to 37 percent.
since they generally reflect solar radiation back into space. Therefore a 50 percent reduction in forest aerosols has spurred actually greater warming since the pre-industrial era.
Called the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar the instrument will be the first to systematically probe the depths of the forests from space.
The instrument will be built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. As a global leader in research and discovery related to environmental sustainability the University of Maryland is extraordinarily proud to be a part of this new venture with our partners from NASA said University of Maryland Vice president and Chief Research
when combined with the historical record of changes captured by the U s s longstanding program of Earth-orbiting satellites such as Landsat and MODIS.
The MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer is an instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites.
because it's a laser-based system called a lidar that can measure the distance from the space-based instrument to Earth's surface with enough accuracy to detect subtle variations including the tops of trees the ground and the vertical distribution of aboveground
Its immediate predecessors are Goddard's Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESAT) and airborne Land Vegetation and Ice Sensor known as LVIS
By combining these findings with spatially comprehensive maps from other satellites showing where development and deforestation are taking place
The plastic materials provide certain benefits to the process as the occupying space there allows better aeration and growing area.
#Study shows where on the planet new roads should and should not goresearchers have created a'large-scale zoning plan'that aims to limit the environmental costs of road expansion
Now an ambitious study has created a'global roadmap'for prioritising road building across the planet to try to balance the competing demands of development and environmental protection.
Pebble-size particles may jumpstart planet formationrocky planets like Earth start out as microscopic bits of dust tinier than a grain of sand
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles--planetary building blocks 100
If confirmed these dense ribbons of rocky material may well represent a new mid-size class of interstellar particles that could help jumpstart planet formation.
The large dust grains seen by the GBT would suggest that at least some protostars may arise in a more nurturing environment for planets said Scott Schnee an astronomer with the National Radio astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville Virginia.
and something similar can be said for planet formation. The new GBT observations extend across the northern portion of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex a star-forming region that includes the famed Orion Nebula.
The star-forming material in the section studied by the GBT called OMC-2/3 has condensed into long dust-rich filaments.
The filaments are dotted with many dense knots known as cores. Some of the cores are just starting to coalesce
Though incredibly small compared to even the most modest of asteroids dust grains on the order of a few millimeters to a centimeter are incredibly large for such young star-forming regions.
Rather than typical interstellar dust these researchers appear to have detected vast streamers of gravel--essentially a long and winding road in space said NRAO astronomer Jay Lockman who was involved not in these observations.
and we have known that there are things the size of asteroids and planets but if we can confirm these results it would add a new population of rocky particles to interstellar space.
The most recent data were taken with the Green Bank Telescope's high frequency imaging camera MUSTANG.
MUSTANG-1. 5 the even more-sensitive successor to MUSTANG and ARGUS a camera designed for mapping the distribution of organic molecules in space.
vegetables for skin with sun-kissed glowforget sun beds sunbathing and fake tanning lotions. The secret to a sexy healthy glow lies in eating your five-a-day reveals new breakthrough research from Taylor & francis. A new and innovative study recently published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental psychology sheds new light on the importance
analysis showsa new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass--the total material in leaves stems roots fruits grains
When you try to estimate something over the whole planet you have to make some simplifying assumptions said University of Illinois plant biology professor Evan Delucia who led the new analysis
but the theory tells us that what is possible on the planet is much much higher than
I don't want to be the guy that says science is going to save the planet and we shouldn't worry about the environmental consequences of agriculture we shouldn't worry about runaway population growth he said.
While the toxic substances in e-cigarettes are lower than those in cigarette smoke nonsmokers could be exposed involuntarily to nicotine in any confined space where e-cigarettes are used Unregulated e-cigarettes could potentially turn back the clock to the days
This changes the speed of the huge current in the Atlantic ocean that circulates heat throughout the planet.
Currently there is no ground-or satellite-based global network monitoring soil moisture at a local level.
http://smap. jpl. nasa. gov/NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns.
and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community
and protecting our home planet. For more information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014 visit:
This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on August 15 2014.
The above story is provided based on materials by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length n
when you see this raging fire where exactly is all this energy being released in space?
) In a computer model we are using very small volumes of space on the order of one cubic millimeter on one end to a cubic meter on the other end he says.
We model these on a grid as a region of space. Fire is a process in
#What are made stars of? Determining stellar compositions made easier with new catalogan Arizona State university alumna has devised the largest catalog ever produced for stellar compositions.
Called the Hypatia Catalog after one of the first female astronomers who lived 350 AD in Alexandria the work is critical to understanding the properties of stars how they form
and possible connections with orbiting planets. And what she found from her work is that the compositions of nearby stars aren't as uniform as once thought.
Since it is not possible to physically sample a star to determine its composition astronomers study of the light from the object.
This is known as spectroscopy and it is one of the most important tools that an astronomer has for studying the universe.
From it researchers can often get information about the temperature density composition and important physical processes of an astronomical object.
The digital catalog is a compilation of spectroscopic abundance data from 84 literature sources for 50 elements across 3058 stars in the solar neighborhood within 500 lightyears of the Sun. It essentially lists the compositions of stars
but only stars that are like the Sun --or F-G-or K-type (the Sun is A g-type star)--that are relatively near to the Sun. This catalog can hopefully be used to guide a better understanding of how the local neighborhood has evolved explains Natalie Hinkel who graduated from ASU in 2012 with her doctorate in astrophysics
and is now a postdoctoral fellow at San francisco State University (SFSU). Putting together a catalog this large that is an accumulation of other people's work required a substantial amount of background research--compiling the first 50 datasets took her about six months.
The most obvious one for astronomers is looking at stars who host extrasolar planets or exoplanets.
Since 1997 we've known that stars with giant Jupiter-like planets have quite a bit of iron in them.
However with a catalog of this magnitude we can now study literally all of the other elements measured in stars in great detail to see
if there are relationships between the presence of a planet (gaseous or terrestrial) and the element abundances explains Hinkel.
Another example would be to look at the abundances of stars that rotate quickly versus those that rotate slowly to see
While constructing the catalog Hinkel noticed that the stars in the solar neighborhood reveal unexpected compositions
The Sun is in the disk of the galaxy where the vast majority of the Milky way's young stars are located.
As the disk rotates so too do the stars--both in the direction of the disk as well as in smaller random motions.
Because of this motion within the disk the stars are considered to be well mixed--like a tossed salad.
--or many stars that have similar abundances in close proximity to each other explains Hinkel. However what Hinkel found is that the nearby'solar salad'is comprised of lettuce at the bottom chunks of tomato in the middle (where the middle of the galactic plane is) then lettuce again on top.
In this case the lettuce are stars that all have a high abundances of quite a few elements
and the tomatoes are stars that have low abundances of those same elements. In other words the solar neighborhood does not appear to be mixed a salad;
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