• ORNL develops lignin-based thermoplastic conversion process

    Updated: 2012-11-30 21:00:05
    Turning lignin, a plant's structural "glue" and a byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, into something considerably more valuable is driving a research effort headed by Amit Naskar of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.read more

  • Geoscientists cite 'critical need' for basic research to unleash promising energy resources

    Updated: 2012-11-30 20:30:11
    Developers of renewable energy and shale gas must overcome fundamental geological and environmental challenges if these promising energy sources are to reach their full potential, according to a trio of leading geoscientists. Their findings will be presented on Dec. 4, at 5:15 p.m. (PT), at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco in Room 102 of Moscone Center West .read more

  • UI researcher predicts more intense North Atlantic tropical storms

    Updated: 2012-11-30 19:30:08
    Tropical storms that make their way into the North Atlantic, and possibly strike the East Coast of the United States, likely will become more intense during the rest of this century.</p That's the prediction of one University of Iowa researcher and his colleague as published in an early online release in the prestigious Journal of Climate, the official publication of the American Meteorological Society.read more

  • How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dinosaurian Oddities

    Updated: 2012-11-30 18:47:28
    A new book argues that dinosaur reconstructions, which stretch skin over bone, are bound to be inaccurate and imagines what the creatures may have looked with more fat, feathers and accessory adornments

  • Carbon dioxide could reduce crop yields

    Updated: 2012-11-30 17:30:08
    read more

  • More evidence for an ancient Grand Canyon

    Updated: 2012-11-29 20:30:29
    PASADENA, Calif.—For over 150 years, geologists have debated how and when one of the most dramatic features on our planet—the Grand Canyon—was formed. New data unearthed by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) builds support for the idea that conventional models, which say the enormous ravine is 5 to 6 million years old, are way off.read more

  • Grand Canyon as old as the dinosaurs, suggests new study led by CU-Boulder

    Updated: 2012-11-29 19:31:46
    An analysis of mineral grains from the bottom of the western Grand Canyon indicates it was largely carved out by about 70 million years ago -- a time when dinosaurs were around and may have even peeked over the rim, says a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.read more

  • Integrating science and policy to address the impacts of air pollution

    Updated: 2012-11-29 19:30:54
    An article in this week's Science magazine by Dr Stefan Reis of the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK) and colleagues from six countries examines how science and policy address air pollution effects on human health and ecosystems, and climate change in Europe.read more

  • International study provides more solid measure of melting in polar ice sheets

    Updated: 2012-11-29 19:30:49
    The planet's two largest ice sheets have been losing ice faster during the past decade, causing widespread confusion and concern. A new international study provides a firmer read on the state of continental ice sheets and how much they are contributing to sea-level rise. Dozens of climate scientists have reconciled their measurements of ice sheet changes in Antarctica and Greenland over the past two decades. The results, published Nov. 29 in the journal Science, roughly halve the uncertainty and discard some conflicting observations.read more

  • The beginning of everything: A new paradigm shift for the infant universe

    Updated: 2012-11-29 18:06:06
    read more

  • New approach allows past data to be used to improve future climate projections

    Updated: 2012-11-29 17:00:43
    read more

  • Why Did Plant-Munching Theropods Get So Big?

    Updated: 2012-11-29 15:18:57
    Were these Late Cretaceous dinosaurs just the culmination of an evolutionary trend towards ever-larger body size or was something else at work?

  • Geosphere builds momentum with 17 newly published studies and a new series

    Updated: 2012-11-28 21:30:10
    Boulder, Colo., USA – Geosphere articles posted online 16 November 2012 cover a variety of topics, such as the geophysics of the Hogri fault zone, 5 km offshore of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant; using web-based GIS technologies and readily available global remote sensing datasets for investigations of arid land; the structure and evolution of the U.S. Sierra Nevada; the ANDRILL McMurdo Ice Shelf and Southern McMurdo Sound Drilling Projects; and climate-tectonic interactions in the southern Alaskan orogen.read more

  • UF researcher tests powerful new tool to advance ecology, conservation

    Updated: 2012-11-28 19:00:17
    GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study shows ecologists may have been missing crucial information from animal bones for more than 150 years. The study featured on the cover of the November issue of Ecology shows animal bone remains provide high-quality geographical data across an extensive time frame. The research may be used to identify regions of habitat for the conservation of threatened species. read more

  • Chemists invent powerful toolkit, accelerating creation of potential new drugs

    Updated: 2012-11-28 18:31:25
    LA JOLLA, CA – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have invented a set of chemical tools that is radically simplifying the creation of potential new drug compounds. read more

  • Scientists develop new approach to support future climate projections

    Updated: 2012-11-28 18:30:31
    Scientists have developed a new approach for evaluating past climate sensitivity data to help improve comparison with estimates of long-term climate projections developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The sensitivity of global temperature to changes in the Earth's radiation balance (climate sensitivity) is a key factor for understanding past natural climate changes as well as potential future climate change. read more

  • Fracking in Michigan: U-M researchers study potential impact on health, environment, economy

    Updated: 2012-11-28 17:30:28
    ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan researchers are conducting a detailed study of the potential environmental and societal effects of hydraulic fracturing, the controversial natural gas drilling process known as fracking. In hydraulic fracturing, large amounts of water, sand and chemicals are injected deep underground to break apart rock and free trapped natural gas. Though the process has been used for decades, recent technical advances have helped unlock vast stores of previously inaccessible natural gas, resulting in a fracking boom.read more

  • New study shows how climate change could affect entire forest ecosystems

    Updated: 2012-11-28 17:00:11
    (Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The fog comes in, and a drop of water forms on a pine needle, rolls down the needle, and falls to the forest floor. The process is repeated over and over, on each pine needle of every tree in a forest of Bishop pines on Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara. That fog drip helps the entire forest ecosystem stay alive.read more

  • Outside a vacuum: Model predicts movement of charged particles in complex media

    Updated: 2012-11-28 16:31:25
    Picture two charged particles in a vacuum. Thanks to laws of elementary electrostatics, we can easily calculate the force these particles exert upon one another, and therefore predict their movements. Submerge those particles in a simple medium — say, water — and the calculation grows more complex. The charged particles' movements influence the water, which in turn may slow, speed, or otherwise alter the particles' paths. In this environment a prediction must also consider the water's reaction, or its dielectric response.read more

  • NIST experiments challenge fundamental understanding of electromagnetism

    Updated: 2012-11-28 16:00:03
    A cornerstone of physics may require a rethink if findings at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are confirmed. Recent experiments suggest* that the most rigorous predictions based on the fundamental theory of electromagnetism—one of the four fundamental forces in the universe, and harnessed in all electronic devices—may not accurately account for the behavior of atoms in exotic, highly charged states.read more

  • Graphite experiment shines new light on giant planets, white dwarfs and laser-driven fusion

    Updated: 2012-11-28 15:30:36
    An international team led by researchers from the University of Warwick and Oxford University is now dealing with unexpected results of an experiment with strongly heated graphite (up to 17,000 degrees Kelvin). The findings may pose a new problem for physicists working in laser-driven nuclear fusion and may also lead astrophysicists to revise our understanding of the life cycle of giant planets and stars.read more

  • Feathers Fuel Dinosaur Flight Debate

    Updated: 2012-11-28 15:00:27
    Was the early bird Archaeopteryx more of a glider than a flier?

  • Sea-levels rising faster than IPCC projections

    Updated: 2012-11-28 00:30:59
    Sea-levels are rising 60 per cent faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) central projections, new research suggests. While temperature rises appear to be consistent with the projections made in the IPCC's fourth assessment report (AR4), satellite measurements show that sea-levels are actually rising at a rate of 3.2 mm a year compared to the best estimate of 2 mm a year in the report.read more

  • Projected sea-level rise may be underestimated

    Updated: 2012-11-28 00:30:39
    That sea level is rising faster than expected could mean that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) sea-level rise projections for the future may be biased low as well, their results suggest. Sea-level rise potentially affects millions of people all around the world in coastal areas as well as megacities like Tokyo.read more

  • Graphene switches: HZB research group makes it to first base

    Updated: 2012-11-27 16:31:23
    read more

  • James' bond: A graphene/nanotube hybrid

    Updated: 2012-11-27 16:31:17
    HOUSTON – (Nov. 27, 2012) – A seamless graphene/nanotube hybrid created at Rice University may be the best electrode interface material possible for many energy storage and electronics applications. Led by Rice chemist James Tour, researchers have successfully grown forests of carbon nanotubes that rise quickly from sheets of graphene to astounding lengths of up to 120 microns, according to a paper published today by Nature Communications. A house on an average plot with the same aspect ratio would rise into space.read more

  • Tracking pollution from outer space

    Updated: 2012-11-27 16:30:15
    The thickest layers of global smog — caused by traffic, industry, and natural minerals, among other factors — are found over the world's megacities. But getting an accurate measurement of pollution is no easy task. On-the-ground monitoring stations do not always provide the most accurate picture —monitoring stations depend heavily on local positioning and some cities put stations in urban centers, while others build on the edge of a city.read more

  • Paralysis by analysis should not delay decisions on climate change

    Updated: 2012-11-27 15:30:25
    Uncertainty about how much the climate is changing is not a reason to delay preparing for the harmful impacts of climate change says Professor Jim Hall of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and colleagues at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, writing today in Nature Climate Change. read more

  • What is Genyodectes?

    Updated: 2012-11-27 14:46:29
    A set of partial jaws hold an important place in the history of South American paleontology, but what sort of dinosaur do they represent?

  • Researchers use shock tube for insight into physics early in blasts

    Updated: 2012-11-27 14:30:56
    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories' one-of-a-kind multiphase shock tube began with a hallway conversation that led to what engineer Justin Wagner describes as the only shock tube in the world that can look at how shock waves interact with dense particle fields. The machine is considered multiphase because it can study shock wave propagation through a mixture of gas and solid particles. read more</p

  • GI researcher co-author of international permafrost report

    Updated: 2012-11-27 14:30:42
    Fairbanks, Alaska—University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Vladimir Romanovsky is one of four scientists who authored a report released today by the United Nations Environmental Programme.read more

  • A new look at wetting models: Continuum analysis

    Updated: 2012-11-27 05:30:23
    read more

  • G is for Gigantspinosaurus

    Updated: 2012-11-26 15:04:07
    Gigantspinosaurus had enormous shoulder spikes, but what were these ornaments used for?

  • Stegosaurus Plate Debate

    Updated: 2012-11-23 15:22:31
    Stegosaurus is immediately recognizable for its prominent plates, but why did these structures actually evolve?

  • What Kind of Dinosaur is Coming to Dinner?

    Updated: 2012-11-22 15:00:36
    Everyone knows that birds are dinosaurs, but what kind of dinosaur is your holiday turkey?

  • What’s the Secret of Hadrosaur Skin?

    Updated: 2012-11-21 14:16:10
    Were extra-thick hides the secret to why paleontologists have found so much fossilized hadrosaur skin?

  • After 121 years, identification of 'grave robber' fossil solves a paleontological enigma

    Updated: 2012-11-21 00:56:28
    Researchers have resolved the evolutionary relationships of Necrolestes patagonensis, a paleontological riddle for more than 100 years. Researchers have correctly placed the strange 16-million-year-old Necrolestes in the mammal evolutionary tree, unexpectedly moving forward the endpoint for the fossil's evolutionary lineage by 45 million years and showing that this family of mammals survived the extinction event that marked the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.  #187; riginal news

  • Paleontologists Puzzle Over Possible Dinosaur Bones

    Updated: 2012-11-20 14:36:45
    When did dinosaurs start to become giants? Enigmatic bone fragments found in England complicate the debate

  • Doggerland

    Updated: 2012-11-20 08:45:54
    Searching for Doggerland. "For decades North Sea boatmen have been dragging up traces of a vanished world in their nets. Now archaeologists are asking a timely question: What happens to people as their homeland disappears beneath a rising tide?"  #187; riginal news

  • F is for Futalognkosaurus

    Updated: 2012-11-19 14:27:01
    Though not as famous as other huge dinosaurs, Futalognkosaurus is the most complete giant sauropod ever found

  • Cretaceous Legs Give Away New Dinosaur

    Updated: 2012-11-16 15:18:53
    Slender limb bones found in Argentina give away a new species of tiny dinosaur

  • Lessons from Einiosaurus

    Updated: 2012-11-15 14:18:52
    New dinosaurs are always cause for excitement, but the real joy of paleontology is investigating dinosaur lives

  • Peering Inside Dinosaur Skin

    Updated: 2012-11-14 15:23:58
    Dinosaur skin impressions aren't as rare as you might think, but how they form is a mystery

  • Tracking Dinosaurs With Ray Stanford

    Updated: 2012-11-13 15:18:21
    Amateur paleontologist Ray Stanford has a great talent for tracking Maryland's Cretaceous dinosaurs

  • E is for Eotriceratops

    Updated: 2012-11-12 15:14:53
    The recently discovered Eotriceratops might yield important clues about how the famous Triceratops evolved

  • Avisapiens saurotheos

    Updated: 2012-11-04 13:08:06
    "Pretty much everyone interested in dinosaurs, in the history of life, or in such matters as the evolution of intelligence and/or brain size, will be familiar with the various speculations on ‘humanoid dinosaurs' that have made their way into the literature." - Tetrapod Zoology on Dinosauroids See also:The Speculative Dinosaur Project"What KT Extinction?" - a collection of material relating to (speculative, alas) extant dinosaurs  #187; riginal news

  • New study shows effects of prehistoric nocturnal life on mammalian vision

    Updated: 2012-11-04 13:03:10
    Since the age of dinosaurs, most species of day-active mammals have retained the imprint of nocturnal life in their eye structures. Humans and other anthropoid primates, such as monkeys and apes, are the only groups that deviate from this pattern, according to a new study. The findings are the first to provide a large-scale body of evidence for the "nocturnal bottleneck theory," which suggests that mammalian sensory traits have been profoundly influenced by an extended period of adaptation to nocturnality during the Mesozoic Era.  #187; riginal news

  • Nov 3, Frequently Asked Questions About Fossils And Geologic Time

    Updated: 2012-11-03 19:19:01
    We often get questions related to fossils and geologic time here at Fossils-facts-and-finds.com. We reply to as many of those as we possibly can.

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