Research Highlights |
Featured
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Research Highlights |
Ecology: why horses wear white
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Research Highlights |
Palaeontology: Do the locomotion
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News |
Asian pollution delays inevitable warming
Dirty power plants exert temporary protective effect.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News Feature |
Carbon sequestration: Buried trouble
Protesters saying "no to CO2" are just one roadblock facing carbon sequestration — a strategy that could help prevent dangerous climate change. Richard Van Noorden investigates.
- Richard Van Noorden
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Opinion |
Lessons from the Haiti earthquake
Roger Bilham, one of the first seismologists to visit Haiti after last month's earthquake, calls for UN enforcement of resistant construction in cities with a history of violent tremors.
- Roger Bilham
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News & Views |
A chromatin thermostat
When environmental temperatures rise, plants seek help from their core molecular mechanisms to adapt. The chromatin protein H2A.Z, which regulates gene expression, is one such rescue molecule.
- Roger B. Deal
- & Steven Henikoff
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News |
'Climategate' scientist speaks out
Embattled climatologist Phil Jones faces his critics.
- Olive Heffernan
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News |
Setting the climate record straight
A co-chair of the IPCC's beleaguered second working group discusses recent criticisms.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
'Climategate' scientist speaks out
Climatologist Phil Jones answers his critics in an exclusive interview with Nature.
- Olive Heffernan
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News |
Acid soil threatens Chinese farms
Overuse of fertilizers is imperilling food supply.
- Natasha Gilbert
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News |
Sea-level records challenged
High point 80,000 years ago may hint at flaws in ice-age theory.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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Letter |
Zonal flow formation in the Earth’s core
Zonal jets are common in nature and are spontaneously generated in turbulent systems. Because the Earth's outer core is believed to be in a turbulent state, it is possible that there is zonal flow in the liquid iron of the outer core. By investigating numerical simulations of the geodynamo with lower viscosities than most previous simulations have been able to use, a convection regime of the outer core is now found that has a dual structure comprising inner, sheet-like radial plumes and an outer, westward cylindrical zonal flow.
- Takehiro Miyagoshi
- , Akira Kageyama
- & Tetsuya Sato
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Perspective |
The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment
- Richard H. Moss
- , Jae A. Edmonds
- & Thomas J. Wilbanks
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Research Highlights |
Geoengineering: Ocean beating
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Research Highlights |
Geoscience: Shocking tides
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Books & Arts |
Why we cannot predict earthquakes
Roger Bilham enjoys a history of a potentially useful field in which spectacular failures can win accolades.
- Roger Bilham
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News |
Still looking for that woodpecker
An expensive recovery plan to save the ivory-billed woodpecker from extinction may come decades too late.
- Rex Dalton
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News Feature |
Palaeogenetics: Icy resolve
Eske Willerslev combines Arctic escapades with meticulous lab work in his quest to pull ancient DNA from the ice. Rex Dalton talks to the adventurer about extracting the first ancient human genome.
- Rex Dalton
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Opinion |
IPCC: cherish it, tweak it or scrap it?
As calls for reform intensify following recent furores about e-mails, conflicts of interest, glaciers and extreme weather, five climatologists propose ways forward for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their suggestions range from reaffirming the panel' governing principles to increasing the number and speed of its publications to replacing the volunteer organization with a permanently staffed structure.
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Letter |
Organic-walled microfossils in 3.2-billion-year-old shallow-marine siliciclastic deposits
Claims that life existed on Earth in the early Archaean eon (3.2 billion years ago) are often controversial, as non-biological processes can produce life-like microstructures and chemical signatures that mimic those of the remains of living organisms. Now, however, the discovery of relatively large, carbonaceous spheroidal microstructures — interpreted as organic-walled microfossils — in early Archaean deposits adds further evidence that life existed, thrived and survived on Earth at a very early date.
- Emmanuelle J. Javaux
- , Craig P. Marshall
- & Andrey Bekker
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News |
Is climate change hiding the decline of maple syrup?
Human-related carbon emissions may skew isotope analysis for food-quality control.
- Matt Kaplan
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Letter |
Migrating tremors illuminate complex deformation beneath the seismogenic San Andreas fault
Despite extensive study of the San Andreas fault, its physical character and deformation mode beneath the relatively shallow earthquake-generating portion remain largely unconstrained. Here, continuous seismic data from mid-2001 to 2008 is examined, using an approach that allows differentiation between activities from nearby patches of the deep fault and begins to unveil rich and complex patterns of tremor occurrence, in particular, constant motion of the tremor source.
- David R. Shelly
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Letter |
Coherently wired light-harvesting in photosynthetic marine algae at ambient temperature
- Elisabetta Collini
- , Cathy Y. Wong
- & Gregory D. Scholes
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Research Highlights |
Atmospheric physics: Bolt from the blue
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News & Views |
Washed up in Madagascar
How, when and from where did Madagascar's unique mammalian fauna originate? The idea that the ancestors of that fauna rafted from Africa finds support in innovative simulations of ancient ocean currents.
- David W. Krause
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News |
Haiti earthquake may have primed nearby faults for failure
Geologists say it's time to start preparing for the next big one.
- Lucas Laursen
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News |
IPCC flooded by criticism
Climate body slammed for errors and potential conflicts of interest.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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News |
Water vapour could be behind warming slowdown
Mysterious changes in the stratosphere may have offset greenhouse effect.
- Jeff Tollefson
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Research Highlights |
Atmospheric science: Stronger storms
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Research Highlights |
Biomaterials: Super snail shells
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Opinion |
Research on global sun block needed now
Geoengineering studies of solar-radiation management should begin urgently, argue David W. Keith, Edward Parson and M. Granger Morgan — before a rogue state decides to act alone.
- David W. Keith
- , Edward Parson
- & M. Granger Morgan
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News & Views |
Degrees of climate feedback
A probabilistic analysis of climate variation during the period AD 1050–1800 refines available estimates of the influence of temperature change on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- Hugues Goosse
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News |
Icy hunt for old air
Antarctic drilling project aims for a definitive record of climate.
- Chaz Firestone
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Letter |
Ensemble reconstruction constraints on the global carbon cycle sensitivity to climate
Anthropogenic global warming is likely to be amplified by positive feedback from the global carbon cycle; however, the magnitude of the climate sensitivity of the global carbon cycle, and thus of its positive feedback strength, is under debate. By combining a probabilistic approach with an ensemble of proxy-based temperature reconstructions and pre-industrial CO2 data from three ice cores, this climate sensitivity is now shown to be much smaller than previously thought.
- David C. Frank
- , Jan Esper
- & Fortunat Joos
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News |
Biodiversity talks get under way
Delegates begin to hammer out a new strategy for the Convention on Biological Diversity.
- Natasha Gilbert
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News |
Early humans wiped out Australia's giants
Climate not to blame for the extinction of Australia's big animals.
- Cheryl Jones
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News |
Senate climate debate up in the air
Moves by Republicans shift the US legislative landscape.
- Jeff Tollefson
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News |
Europe cannot keep its promises on fish stocks
Even with total cessation of fishing, UN target would still be missed.
- Daniel Cressey
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News |
Most powerful hurricanes on the rise
Global warming could lead to fewer but more-intense storms.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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Letter |
Increasing springtime ozone mixing ratios in the free troposphere over western North America
High concentrations of ozone in the troposphere are toxic and act as a greenhouse gas. Anthropogenic emissions of ozone precursors have caused widespread increases in ozone concentrations since the late 1800s, with the fastest-growing ozone precursor emissions currently coming out of east Asia. Much of the springtime east Asian pollution is exported towards western North America; a strong increase in springtime ozone mixing ratios is now found in the free troposphere over this region.
- O. R. Cooper
- , D. D. Parrish
- & M. A. Avery
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Research Highlights |
Geoscience: Blowin' in the wind
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Editorial |
Climate of suspicion
With climate-change sceptics waiting to pounce on any scientific uncertainties, researchers need a sophisticated strategy for communication.
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Correspondence |
Conservation work is incomplete without cryptic biodiversity
- Genoveva F. Esteban
- & Bland J. Finlay
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Authors |
Abstractions