ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

A new study looks at the causal relationship between outdoor air pollution levels on nationwide university entry examination day and students' cognitive performance in Brazil.

A new study of the genetic profiles of wild and hatchery coho salmon demonstrates important distinctions in how the two types of fish form mating pairs.

In 2011, Texas experienced one of its worst droughts ever. The dry, parched conditions caused over $7 billion in crop and livestock losses, sparked wildfires, pushed power grids to the limit, and reduced reservoirs to dangerously low levels. And according to a recent study led by geoscientists, the drought was worse than previously thought.

An international agreement to protect the ozone layer is expected to prevent 443 million cases of skin cancer and 63 million cataract cases for people born in the United States through the end of this century, according to new research. The research team developed a computer modeling approach that revealed the effect of the Montreal Protocol and subsequent amendments on stratospheric ozone, the associated reductions in ultraviolet radiation, and the resulting health benefits.

Experiments and modeling work offers new insights into the striking patterns of repeating stones seen in frost-prone landscapes.

New research suggests that Earth's 'solid' inner core is, in fact, endowed with a range of liquid, soft, and hard structures which vary across the top 150 miles of the inner core.

The goal of tackling global warming by turning carbon dioxide into fuel could be one step closer with researchers using a supercomputer to identify a group of 'single-atom' catalysts that could play a key role.

An international team of scientists used data from Antarctic ice cores to trace a 700-year old increase in black carbon to an unlikely source: ancient Maori land-burning practices in New Zealand, conducted at a scale that impacted the atmosphere across much of the Southern Hemisphere and dwarfed other preindustrial emissions in the region during the past 2,000 years. Their results make it clear that human activities have impacted Earth's atmosphere and climate earlier and at larger scales than previously known.

Scientists have figured out how plants respond to light and can flip this genetic switch to encourage food growth, even in shade. The discovery could help increase food supply for an expanding population with shrinking opportunities for farming.

A study including more than 22,000 female nurses in Denmark evaluated exposure over 15-20 years to air pollution and road traffic noise to evaluate the impact on heart failure. Exposure to small particulate matter and road traffic noise over three years was associated with an increased risk for heart failure. The risks were greater among women who were former smokers or women who had high blood pressure.

By decoding honeybees' waggle dances, which tell other bees where to find food, researchers have found that bees in agricultural areas travel farther for food than those in urban areas.

Farming should be as high-yield as possible so it can be limited to relatively small areas, allowing much more land to be left as natural habitats while still meeting future food targets, according to a major new analysis of over a decade of research.

Researchers studying two solar parks, situated in arid locations, found they produced 'cool islands' extending around 700 meters from the solar park boundaries. The temperature of surrounding land surface was reduced by up to 2.3 degrees at 100 meters away from the solar park, with the cooling effects reducing exponentially to 700 meters. This new discovery is important as it shows the solar park could impact ecological processes, including productivity, decomposition, and ultimately the carbon balance, in the surrounding landscape.