ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

Researchers have completed a comprehensive analysis of the head width of over 1500 modern and fossilized species of termites and determined that their size isn't shrinking at a geological timescale.

Researchers have demonstrated in the lab how well a mineral common at the boundary between the Earth's core and mantle conducts heat. This leads them to suspect that the Earth's heat may dissipate sooner than previously thought.

Earth's global average surface temperature in 2021 tied with 2018 as the sixth warmest on record, according to independent analyses done by NASA and NOAA. Collectively, the past eight years are the warmest years since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.

Biologists have found two new species of goby fish in Palawan, a Philippine archipelago. The goby fish both belonged to the genus, Rhinogobius.

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers transformed agriculture as we know it during the Green Revolution, catapulting crop yields and food security to new heights. Yet, despite improvements in crop nitrogen use efficiency, fears of underperformance spur fertilizer overapplication to this day. Excess nitrogen then ends up in waterways, including groundwater, and in the atmosphere in the form of potent greenhouse gases.

Efficient electrocatalysts, which are needed for the production of green hydrogen, for example, are hidden in materials composed of five or more elements. A team has developed an efficient method for identifying promising candidates in the myriad of possible materials. To this end, the researchers combined experiments and simulation.

The study of the human body at single-cell level has received a boost with the creation of a new tool, which will allow researchers to see not only the function of cells, but also where they are situated within tissues. The tool, called cell2location, has been developed by researchers.

Deciding when to stop learning and take action is a common, but difficult decision in conservation. Using a new method, this trade-off can be managed by determining the amount of time to spend on research at the outset.