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Scientists have long mapped separate brain areas for sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Yet new research reveals that when we focus sharply on any of those senses, signals converge on the same two structures buried deep in the brain - the midbrain reticular formation and the central thalamus.



This finding highlights a shared neural pathway that sustains <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/our-brain-stops-paying-attention-to-repeated-distractions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">attention</a> and wakefulness and could inspire therapies for coma, epilepsy, and attention-deficit disorders.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-senses-in-a-single-brain-region">Senses in a single brain region</h2>



Research over the past century has shown that visual scenes activate the occipital cortex, melodies light up the temporal lobes, and so forth.



“We were expecting to find activity on shared networks, but when we saw all the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/our-sense-of-smell-and-different-odors-can-influence-how-we-see-colors/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">senses</a> light up the same central brain regions while a test subject was focusing, it was really astonishing,” said Aya Khalaf, a postdoctoral associate in neurology at <a href="https://medicine.yale.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yale School of Medicine</a> and lead author of the study.



Those two regions - the reticular formation, a mesh of neurons in the upper brainstem, and the intralaminar and mediodorsal nuclei of the thalamus - form part of the so-called subcortical arousal system, a set of circuits long suspected to regulate alertness and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/consciousness-may-stem-from-unseen-dimensions-beyond-our-reality/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">consciousness</a>.



Previous work had linked these hubs to vigilance by studying patients emerging from coma or experiencing absence seizures. But most of those experiments examined responses to a single type of stimulus, for example flashing lights or chirping sounds.



Khalaf and colleagues asked the broader question: do different senses share the same arousal circuitry when people deliberately pay attention?



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-massive-data-mine">A massive data mine</h2>



To answer that, the team turned to the publicly available <a href="https://www.humanconnectome.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Human Connectome Project</a> and other repositories, assembling functional MRI scans from 1,561 healthy adults.



Across 11 tasks, participants viewed moving shapes, listened to spoken stories, sampled liquid tastants, or felt puffs of air on their fingertips. Each task included abrupt cues that forced subjects to switch attention - for instance, a sudden change in picture orientation or a surprise tone embedded in white noise.



The investigators processed more than 500 hours of scan data through a pipeline that removed head motion and physiological noise, then aligned brain volumes to a common atlas.



In every sensory domain, when a cue demanded rapid attentional re-orientation, blood-oxygen signals spiked in the reticular formation and the central thalamus. The effect was absent or minimal during passive stimulation, underscoring the importance of active engagement.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-consciousness-in-the-brain">Consciousness in the brain</h2>



Why would a taste test and a vision task end up at the same neural address? The authors propose that the midbrain reticular formation integrates sudden sensory changes and broadcasts a “wake-up” volley to the thalamus, which relays it to widespread cortical areas.



That burst synchronizes cortical rhythms, priming the brain to process incoming information. The scheme dovetails with classical animal studies showing that electrical stimulation of the reticular formation induces cortical desynchronization and behavioral arousal, while lesions produce stupor.



“It tells us how important this brain region is and what it could mean in efforts to restore consciousness,” Khalaf said.



“This has also given us insights into how things work normally in the brain. It’s really a step forward in our understanding of awareness and consciousness,” said senior author Hal Blumenfeld, a neurologist at Yale.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-awakening-senses-in-the-brain">Awakening senses in the brain</h2>



Because the same deep-brain hubs fire regardless of which sense is active, treatments aimed at modulating those hubs could benefit diverse conditions.



Drugs that enhance thalamic neurotransmission, for instance, might improve focus in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/autism-and-adhd-disorders-directly-linked-amount-of-time-kids-spend-on-screens/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">attention deficit hyperactivity disorder</a>. Conversely, overactivity in the arousal circuit has been implicated in insomnia; dampening the circuitry could help induce sleep.



The results also support ongoing trials that deliver low-intensity ultrasound or deep-brain electrodes to the central thalamus in patients with disorders of consciousness. 



If attention triggers the thalamus to “switch on” the cortex, stimulating it directly might help rouse patients who are minimally conscious.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-rethinking-sensory-rehabilitation"><a></a>Rethinking sensory rehabilitation</h2>



The discovery challenges sensory-specific training programs that ignore subcortical commonalities. 



For example, visual rehabilitation for <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/stroke-risk-is-elevated-by-air-pollution-and-traffic-noise/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stroke</a> survivors may benefit from pairing attentional cues with tactile or auditory tasks to engage the shared arousal pathway.



Likewise, virtual-reality therapies that bombard users with multi-sensory surprises might more effectively sharpen attentional control.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-future-research-directions">Future research directions </h2>



The Yale team plans to refine the timeline of activation using magnetoencephalography, which offers millisecond resolution. They also hope to dissect the frequency bands that link the thalamus to frontal and parietal cortices during attentional jumps. 



Such work could reveal whether gamma-band bursts or alpha-band suppression carry the critical “wake-up” message.



Another frontier involves patients. Investigators will compare responses in healthy volunteers with those in people who have attention deficits or who are emerging from anaesthesia. 



Identifying a lost or delayed thalamic spike could serve as a biomarker for impaired consciousness.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-brain-regions-and-the-senses">Brain regions and the senses</h2>



For now, the study establishes the midbrain reticular formation and central thalamus as the universal relay through which sight, sound, taste, and touch gain conscious entry - at least when our minds snap to attention.



By showing that “all the senses light up the same central brain regions,” it confirms that consciousness depends not only on specialized cortical maps but also on a common deep-brain gatekeeper. 



Therapies that target this gatekeeper may eventually help restore awareness where it has dimmed and sharpen it where it wanders.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811925002277?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NeuroImage</a>.



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Scientists discover a brain region that connects all the senses

Scientists have long mapped separate brain areas for sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Yet new research reveals that when we focus sharply on any of those senses, signals converge on the same two structures buried deep in the brain - the midbrain reticular formation and the central thalamus. This finding highlights a shared neural pathway that sustains attention and wakefulness and could inspire therapies for coma, epilepsy, and attention-deficit disorders. Senses in a single brain region Research over the past century has shown that visual scenes...

Apple Steps Up Efforts To Go Green In China. Apple says it's boosting efforts to go green in China by partnering with conservationists to promote sustainable forestry for paper production.
CEO Tim Cook also said in a statement Sunday that he will try to get Apple's Chinese suppliers and contract manufacturers to use renewable energy to power their factories. Apple Steps Up Efforts To Go Green In China
That could take years, Cook conceded. But Apple hopes to set an example by investing in two Chinese solar projects that will produce more power than Apple uses in its Chinese stores and offices.
While releasing few details, Apple said it will work with the World Wildlife Fund on an effort to get up to 1 million acres of <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/understanding-chinese-medicine-could-protect-endangered-animals/">Chinese</a> commercial timberland certified as being managed under sustainable environmental practices. Apple has undertaken similar projects in the <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=united+states&amp;cvid=66fd45e35344492eafbd42980583be8e&amp;pglt=43&amp;FORM=ANNTA1&amp;PC=HCTS">United States</a>.China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.4 billion in 2019. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, it is the world's third or fourth-largest country by area. As a one-party state led by the Chinese Communist Party, the country officially divides itself into 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities, and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau.
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Apple Steps Up Efforts To Go Green In China

Apple Steps Up Efforts To Go Green In China. Apple...

Carbon Emissions From Peatlands Lower Than Expected. Anti-decay adaptation may hold key to reducing CO2 emissions

Duke University scientists have discovered a previously unknown dual mechanism that slows peat decay and may help reduce <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=carbon+dioxide&amp;cvid=e29a3705d0914ad0b9a23509a7e07b87&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">carbon dioxide</a> emissions from peatlands during times of drought.

"This discovery could hold the key to helping us find a way to significantly reduce the risk that increased drought and global warming will change Earth's peatlands from carbon sinks into carbon sources, as many scientists have feared," said Curtis J. Richardson, director of the Duke University Wetland Center and professor of resource ecology at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

The naturally occurring mechanism was discovered in 5,000-year-old pocosin bogs in coastal North <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/the-outer-banks-of-north-carolina/">Carolina</a>. Preliminary field experiments suggest it may occur in, or be exportable to, peatlands in other regions as well. Carbon Emissions From Peatlands Lower Than Expected

"When we took peat extracts from the southern peatlands and put them into Canadian peatlands, they slowed down decomposition there, too," said Richardson.

Peatlands are wetlands that cover only 3 percent of Earth's land but store one-third of the planet's total soil carbon. Left undisturbed, stored carbon can remain locked in their organic soil for millennia due to natural antimicrobial compounds called phenolics that prevent the waterlogged peat from decaying.

If the peat dries out, however, many scientists have theorized peatlands would switch from storing carbon to pumping it out instead.

"The accepted scientific paradigm is that prolonged drought, coupled with global warming and increased drainage of peatlands for agriculture and forestry, will lower water levels. This could cause peatlands to dry out, decay and release massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere," Richardson said. "Our research supports a less dire scenario. It finds that moderate long-term drought might have less impact on the release of carbon dioxide from peatlands than expected."

The reason, he said, lies buried in the peatland soil itself.

By comparing the chemistry of soil from pocosin bog peatlands in North Carolina with soil from boreal peatlands in Canada, Richardson and his team discovered a significant and previously unrecognized difference between the two.

"Southern wooded peatlands are up to 5,000 years old and have more complex plant-derived compounds that have allowed them to adapt to drought through a mechanism that regulates the buildup of phenolics and helps slow down decomposition," said Hongjun Wang, a research scientist at the Duke Wetland Center.

This natural adaptation, which was not found as abundantly in soil from boreal peatlands of the north, protects stored carbon directly by reducing decay-promoting phenol oxidase activity during short-term drought. The mechanism also indirectly protects stored carbon by spurring a shift in the peatlands' plant cover in response to moderate long-term drought. As water levels drop, plants that contain low levels of phenolics, such as sphagnum moss, ferns and sedges, are replaced by trees and shrubs, which are high in the decay-retarding compounds.

"This dual mechanism helps peat resist decay and adapt to climate change," Wang said.

He believes high-phenolic shrubs could naturally expand into northern peatlands or be introduced there as water levels drop, offering hope that scientists might be able to reduce the risk of large carbon releases.

"We still need to identify the specific aromatic components or groups of phenolics that are responsible for the decay-retarding mechanism," Richardson said. "Plants produce and contain thousands of compounds, so this may take time. But it will be worth the effort. What we learn will provide us with new approaches for managing storage and losses of carbon from millions of acres of peatlands worldwide."

---

<a href="http://www.duke.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Duke University</a>

Carbon Emissions From Peatlands Lower Than Expected

Carbon Emissions From Peatlands Lower Than Expected. Anti-decay adaptation may...

Increased Atmospheric CO2 Helps Trees Use Water More Efficiently. The increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has allowed trees across Europe to use their available water resources more efficiently, new research has shown.

Over the course of the 20th century, the so-called water use efficiency has risen nearly 20% from the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

These results, produced by an international research team, including experts from the University of Exeter, are reported in leading scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

Trees take up carbon dioxide from the air through tiny pores on their leaves called stomata and they lose water through these same pores.

When the CO2 concentration in the air increases, the size of the stomatal opening reduces to regulate the amount of carbon acquired which minimises the water lost. As a result the so-called water use efficiency increases.

In this study the researchers used measurements of carbon from tree-rings and computer models to quantify tree and forest responses to both climate variation and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

"Tree-ring data provide one of the unique opportunities to obtain long-term records of ecosystem responses to climate change", said David Frank, a Dendroclimatologist at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL and collaborator at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern.

The researchers used data from 23 tree ring sites spanning Morocco to Norway to quantify variation in water use efficiency - the amount of water required to produce a given amount of carbon - and a basic measure of plant and ecosystem economy. Increased Atmospheric CO2 Helps Trees Use Water More Efficiently

Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, Chair of Mathematical Modelling of Climate Systems at the University of Exeter and one of the authors of the report, said: "The observed water use efficiency increase, in response to atmospheric CO2 increase, is something we are able to reproduce with global vegetation models giving us more confidence in the whole ecosystem response to CO2.

"However, our models simulation also indicate that globally, other drivers, such as climate change and land use change, also impact on the plant hydrological cycle."

"By measuring the ratios of heavy to light carbon isotopes of tree-ring cellulose we are able to reconstruct various physiological metrics such as water use efficiency and their environmental drivers", said Kerstin Treydte co-author of this study and a specialist in tree-ring isotopes at the WSL.

On average, 100 kilograms of water released by a tree through the stomata equates to one kilogram of tree biomass created. The study showed that reduced stomatal opening increased water use efficiency by 14% in broadleaf species and by 22% in needleleaf species.

Despite the CO2 induced stomatal closure, the models showed that the consequences of a warming climate - lengthened growing seasons, increased leaf area and increased evaporation - resulted in a 5% increase in forest transpiration - the cycle of water through trees. This increase cancels out any savings in water from improved efficiency. Plants are therefore unlikely to reduce levels of atmospheric water vapour - an important greenhouse gas. It is also unlikely that plant responses to increased CO2 will substantially increase soil moisture or river run-off.

---

<a href="http://www.exeter.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Exeter</a>

Increased Atmospheric CO2 Helps Trees Use Water More Efficiently

Increased Atmospheric CO2 Helps Trees Use Water More Efficiently. The...

Obama Administration Approves Arctic Drilling Plan. Just days ahead of a planned protest of Royal Dutch Shell's Arctic drilling program in Seattle, the company on Monday cleared a major bureaucratic hurdle to drill off Alaska's northwestern coast.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the multi-year exploration plan in the Chukchi Sea for Shell after reviewing thousands of comments from the public, <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=alaska&amp;cvid=c8d63b0417c64b1daa0ac002a85fd411&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Alaska</a> Native organizations and state and federal agencies.
"We have taken a thoughtful approach to carefully considering potential exploration in the <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/chukchi-sea/">Chukchi Sea</a>, recognizing the significant environmental, social and ecological resources in the region and establishing high standards for the protection of this critical ecosystem, our Arctic communities, and the subsistence needs and cultural traditions of Alaska Natives," the agency's director, Abigail Ross Hopper, said in a statement. "As we move forward, any offshore exploratory activities will continue to be subject to rigorous safety standards."
Before Shell can begin drilling this summer, the company must still obtain other permits from state and federal agencies, including one to drill from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and government opinions that find Shell can comply with terms and conditions of the Endangered Species Act.
Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the approval "is an important milestone and signals the confidence regulators have in our plan. However, before operations can begin this summer, it's imperative that the remainder of our permits be practical, and delivered in a timely manner.
"In the meantime, we will continue to test and prepare our contractors, assets and contingency plans against the high bar stakeholders and regulators expect of an Arctic operator," Smith said in an email to The Associated Press.
The Port of Seattle would need to get another permit to base the Arctic drilling fleet in Seattle for about six months of the year.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray last week said the port, a public agency, must obtain a new land-use permit from the city before Shell contractor, Foss Maritime, can use Terminal 5. Foss Maritime on Saturday said it planned to appeal to the Seattle Hearing Examiner in the next two weeks. Once filed, the examiner will set a hearing date and then issue a ruling.
Port commissioners are taking up the lease issue at a meeting Tuesday.
Meanwhile, activists plan to protest the movement of 400-foot drill ship Polar Pioneer from Port Angeles, Washington, to the Seattle port. A so-called "festival of resistance" starts Saturday and will include protesters on land and in kayaks, trying to block the ship's movements.
"We respect the choice that anyone might make to protest based on Shell's Arctic aspirations, we just ask that they do so safely and within the boundaries of the law," Smith said.
Environmental groups on Monday blasted the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for providing the permit to Shell.
"This decision places big oil before people, putting the Arctic's iconic wildlife and the health of our planet on the line," Erik Grafe, an attorney for Earthjustice, said in a statement. "The agency should not be approving such threatening plans based on a rushed and incomplete environmental and safety review. Ultimately, Arctic Ocean drilling is far too risky and undermines the administration's efforts to address climate change and transition to a clean energy future."
Shell's drilling plan proposes to drill up to six wells within the Burger Prospect, located about 70 miles northwest of the village of Wainwright, Alaska. The wells would be drilled in about 140 feet of water by the Polar Pioneer and the Noble Discoverer. Both vessels would provide relief-well capability for the other.
Shell has said the two ships will leave the Chukchi Sea at the end of each drilling season.
Arctic offshore reserves are estimated at 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates.
---
Associated Press reporter Phuong Le in Seattle contributed to this report.
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Obama Administration Approves Arctic Drilling Plan

Obama Administration Approves Arctic Drilling Plan. Just days ahead of...

Sea-Level Rise Is Accelerating Due To Faster Antarctic Ice Melt. Sea-level rise is accelerating, not declining as some have hoped, scientists said on Monday citing melt water from <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/earths-temperature-could-reach-a-tipping-point-within-20-to-30-years/">Earth's</a> ice sheets as the likely cause.

In 2013, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the global mean sea level rose by 19 centimetres (7.6 inches) from 1901-2010, an average 1.7 mm (0.06 of an inch) per year.

This accelerated to 3.2 mm per year between 1993 and 2010, the IPCC said in its landmark Fifth Assessment Report. Sea-Level Rise Is Accelerating Due To Faster Antarctic Ice Melt

But in 2014, another study raised a big question.

In the past decade, it said, sea-level rise had been much lower than the previous decade.

That raised hopes in some quarters that, far from being an inexorably rising threat, sea levels could fluctuate in response to some hidden but natural variability.

The new study deals a blow to this scenario.

Both the IPCC estimate and the 2014 paper were based on satellite observations of sea levels.

But they were unable to take an important variable into account: something called vertical land motion.

This is natural movement in the height of the Earth's land surface, which can happen through subsidence, earthquakes or uplift.

For instance, parts of the northern hemisphere are still rising after the end of the last Ice Age -- the land was crushed by glacial weight and even today is slowly "rebounding," thousands of years after the ice melted.

The new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, takes land movement into account, along with an important statistical tweak -- hourly data from a network of tide gauges deployed around the world's oceans.

It finds that the overall rate of sea level rise between 1993 and mid-2014 is between 2.6 and 2.9 mm per year, with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.4 mm.

The bad news is that the first six years of the satellite data -- 1993 to 1999 -- is the period that is most affected by these corrections.

For those six years, estimates have to be scaled down by 0.9-1.5 mm a year.

That mean in more recent years the rate of sea-level rise has actually increased rather than declined, according to the paper, led by Christopher Watson of the University of Tasmania, Australia.

The acceleration "is higher than the observed twentieth-century acceleration but in reasonable agreement with an accelerating contribution from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets over this period," the team said.

It is also consistent with the IPCC's projections for an additional 0.07 mm rise in the early decades of the 21st century, they added.

The IPCC projected that the global mean sea level would rise by between 40 and 63 cm by the end of this century, depending on how much heat-trapping carbon gases are emitted.

These figures do not include margin of error. At the top end of the range, the 63 cm could be as high as 82 cm.

Ocean rise has huge implications for the hundreds of millions of people who are coastal dwellers.

Their cities could be threatened by ground erosion, flooding and storm surges, and their groundwater imperilled by saltwater intrusion.

But it is also one of the most vexed questions in climate science, given the many uncertainties.

Computer models have to try to estimate how much of the rise is due to thermal expansion -- warming of the water -- or to runoff from ice sheets, glaciers or permafrost.

They also have to calculate the extreme time it takes for a vast body of water to respond to temperature change.

The IPCC said the loss of Greenland's ice sheet had probably increased from 34 billion tonnes per year in the decade to 2001 to 215 billion tonnes a year over the following decade.

In Antarctica, the rate of loss likely increased from 30 billion tonnes a year to 147 billion tonnes a year over the same timescale.

---

Credit: AFP/IPCC

Sea-Level Rise Is Accelerating Due To Faster Antarctic Ice Melt

Sea-Level Rise Is Accelerating Due To Faster Antarctic Ice Melt....

Arctic OffShore Drilling

Shell Plans To Tow Oil Rig To Seattle Despite Mayor's Warning. A giant floating oil rig currently anchored off Port Angeles, Washington, will be towed to <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=seattle&amp;cvid=449880354996454baa05257dcf6281d0&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Seattle</a> this week despite the Seattle mayor's assertion that the Port of Seattle can't host the rig until it gets a new land-use permit, a Royal Dutch Shell spokesman said Monday.
In an email, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said the 400-foot-long Polar Pioneer was scheduled to arrive at the Port of Seattle's Terminal 5 "later in the week" to prepare for planned exploration in the Arctic Ocean.
Protesters in kayaks have promised to challenge the rig.
Smith said his company believes its arrangements to use the terminal are valid and disagrees with Seattle's interpretation. Shell Plans To Tow Oil Rig To Seattle Despite Mayor's Warning
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has urged the port to reconsider its two-year, $13 million lease with Foss Maritime, a company whose client is Shell.
"This is an opportunity for the port and all of us to make a bold statement about how oil companies contribute to climate change, oil spills and other environmental disasters - and reject this short-term lease," Murray said earlier.
Murray spokesmen did not immediately return Associated Press calls and emails seeking comment Monday evening.
The mayor "expects the Port of Seattle to obtain all required city permits for Terminal 5," Murray spokesman Jason Kelly told the Peninsula Daily News in response to Shell's latest announcement.
The Seattle City Council on Monday approved a resolution encouraging the Port of Seattle to reconsider the rig-hosting deal.
"None of the parties involved, including Foss and the Port of Seattle, share the city's interpretation of how T5 can be used," Shell spokesman Smith said in his email. "Furthermore, we view our lease and the supporting contract Foss has with the Port as valid."
Port commissioners planned to take up the lease issue at a meeting Tuesday.
The Polar Pioneer is one of two drill rigs Shell plans to use this summer for exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast. Smith said the second rig, the Noble Discoverer, was headed for the Port of Everett, Washington.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on Monday approved a multi-year Chukchi exploration plan for Shell.
Shell must still obtain other permits from state and federal agencies, including one to drill from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Both BOEM and BSEE are agencies of the U.S. Department of Interior. The company must also obtain government opinions that find Shell can comply with terms and conditions of the Endangered Species Act.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acted after reviewing thousands of comments from the public, Alaska Native organizations and state and federal agencies.
© 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Shell Plans To Tow Oil Rig To Seattle Despite Mayor's Warning

Shell Plans To Tow Oil Rig To Seattle Despite Mayor's...

Expansion Of Cattle Pastures Destroys Huge Swaths Of Rainforest. Expansion of cattle pastures has led to the destruction of huge swaths of rain forest in Brazil, home to the world's largest herd of commercial beef cattle. But a new study led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Holly Gibbs shows that market-driven "zero deforestation agreements" have dramatically influenced the behavior of ranchers and the slaughterhouses to which they sell.

Publishing today [May 12, 2015] in the journal Conservation Letters, the research team - including other UW-Madison scientists, the National Wildlife Federation, and IMAZON Amazon Institute of People and the Environment -- is the first to evaluate the impacts of these agreements, which are aimed at curbing the destruction of rain forests in Brazil.

The team found that these zero deforestation agreements prompted ranchers to swiftly register their properties in an environmental registry, led slaughterhouses to actively block purchases from ranches with recent deforestation, and saw lower deforestation rates among supplying ranches.

"We show that concurrent public and private supply-chain pressures could be a game changer, and help to finally break the link between deforestation and beef production," says Gibbs, a professor of geography and environmental studies in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment.

However, the study also found that challenges remain to achieve zero-deforestation for beef production. Gibbs suggests that further investment by the beef industry and the Brazilian government to improve the agreements would pay high dividends for forest conservation.

Historically, expansion of cattle pastures has driven deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, where these pastures cover about two-thirds of all the deforested land. The state of Para, where the study was based, has the largest cattle herd in the Amazon biome.

In 2009, under concurrent pressure from Greenpeace-Brazil and the federal prosecutor's office in Para, the region's largest slaughterhouse owners publicly committed to buy cattle only from those ranchers who ceased clearing rain forests and who registered their properties with Brazil's rural environmental registry.

The three largest companies -- JBS, Marfrig, and Minerva -- also vowed to set up monitoring systems to track deforestation on their supplying properties.

Gibbs and her team focused on JBS, the world's largest meatpacking company, and began by mapping the locations and land use histories of every cattle ranch that sold to JBS, before the agreements and after. They also interviewed ranchers to gain on-the-ground perspective about the changes they were or were not making following the agreements, and used rigorous statistical and spatial analysis to track changes in rancher and slaughterhouse behavior.

They found the agreements rapidly incentivized the company's supplying ranchers to register their land, as mandated by a state law in 2006. Prior to the agreements, only 2 percent of JBS' suppliers had registered their properties. However, 60 percent were registered within the first five months of the zero-deforestation agreements and by 2013, nearly all suppliers were registered.

In fact, JBS suppliers registered their properties two to three years sooner than neighboring properties that did not sell to JBS. Importantly, interviews with these suppliers revealed that 85 percent did so in order to continue selling to the company.

Additionally, Gibbs' team found clear evidence that slaughterhouses actively blocked ranches with deforestation, in sharp contrast to their practices before the agreement. For instance, the study found that before 2009, nearly 4 in 10 of JBS's direct suppliers had recent deforestation and by 2013, this number dropped to fewer than 4 in 100.

In response to these market signals, the supplying ranchers that sold to JBS after the agreements also dramatically reduced their deforestation overall and cleared only half as much rainforest as the properties JBS stopped buying from following the agreement.

"Public enforcement of environmental laws is a formidable task in the Brazilian Amazon, which covers an area six times the size of Texas," says Gibbs. "But these market-based interventions are leading to rapid changes in the beef industry within a period of months, even in very remote areas."

While these are important and encouraging results, Gibbs says much work remains to be done, since many ranchers are able to bypass the agreements. For example, the study found that slaughterhouses currently only monitor the fattening ranches from which they directly buy.

"In Brazil, cows are moved around to multiple farms before they reach the final fattening farm that sells directly to the slaughterhouse," says Gibbs.

Cattle can be calved, reared, and fattened on properties with illegal deforestation and then simply moved to another "clean" farm -- one without deforestation -- just prior to sale to JBS. Though the cattle may have spent a significant portion of their lives on farms with recent deforestation, the final ranch supplying JBS is still compliant with the agreements. This "laundering," Gibbs says, can be a shell game.

Ranchers may also bypass the agreements by selling to one of the many slaughterhouses that do not monitor their supplying properties, presenting another challenge to reducing deforestation in the beef industry.

Paulo Barreto, senior researcher at IMAZON and co-author of the paper, says the agreements need three developments to reach their full potential: First, they should involve all ranches in the cattle supply chain, including the ones specialized in calving and rearing. Second, the entire meatpacking industry should monitor its suppliers. Third, the <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/plan-manage-wild-horses/">government</a> should increase the quality and transparency of public information used by private companies to enforce the agreements. Expansion Of Cattle Pastures Destroys Huge Swaths Of Rainforest

Gibbs is encouraged by the findings and the potential for industry to help drive change through such market-driven agreements. She has observed what she calls "a gradual sea change," which has gained momentum over the last year or two.

For instance, another research study she recently published in Science describes the impact of an agreement brought about with support from major retailers, like Walmart and McDonald's, to stop buying from producers in the Brazilian Amazon that clear tropical rain forest to grow soy.

"Every few weeks we see a major global corporation come forward and commit to removing deforestation from their supply chain," says Gibbs. "These multinational companies have long profited from the exploitation of tropical forests, but they're now at the forefront of an environmental movement to reduce the deforestation caused by agricultural expansion."

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<a href="http://www.wisc.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Wisconsin-Madison</a>

Expansion Of Cattle Pastures Destroys Huge Swaths Of Rainforest

Expansion Of Cattle Pastures Destroys Huge Swaths Of Rainforest. Expansion...

Oil Train Derailment North Dakota

Oil Industry Challenges Law Meant To Stop Train Explosions. The U.S. oil industry has filed a court challenge to new rules aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic accidents involving crude moved by rail, following a string of fiery derailments in recent years.
The American Petroleum Institute petition to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., would set aside a requirement for improvements to railroad tank cars that are known to fail during accidents.
API spokesman Brian Straessle said the politically influential trade group supports better tank cars but companies need more time to get them on the tracks. Oil Industry Challenges Law Meant To Stop Train Explosions
"We definitely support upgrades to the fleet," Straessle said. "It's a matter of timing."
At least 24 oil trains have been involved in major fires or derailments over the past decade in the U.S. and Canada, including a 2013 accident in Quebec that killed 47 people. The latest derailment came last week, when a train carrying crude from the Bakken region derailed and caught fire in central <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=north+dakota&amp;cvid=0f255fe40cbb4176b093b6854b4ab0e7&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">North Dakota</a>, forcing the evacuation of a small town.
The Department of Transportation rules unveiled May 1 call for an estimated 43,000 cars that primarily haul crude to be phased out of retrofitted by 2020. Similar improvements to cars primarily carrying ethanol must be completed by 2023.
Transportation Department spokeswoman Suzi Emmerling said the rules will make crude transportation safer.
"We believe the rule will stand up to challenge in court and remain hopeful that industries impacted by these changes will accept their safety obligations and follow the new regulations," she said.
The petition filed late Monday also asks the court to set aside a requirement for advanced braking systems on fuel-hauling trains. The oil industry contends the brakes are unproven and would be too costly. <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/unhealthy-foods-spoil-the-benefits-of-a-mediterranean-diet/">Oil</a> Industry Challenges Law Meant To Stop Train Explosions
The braking rule has drawn similar objections from the rail industry, which is considering its own legal challenge to the rule, said Ed Greenberg, spokesman for Association of American Railroads.
Railroads also have concerns about tank cars, but they are the opposite of the oil industry's worries. Railroads want the cars - many of which are owned by oil companies - to be fitted with "thermal blankets" that wrap around the tank to prevent fires from spreading during a derailment.
Another challenge to the rules could come from environmental groups and safety advocates who say the deadlines set by the Transportation Department are not fast enough.
The Sierra Club and Forest Ethics are among the groups considering a court appeal or an administrative request for transportation officials to reconsider the May 1 rule, said Kristen Boyles, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice.
Also of concern is a provision exempting trains with fewer than 35 tank cars from the tougher construction requirement.
"You could have 34 crude oil cars on a train and none of them would have to meet the news standards," Boyles said.
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Oil Industry Challenges Law Meant To Stop Train Explosions

Oil Industry Challenges Law Meant To Stop Train Explosions. The...

Michigan And Enbridge Energy Reach Deal Over 2010 Oil Spill. A company responsible for one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history will restore or create 300 acres of wetlands as part of a sweeping agreement to improve the Kalamazoo River watershed in southwestern Michigan, state officials said.
A settlement between the state and Enbridge Energy filed in Calhoun County court Tuesday, nearly five years after a broken pipeline released more than 800,000 gallons of oil, requires the company to continue to monitor the impacts of the spill on the environment. The company also agreed to spend $75 million, much of it on various projects, including a dam removal and improved access to boating and fishing on the river. Some have been finished.
Those projects include 300 acres of wetlands valued at $30 million. Wetlands are considered to be crucial in a watershed, serving as nature's filter in absorbing and releasing water and providing habitat to fish and wildlife.
"That's huge," said Nicole Zacharda, an enforcement specialist at the Department of Environmental Quality. "They have to be within the Kalamazoo River watershed so that we keep the benefits in the same area where the injuries occurred."
The improvements are on top of Enbridge's costs directly related to the spill, which have been pegged at more than $1 billion. A pipeline ruptured in July 2010, spoiling approximately 40 miles of the Kalamazoo River and Talmadge Creek. The line runs through Michigan and carries oil between Ontario, Canada, and Griffith, Indiana.
"Everyone has this image of a river coated with oil. We've come a long way," said Mark DuCharme of DEQ's remediation division as he guided reporters on the river last week.
Indeed, there was no sign of oil on the surface during the two-hour paddle. Feisty smallmouth bass broke the surface. A blue heron glided shore to shore under the sun, and turtles warmed themselves on fallen trees.
"You're not seeing it, but we do know there's oil left in the system," DuCharme said. "It's left in the banks at some spots. It's left in the bottom of the river. But it's a little bit of oil. It truly is residual. ... You're not going to see a lot of heavy equipment out here anymore."Michigan And Enbridge Energy Reach Deal Over 2010 Oil Spill
He stopped his kayak at a wetland and shoved his paddle into the ground. A narrow sheen hit the surface, indicating a pocket of oil. DuCharme said there are no plans to excavate the site because digging up the wetland would do more harm than good. There are other similar examples in the watershed.
"That's what we're talking about when we're talking about residual oil," he said.
The agreement requires Enbridge to file monthly progress reports on cleanup and monitoring activities. It also is paying $12 million to reimburse the state for legal costs and the expense of overseeing cleanup and restoration.
"We realize some groups will jump on this settlement and say it looks small - like more money means more justice," DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel said. "This settlement is huge, because while a few million more to the state's General Fund wouldn't do a thing to help improve the river, this settlement specifically focuses (on) creating a healthier, more accessible waterway."
---
Follow Ed White at <a href="http://twitter.com/edwhiteap" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://twitter.com/edwhiteap</a>
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Michigan And Enbridge Energy Reach Deal Over 2010 Oil Spill

Michigan And Enbridge Energy Reach Deal Over 2010 Oil Spill....

Pope Francis: God Will Judge Those Who Don't Care For Earth. Pope Francis warned the rich and powerful on Tuesday that God will judge them on whether they fed the poor and cared for the Earth, his latest exhortation on the environment ahead of his eagerly-awaited encyclical on climate change and its effects on the world's most vulnerable. Pope Francis: God Will Judge Those Who Don't Care For Earth
Francis delivered the warning during a Mass for the Vatican's Caritas Internationalis charity.
In his homily, Francis said the planet has enough food to feed the world but "it seems that there is a lack of willingness to share it with everyone."
"We must do what we can so that everyone has something to eat. But we must also remind the powerful of the<a href="http://www.earth.com/video/the-largest-collection-of-earth-scientists-on-the-planet/"> Earth</a> that God will call them to judgment one day," he said. "And there it will be revealed if they really tried to provide for him in every person, and if they did what they could to preserve the environment so that it could produce this food."
No papal document in recent times has produced as much anticipation or anxiety as Francis' encyclical, which is expected next month. Environmentalists are thrilled that Francis is lending his moral authority to provide an ethical foundation for action to stem climate change. Conservatives, including many Christians, have criticized Francis for wading into the politically charged climate debate.
On Tuesday, one of Francis' key advisers, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, said he was stunned by the complaints he had heard during a trip to the United States over a papal document that hasn't even been published yet. He accused those fueling it of an ideology "that is very strongly linked to a vision of capitalism that doesn't want to renounce damaging the environment for the sake of profits."
Francis has said global warming is "mostly" man-made and that humanity has a moral duty to stop it.
---
Follow Nicole Winfield at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/nwinfield" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.twitter.com/nwinfield</a>
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Pope Francis: God Will Judge Those Who Don't Care For Earth

Pope Francis: God Will Judge Those Who Don't Care For...

House Votes To Block EPA Clean Water Act Rules. House Republicans on Tuesday voted to block government rules that would clarify which streams, tributaries and wetlands should be protected from pollution and development under the Clean Water Act.
The rules proposed last year by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have fueled political anger in the country's heartland, becoming a top issue of concern for many farmers and landowners who say there are already too many government regulations affecting their businesses. House Votes To Block EPA Clean Water Act Rules
The House bill, approved 261-155, would force the EPA to withdraw the rules and further consult with state and local officials before rewriting it. The White House has threatened to veto the legislation.
The EPA says its water rules simply clarify - and don't expand - what smaller bodies of water are regulated under the Clean Water Act. Administrator Gina McCarthy says one out of three Americans gets their drinking water from sources that aren't clearly protected, and the rules would make sure those waters aren't polluted.
Republican Rep. Bill Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said he believes the proposed EPA and Army Corps rules are "purposely vague" and that they would expand the government's authority over these small bodies of water, despite what the agency says.
"Not all waters need to be subject to federal jurisdiction," Shuster said
EPA officials have acknowledged they may not have written the proposal clearly enough, and said final rules expected in the coming months will better define which waters would fall under the law.
"I want to tell you up front that I wish we had done a better job of rolling out our clean water rule," McCarthy told the National Farmers Union in March.
The agency says the rules are necessary to make clear which waters are regulated under the Clean Water Act in the wake of decades-long uncertainty and two U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the issue. The 2001 and 2006 decisions limited regulators' reach but left unclear the scope of authority over some small waterways, like those that flow intermittently.
Democrats said blocking the rules could mean even more uncertainty for landowners who don't know if waters on their land are regulated. They said the GOP bill is premature because the EPA and Army Corps have not yet released the revised, final version of the rules.
"We're being asked to vote on killing something that nobody has read," said Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon.
Across the Capitol, several senators introduced a bill last month that would lay out what bodies of water should be covered under the rules and force the EPA to rewrite them by the end of next year. Sponsors included Democrats who have heard from their constituents on the proposal and said it is aggravating longstanding trust issues between rural areas and the federal government.
"It's the perfect example of the disconnect between Washington and rural areas," said Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly of the rules. Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who also backs the Senate bill, says the water rule is the number one issue she hears about from farmers.
Broadly, the EPA's proposed rules would assert federal regulatory authority over streams, tributaries, wetlands and other flowing waters that significantly affect other protected waters downstream. That means landowners would have to obtain permits for practices or development that may pollute or destroy the waters.
"We're making a targeted effort to protect the waters that matter most," McCarthy told the National Farmers Union audience.
Farm groups are particularly concerned over what they say is an overly broad definition of tributary and whether common farm ditches would be regulated. EPA says it would only regulate farm ditches that are constructed through wetlands or streams and flow year-round.
The EPA has been working to clear up misconceptions, putting to rest rumors that puddles in your back yard would be regulated, for example. Farming practices that are currently exempted from the Clean Water Act - plowing, seeding and minor drainage, among other things - will continue to be exempted.
Many landowners aren't swayed.
Missouri rancher David Luker says he's already spent thousands of dollars trying to comply with the Clean Water Act because several shallow streams run through his farm. "It seems like you can't do anything anymore without some agency being in control or having oversight over what you are doing," Luker says.
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House Votes To Block EPA Clean Water Act Rules

House Votes To Block EPA Clean Water Act Rules. House...

Microbes Serve As Markers For Environmental Contamination. ENIGMA study shows natural bacterial communities as effective geochemical biosensors

First there were canaries in coal mines, now there are microbes at nuclear waste sites, oil spills and other environmental contamination. A multi-institutional team of more than 30 scientists has found that statistical analysis of DNA from natural microbial communities can be used to accurately identify environmental contaminants and serve as quantitative geochemical biosensors. This study was sponsored by ENIGMA, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science "Scientific Focus Area Program" based at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

"Changes induced in the natural microbial community structure by contaminants lasts long after the contaminants themselves have become undetectable," says Terry Hazen, an internationally recognized authority on microbial ecology who led the research. "This means the DNA of these microbial communities can be used as a forensic tool for measuring anthropogenic effects on the environment."

Hazen, who holds joint appointments with DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, is the corresponding author of a paper detailing the results of this ENIGMA study in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The paper is titled "Natural Bacterial Communities Serve as Quantitative Geochemical Biosensors." For a complete list of authors go here.

For this study, the ENIGMA collaborators identified the most independent and interesting groundwater well clusters from 25 years of monitoring data collected at the Bear Creek watershed in Oak Ridge. This watershed was a crucial site for the early development of nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project and harbors spectacular geochemical gradients. The collaborators then collected a large number of microbial DNA samples from the identified wells in combination with 28 other physical/chemical characteristics.

"The wells we sampled typically contain a high number of particulates in the groundwater, thus causing the filters we collected DNA on to clog easily," says Andrea Rocha, a post-doctoral associate in Hazen's research group, who spent three months collecting samples from the watershed. "We had to change our filters each time they clogged until we obtained our required four liters of groundwater. Sometimes this meant changing filters five to six times for one well."

Analysis of the DNA data from the collected groundwater samples was carried out via a technique called "supervised machine-learning," which the ENIGMA team applied to high-throughput DNA sequencing data.

"Because microbial communities continuously sense and respond to their environments, they form a ubiquitous environmental surveillance network that can be inexpensively digitized through DNA sequencing," Hazen says. "Our idea was to determine whether and how information encoded in bacterial communities might be tapped to quantitatively characterize the environment."

While previous research demonstrated that specific proteins or whole bacterial cells could be used as biosensors to translate environmental signals into machine-readable data, the focus of the ENIGMA study was on the integration of information gathered from native bacterial communities containing billions of cells and encompassing thousands of taxonomic groups.

With just the sequencing data from the 16S rRNA gene alone, the ENIGMA team was able to quantitatively produce "a rich catalogue of 26 geochemical features" from 93 groundwater wells with highly differing geochemistry characteristics. These features were then used to predict contamination. The accuracy for predicting uranium contamination of the groundwater was about 88-percent, and the accuracy for predicting nitrate contamination was about 73-percent.

"Our work shows that knowing what bacteria are present allows us to infer something about the current or past chemistry of a site," says Eric Alm, an MIT microbiologist and one of the principal investigators on this project. "The next big challenge will be to understand why different bacteria are associated with different environmental conditions."

As human populations continue to grow and the industrialization of developing nations continues to expand, the impact of human activity on the environment is only going to intensify. Measuring the causes and consequences of these impacts is a challenge that science must meet. The ENIGMA project demonstrates one path towards meeting this objective.

"It takes an integrated team to tackle a large problem like this," says Paul Adams, the SFA Laboratory Research Manager for ENIGMA. "The work with these natural microbial communities highlights what can be achieved through interdisciplinary research that harnesses ENIGMA's scientific expertise in field sampling, high throughput sequencing, and computational analysis."

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<a href="http://www.lbl.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory</a>

Microbes Serve As Markers For Environmental Contamination

Microbes Serve As Markers For Environmental Contamination. ENIGMA study shows...

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing it with probiotics and prebiotics, aiming to create a treat that satisfies cravings while supporting gut health. 



The challenge lies in maintaining chocolate's beloved texture and flavor while adding health benefits.



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Probiotics - beneficial microbes that balance gut bacteria and aid digestion - are typically fragile and can be destroyed by stomach acid or processing. 



Prebiotics act as food for these microbes, helping them thrive. Together, they form "synbiotics," a powerful health combination.



Researchers Smriti Gaur and Shubhi Singh from India's Jaypee Institute of Information Technology took an innovative approach, using natural prebiotics like corn and honey instead of complex processing methods. 



They created five chocolate varieties: a control and four synbiotic versions containing different combinations of prebiotics, probiotics (Lactobacillus strains), and flavor enhancers (cinnamon or orange).



Laboratory simulations of human digestion showed the probiotics remained viable for over five hours, suggesting they could survive long enough to benefit gut health.



Taste tests were positive, with researchers particularly enjoying the orange-flavored variety, describing it as having "vibrant citrus notes" complementing the "rich cocoa" with a "luxurious" texture.



This research represents just the beginning. With further refinement of strains, textures, and flavors, chocolate could evolve beyond mere indulgence to become a functional food that nourishes while it delights.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.4c00741" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ACS Food Science &amp; Technology</a>.

Is chocolate the next nutritional powerhouse?

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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How does salt makes things taste better?

[sendtonews key="X0f6OHYoI4-2310561-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Santiago, Chile in South America

[sendtonews key="JRaP49ISmm-2357509-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

[sendtonews key="e4ZG0Jawp3-2374785-12187" type="single"] Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have created...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

[sendtonews key="qjvhBOBnY8-2426650-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

[sendtonews key="oL4FnPTGCV-2384527-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

[sendtonews key="f8fukm28Vz-2491833-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

[sendtonews key="0879czfG3k-1785905-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How the immune system responds to injury

[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Stowers...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

[sendtonews key="3UUsNkFOuS-2487333-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

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