Tag: "gases" at biology news

Buying Time Through Hibernation on Demand

...n through oxygen deprivation caused by exposure to gases such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. Known as oxygen mimetics, these chemicals are very similar to oxygen at the molecular level and so bind to many of the same receptor sites. As a result, they compete for and interfere with the body's abil...

U-M team recovers ancient whale in Egyptian desert

...n through oxygen deprivation caused by exposure to gases such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide. Known as oxygen mimetics, these chemicals are very similar to oxygen at the molecular level and so bind to many of the same receptor sites. As a result, they compete for and interfere with the body's abil...

Africa to take it on chin again with climate change

... warming consistent with an increase in greenhouse gases appears to be a factor in these expected 21st-cent...ocesses. This strengthens the case that greenhouse gases are involved, says Hurrell. In the Atlantic, natural variability affects ocean temperatures more str...

Hydrogen and methane provide raw energy for life at 'Lost City'

...hers publish for the first time findings about the gases produced at Lost City and the organisms that make their living off them. Both are so different from so-called black-smoker hydrothermal vents that they may provide a whole new avenue for looking for the earliest life on Earth and for signs of life on...

Grass makes environmentally friendly biofuel

...because they emit up to 90 percent less greenhouse gases than oil, coal and natural gas do. Furthermore, he says, grass is perennial, does not require fertilization and can be grown on marginal farmland. "Any mixture of grasses can be used, cut in mid- to late summer, left in the field to leach out minera...

Study of energy and health in Africa focuses spotlight on charcoal and forest management

...7 billion tons of carbon in the form of greenhouse gases to the environment. That's about 6 percent of the total expected greenhouse gases from the continent. The researchers conclude that "helping African nations make the transition to c...

Genetic discovery could lead to drought-resistant plants

...r mouths "shut" longer than usual, to avoid losing gases and water through evaporation. However, they must open their stomata at some point, both to pick up carbon dioxide needed for photosynthesis and to release oxygen back into the atmosphere. This new information will be important to plant breeders look...

Study uncovers dirty little secret: Soil emissions are much-bigger-than-expected component of air pollution

...itrogen oxides comprise a group of highly reactive gases containing nitrogen and oxygen in varying amounts. Besides producing ozone smog, they help form the dirty brown clouds that often hang over major cities, they contribute to acid rain and they play a role in global climate change. In addition to equa...

Errors in the measurement of global warming corrected

...g has partly resulted from a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The key to the error in climate change estimates lay in instrument design, according to this study. With exposed sensors, measurement taken in daylight read too warm, and while solar heating had a measurable impact on the earlier ...

Solution to 'legionella'

...ressure front that produces a decompression of the gases dissolved in the water. This wave front produces a luminous plasma around the bubbles, as well as high pressure and temperatures. These pressures and temperatures have two effects: on the one hand, they eliminate the circulating bacteria and, on the...

India's smoking gun: Dino-killing eruptions

...th - if they erupted and released climate-changing gases quickly enough. French and Indian geologists have now identified a 600-meter (2000-foot) thick portion of the lava that may have piled up in as little as 30,000 years - fast enough to have possibly caused a deadly global climate shift. "Our working ...

Breath of the dragon: ERS-2 and Envisat reveal impact of economic growth on China's air quality

...tor a significant number of key tropospheric trace gases including formaldehyde, methane, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide and dioxide," Burrows remembers. "Back when we were starting out, many people thought it would be impossible to get any useful results out of the troposphere. There are many importa...

Scientist measures role of science's coolest player: The snow

...edicted, should levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases double. "This was not just a what-if question," says Vavrus, whose work comes amidst mounting reports on the steady melt of Arctic ice. "I wanted to quantify the influence of global snow cover on the present-day climate because that has relevance f...

Tropical Atlantic cooling and African deforestation correlate to drought, report scientists

...al temperatures through the emission of greenhouse gases will likely strongly affect the African monsoon system in the future. "The weakening of the monsoon has a huge effect," says Weldeab, "resulting in shortages of harvests and hunger." As vegetation is cleared, the land loses its capacity to retain ...

Amazonian terra preta can transform poor soil into fertile

...d to prepare fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases, Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils. "The re...

GPSDB, the free Gene and Protein Synonyms DataBase

...d to prepare fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases, Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils. "The re...

Researchers reveal lung's unique innate immune system

...eola ?tiny air sacs in the lung where exchanges of gases between the respiratory and circulatory systems takes place ?are protected from invading microbes by the alveolar macrophage. Macrophages are white blood cells involved in the inflammatory response throughout the body, cells normally on the alert f...

Scientists find Antarctic ozone hole to recover later than expected

.... The ozone hole is caused by chlorine and bromine gases in the stratosphere, an upper layer of the atmosph...al conditions of the Antarctic stratosphere. Those gases come from human-produced chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons. "The Antarctic ozone hole is the p...

New MRI technique shows emphysema in asymptomatic smokers

...n believes that this new method of using polarized gases to study lung diseases will provide a clearer picture of the underlying mechanisms of poorly understood conditions like asthma and chronic pulmonary obstructive disease, leading to better treatments. ...

Atmospheric ozone recovering in mid-latitudes, report shows

...ude range - below the region where ozone-depleting gases derived from human activity are thought to cause ozone depletion - contribute about half of the overall-measured improvement, researchers said. "There is now widespread agreement in the scientific community that ozone is leveling off in the 18- to 2...

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