Individual category feeds are available from each category page

An Unsettled Debate About the Chemistry of the Sun

In 2005, an astrophysicist came out with a new picture of the chemical composition of the sun. His calculations showed that the abundances of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and neon in the star—the most plentiful elements in it besides hydrogen and helium—were about half as high as researchers had previously worked out. The new values solved [...]

The Genetic Structure of Pacific Islanders

Because of their comprehensive nature, we believe the results of our autosomal microsatellite survey present a resolution to this issue with regard to human genetic relationships. The fact that the STRUCTURE cluster containing Micronesians, Samoans, and Maoris has a detectable signature only in Oceanic-speaking Melanesians and Taiwan Aborigines supports the position that an expansion of [...]

A global coal production forecast sees exhaustion of resource and fewer emissions

Based on economic and policy considerations that appear to be unconstrained by geophysics, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) generated forty carbon production and emissions scenarios. In this paper, we develop a base-case scenario for global coal production based on the physical multi-cycle Hubbert analysis of historical production data. Areas with large resources but [...]

Where the wild veggies are: Cultivated cucumber and melon originated in Asia and Australia

Taken together, the results argue that the common ancestor of cucumber and melon originated on the continent of Asia. Possible ancestral populations from which the domesticated forms derive have been localized in the Himalayas. The genetic diversity of the varieties of C. melo that occur in India and China is particularly striking. “Our data also [...]

Man-made global warming started with ancient mammoth hunters: study suggests

First, mammoth populations began to drop—both because of natural climate change as the planet emerged from the last ice age, and because of human hunting. Normally, mammoths would have grazed down any birch that grew, so the area stayed a grassland. But if the mammoths vanished, the birch could spread. In the cold of the [...]

A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis

Based on economic and policy considerations that appear to be unconstrained by geophysics, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) generated forty carbon production and emissions scenarios. In this paper, we develop a base-case scenario for global coal production based on the physical multi-cycle Hubbert analysis of historical production data. Areas with large resources but [...]

Quantifying Uncertainty in Estimation of Tropical Arthropod Species Richness

There is a bewildering range of estimates for the number of arthropods on Earth. Several measures are based on extrapolation from species specialized to tropical rain forest, each using specific assumptions and justifications. These approaches have not provided any sound measure of uncertainty associated with richness estimates. We present two models that account for parameter [...]