Journal Club

Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs

Category Archives: Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

Journal Club: Ocean wave power generator gets boost from optics insights

Posted on September 24, 2018 by Adam Mann

Engineers have long dreamed of tapping into the vast quantities of renewable energy available in the motion of ocean waves, but designing apparatuses to harness such power efficiently has so far proven difficult. Borrowing a technique from optical physics, a … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Highly-detailed solar wind observations may help explain sun’s mysteries

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Adam Mann

The solar wind—a stream of charged particles blowing off the sun’s surface—affects the entire solar system. Yet its behavior remains largely enigmatic. Now a new effort has provided the most detailed long-term measurements ever made of the solar wind, helping … Continue reading →

Categories: Astronomy | Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Journal Club | Tagged heliophysics, magnetosphere, NASA, Parker Solar Probe, solar wind, space weather, sun | Leave a comment

Journal Club: Researchers may’ve finally solved mystery of crater ray formation

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Adam Mann

Look carefully at the full moon and you’ll see bright skinny streaks extending from large lunar craters. These are ejecta rays, spoke-like lines that seem to shoot from the circular impact site, a vivid testament to ancient explosions. But scientists … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Cooler temperatures might make some mosquitoes better dengue spreaders

Posted on October 20, 2017 by Amber Dance

Migrating mosquitoes that carry diseases from the tropics to cooler climes might be better at spreading disease in their new, cooler home, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Researchers from Yale University in … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Aerosols, global warming may dampen cyclone activity in some regions

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Charles Choi

A recent study suggests that human activity may have decreased the number of tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific. A separate study predicts that the total number of intense tropical cyclones will decrease globally in the decades to come, … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Wheat’s molecular response to full sun exposure could suggest ways to increase yield

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Carrie Arnold

A recent study points to novel ways of improving crop yields and food production by elucidating how long it takes for wheat to return to full photosynthesis when making the transition from shade to sun exposure. The Green Revolution in … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Study of volcanic gases offers new fundamental insights into the Earth’s carbon cycle

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Leslie Willoughby

To understand how the planet’s climate will evolve and has evolved over geologic time, scientists need to understand the Earth’s carbon cycle. In work recently published in Science, researchers offer new insights into that cycle, upending calculations about just how … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Antarctic cyanobacteria show no changes due to warming—yet

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Amber Dance

Captain Robert Scott’s Antarctic Discovery expedition took place over 100 years ago—and yet its participants recently racked up another contribution to science. Thanks to the samples of bacterial mats they collected from polar ponds—samples that were pressed, dried, and stored … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Geometry of Greenland’s glaciers helps predict future ice melt

Posted on April 28, 2017 by Amber Dance

The changing climate is just one factor contributing to the melting and thinning of the slow-moving rivers of ice that terminate in spots such as Greenland’s fjords. Each glacier’s geometry—including its thickness and how steeply it flows—also makes a difference. … Continue reading →

Categories: Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Environmental Sciences | Journal Club | Tagged climate change, Greenland, ice sheet, iceberg | Leave a comment

Journal Club: In some cases, water management practices exacerbated California drought, according to model

Posted on March 24, 2017 by Danielle Venton

Many of California’s reservoirs are now fuller than they’ve been in years thanks to an extraordinarily wet winter. Yet drought conditions are likely to return based on historical cycles, even without accounting for climate change. And California’s depleted groundwater is … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Copper offers novel clues to ancient Earth’s “Great Oxidation Event”

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Charles Choi

Roughly 2.4 billion years ago, oxygen gas began suffusing Earth’s atmosphere in what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event. Much remains uncertain about this critical moment in history, but now researchers find that copper in ancient sediments could help track … Continue reading →

Categories: Chemistry | Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Journal Club | Tagged atmosphere, copper, great oxidation event, oxygen | Leave a comment