Journal Club

Highlighting recent, timely papers selected by Academy member labs

Category Archives: Environmental Sciences

Journal Club: Damaged reefs get quieter, causing fewer fish to hear their way home

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Carolyn Beans

A healthy coral reef creates quite the underwater racket. Reef croakers croak, damselfish woop-woop-woop, and clown fish sound thuds like a woodpecker at a tree. But a new study reports that climate-change related disturbances can turn down the volume … 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: 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: Engineered enzyme could streamline synthesis of nitrogen containing compounds

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Jessica P. Johnson

Researchers have re-engineered a bacterial enzyme to transform abundant alkanes into industrially important nitrogen-containing compounds that can be used to synthesize pharmaceuticals. In principle, the enzyme, now called P411CHA, could help streamline some methods for creating synthetic molecules, which often … Continue reading →

Journal Club: In a first, deep sea robots get a close look at giant larvaceans, a key player in the biological carbon pump

Posted on May 3, 2017 by Gayathri Vaidyanathan

Closer inspection of the giant larvacean, seen here in an undersea video taken by a remotely operated vehicle, could reveal clues about how the deep sea sequesters carbon. Image Credit: © 2017 MBARI In the deeps off Monteray Bay, Calif., … 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: Layer-cake chemistry offers up a cheap way to perform chemical tests

Posted on February 24, 2017 by Amber Dance

Sana Jahanshahi-Anbuhi started her study with a trip to the supermarket to buy Listerine breath strips, the sort that melt on your tongue in seconds. But the chemical engineering postdoc at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada wasn’t worried about bad … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Why do trees fix nitrogen in certain forests and not others? Model offers insights with big implications for the biosphere

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Charles Choi

Many trees can generate their own fertilizer from nitrogen in the air. But it remains a mystery as to why they grow where they do – for example, few grow in the nitrogen-poor soils of temperate forests but many thrive … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Maya altered their environment significantly, for better or worse

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Charles Choi

The ancient Maya once had a civilization in the Americas that stretched over an area the size of Texas. Now scientists detail a number of key ways the Maya left behind a lasting impact on the environment during the so-called … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Epigenetic marks may reveal how the environment affected ancient societies

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Charles Choi

Ancient DNA can shed light on the past in myriad ways — for instance, genes and mutations may reveal important adaptations or physiological changes. But gene-regulating molecules latched onto the DNA, known as epigenetic marks, may also reveal important clues. … Continue reading →