First large-scale experiment shows fire whirls burn oil spills faster and cleaner than fire pools, proving their game-changing potential for ocean cleanups.

Microplastics and nanoplastics are now found everywhere on Earth, from ocean depths to agricultural soils and even inside the human body. Yet scientists still struggle to understand what these particles actually do once they enter living organisms. A new study proposes an innovative fluorescence-based strategy that could allow researchers to track microplastics in real time as they move, transform, and degrade inside biological systems.

In a recent paper published in Geology, scientists propose that certain kinds of wrinkle structures in sedimentary rock are the remnants of ancient microbial communites, similar to those found in deep ocean whale falls today. Geologists have long considered these wrinkle structures as physical in nature, formed by underwater landslides, because the deepsea environment wasn't thought to be hospitable to photosynthetic microbes. In their paper, the researchers demonstate how chemosynthetic microbes, which need no light to grow, could thrive in these environments and leave these wrinkles structures behind. 

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Although modern science has only been around for a few centuries, we’ve become quite adept at training students in the scientific method. But learning how to translate research insights into practical actions often isn’t part of a budding scientist’s curriculum.

A new 17-year study of loggerhead sea turtles nesting in Cabo Verde shows climate change having impacts that may threaten their long term survival. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and conservationists from NGO Associação Projeto Biodiversidade report that warming oceans are triggering earlier nesting in one of the world’s most important loggerhead turtle populations. Yet at the same time, declining ocean productivity is reducing how often females reproduce and how many eggs they lay.

The mechanisms underlying two important phenomena in the Archean—the emergence of continental crust and the presence of an exceptionally strong geomagnetic field—remain poorly understood. Notably, these two phenomena are temporally correlated, both intensified between ~3.5 and ~2.5 Ga, and declined rapidly at the end of the Archean. A recent study proposes that water-induced mantle overturn that originates from the magma ocean, provides a unified explanation for both the origin and co-evolution of Archean continents and the paleomagnetic field.

The new holistic monitoring system developed under the leadership of TU Graz measures boat waves with millimetre precision using satellite navigation data and sensors on buoys and for the first time allows investigations into the extent to which boat traffic, weather and other factors influence the ecosystem of lakes.