Search Results for: Ocean

Theory could result in faster artificial muscles

Robots, both large and micro, can potentially go wherever it’s too hot, cold, dangerous, small or remote for people to perform any number of important tasks, from repairing leaking water mains to stitching blood vessels together.

Now MIT researchers, led by Professor Sidney Yip, have proposed a new theory that might eliminate one obstacle to those goals – the limited speed and control of the “artificial muscles” that perf

After five years of being the world’s largest free-floating object, the B-15A iceberg has finally broken up off Antarctica’s Cape Adare.

ESA’s Envisat satellite’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) is sensitive to ice, and has been tracking the movement of the drifting ice object since the beginning of this year. Its latest imagery reveals the bottle-shaped iceberg split into nine knife-shaped icebergs and a myriad of smaller pieces on 27-28 October,

In searching for ways to counteract the greenhouse effect, some scientists have proposed capturing the culprit—carbon dioxide—as it is emitted from power plants, then liquefying the gas and injecting it into the ocean. But there are pitfalls in that plan.

The carbon dioxide can rise toward the surface, turn into gas bubbles and vent to the atmosphere, defeating the purpose of the whole grand scheme. Even worse, if the liquid-to-gas conversion happens suddenly, the gas can bubbl

Scientists at Oregon State University have successfully cultured in a laboratory a microorganism with a gene for an alternate form of photochemistry – an advance that may ultimately help shed light on the ecology of the world’s oceans.

The microorganism is SAR11, the smallest free living cell known and probably the most abundant organism in the seas. By being able for the first time to study the SAR11 “proteorhodopsin” gene in a laboratory, researchers will be able to better

Researchers have utilised more than a decade’s worth of data from radar altimeters on ESA’s ERS satellites to produce the most detailed picture yet of thickness changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet.

A Norwegian-led team used the ERS data to measure elevation changes in the Greenland Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2003, finding recent growth in the interior sections estimated at around six centimetres per year during the study period. The research is due to be published by Sci

The Marine Board of the European Science Foundation (ESF) has recently established a Working Group that will summarise current observations and identify possible future impacts of climate change in European marine waters. The Group will identify future needs for marine monitoring and R&D at both European and regional scales.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that effects of climate change (such as changes in water temperature, storm intensity, wave height, ocean currents and sea lev