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It comes as no surprise, therefore, when researchers announce as they did this past September that Arctic sea ice extent is still below normal, continuing a years-long downward trend, covering less and less of the north polar seas with a frozen crust. On the heels of that announcement, came another, a little more puzzling.  While Arctic sea ice was melting, Antarctic sea ice was at an all-time high.  In 2014, sea ice surrounding Antarctica covered more of the southern oceans than it has since satellite record began in the late 1970s.

Researchers from the University of Hawai’i (UH) and NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries today announced the discovery of an intact “ghost ship” in 2,000 feet of water nearly 20 miles off the coast of Oahu. Sitting upright, its solitary mast still standing and the ship’s wheel still in place, the hulk of the former cable ship Dickenson, later the USS Kailua, was found on the seabed last year on a maritime heritage submersible mission with the UH Hawai’i Undersea Research Laboratory’s (HURL) Terry Kerby and Drs

Unconventional oil and gas (UOG) operations combine directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to release natural gas from underground rock. Recent discussions have centered on potential air and water pollution from chemicals used in these processes and how it affects the more than 15 million Americans living within one mile of UOG operations

The rewards of corporate leadership accrue faster for men. Not only do women hold just one in nine of the executive and board positions in California’s top 400 public companies, an annual University of California, Davis, study shows that the women in top executive roles are not being promoted to the highest levels, and earn less than their male counterparts.

A rapid process of urbanisation and an expanding middle class with increasingly western tastes will keep energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in China at high levels over the next 20 years. However, changes are unfolding in China that offer promise and opportunities for cutting emissions and for promoting sustainable energy and climate policies.

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Germany has discovered samples of two types of carnivorous plants that apparently date from the Eocene, embedded in Baltic amber. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes the plant leaves and offers opinions on their possible ties to modern carnivorous plants.

David Schneider, a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, was interested in exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, but figured this kind of exercise as a home-based project was going to need expensive telescopes; he stumbled across a project at Ohio State University, where resourceful astronomers had figured out a way to spot exoplanets using a device with a lens designed for high-end cameras.

(Phys.org)—Researchers have set a new record for the quantum factorization of the largest number to date, 56,153, smashing the previous record of 143 that was set in 2012. They have shown that the exact same room-temperature nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiment used to factor 143 can actually factor an entire class of numbers, although this was not known until now.

The proteins associated with driving the cell shape changes that internalize the embryonic inner ear have been identified by Raj Ladher and colleagues from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology. “Our hope,” says Ladher, “is that by understanding the morphogenesis of the inner ear, clinicians will become more aware of what to look for in their diagnosis of otic developmental defects.”

According to paper published online November 20 in the Journal of Human Evolution, the age of the Lantian Homo erectus cranium from Gongwangling, Lantian County, Shaanxi Province, China, is likely half a million years older than previously thought. Earlier estimates dated this important fossil, which was found in 1964, to 1.15 million years ago.