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The Hawaiian Islands represent a wide diversity of ecosystems and environments, including areas of breathtaking natural beauty as well as densely populated coastal cities. These unique environments are already changing under the influence of climate change from the effects of increasing temperatures, decreasing rainfall, rising seas, coastal erosion, land use and development changes, and increasing demands on our natural resources

(Phys.org) —Examination of one of the Almahata Sitta meteorites (aka, ALM-A, found in Sudan in 2008) by a team of space scientists working in Germany has revealed a volcanic past. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they dated the meteorite to just a few million years after our solar system was born and uncovered evidence that it suggests it was produced by volcanic activity.

The Russian news agency ITAR-TASS is claiming that Russian officials have confirmed that Russian cosmonauts have found sea plankton on the outside of the International Space Station. The news agency reports that the cosmonauts have also found traces of other organisms on the outside of the station as well.

When a colony of honeybees grows to about 4,000 members, it triggers an important first stage in its reproductive cycle: the building of a special type of comb used for rearing male reproductive, called drones. A team of experts from the Department of Neurobiology and Behaviour at Cornell University, led by Michael Smith, studied what starts the reproductive cycle of honeybee colonies

Researchers are reporting new discoveries about how militarization affects the general, civilian population, and the biggest positive impact is adequate sanitation and access to education. The research led by Steve Carlton-Ford, professor and head of the University of Cincinnati Sociology Department, was presented at the 109th meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco.

A convergence of factors is propelling a market rollout of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, according to a new study from the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. A key to hydrogen’s potential success is a new smart solution that clusters hydrogen fuel infrastructure in urban or regional networks, limiting initial costs and enabling an early market for the technology before committing to a full national deployment, suggests the study.

Leaf measurements are often critical in plant physiological and ecological studies, but traditional methods have been time consuming and sometimes destructive to plant samples. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed Easy Leaf Area—a free software written in an open-source programming language—to allow users to accurately measure leaf area from digital images in seconds.

That mountain lions have managed to survive at all in the Santa Monica Mountains of California—in the vicinity of the megacity of Los Angeles—is a testament to the resilience of wildlife, but researchers studying these large carnivorous cats now show in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on August 14 that the lions are also completely isolated, cut off from other populations by the freeway. According to the researchers’ analyses, only one young mountain lion successfully dispersed into the Santa Monica Mountains in a decade.

From research stations drifting on ice floes to high-tech aircraft radar, scientists have been tracking the depth of snow that accumulates on Arctic sea ice for almost a century. Now that people are more concerned than ever about what is happening at the poles, research led by the University of Washington and NASA confirms that snow has thinned significantly in the Arctic, particularly on sea ice in western waters near Alaska.

Wrapping wound dressings around fingers and toes can be tricky, but for burn victims, guarding them against infection is critical. Today, scientists are reporting the development of novel, ultrathin coatings called nanosheets that can cling to the body’s most difficult-to-protect contours and keep bacteria at bay.