Research has shown that genes play an important role in educational achievement. A key question is the extent to which the same genes affect different academic subjects before and after controlling for general intelligence. The present study investigated genetic and environmental influences on, and links between, the various subjects of the age-16 UK-wide standardized GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examination results for 12,632 twins.

Relief of iron (Fe) limitation in the Southern Ocean during ice ages, with potentially increased carbon storage in the ocean, has been invoked as one driver of glacial–interglacial atmospheric CO2 cycles. Ice and marine sediment records demonstrate that atmospheric dust supply to the oceans increased by up to an order of magnitude during glacial intervals. However, poor constraints on soluble atmospheric Fe fluxes to the oceans limit assessment of the role of Fe in glacial–interglacial change.

Currently, little is known on how volcanic eruptions impact large-scale climate phenomena such as paleo-ITCZ position or South American summer monsoon behavior. In this paper, an analysis of observations and model simulations is employed to assess the influence of large volcanic eruptions on the climate of South America. This problem is considered both for historically recent volcanic episodes, for which more comprehensive global observations exist, as well as reconstructed volcanic events for the period 850 C.E.

The devastating flood episode (16–17 June 2013) at Kedarnath (Uttrakhand, India), caused a huge loss of lives and loss of physical/material wealth. To understand this catastrophic event, rainfall/convective data and associated climate meteorological parameters are investigated. A low-pressure zone with very high cloud cover (60–90 %) and relative humidity (70–100 %), associated with low (< 4 m s−1) wind velocity, are observed over the Kedarnath region during 15–17 June.

Governments should not meet existing conservation targets using the compensation that developers pay for damaging biodiversity, say Martine Maron and colleagues.

Original Source

Ecologists and space agencies must forge a global monitoring strategy, say Andrew K. Skidmore, Nathalie Pettorelli and colleagues.

They are 5 billion kilometres from the Sun in the dim, far-flung outskirts of the Solar System, but Pluto and its large moon Charon turn out to be astonishingly vital worlds. Images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, which flew within 12,500 kilometres of Pluto on 14 July, reveal frosty plains, soaring mountains and much more geological activity than anyone anticipated.

Original Source

An ecomorphodynamic model was developed to study how Avicennia marina mangroves influence channel network evolution in sandy tidal embayments. The model accounts for the effects of mangrove trees on tidal flow patterns and sediment dynamics. Mangrove growth is in turn controlled by hydrodynamic conditions. The presence of mangroves was found to enhance the initiation and branching of tidal channels, partly because the extra flow resistance in mangrove forests favours flow concentration, and thus sediment erosion in between vegetated areas.

The obesity epidemic in the U.S. has led to extensive research into potential contributing dietary factors, especially fat and fructose. Recently, increased consumption of soybean oil, which is rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), has been proposed to play a causal role in the epidemic. Here, we designed a series of four isocaloric diets (HFD, SO-HFD, F-HFD, F-SO-HFD) to investigate the effects of saturated versus unsaturated fat, as well as fructose, on obesity and diabetes.

Since the Mid-Holocene, some 5000 years ago, coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean have been vertically constrained by sea level. Contemporary sea-level rise is releasing these constraints, providing accommodation space for vertical reef expansion. Here, the researchers show that Porites microatolls, from reef-flat environments in Palau (western Pacific Ocean), are ‘keeping up’ with contemporary sea-level rise.