The vast fresh-water Amazon floodplain plays an important role in climate changes, biogeochemical fluxes, wetlands ecology and flood hazards. Yet, scientists really don’t know exactly how much water courses through the world’s largest river.
Do no harm. In the effort to manage the forest habitats of the endangered Indiana bat, naturalists must always, always, first consider the impact on this nocturnal mammal. Bats perform a vital ecological role, feeding entirely on flying insects; a single bat can consume thousands of mosquitoes each night.
The sea-ice melt that last summer opened the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic for the first time since satellite records began in 1978 may signal a significant climatic shift that has serious economic and ecological implications for wildlife, natural resources and world politics.
Ohio State University chemists and their colleagues have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it has an absorption spectrum that closely matches that of the solar spectrum, and it generates long-lived excited electrons that should allow solar cells to generate electricity more efficiently.
The stalwart computing power of the Ohio Supercomputer Center recently played an integral role in a groundbreaking discovery by Cornell University scientists.
Composite laminates — engineered materials made from two or more distinct properties — can be found everywhere, from asphalt-concrete roads to the shell of the space shuttle.
Rice serves as the staple food for more than half the world’s population, especially in tropical Latin America, and East, South and Southeast Asia. Additionally, rice is used in products such as straw and rope, paper, wine, crackers, beer, cosmetics, packing material − even toothpaste.
Using the high performance computing and support resources of the Ohio Supercomputer Center, Ohio State University Earth scientist Doug Alsdorf, Ph.D., and his colleagues successfully predicted flooding patterns for 5,000 square miles of the central Amazon floodplain.