Using sophisticated airborne imaging and structural analysis, scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology mapped more than 40,000 termite mounds over 192 square miles in the African savanna. They found that their size and distribution is linked to vegetation and landscape patterns associated with annual rainfall. The results reveal how the savanna terrain has evolved and show how termite mounds can be used to predict ecological shifts from climate change.

By integrating satellite mapping, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys, scientists from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, with colleagues, have revealed the first high-resolution maps of carbon locked up in tropical forest vegetation and emitted by land-use practices. These new maps pave the way for accurate monitoring of carbon storage and emissions for the United Nations initiative on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Spanish version [5]

The innovative, educational, outreach program BioEYES [7] has now been adopted by Monash University and the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute. The down-under partnership program debuts this August. BioEYES is designed to foster an interest in and a love for science in elementary, middle, and high school students. Over the course of one week, students watch the transparent zebrafish, Danio rerio, grow from a single-celled zygote to a larval fish complete with a beating heart.

Superconductors are more efficient at carrying electricity than copper wires. But these materials have to be cooled below an extremely low, so-called transition temperature for electrical resistance to disappear. Researchers at the Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory, have unexpectedly found that the transition temperature can be induced under two different intense pressures in a three-layered bismuth oxide crystal. They believe this unusual two-step phenomena comes from competition of electronic behavior in different layers.

There are places in space where the gravitational tug between a planet and the Sun balance out, allowing other smaller bodies to remain stable called Lagrangian points. So-called Trojan asteroids have been found in some of these stable spots near Jupiter and Neptune. Now Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and Chad Trujillo have discovered the first Trojan asteroid in a difficult-to-detect stability region at Neptune—the Lagrangian L5 point.

Scientists have discovered a new window into the Earth's violent past. Geochemical evidence from volcanic rocks collected on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic suggests that beneath it lies a region of the Earth's mantle that has largely escaped the billions of years of melting and geological churning that has affected the rest of the planet. Researchers believe the discovery offers clues to the early chemical evolution of the Earth.

The private sector and an Austrian research institute are chipping in to help support one of the most widely used public biological databases in the world. Although the majority of funding continues to come from the National Science Foundation, The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) database is now receiving support from other organizations as well. Two corporations have recently signed on as TAIR sponsors: Dow AgroSciences and most recently Syngenta Biotechnology Inc.

The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) Corporation is pleased to announce that the University of Chicago has joined the partnership that will construct the 25-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a state of the art astronomical observatory. The GMT will be used to address fundamental questions in cosmology and astrophysics and to explore worlds around other stars.

Video Press Release [14]
Analysis of data from MESSENGER’s third and final flyby of Mercury in September 2009 has revealed evidence of younger volcanism on the innermost planet than previously recognized, new information about magnetic substorms, and the first observations of emission from an ionized species in Mercury’s very thin atmosphere or exosphere.