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Collapsing cliff reveals comet’s interior / Rosetta / Space Science / Our Activities / ESA
▻http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Collapsing_cliff_reveals_comet_s_interior

http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2017/03/collapsing_cliff/16865089-1-eng-GB/Collapsing_cliff_large_fb.gif

Rosetta scientists have made the first compelling link between an outburst of dust and gas and the collapse of a prominent cliff, which also exposed the pristine, icy interior of the comet.
[…]
The event also provided a unique opportunity to study how the pristine water-ice otherwise buried tens of metres inside the comet evolved as the exposed material turned to vapour over the following months.

Indeed, after the event, the exposed cliff face was calculated to be at least six times brighter than the overall average surface of the comet nucleus. By 26 December 2015 the brightness had faded by half, suggesting much of the water-ice had already vapourised by that time.

And by 6 August 2016, most of the new cliff face had faded back to the average, with only one large, brighter block remaining.

http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2017/03/comet_cliff_collapse_in_3d/16865348-1-eng-GB/Comet_cliff_collapse_in_3D.jpg

Points of Significance: Clustering : Nature Methods : Nature Research
▻http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v14/n6/full/nmeth.4299.html

#kmeans en #biologie

Huge Arctic report ups estimates of sea-level rise : Nature News & Comment
▻http://www.nature.com/news/huge-arctic-report-ups-estimates-of-sea-level-rise-1.21911

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.43893.1493388154!/image/GettyImages-664085452_web.jpg_gen/derivatives/nature_homepage/GettyImages-664085452_web.jpg

Le réchauffement de l’Arctique plus rapide et plus dévastateur que prévu | ICI.Radio-Canada.ca
▻http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1030107/rechauffement-climatique-arctique-fonte-changements-climat-meteo-sw

Certaines des grandes constatations du rapport :

L’océan #Arctique serait en grande partie libre de glaces pendant l’été d’ici 2030, ou même plus tôt.

Les #températures dans l’Arctique montent deux fois plus vite qu’ailleurs sur la planète. À l’automne 2016, les températures moyennes dépassaient les normes saisonnières de 6 degrés Celsius.

La fonte du #pergélisol, qui stocke environ 50 % du #carbone du monde, touche déjà l’infrastructure du Nord et pourrait rejeter des volumes importants de #méthane dans l’atmosphère.

Les ours polaires, les morses et les phoques, qui dépendent des glaces de la #banquise pour leur survie, connaissent de plus en plus de stress et de perturbations.

Les changements dans l’Arctique seraient à l’origine de changements météorologiques dans des régions aussi éloignées que le Sud-Est asiatique.

#climat #réchauffement

Migration induced by sea-level rise could reshape the US population landscape
▻http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3271.html
Estimated SLR [Sea Level Rise] net migrants (in-migrants minus out-migrants) for counties and core based statistical areas under the 1.8 m scenario and no adaptation.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nclimate3271-f1.jpg

It is likely that many communities will deploy a wide variety of adaptation measures, including sea walls, beach and marsh nourishment, pumps, or elevate homes and roads to protect both people and property, and IPCC reports have increasingly emphasized adaptation when discussing SLR. Global estimates of adaptive infrastructure for SLR could reach US$421 billion (2014 values) per year and could cost upwards of US$1.1 trillion in the US. However, the deployment of adaptation measures is driven by wealth for both cities and individuals.

[...] Florida could lose more than 2.5 million residents due to 1.8 m of SLR, while Texas could see nearly 1.5 million additional residents.

#climat #adaptation #migrations #relocation

Virus genomes reveal factors that spread and sustained the Ebola epidemic : Nature : Nature Research
▻http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature22040.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20170413&spMailingID=53838452&spUserID=MjI3

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/carousel/nature22040-sf2.jpg

Virus dispersal between administrative regions estimated using the GLM phylogeography model (see Methods). The arcs are between population centroids of each region, show directionality from the thin end to the thick end and are coloured…

#visualisation #ebola #réseaux #santé #épidémiologie

The massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet looks stable from above — but it’s a dangerously different story below.
▻http://www.nature.com/news/antarctica-s-sleeping-ice-giant-could-wake-soon-1.21808

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.43544.1491575043!/image/Antarctica-feature-graphic-13.04.17.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/Antarctica-feature-graphic-13.04.17.jpg

#antarctique #climat

Groundwater depletion embedded in international food trade : Nature : Nature Research
▻http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v543/n7647/full/nature21403.html

Recent hydrological modelling1 and Earth observations2, 3 have located and quantified alarming rates of groundwater depletion worldwide. This depletion is primarily due to water withdrawals for irrigation1, 2, 4, but its connection with the main driver of irrigation, global food consumption, has not yet been explored. Here we show that approximately eleven per cent of non-renewable groundwater use for irrigation is embedded in international food trade, of which two-thirds are exported by Pakistan, the USA and India alone. Our quantification of groundwater depletion embedded in the world’s food trade is based on a combination of global, crop-specific estimates of non-renewable groundwater abstraction and international food trade data. A vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries sourcing nearly all their staple crop imports from partners who deplete groundwater to produce these crops, highlighting risks for global food and water security. Some countries, such as the USA, Mexico, Iran and China, are particularly exposed to these risks because they both produce and import food irrigated from rapidly depleting aquifers. Our results could help to improve the sustainability of global food production and groundwater resource management by identifying priority regions and agricultural products at risk as well as the end consumers of these products.

#eau #aquifère #irrigation #dataviz
téléchargeable ici
▻http://sci-hub.io/10.1038/nature21403

Pêche, réchauffement et faune marine méditerranéenne - Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
▻https://www.ird.fr/ird.fr/toute-l-actualite/actualites/actualites-generales/peche-rechauffement-et-faune-marine-mediterraneenne#note1

Paradoxe de la recherche s’il en est, les écosystèmes marins de Méditerranée sont très observés mais leur état n’est pas si bien connu. Un récent travail scientifique d’ampleur, impliquant des partenaires français, italiens, espagnols et canadiens, vient changer la donne. Il apporte une vision d’ensemble inédite, permettant de mieux connaitre l’évolution des populations marines et les causes de leur apparent déclin. « La mer Méditerranée ne va pas très bien, explique la biologiste marine Marta Coll, cosignataire de cette étude, dont les résultats viennent d’être publiés dans la revue Nature (1). C’est un concentré de problèmes notamment en termes de surexploitation, de changement climatique et de pollutions ». Selon ces recherches, cela se traduit par une diminution substantielle de l’abondance des espèces de poissons commerciaux et non commerciaux, atteignant 34 % en une cinquantaine d’années. L’hécatombe est plus sévère encore s’agissant des prédateurs supérieurs, dont le nombre recule de 40 % sur la même période.. Les mammifères marins ne sont guère mieux lotis, avec une perte de 41 % des effectifs. Et encore, ce recul de la faune pourrait être sous-estimé par le recours à la modélisation dans ces travaux…

Les poissons commerciaux ou non-commerciaux #facepalm

Historical changes of the Mediterranean Sea ecosystem: modelling the role and impact of primary productivity and fisheries changes over time
▻http://www.nature.com/articles/srep44491

http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/srep/2017/170314/srep44491/images/m685/srep44491-f2.jpg

Protect rights at automated borders.

Gemma Galdon Clavell calls for checks and balances to avoid the indiscriminate sharing of personal data.

In 2013, the European Union proposed expanding and harmonizing automated border crossings across the region. This Smart Borders initiative could soon be approved1. The automated gates (e-gates) in place in many EU airports are the first phase. The European Agency for the Operational Management of Large-scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA) is testing how to link them to databases and processes region-wide. Entries and exits will be stored in a database, replacing passport stamps. This information will be made available to border-control and immigration authorities, and will be linked to fingerprint records and watch lists held by police, customs and immigration agencies.

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.42583.1487953810!/image/WEBnature_graphic_migration_borders_2.3.17.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/WEBnature_graphic_migration_borders_2.3.17.jpg

What the numbers say about refugees. The biggest concentrations of displaced people lie far from the spotlight.

Growing concerns over an ‘invasion’ of refugees and migrants helped to elect Donald Trump and sway Brexit voters. Yet the data suggest that the situation is very different from how it is often portrayed.

Researchers warn that misleading reports about the magnitude of flows into Europe and the United States are creating unjustified fears about refugees. That is undermining efforts to manage the massive humanitarian problems faced by those fleeing Syria and other hotspots.

The number of refugees and migrants entering the European Union is low compared with the bloc’s population. Nations in Africa and Asia are absorbing many more. “The number of refugees in Europe is a classic example of perception versus reality,” says geographer Nikola Sander at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.42711.1488366959!/image/refugees-feature-graphic-online01.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/refugees-feature-graphic-online01.jpg http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.42712.1488366985!/image/refugees-feature-graphic-online02.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_630/refugees-feature-graphic-online02.jpg

▻http://www.nature.com/news/what-the-numbers-say-about-refugees-1.21548
#statistiques #chiffres #afflux #mythe #préjugés #graphiques #visualisation
cc @reka

A giant neuron found wrapped around entire mouse brain : Nature News & Comment
▻http://www.nature.com/news/a-giant-neuron-found-wrapped-around-entire-mouse-brain-1.21539

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.42573.1487947588!/image/3_claustrum_neurons_AIBSa.jpg_gen/derivatives/nature_homepage/3_claustrum_neurons_AIBSa.jpg

Like ivy plants that send runners out searching for something to cling to, the brain’s neurons send out shoots that connect with other neurons throughout the organ. A new digital reconstruction method shows three neurons that branch extensively throughout the brain, including one that wraps around its entire outer layer. The finding may help to explain how the brain creates consciousness.

#cerveau #neurones #conscience

Pollution record dans les grands fonds marins
▻http://www.journaldelenvironnement.net/article/pollution-record-dans-les-grands-fonds-marins,79425?xtor=RS

http://www.journaldelenvironnement.net/mediatheque/5/0/8/000020805_5.jpg

Les fosses marines sont parmi les lieux les plus contaminés au monde par les polluants organiques persistants (POPs), dont les PCB, révèle une étude publiée lundi 13 février dans Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna
▻http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0051
Ecotoxicology: Pollutants plumb the depths
▻http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0075
#polluants_organiques_persistants #POP #écotoxicologie

Climate change reduces extent of temperate drylands and intensifies drought in deep soils : Nature Communications
▻http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14196

http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/ncomms/2017/170131/ncomms14196/images/m685/ncomms14196-f1.jpg

Drylands cover 40% of the global terrestrial surface and provide important ecosystem services. While drylands as a whole are expected to increase in extent and aridity in coming decades, temperature and precipitation forecasts vary by latitude and geographic region suggesting different trajectories for tropical, subtropical, and temperate drylands. Uncertainty in the future of tropical and subtropical drylands is well constrained, whereas soil moisture and ecological droughts, which drive vegetation productivity and composition, remain poorly understood in temperate drylands. Here we show that, over the twenty first century, temperate drylands may contract by a third, primarily converting to subtropical drylands, and that deep soil layers could be increasingly dry during the growing season. These changes imply major shifts in vegetation and ecosystem service delivery. Our results illustrate the importance of appropriate drought measures and, as a global study that focuses on temperate drylands, highlight a distinct fate for these highly populated areas.

#sol #climat #aridité

Edit : @odilon a raison. Nous sommes souvent trop fainéant (ou alors on va beaucoup trop vite). Sur les thèmes ou les initiatives intéressantes, on devrait prendre l’habitude de remonter à la source originale - ou au plus près - le plus souvent possible, ce que je fais très volontiers ici. En essayant de faire vraiment attention à la manière dont on cite les journaux #journalisme comme Le Monde pour n’en citer qu’un. Mais oui, il y en a aussi beaucoup d’autres.

Identifying species threat hotspots from global supply chains : Nature Ecology & Evolution

►http://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-016-0023

http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/natecolevol/2017/s41559-016-0023/images_hires/m685/s41559-016-0023-f3.jpg http://www.nature.com/article-assets/npg/natecolevol/2017/s41559-016-0023/images_hires/m685/s41559-016-0023-f1.jpg

Identifying hotspots of species threat has been a successful approach for setting conservation priorities. One important challenge in conservation is that, in many hotspots, export industries continue to drive overexploitation. Conservation measures must consider not just the point of impact, but also the consumer demand that ultimately drives resource use. To understand which species threat hotspots are driven by which consumers, we have developed a new approach to link a set of biodiversity footprint accounts to the hotspots of threatened species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The result is a map connecting consumption to spatially explicit hotspots driven by production on a global scale. Locating biodiversity threat hotspots driven by consumption of goods and services can help to connect conservationists, consumers, companies and governments in order to better target conservation actions.

How we discovered the world’s largest tropical #peatland, deep in the jungles of #Congo
▻https://theconversation.com/how-we-discovered-the-worlds-largest-tropical-peatland-deep-in-the-

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nature21048-f1.jpg

We were increasingly in awe that a remote, almost unknown, wilderness such as this could still be found on Earth today.

Technology : He wrote the future : Nature : Nature Research
▻http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v541/n7637/full/541286a.html

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v541/n7637/images/541286a-i1.jpg

In 1945, Clarke inadvertently launched a career as a futurologist with his outline for a geostationary communications satellite. In a letter (’V2 for ionosphere research?’) published in February’s issue of Wireless World and inspired by the German V2 rockets then landing on London, he made a revolutionary proposal:

An ’artificial satellite’ at the correct distance from the earth would make one revolution every 24 hours; i.e., it would remain stationary above the same spot and would be within optical range of nearly half the earth’s surface. Three repeater stations, 120 degrees apart in the correct orbit, could give television and microwave coverage to the entire planet.

Clarke realistically concluded: “I’m afraid this isn’t going to be of the slightest use to our postwar planners, but I think it is the ultimate solution to the problem.” He followed up with a more detailed piece in Wireless World that October, envisioning “space-stations” that relied on thermionic valves serviced by an onboard crew supplied by atomic-powered rockets.
Space Godfather

The first commercial communications satellite, Telstar I, was built by Bell Telephone Laboratories and launched in 1962. The first to be geostationary, the Hughes Aircraft Company’s Intelsat I (’Early Bird’), went up in 1965. Both launched on conventional rockets, and operated with transistors and without human maintenance. The two US engineers chiefly responsible — John Pierce for Telstar and Harold Rosen for Intelsat — saw Clarke as the father of satellite communications. Richard Colino, director-general of Intelsat (the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization) agreed in his foreword to a collection of Clarke’s technical writings, Ascent to Orbit (1984). Clarke preferred “godfather”, noting with uncharacteristic modesty in the book that he had received “rather more of the credit, I suspect, than I really deserve”. In old age, however, he told me that his comsat article was “the most important thing I ever wrote”.

Conclusion : publiez vos idées afin qu’elles fassent des enfants.

▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke

#technologie #science-fiction #littérature #2001 #centenaire #1917

Gates Foundation research can’t be published in top journals : Nature News & Comment
▻http://www.nature.com/news/gates-foundation-research-can-t-be-published-in-top-journals-1.21299

Scientists who do research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are not — for the moment — allowed to publish papers about that work in journals that include Nature, Science, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

#open_access #bill_gates (cette fois du bon côté !)

Five big mysteries about CRISPR’s origins : Nature News & Comment
▻http://www.nature.com/news/five-big-mysteries-about-crispr-s-origins-1.21294

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.41636.1484211579!/image/research.pasteur.fr_molecular-biology-of-gene-in-extremophiles.jpg_gen/derivatives/nature_homepage/research.pasteur.fr_molecular-biology-of-gene-in-extremophiles.jpg

For Mojica, exploring that diversity and answering basic questions about CRISPR systems hold more allure than the revolution they sparked. This puzzles many of his colleagues, he says. He has immersed himself in CRISPR–Cas biology for a quarter of a century, and although there’s a lot of funding available for those who wish to edit genomes, there is considerably less for the kind of work he does.

The quiet revolutionary: How the co-discovery of CRISPR explosively changed Emmanuelle Charpentier’s life : Nature News & Comment
►http://www.nature.com/news/the-quiet-revolutionary-how-the-co-discovery-of-crispr-explosively-changed-e

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.36034.1461592478!/image/PA-23209793.jpg_gen/derivatives/nature_homepage/PA-23209793.jpg

The microbiologist spent years moving labs and relishing solitude. Then her work on gene-editing thrust her into the scientific spotlight.

The unsung heroes of CRISPR : Nature News & Comment
▻http://www.nature.com/news/the-unsung-heroes-of-crispr-1.20272

http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/7.37868.1468859480!/image/crispr_heroes.jpg_gen/derivatives/nature_homepage/crispr_heroes.jpg

The soaring popularity of gene editing has made celebrities of the principal investigators who pioneered the field — but their graduate students and postdocs are often overlooked.

#crispr-cas #recherche #financements #inégalités #star-system