The sun has terrific energy potential but harnessing its electricity with silicon solar cells is too expensive; at times 10 times the price of coal energy it is fine for wealthier people but unrealistic in developing nations, where CO2 emissions are rising the fastest.

At least in America, CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically. The energy sector, the largest producer of CO2, is already back at early 1990s levels of emissions and the traditionally worst offender, coal, is at early 1980s levels.

CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activity. A simple way to measure climate sensitivity is to calculate how much the mean air temperature will rise if we were to double the level of overall CO2 emissions compared to the world's pre-industrialized level around the year 1750. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at our current rate, estimates are that we risk doubling that atmospheric CO2 level in roughly 2050.

About ten percent of all cases of malignant melanoma are familial cases. The genome of affected families tells scientists a lot about how the disease develops. Prof. Dr. Rajiv Kumar of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) together with Prof. Dr. Dirk Schadendorf from Essen University Hospital studied a family where 14 family members were affected by malignant melanoma.

Decentralization is the greatest challenge facing energy companies in Germany - directing energy efficiently has become more important than how much to produce. 

"Distribution System Operators (DSO) and energy companies are working feverishly on various new models and technologies to ensure the right amounts of energy get to the right places at the right times, as well as attempting to pre-empt looming new questions," said Tobias Rothacher, Senior Manager of Renewable Energies and Resources at Germany Trade&Invest.

Electric cars of the future will present a whole host of new riddles in power availability that will need answering, as will eventual turns to electric forms of heating and/or cooling. 

The “coffee-ring effect” is a commonplace occurrence that happens when drops of liquid with suspended particles dry, leaving a ring-shaped stain at the drop’s edges.

How those particles stack up as they reach the drop’s edge, and how different particles make smoother or rougher deposition profiles at the drop edge depending on their shape, is the subject of a new study from Penn and the growth profiles they found offer tests of deep mathematical ideas about growing interfaces.

A new study details changes in Earth's climate from more than 100,000 years ago and indicates that the last interglacial, the term for the periods between "ice ages", was warmer than previously thought. 

The research findings also indicate that melting of the massive West Antarctic ice sheet may have contributed more to sea-level rise at that time than melting of the Greenland ice sheet.