To date, research on the effects of climate change has underestimated the contribution of seawater expansion to sea level rise due to warming of the oceans. A team of researchers at the University of Bonn has now investigated, using satellite data, that this effect was almost twice as large over the past twelve years than previously assumed. That may result in, for example, significantly increased risks of storm surges. The scientists are presenting their findings in the renowned scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

Mailing free nicotine patches to smokers without providing behavioral support was associated with higher rates of tobacco cessation than not offering the patches, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Smoking is a leading cause of preventable disease worldwide. There is a need for randomized clinical trials on the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) where there is no additional behavioral support.

The first-ever global nitrogen footprint, encompassing 188 countries, has found the United States, China, India and Brazil are responsible for 46 percent of the world's nitrogen emissions.

The international collaboration, led by the University of Sydney's Integrated Sustainability Analysis team in the Faculty of Science, found developing countries tend to embody large amounts of nitrogen emissions from their exports of food, textiles and clothing. Australia is one of the few wealthy nations that is a net exporter of nitrogen, because of the substantial agriculture industry.

A small pilot study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research finds that using smartphone reminders to prompt people to get moving may help reduce sedentary behavior.

Prior papers have corrolated sedentary time to increased risk of breast, colorectal, ovarian, endometrial, and prostate cancers as well as weight gain, higher BMI, and obesity. Still, we love our phones. Surveys finds that adults in the U.S. report spending an average of about 8 waking hours per day being sedentary. 

In the water above natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil and gas bubbles rise almost a mile to break at the surface, scientists have discovered something unusual: phytoplankton, tiny microbes at the base of the marine food chain, are thriving.

The oil itself does not appear to help the phytoplankton, but the low concentration of oil found above natural seeps isn't killing them, and turbulence from the rising oil and gas bubbles is bringing up deep-water nutrients that phytoplankton need to grow, according to a new study appearing in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience. The result: phytoplankton concentrations above oil seeps are as much as twice the size of populations only a few kilometers away.

Evolution likes to borrow. It can take an already-successful biological structure and alter it until it serves a new function. Two independent groups studying the proteins that organize gut microvilli now suspect that this may have been the case in the development of inner ear hair cell stereocilia. While functionally very different, the protein complexes that organize microvilli and stereocilia have striking parallels. Both papers appear January 25 in Developmental Cell.