As nations across the globe negotiate how to reduce their contributions to climate change, researchers at Penn are investigating just how the coming changes will impact the planet. What's clear is that the effect extends beyond simple warming. Indeed, the very physics and chemistry of the oceans are also shifting, and are forecast to change even more in the coming decades.

These changes have implications for, among other things, the single-celled organisms that comprise the base of the ocean's food web and are responsible for half of the world's photosynthetic activity: phytoplankton. Not only are phytoplankton sensitive to changes in climate, they also contribute to those changes, as they can remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it deep in the ocean when they die.

Essen, Germany, December 16, 2015 - In a large population-based study of randomly selected participants in Germany, researchers found that participants with anemia, defined as haemoglobin <13 g/dl in men and <12 g/dl in women, showed lower performances in verbal memory and executive functions. Furthermore, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) occurred almost twice more often in participants diagnosed with anemia. This study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

There is a bad habit in environmental circles, created by the academics that feed them information: Discovering a new species and immediately declaring it endangered. More evidence-based scientists recognize that over 99.99999% of all species that have gone extinct we never knew about in the first place so declaring everything endangered and claiming a domino effect undermines public acceptance of science. Nonetheless, a new paper adds to the former effort by saying we should forget species extinction and talk about species rarity.

Climate researchers have published direct observations of the reduction and melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the latest 110 years, a step up from flawed numerical estimates used for all previous claims. In a recent paper, the researchers claim they can pinpoint where the ice sheet is particularly sensitive and what controls the loss of glacier ice in Greenland - and they close a gap in IPCC's estimate of global sea level budget. 

Supplement fads come and go and the most recent one to take the U.S. by storm has been to list vitamin D as both cause and cure of just about everything - and make some money selling vitamin supplements. It takes a while for science to catch up to spurious correlations and a recent study of elderly men found no evidence that obstructive sleep apnea increased in severity (or prevalence) as a result of vitamin D deficiency, despite what Joe Mercola or other health frauds are claiming this week.

The researchers also found no evidence to support a link between vitamin D deficiency and increased risk of OSA in non-obese study participants.

The discovery of hydrothermal fields at ocean floor opens a new chapter for marine sciences. Fluids in hydrothermal fields are hot and acidic, where at least 400 different biological organisms have been detected, including shrimp, crab and bacteria. Such biological organisms are resistant to high temperature, acidic fluids, and high pressure, and they are dependent on energy and materials (hydrogen gas, methane, ethane and propane, and organic acids) provided by the interaction between basement rocks and seawater (i.e. serpentinization). Hydrothermal fields resemble the early history of Earth. Therefore, serpentinization potentially contributes to the origin and evolution of life.