A new factor contributing to the rise of sea levels has been discovered.

A new factor contributing to the rise of sea levels has been discovered.Scientists have uncovered an alarming reason for why sea levels are rising. While melting glaciers were believed to be the primary factor for the increase of water levels, researchers did not take into account the way oceans cope with the added mass.

According to a report published in the journal, Geophysical Research Letters, the extra weight coming from melting glaciers is pushing the seafloor at the bottom. Thus, the larger volume of water increases the total height of the oceans. This new discovery adds another layer of the overall ramifications of climate change.

“The Earth itself is not a rigid sphere, it’s a deforming ball,” said Thomas Frederikse, a geoscientist from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

According to Frederikse, climate change does not only change temperature but also causes the ocean bottom to strain the elasticity of the ocean floor. Frederikse and his team call this phenomenon barystatic sea level rise, and they believe it can tamper with previous measurements obtained through satellite imagery. Satellites are only good at reading sea levels from a geocentric point of view, with the help of altimeters that measure the ocean surface from the center of the Earth.

According to the research, all sea-levels measurements would be about 8 percent off, however, Frederikse believes only 4 percent could be attributed to the ocean floor subsiding. This is due to warming temperatures contributing half the increase in sea level rise, which can cause the same amount of water to expand and take up more space.

The researchers explain that seafloor deformation is not uniform as the difference between relative and geocentric sea level change may deviate from the overall global difference.

According to the study, the sea floor sank by about 2.5 mm between 1993 and 2014, which translates to 0.13 mm per year. While the calculation encompasses the change in sea level depth on a global scale, researchers warn that some specific regions are more affected than others. For example, scientists point out that water levels in the Arctic region rise 1 mm per year while the south Pacific registered  0.4 mm per year.

Researchers stress that further sea-level estimates should be calculated using all available means to properly quantify seabed warping.

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China plans to test the resilience of terrestrial lifeforms by sending insects and plants to the moon.

The moon has been receiving a bit of attention as of late. We have a Japanese start-up that wants to place ads on the rock by 2020, Trump gave NASA the go-ahead to return to the moon and now it seems that China is following suit, albeit in a different way.

The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) aka the Chang’e Program has already sent two orbiters and one lander on the moon. However, China’s next Chang’e mission, the Chang’e 4, will involve bringing insects and plants to the moon. The purpose will reportedly be to test the effects of lunar gravity on living beings aside from humans as well as to study the local geology.

A Long March 5 rocket containing a relay orbiter, is slated to launch towards Earth’s natural satellite in June 2018. The relay will begin orbiting around the Earth-moon L2 Lagrange Point. A lander and rover containing various equipment to study the lunar surface will be launched six months later. In addition to the instruments, the lander will also carry an aluminum alloy container filled with seeds and insects.

Zhang Yuanxun, who is the chief designer of the container, described the contents of the lunar package as being a number of potatoes, Arabidopsis seeds, and silkworm eggs.

“The eggs will hatch into silkworms, which can produce carbon dioxide, while the potatoes and seeds emit oxygen through photosynthesis.” States Yuanxun “Together, they can establish a simple ecosystem on the moon.”

What’s more noteworthy is that this will be the first time a lander is sent to an unexplored area on the far side of the moon. The region in question is in the South Pole- Aitken Basin, located in the moon’s southern hemisphere.

Chang’e 4 mission will investigate whether terrestrial organisms can grow and thrive in a lunar environment. If the Chang’e 4 mission produces satisfying results, China will follow up with robotic missions and a potentially manned excursion in about 15 years.

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Scientists may have found an effective way to provide long-term relief to people who suffer from tinnitus.

Imagine constant ringing in your years coupled with random phantom noises that happen at random and you may just scratch the surface of how bad having tinnitus really is. The medical condition affects millions of Americans, and in some cases, the symptoms can be so severe that it can cripple one’s life. There are a number of treatments that can alleviate the noises or that manage them, however, none of them offer long-term relief. A recent study published in the journal, Science Translational Medicine, may give people afflicted with tinnitus exactly what they were looking for.

In the study, researchers used a new device that generated “precisely timed sounds” in parallel with weak electrical pulses to suppress the ringing sounds associated with the condition. The two effects working in conjunction would reportedly activate touch-sensitive nerves, rendering damaged nerve cells back to normal.

“If we can stop these signals, we can stop tinnitus. That is what our approach attempts to do, and we’re encouraged by these initial parallel results,” said Susan Shore, a professor at the University of Michigan Medical School and lead researcher of the study.

All twenty participants who used the device every day for four weeks reported that their symptoms had decreased to the point where they could resume their lives. The results showed so much potential that the researchers eventually patented the device. Another group was exposed to a placebo in order for the researchers to tell if the primary treatment worked.

According to the scientists, the tech behind the device includes a bimodal auditory-somatosensory stimulation, which alternates between a faint electrical pulse and a sound played in the ears. The device does not cure tinnitus, however, it does alleviate the symptoms to the point where the person is able to ignore the condition. Development of the device for commercialization purposes is still underway.

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Global climate change concerns prompted scientists and Mars Inc. to look for ways to maintain chocolate production.

Chocolate is in danger of becoming a commodity, according to a report made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to the organization, climate change can limit and eventually kill off cacao trees by 2050. The prospect is grim to say the least, especially considering that our social fabric is so intertwined with chocolate consumption at this point that imagining a future without the sweet is impossible. However, there are people who are trying to prevent this scenario from ever happening. Scientists from the University of California-Berkeley partnered up with chocolate company, Mars Inc. to prevent the cacao trees decline.

Cacao trees are able to grow normally only under certain conditions, the NOAA stated. These conditions include high temperatures, high humidity, constant rainfall and nitrogen-rich soil. Thus, the best spots for cultivating cocoa are 20 degrees of land north and south of the equator. These are the same locations that will be rendered hotter and drier by global warming in the next couple of decades.

“In other words, as higher temperatures squeeze more water out of soil and plants, it’s unlikely that rainfall will increase enough to offset the moisture loss,” the NOAA notes.

Berkeley scientists are currently testing a new gene-editing technology called CRISPR to alter the DNA of the cacao plants and make them resistant to drier and hotter climates.

Cacao trees are highly vulnerable to climate change mainly due to their reliance on a small patch of “rainforested land” that grows smaller each year.

Barry Parkin, Mars’ chief sustainability officer, has said that the company is fully invested in maintaining the cocoa tree’s sustainability. Mars has been a firm opponent against climate change having pledged $1 billion in a programme called “Sustainability in a Generation” which seeks to reduce the carbon footprint of the company and its supply chain by 60 percent by 2050.

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Researchers have found more callous-unemotional traits in boys rather than in girls.

Ever wondered why boys don’t cry as much as girls? According to researchers, this has to do with their unique brain structures.

A team of scientists from the University of Basel and University of Basel Psychiatric Hospital in Switzerland focused on the brain development of 189 adolescents. Not crying or appearing entirely unemotional falls within a category called callous-unemotional traits. These traits also include a lack of empathy, a lack of remorse of guilt, and an overall disregard for other’s feelings.

The results revealed that boys have a larger volume of the anterior insula or gray matter volume, a brain region responsible for recognizing emotions in others and empathy. Researchers believe that the size of this brain component is responsible for higher levels of callous-unemotional traits.

“Our findings demonstrate that callous-unemotional traits are related to differences in brain structure in typically-developing boys without a clinical diagnosis,” said Nora Maria Raschle from the University of Basel in Switzerland and lead author of the study.

Raschle and her team of researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to better monitor the brain development of the participants and find out whether callous-unemotional traits are associated with different brain structures. They concluded that boys and girls have different brain structures, particularly when dealing with emotions.

Once they compared the MRI images of both sexes who showed unemotional behavior, researchers discovered that only boys displayed significant differences in the bilateral anterior peninsula.

19 percent of the callous-unemotional traits displayed in boys was due to a larger bilateral anterior peninsula, according to the scientists.

The team, however, wants to further examine the link between callous-unemotional traits and brain structure in order to understand the different thought processes of developing teens. They are curious to see if the findings will translate to older test subjects or if they are limited to one age group. The study was published in the journal, Neuroimage.

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Men avoid being eco-friendly because they believe the activity undermines their manliness, researchers suggest.

A recent report sheds light on men’s reticence to care for the environment.  According to the study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, most men avoid being eco-friendly because they regard the behavior as “feminine”.

Researchers sifted through seven studies that involved over 2 thousand participants and discovered that both men and women associated preserving the environment with “being feminine”, something which confirms male perception towards embracing environmentally-conscious behaviors.

James Wilkie, a consumer psychologist from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and one of the authors of the report, claims that men are as concerned with maintaining their masculine identity as women are with their feminine identity.

“We, therefore, thought that men might be more open to environmental products if we made them feel secure in their masculinity, so they are less threatened by adopting a green product.” States Wilkie.

As part of the study, Wilkie and his team of researchers monitored several men and women’s shopping behaviors when it came to eco-friendly products to determine the limits of the “green-feminine stereotype”.

Previous studies revealed that men use more energy than women which, in turn, prompted them to recycle less and litter more. While the reasons behind this behavior were unclear in the past, recent findings point to men’s fear of having their manliness undermined.

Researchers pointed out to one experiment in which they asked men and women to describe an individual who brought a reusable canvas bag to a grocery store. Both sexes admitted that the individual would appear more feminine than someone who used a plastic bag, regardless if that shopper was a male or female.

Another experiment saw participants describe how they felt after they did something good or bad for the environment. Being eco-friendly was, again, perceived by the participants to be a feminine behavior.

Researchers suggest that future eco-friendly products be re-branded to cater to men’s self-image. They also stress the fact that man are not inherently ignorant towards preserving the environment but rather they fear their eco-friendly behaviors will brand them as feminine.

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