Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laboratory instrument that can measure how much of the carbon in many carbon-containing materials was derived from fossil fuels. This will open the way for new methods in the biofuels and bioplastics industries, in scientific research, and environmental monitoring. Among other things, it will allow scientists to measure how much of the carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere came from burning fossil fuels, and to estimate fossil fuel emissions in an area as small as a city or as large as a continent.

Although Tropical Storm Jose was located off the coast of southeastern U.S. it is stirring up the waters along the U.S. East coast, causing dangerous conditions. NOAA’s GOES East satellite saw Jose centered about 360 miles northeast of the southwestern Bahamas on Sept. 15.

Satellite imagery showed that Tropical Depression 15E continued to struggle to organize while still being affected by vertical wind shear.

NOAA’s GOES East satellite captured a visible image of the latest tropical cyclone to form in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. Tropical Depression 14E formed, despite battling northerly wind shear.

NASA created a dramatic 3-D image of powerful Typhoon Talim using data from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite. Talim’s large eye really made the storm stand out as it moved toward landfall.

A discovery by Indiana University researchers could advance the long-term storage of nuclear waste, an increasingly burdensome and costly task for the public and private agencies that protect people from these harmful chemicals.

Star Formation: Three scientists at Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), University of Copenhagen, have carried out extensive computer simulations related to star formation. They conclude that the present idealized models are lacking when it comes to describing details in the star formation process. “Hopefully our results can also help shed more light on planet formation”, says Michael Küffmeier, astrophysicist and head of the research team.

NASA’s Aqua satellite captured in infrared-light image of Hurricane Max that showed the storm weakened quickly as it made landfall in southwestern Mexico. Max quickly degenerated into a large area of low pressure.

Popular portrayals of “nature reclaiming civilization” in flood-damaged New Orleans, Louisianna, neighborhoods romanticize an urban ecology shaped by policy-driven socioecological disparities in redevelopment investment, ecologists argue in a new paper in the Ecological Society of America’s open access journal Ecosphere.

A rattle will only make noise if you shake it. Children learn this principle of cause and effect early on in their lives. However, animals like the wolf also understand such connections and are better at this than their domesticated descendants. Researchers at the Wolf Science Center of the Vetmeduni Vienna say that wolves have a better causal understanding than dogs and that they follow human-given communicative cues equally well. The study in Scientific Reports provides the insight that the process of domestication can also affect an animal’s causal understanding.