Petra University

The ebb and flow of the ocean tides, generally thought to be one of the most predictable forces on Earth, are actually quite variable over long time periods, in ways that have not been adequately accounted for in most evaluations of prehistoric sea level changes. Due to phenomena such as ice ages, plate tectonics, land uplift, erosion and sedimentation, tides have changed dramatically over thousands of years and may change again in the future, a new study concludes.

Electrical engineers have developed a material that allows them to manipulate light in much the same way that electronics manipulate flowing electrons. The researchers say the results of their latest proof-of-concept experiments could lead to the replacement of electrical components with those based on optical technologies. Light-based devices would enable faster and more efficient transmission of information, much in the same way that replacing wires with optical fibers revolutionized the telecommunications industry.

In the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have found that bacterial microbes inside the slick degraded the oil at a rate five times faster than microbes outside the slick -- accounting in large part for the disappearance of the slick some three weeks after Deepwater Horizon's Macondo well was shut off.

The European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory has found molecules of oxygen in a nearby star-forming cloud. This is the first undisputed detection of oxygen molecules in space. It concludes a long search but also leaves questions unanswered.